What other sorts of things could we do with inSyte? (2)

If you’re in an accident then you can call for help. Telepathically.

Pretty neat.

You’re in a critical meeting and you have transparent access to your engineers back at HQ. Better than that, they are literally attending the meeting through your eyes and ears. Talk about driving efficiency.

You’re about to say something insensitive at a dinner party, your wife doesn’t have to pretend to change the subject or kick you under the table. She just tells you to shut up through your common feed.

Let’s reverse it – how do you protect your thoughts. You don’t want your wife to know that you don’t like her meatballs, or how cute you think the waitress is. Or if she’s telling you about her day you don’t want her to know you’re really watching the ballgame.

So you have to protect your thoughts. OK – no need to reinvent the wheel. One approach might be to leverage so called demilitarized zones. Create DMZs just like we have on networks today.

So only your thoughts that go into the DMZ can be picked up on.

That would be fine for business and for general interactions with people.

But what about your spouse? Is the person you love going to be OK with that? Now you’re hiding your thoughts intentionally?

Could the authorities get a warrant to explore past the DMZ based on the Patriot Act?

Does probable cause enter the equation if the authorities find actual physical proof of premeditation only as a result of reading your thoughts?

Well, if they could prevent another 911 then of course you would want them to.

So – could they insert this into your head to read your thoughts? Beats waterboarding.

I’m sure this would spawn massive legal questions that would make it all the way to the Supreme Court.

What about hackers? Someone could hack into your mind to steal critical information. Business info, credit card, passwords. Or insert, ie push, a nightmare image. Cause a hallucination. Take you into a virtual reality. Maybe during a business meeting. Or a robbery. Or a date.

What other sorts of things could we do with inSyte? (1)

Your world, Connected. We see these taglines for SPs and technology. Because with a smartphone or a PC there are a number of ways to communicate with other people.

Instant Messaging, Skype, Apple’s new Facetime.

In my book, only one person has the screen in his mind.

What happens when everyone has it?

Well, then you’re communicating in real time with other people using the airwaves, using RF.

Invisibly.

You can talk to anyone else on the grid with your thoughts.

The simple notion is that someone IM’s you, you have an IM session in your head.

Ok – so you can IM someone. Big deal. How about skype? Communicating with your friend. Having an actual conversation. Silently. And he sees what you see.

Except that he’s in another room. Or across town. Or across the country. Or across an ocean.

It’s no different then communicating telepathically. Better, actually, because of the video component.

Sounds like impossible science fiction from the fifties, right?

In fact, if you were an observer from the fifties, you would look on incredulously and likely conclude mankind had discovered an innate telepathic ability.

But as we have this discussion, you see it’s just technology.

In my next blog, I’ll discuss what you could do with this ability…

What would inSyte do to personal conversations?

On the one hand, it would raise the level of the discussion because you don’t have to argue or debate about the facts. So it frees us to focus on concepts, ideas.

On the other hand, can you have a simple conversation? Would we be bored with small talk, already a lost art form? Would we constantly check and correct everything anyone else said?

Sort of like Vulcan’s from Star Trek? “Excuse me, Doctor, but that is factually incorrect.”

And what about the continual interruptions? We think crackberry addicts are bad now, what if everyone had inSyte? You’re having a conversation with someone and they get these constant distant looks in their eyes, or they seem to glance down to read the ticker.

Your wife is telling you about her day and you’re smiling and nodding while you’re watching the ballgame in real time in your mind. I mean, how could you resist?

Again – we would need the proper tools to filter out interruptions.

What might this mean for the Economy?

The implications are tremendous. Productivity is the most important metric in economics. Ratio of output over input. Even small improvements dramatically change our lives.

In the seventies and eighties, productivity grew one and a half percent annually in the U.S. Not very robust. In 1980 it was all gloom and doom.

Because nobody saw the PC explosion of the nineties coming. Because we were on the flat part of the exponential improvement curve for computers and IT. So people could not conceive that within 10 years we would be on the steep part of that curve and the technology would explode.

In the early 90’s, fourth gen computers and IT software hit the market and finally the technology was easy to use. Remember Windows 95? Game changer.

And productivity exploded to 4%+

I mean, think about it – how did we even function as a society before spreadsheets and the ability to email attachments?

Today the economy has stalled and productivity is flat. It’s all gloom and doom. But people cannot imagine that right around the corner lies inSyte.

I’m not talking about turning a crank faster on a machine. I’m talking about fundamentally altering the way we all think and work. InSyte can do for the twenties what the computer and IT did for the nineties. Drive productivity gains off the scale.

Because of the improvement of access to information and the ability to communicate.

If you’re better at searches you’ll know more than your Doctor. You literally do a better, faster diagnosis.

To some degree that could be true. But it’s not enough to know something. Experience plays a huge role. It’s not like I can read how to conduct open heart surgery and then go perform an operation. But maybe I could if it were an absolute emergency. Assuming I don’t faint at the sight of blood.

This wouldn’t be like The Matrix – where I download how to fly a helicopter then jump in and take off. But it might help if I were taking flying lessons from a professional.

Relieve me from the burden of memorization – but I still have to develop the muscle memory.

A lot of factors differentiate people way beyond mere information. Sure, you’ve got to have the info to begin with. But how you deal with situations, interact with people, control emotion… those are real attributes that aren’t going away.

OK - we have size, bw, viewing and triggering - now what?

So far all we’ve talked about is searching. But it’s really more than that, isn’t it. Much more.

It’s viewing – in your mind – all the information available on an external screen today. (VFAT)

Video – you could be casually watching a TV show in your mind and also have a split screen to the the video camera you have at your front door, or at your cabin, or at your office.

Or any feed from millions of video cameras connected to the global internet. So you could see anything, anywhere, anytime.

Did you forget the name of the person you’re talking to at a party? Face recognition will tell you their name and their FB page tells you their wife and kid’s names.

You have Augmented Reality. Today with Google Goggles, you look at a building through your smartphone lens and information about the structure will pop up. There are apps that convert Spanish to English. In real time. You would have all of that in your mind now. You look at a building and see blueprints, see the menu items for a restaurant. From a block away. See inside the building if you can find the camera feed.

Read tweets and Facebook posts so you know what people are thinking. Not today’s tweets, but 3^rd and 4^th generation tweets that will bring everything closer to real time.

So you have access to all mankind’s knowledge, you can be all places at all times, see into the hearts of men, and you’re all knowing as you gaze upon the world – or at least your City block.

Sort of like God.

Viewing and Triggering

Today we have “near eye displays” available today from companies like Sharper Image and Vusix. They look a lot like sunglasses and interface to your iphone wirelessly. They range in price from $150 to $10,000.

The more expensive pairs act like sunglasses but they have a little screen in one corner that displays data from your smartphone.

A bit clunky but Moore’s Law will take care of that in time.

Glasses today, contact lenses tomorrow, somehow tied directly to the optic nerve by the end of the decade.

There you go – you’re constantly connected to the net.

All information recorded by man. Right there in your head.

OK – so you can search based on audio. No doubt voice recognition software will support that in 10 years.

Of course, you don’t want to search based only on external stimulae, ie answering other people’s questions.

You want answers to your own questions.

So you need to trigger a search based on a thought. Your thought.

Not too far fetched, there are technologies today that type based on visual queues and thoughts.

Neuro feedback – or Thought Technology – is about EEG based biofeedback where technology responds to your thoughts, to your brain energy and patterns. Pretty rudimentary today. Designed for people who are paralyzed where they can navigate a computer mouse, to some degree. So let’s assume Moore’s Law makes that easy.

That 10 or 20 years from now you can control the micro with a high degree of granularity just by using your thoughts.

Bandwitdh

Think about bandwidth - Cisco made headlines in May announcing a next generation router – the CRS 3 - that will revolutionize the internet by increasing downloads to unheard of speeds.

A single fully configured CRS 3 router would

· Download the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in just over one second

· Support a video call for every man, woman and child in China - simultaneously;

OK – so size (discussed on my last post) is essentially zero and bandwidth is essentially infinite.

Off to a good start. On my next post, I'll discuss Viewing.

Specifically, what are the technical challenges?

There are 4 considerations - size, bandwidth, viewing and triggering. Today we'll discuss size...

Ray Kurzweil makes the point in his Trancendental Man documentary that the computer we all carry around with us (ie smartphone) is 1 billion times better then computers of the sixties in terms of processing power per dollar. I think he factors size into his equation too. The power of exponential improvements.

Moore’s Law. Processing power will double every two years, the size decreases, etc. So by Ray’s calculation, the smartphone will be the size of a blood cell by 2029.

OK – so size is essentially zero.

In my novel, the micro evolves into a fun fashion statement. Old folks used ceramic clips on their belt. Boring. Others hide micros in earrings, watches, rings.

Teenagers don’t screw around. Skin patches. Tattoo ink. Breast implants.

But most people simply paint their fingernails with an electronic resin.

How far are we from having transparent internet access

Very real possibility within a decade or so.

Today we talk about 3 screens – the computer, the TV and the smartphone display. With Mitch, my main character, his mind becomes the 4^th screen.

So it’s really just another screen to view whatever’s on your smartphone screen. That includes surfing. Someone could ask you a question and you could Google it and see the answer. Pretty simple.

Today you’re able to wirelessly connect your screen data to special pairs of glasses. Vusix and Sharp make the glasses. Let’s say a decade from now you can stream to any pair of glasses, and that includes contact lenses.

Now let’s assume voice recognition software improves and when someone asks a question you see the search results automatically.

Which film won the Academy Award in 1975?

Boom – “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” scrolls across the bottom of your vision field like the ticker on a news channel.

How do you tie a bowline knot?

Boom – watch an animation and tie away.

Any math problem – bam, answer is right there in Google search.

Let’s call this concept, inSyte.

If you saw someone today with this ability, you would think – wow, genius. Except we’re not talking about a genius. We’re talking about everyone having this ability, all the time.

And yes, it is inevitable.

Think about when you try to remember something and it takes a few seconds. You’re searching your local HD, so to speak. With inSyte, when you try to remember something, you might find the answer on a server in Germany. And you have no idea. Your memory now consists of man’s entire recorded set of information.

inSyte would become an extension of your own memory. In the cloud. You would become so dependent that without it you would feel empty. Unplugged.

Characters defined as Navy SEALs...

I’ve always been fascinated by Navy SEALs. I was in the Navy for 6 years in what’s considered an elite program – Navy Nuclear Power. Child’s play compared with what our SEALs go through. Pure child’s play. Those SEALs are a different breed. Maybe I can say that better – SEALs represent the finest qualities of our humanity. Endurance, focus, commitment, responsibility, heart, courage. They’re the best of the best of the best. All special Ops, for that matter. Maybe I’m partial to SEALs because I was in the Navy.

The antagonist in my novel is sort of a wolf like, paranormal killer. So the idea of a SEAL taking on a paranormal psycho killer – the SEAL would eat him up. No doubt.

Time for a Little Writing Q&A...

Tell us about a favorite character from a book.

My favorite character is Cheslov who is an antagonist… but not necessarily THE antagonist. I struggled at times with dialogue and scene creation for other characters. But for some reason, it just flowed with Cheslov.

My book takes place in 2020. Cheslov is Russian, born around the turn of the century. Around 1900, that is. Somehow he ends up in Tampa in 2020 as hired muscle for the Mayor. How did he survive to 2020 if he was born in 1900?

Something happened in the woods of Rostov.

It’s like that with Cheslov, he’s just naturally creepy. I think Kirkus reviews put it pretty well when they wrote the following in their review of inSyte:

“Woven throughout a story with many finely crafted twists, turns and revelations is the charismatic, mysterious, murderous Cheslov Kirill. As a classic merciless political operator, Kirill is unforgettable and chillingly, complexly rendered, especially for a man who uses a school of sharks off the Florida coast for corpse disposal.”

But he’s also charming, likeable on some level. He is the character everyone who reads my novel seems to talk about. Some are darkly drawn to him. Most found him fascinating in his evilness. But he’s the one people remember. Me too.

When in the day/night do you write? How long per day?

I’m totally a morning guy. I wrote the entire novel between 4:00am and 7:00am. All of it. It was a release from my day job. A way to use my creative side to balance out the technical work I had to do during the day.

I was actually working very hard on a business proposal – a $300m business proposal. I was stressed like you wouldn’t believe. Waking up very early in the am, not able to get back to sleep. Finally I started writing. It was a release, an ability to use my creative side to balance out all of the technical work I was doing for my job. And it just flowed. I developed a pattern of waking up every morning around 4:00am and writing until 7:00. Then starting my day job.

What is the hardest part of writing your books?

Figuring out what to write about. Once you figure it out then the next hardest part is putting together the first draft. After that it’s a piece of cake. Enjoyable to watch your baby grow.

Do you have any suggestions for beginning writers? If so, what are they?

I can only tell you what worked for me. Think of a high concept. For me, that’s the ability to tap into the internet with your mind. So you can surf the internet the way you peruse your own memory today.

Try to remember the lyrics to a song. Might take a few seconds, then you remember. You find that information in your brain, obviously. Sort of a local hard drive, to use computer terms.

Now imagine you’re transparently tapped into the Global internet 24x7. Now try to remember the lyrics to a song. They’re there instantly. Feels like you found them in your brain, just like before. But you didn’t. You found the words on a server in Germany. Doesn’t matter, all transparent to you.

OK – so you have the high concept. Now what? Well, you have to have conflict. For me, I created a moral dilemma between the protagonist, the ‘monster’ Cheslov, and a local politician who thinks he has a direct connect with God.

Next – ratchet up the tension at every opportunity. I made my protagonist an ex-Navy seal so he could pretty much deal with anything. Made Cheslov part wolf, paranormal. Then went into detail explaining how screwed up the politician is, he’s hooked on drugs due to his wife’s death, etc. Keep ratcheting up.

Then create an outline – and write, write, write to fill in the outline. Don’t worry about adjectives or effect or the best dialogue or even grammar/punctuation.

This is all a hell of a lot of work.

But once you have the first draft – read it. And read and read and read. Every time I picked it up and read a chapter, I thought of better ways to describe things. I watched TV at night or listened to the radio during the day or read the paper in the morning and always, constantly, I gained ideas on how to improve my character’s dialogue, how to enhance a scene, how to polish, enrich, entertain, grow, connect.

The initial draft took 3 months to write. Then finishing the novel took another 3 years.

Oh – and don’t let ANYBODY read that initial draft. It will suck, indeed.

Idea for the conflict

My main antagonist is the Mayor, and all the conflict comes from him and his crazy notion that all of his ideas are God given.

I listened to Rudy Giuliani speak a year after 911. This was in August of 2002, just under a year since 911. Rudy spoke to a crowd of about 5,000 folks. He described the events of that day and it was very emotional, everyone loved the guy, he was held in such admiration.

He told the crowd that every great leader will possess spirituality. And when you have millions of people that you’re serving, there’s a natural temptation to believe that God put you there, there must be a divine intervention. Then the tendency is to think that any gut feeling you have, gut decision, must be God’s decision.

So Rudy talked about how you have to avoid falling into that trap, you have to remain objective and realize you’re only human and they are your decisions.

I found that fascinating because I had never heard a politician talk like that.

I think there are a number of politicians in the US and abroad, recently and not, where pragmatism was nowhere to be found. I wanted to explore that in a novel. Come on, there’s all kinds of room for conflict.

Is my novel super technical?

It’s not technical, it’s credible. Think about Jurassic Park. The mosquitos landed on the dinosaurs then landed on Amber and became fossilized. Now if you can find the amber then you get to the mosquito and have dino DNA. All very credible.

So I tried to make my novel credible like that.

But the techie part is not the part that’s interesting. The social impact is the interesting part, what would this do to an individual and to society to have this ability.

Suddenly everyone has all the answers. To everything. All the time. Think about that.

Idea for my high concept

I remember sitting in a business meeting in the late 90’s. I knew the material pretty well so I didn’t fire up my laptop at the start of the meeting.. Then the customer kept drilling down and asking for facts that I didn’t have memorized. I started writing down his questions and telling him I’d get back to him. After about the 10^th question, I fired up my laptop, searched for the data, and answered his questions.

Afterwards, I thought – man, wouldn’t it be nice if I could tap into my laptop, put a little screen inside my glasses that only I could see. Boy, wouldn’t I look like a genius because no one else would be aware.

Then I thought about the social implications. I thought about meeting some girl in a bar. Cyrano de Bergerac style. Switching from scientific to philosophic to comedic mode. Having software sophisticated enough to give you the next line to anything she says or anything you hear.

How many times have you said, ‘Man, I wish I had said such and such’ after a conversation.

And I’ve always believed it’s inevitable so I finally decided to write a book about it.

What people are saying about my novel, inSyte

· A bold brazen thriller with a serious commentary on the future of information. Equal parts Crichton, Clancy and King. (Kirkus Reviews)

· Some of the scenes were so powerful I could barely catch my breath. (Susan Breen, author of The Fiction Class)

· Fight scenes are horrifying and terrific. (Lisa Reardon, author of Billy Dead)

· Riveting futuristic tale of man’s reliance on technology and what could happen if you allow it to control you. (Heather Powers, Earth’s Book Nook)

Virtual Telepathy - part 4

Think of a hydraulic suit, the kind used in the military. So called exoskeleton suits. An article from Sept 2010 demonstrated the 2^nd generation Exoskeleton (XOS 2) that allows a soldier to easily and repeatedly lift 200 pounds and punch through 3 inches of solid wood. Eventually you get to suit Sigourney Weaver used to battle the queen in 1986’s Aliens.

The you slim it down so that being paralyzed is not something you would necessarily notice.

So man is melded with machine.

And inSyte does the same for the mind. Blindness? A thing of the past. People can see now through a camera smaller than a button in resolution that exceeds natural sight because it includes infrared, a larger spectrum of light becomes visible.

No more need for flashlights for anyone.

These are physical meldings.

Mental – now you have access to everything all the time. You google as easily as you peruse your own memories.

Try to remember the lyrics to a song you used to know. You can’t quite remember so you google it.

Well, now you wouldn’t have to do that manually. Anything you think of, it’s there, in your mind. You’d soon lose the sensation that you were looking on servers. IT would all just become part of your memory.

There would be no more betting on recorded information. I’ll bet you twenty bucks the Beatles first showed up in the US in Feb 1964. Thing of the past.

You wouldn’t leave home with out it. You think you feel naked leaving your home without your cell phone? You would feel downright blind and dumb without inSyte. Flying without your instruments. Weak. Frail. Insubstantial. Incapable. Alone. Afraid.

Within 10 years clock speeds for CPU’s will catch up and surpass the speed of thought. What about within 50 years? 100 years?

Machines taking over?

Virtual Telepathy - part 3

OK, back to positive uses: I can tell my wife to pick up some milk. While I’m at home and she’s at the store.

But we’re back to the interruption thing. You’d never get ANYTHING accomplished.

So you would have to devise a way to shut others out. Unless its an emergency.

What about hackers? Someone could hack into your mind with a nightmare image. Cause a hallucination. Take you into a virtual reality. Maybe during a business meeting. Of course, that happens today, every day. But it’s your computer or smart phone that’s getting hacked. Not your mind.

What about TV Game shows? Jeopardy. You have to have a way to turn it all off.

OK – back to the communication techniques. Instant Messaging, Skype, phone calls (of course) – but calls that take place over the data network.

Facetime calls take place in your mind now.

Facebook.

Avatars.

Skype with avatars – so now someone virtually flirts with you and they look like Marilyn Monroe and you look like Clint Eastwood. Who knows what you both really look like.

Who cares?

Could this extend to business meetings? So you want to come across as tall, dark, menacing? Or charming, the perfect gentlemen.

Why stop there? Program it all ahead of time.

I’m not saying the computers would handle all aspects of the negotiation any time soon, that success and profit and loss financially and in a larger business sense are achieved by the company who hires the best programmers.

In the near term its probably something more along the lines of a melding of man and machine. So the machine component improves the package. The mental package.

Virtual Telepathy - part 2

But take the next leap – maybe 20 years in the future. Back to the screen in your mind.

Now you can talk to anyone else on the grid with your thoughts.

The simple notion is that someone IM’s you, you have an IM session in your head.

See, we want to take existing patterns, existing technology and project what we know into the next wave. That’s why the early television shows were extensions of what had been on the radio. The Lone Ranger, What’s my line. Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life.

It took about a decade for TV to develop based on its own unique attributes, to become a more visual medium.

Ok – so you can IM someone. Big deal. How about skype? Visually communicating with your friend in another state. Silently.

Sounds like impossible science fiction from the fifties, right?

“Video brings the Internet to life,” said Chambers. “You are moving from a messaging platform to a video platform.”

Expand your thought. What would that bring that we don’t have now?

If you’re in an accident then you can call for help. Back to telepathy.

If you’re in a critical negotiation, you could communicate with your business partner. How many times have you said to someone – Man, I wanted to tell you but we couldn’t because the other guy was standing right there!

What else? Reverse it – how do you protect your thoughts. You don’t want the other side to sense your floor price. You don’t want your wife to know that you really don’t like the way she looks in the sunlight today. Or how nice the waitress looks.

So you have to protect your thoughts. Let’s say that’s a given, the technology will do that. Similar to the way you have DMZs on networks today.

So only your thoughts that go into the DMZ can be picked up on.

Again – is your spouse going to be OK with that? That now you’re hiding your thoughts intentionally? Could anyone be ‘totally honest’?

Could the authorities get a warrant to explore past the DMZ based on the Patriot Act?

The conspiracy crowd would have a heyday. Minority Report stuff. If you think about a crime most rational people would say you’re not guilty.

What happens when you’re planning a crime? Does probably cause enter the equation if the authorities found physical proof of premeditation only as a result of reading your thoughts?

Well, if they could prevent another 911 then of course you would want them to. Beats waterboarding.

Virtual Telepathy

Your world, Connected. We see these taglines for SPs and for technology. Because with a smartphone or a PC there are a number of ways to communicate with others. In real time.

Instant Messaging, Skype, phone calls (of course) – but calls that take place over the data network. Facetime.

So in my book, only one person has the screen in his mind.

What happens when everyone has it?

Well, then you’re communicating in real time with other people using the airwaves, using RF.

Invisibly.

My novel explores one person having access to a screen and the voice recognition SW has developed to the point where google searches occur based on local audio. So he can search the grid the way others search their mind.

But what if he could search by just ‘thinking’. He does some of that in my book, and I don’t make a real distinction between voice recognition vs thinking – but in reality they are two entirely different things.

The idea VR tech could advance by 2020 to real time – not a big leap.

The idea that your thought waves could act as input to a virtual keyboard, if you will – well, that’s a bigger leap.

Yet the technology is out there, it’s being explored. Neurofeedback – or Thought Technology – is about EEG based biofeedback where technology responds to your thoughts, to your brain energy and patterns. Pretty rudimentary today. Designed for people who are paralyzed where they can navigate a computer mouse, to some degree.

Very much like telepathy.

Multi-tasking

Multitasking, as a term applied to people, did not exist before Microsoft Windows.

But now we use the term, thinking we can multitask like computers.

I read a study of a client trying to do three things at a time -- talking on the phone, conversing face to face and answering e-mail -- and not accomplishing any of the three tasks in the course of an hour. Handling the tasks separately, she finished all three in 13 minutes.

But actually with people, it means interrupting one task with another.

So there’s the interruption itself, then the recovery time.

Recovery time’s been measured at 10 times the length of the interruption.

So the IM interruption/interaction lasts 30 seconds.

Then it takes 5 min for you to get back to where you were mentally.

20 years, ago, interruptions were phone calls, mail being delivered once a day, the annoying co-worker who would lean against your door frame to tell you about his weekend.

Today it’s that plus email notifications, IM, web-alerts – more interruptions.

A quarter of an office worker’s time is lost to interruptions and recovery time.

That’s only the ‘knowledge’ workers – with 65m knowledge workers in the US and an average salary of $21 per hour, that’s about a trillion a year lost from a GDP of 15T per year.

Now what if you had inSyte? People IM you all day long. You get email notifications in your head all day long.

Not to mention browsing continuously.

So you would have to fight the tendency to be caught in a constant round of task-switching – going from site to site, email to email, IM to IM. At the end of the day you think, man was I busy all day. But what did you accomplish?

Be a shame to accomplish less than you would without inSyte.

So we would need better tools to filter out the interruptions.

How about the guy who won’t leave his blackberry alone for 5 min while you’re trying to have a F2F?

What would inSyte do to personal conversations? On the one hand, it would raise the productivity because you don’t have to worry about memorizing facts anymore. So it elevates the level of the mind, frees us to focus on higher levels of thought. On concepts, critical thinking.

On the other hand, can you have a simple conversation? Or would you be continually interrupted?

Again – we would need the proper tools to filter out interruptions.

Upside, sure. How about downside?

The upside to technology is inherently obvious. The ultimate usefulness of personal computers to the business world is undeniable - especially compared to previous paper-based methods. 12 people can do what 100 did before computers, that sort of thing. Even Greenspan eventually acknowledged the role IT technology played during the nineties on productivity and GDP.

But what about the downside?

My book turns inSyte into a drug metaphor that my main character gets hooked on. Sort of a natural progression of our dependency on the technology we have today. You leave your house without your cell phone for a 5 minute trip to the store and maybe that’s OK. But if you’re going out for 4 hours and know you’re going to be spending much of that time in waiting areas – well, you’re turning your car around because you’re dependent on the smartphone.

Read below for an excerpt from my novel, inSyte. In my next blog, I'll explore some of the downsides to technology today.

He needed to turn on. Losing the ability to search the Grid as part of his memory left him feeling incomplete, unsure… empty. He wanted it back. For himself. InSyte was his and it had been taken.

Mitch remembered reading an article as a kid that described highly addictive online computer games. The article listed case after case of poor sad sacks who chose games over true life. A thirty six year old lost his job and destroyed his marriage. The man was not much of a role model to his young children, but he progressed to Level fifty-eight as Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North Land. That’s all that mattered.

A word was coined to describe such electronic addiction – heroinware. Online self-help groups sprung up to deal with the fallout. Online forums swelled with refugees from online worlds. All had harrowing stories of runaway gaming habits, lives ruined, friends lost, marriages broken. Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North Land, was so obsessed over getting to level sixty that he fatally neglected his youngest child and the game was implicated in the death of the infant.

Game manufacturers were analogized to drug dealers. The first dose was free. Download and play. If you like it then, you know, come back and register, dude. Plenty more where that came from.

Mitch smiled like a man who’d gone all in, everything he had. More than he had. All he would ever have. Then watched his four aces get beat by an improbable straight flush. Because of the wild cards. The Joker. Casinos called them bugs. He had developed a physical dependency to the Grid. His Grid. He tried to avoid the word addiction. He’d thought the chemical that Russian bastard used in the parking garage caused his cramping and nausea. Now he knew better.

He tried to look online for an old Steppenwolf song and felt momentary panic, like a man reaching for his pack of cigarettes who finds an empty shirt pocket. Mitch tried to remember the lyrics and couldn’t. He shook his head and focused on searching his actual memories instead of the Grid. His mind resisted like it didn’t want to make the effort. Or had forgotten how. He concentrated harder and the lyrics came.

The pusher is a monster, not a natural man. Goin to sell you lots of sweet dreams. The pusher will ruin your body but he’ll leave your mind to scream. God Damn the pusher man.

OK, a little downside to inSyte. A technical hiccup, if you will, Mr. Buyer. Nothing to worry about. Sort of like biting into a juicy steak with a pink center that melts in your mouth and the only problem, minor point really, it’s crawling with death because it’s got this germ deep inside that will huff and puff and blow your house down.

But it’ll leave your mind to scream.

What about the weaknesses

What about the weaknesses

Many people get addicted to being online today. Imagine if you could be online all the time in your mind? My novel, inSyte, I present the technology metaphorically as a drug.

Here’s the scene describing when Mitch first gets it to work…

In the quarter century since that commercial aired, every recorded song had indeed been digitized. More than just music -- every book, magazine, research document, opinion paper, news article and blueprint. Twitter and blogs captured practically every new thought. Nothing short of the aggregate sum of all human knowledge developed and recorded over the past five thousand years down to the last bit and byte. And available to anyone who carried a micro smaller than a peanut. And that meant everyone.

If knowledge was power, Mitch had become the strongest man in the world.

What a rush. Wonderful. Awakened. Powerful. His mother would be so proud

He smiled and shook his head. Wait until the Buyer tasted this shit. It was almost too pure. Almost.

Toward the end of the novel, he, ahem, loses the ability to be online in his head. Here’s how I describe his thoughts and feelings…

He needed to turn on. Losing the ability to search the Grid as part of his memory left him feeling incomplete, unsure… empty. He wanted it back. For himself. InSyte was his and it had been taken.

Mitch remembered reading an article as a kid that described highly addictive online computer games. The article listed case after case of poor sad sacks who chose games over true life. A thirty six year old lost his job and destroyed his marriage. The man was not much of a role model to his young children, but he progressed to Level fifty-eight as Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North Land. That’s all that mattered.

A word was coined to describe such electronic addiction – heroinware. Online self-help groups sprung up to deal with the fallout. Online forums swelled with refugees from online worlds. All had harrowing stories of runaway gaming habits, lives ruined, friends lost, marriages broken. Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North Land, was so obsessed over getting to level sixty that he fatally neglected his youngest child and the game was implicated in the death of the infant.

Game manufacturers were analogized to drug dealers. The first dose was free. Download and play. If you like it then, you know, come back and register, dude. Plenty more where that came from.

Mitch smiled like a man who’d gone all in, everything he had. More than he had. All he would ever have. Then watched his four aces get beat by an improbable straight flush. Because of the fucking wild cards. The Joker. Casinos called them bugs. He had developed a physical dependency to the Grid. His Grid. He tried to avoid the word addiction. He’d thought the chemical that Russian bastard used in the parking garage caused his cramping and nausea. Now he knew better.

He tried to look online for an old Steppenwolf song and felt momentary panic, like a man reaching for his pack of cigarettes who finds an empty shirt pocket. Mitch tried to remember the lyrics and couldn’t. He shook his head and focused on searching his actual memories instead of the Grid. His mind resisted like it didn’t want to make the effort. Or had forgotten how. He concentrated harder and the lyrics came.

The pusher is a monster, not a natural man. Goin to sell you lots of sweet dreams. The pusher will ruin your body but he’ll leave your mind to scream. God Damn the pusher man.

OK, a little downside to inSyte. A technical hiccup, if you will, Mr. Buyer. Nothing to worry about. Sort of like biting into a juicy steak with a pink center that melts in your mouth and the only problem, minor point really, it’s crawling with death because it’s got this germ deep inside that will huff and puff and blow your house down.

But it’ll leave your mind to scream.

What about the social order?

What about the social order?

June 3, 2011

What are the implications? I mean, how do people interact with each another? You’re not talking about using a calculator you keep in your shirt pocket, here. You’re talking about giving people all the answers all the time. To any question. And it’s impossible to tell if that person’s smart as hell or just reading from the Grid. Or even paying attention? Christ!

Every civilization has a class system. Since the Greeks. Today the classes are separated by education.”

Meaning knowledge.

If suddenly everyone knows everything… well, that raises a lot of interesting questions.

How could people be satisfied with lower lots in life? Think about it. If you’re better at searches you’ll know more than your Doctor. You literally do a better, faster diagnosis.

Still, it’s not enough to know something. Experience plays a huge role. It’s not like I can read how to conduct open heart surgery and then go perform one. The how-to knowledge doesn’t help if I faint at the sight of blood. Same applies to flying an airplane.

And personalities will always dominate. I might have access to the same information as a businessman, but if he reads people better he’s going to close the sale and I’m not. A lot of factors differentiate people way beyond mere information. Sure, you’ve got to have the info to begin with. But how you deal with situations, interact with people, control emotion… those are real attributes that aren’t going away.

In war gaming, Red Team activity was used to reveal weaknesses in military readiness.

I’ve given you the strengths. Where are the weaknesses?

Productivity

Productivity

May 30, 2011

Productivity.

Ratio of output over input. Even small improvements dramatically change our lives.

In the seventies and eighties, productivity grew one and a half percent annually in the U.S. Then fourth gen computers and IT software hit the market and finally the technology was easy to use.

So guess what – everybody got a whole lot more productive.

Over the next twenty years productivity rises two and a half percent per year. And that despite three wars, a dot com collapse, and the Great Recession.

InSyte can change everything. I’m not talking about turning a crank faster on a machine. I’m talking about fundamentally altering the way we all think and work. InSyte can do for the twenties what the computer and IT did for the nineties. Drive productivity gains off the scale.

Fundamentally this will occur because of the improvement of access to information.

High Concept

High Concept

My last post describes the high concept for my novel, inSyte. In my novel, an ex-Navy SEAL – Mitch - discovers how to beam data directly to his optic nerve. The year is 2020 and the actual cell phone electronics are typically painted onto a fingernail in the form of e-resin.

His software is always on, churning away at the input data – ie, reality. A regression analysis informs Mitch (thru a hallucination, of course) that a great holocaust is coming based on events put in place by a local politician. So the dilemma for Mitch is – should he kill the man? Tough call especially since Mitch is in love with the man’s daughter. Meanwhile, a paranormal killer is stalking Mitch to make sure he does not bring down the politician’s plan.

All the while inSyte is affecting him, taking over his mind like a drug.

Here’s an excerpt from my novel that shows how inSyte technology would allow you to see into men’s hearts, be in all places at all times. Sort of like God.

Mitch knew sleep wasn’t coming so he opened his mind to the Grid. Spread your little wings and fly away. Fly away, far away.

I need warp speed, Scotty, and I need it now!

He’d told Woody he couldn’t see into men’s hearts or be all places at all times. But that wasn’t true. Not exactly. He could tap into camera feeds and blogospheres and eyes and ears and he clenched his fists into the sheets because now he was tripping, really cruising, wandering the earth like Kwai Chang Caine in a rocket ship.

Times Square, the Vegas Palazzo, McKenna Beach, Midtown Tower Tokyo, One Churchill Place, he was in the stratosphere, the fucking exosphere, one camera feed to the next to the next, he tore across stepping stones like a presence, like a true being that was being everywhere at the same time, a part of all things. He sailed oceans climbed mountains scaled buildings ducked through tunnels bounced into satellites above the planet holy crap through a dorm room are those real and people were in every position on everything everywhere doing working playing thinking and it turns out he did know their thoughts after all.

Slammey28 screamed in a tweet that his next move was to pocket his baby Glock and hunt down the ex. The forty caliber knew how to get a bitch’s attention and she ought to know better than to fuck with a man’s truck come on, who does that? TheBiffer18 slipped silk boxers inside out so his member would be caressed by only the finest material during his lap dance in the city and BarbE-Dahl69 said Hallelujah Brother, she loved to see a man have a good time in this world. HarryPitts41 had a rotting cat in his kitchen and was there anyone else out there who had to kill their feline cuz it wouldn’t stop pissin in the sink and if so, how did they get rid of the carcass in an apartment community? DangerWillRobinson suggested a contractor-grade lawn bag, you could get ‘em at the local Home Depot. madEllen19 sobbed, how could bubbuh26 leave her in second life after the adventures they shared, what kindda man just up and runs off after slaying dragons together and making love at the Lost Gardens of Apollo? mamapower58 toyed with the idea of suicide since the C took her son she just couldn’t stand it, oh Lord did anyone out there hear her, please God anyone at all, oh please, oh please, I’m begging---

Captain! She can’t take much more of this!

Where are we going?

May 22, 2011

Consider this - what would you do if you could access all the information on the net ... by merely closing your eyes? Very real possibility in a few years. Here’s how.

Most of you have seen those glasses you hook up to your ipod and view the content on what supposedly look like a 50” HD TV. Vuzix makes a few versions and refers to their product as a “head mounted display”.

So it’s really just another screen to view whatever’s on your smartphone screen. That includes surfing. Someone could ask you a question and you could Google it and see the answer. Pretty simple.

Let’s assume that a decade from now you’re able to Bluetooth your screen data to any pair of glasses. Or contact lenses. Or directly into your optic nerve. Let’s assume voice recognition software improves and now when someone asks you a question you see the answer automatically.

Let’s call this concept, inSyte.

Twenty years ago most of us did not have cell phones. Today most of us feel naked when we leave the house without it. Imagine having inSyte on all the time. Sort of does for your mind what a military hydraulic suit does for your body.

inSyte would become an extension of your own memory. In the cloud. You would become so dependent that without it you would feel empty. Unplugged.

And what about the social order? By and large every society has class separation and that separation is based on education.

What about seeing into men’s hearts? Well, not too difficult with next generation live tweets and FB postings. Not to mention an always on surveillance society with eyes everywhere.

Starting to get the picture?

How about the impact on productivity? Our economy had a nice boost in the 90’s when PCs hit an inflection point in terms of power and ease of use.

What would inSyte do to our economy?

I’ll explore these concepts in my next post.

New experience

OK, so this is a new one for me. A blog. I just published my novel, inSyte, on Amazon. I'm getting very positive reviews - go check it out. Man, it's early. Better get to work.

He indentured the young Russian girls into prostitution, forced them to live in squalor, and routinely beat them into submission. He told the young girls their parents sold them, they were forgotten by their families, they were his property. The twelve year olds believed this absolutely. Some older tuna were skeptical. (Cheslov was long accustomed to weasel wording by fools such as Charles in an attempt to conceal distasteful business). Occasionally he had to carve an older girl and leave her body in the common quarters for a few days. Charles made sure her dead eyelids were open. He told the living tuna he could see them through the dead tuna’s eyes. Charles always rubbed his belly with a hearty laugh when he told this part of his tale. He confided with Cheslov that the empty eyes really closed the deal on the other tuna. Calmed them the hell down.

Charles enjoyed his vodka with fresh grapefruit juice so Cheslov purchased a pewter spoon just for their trips. Essential for anyone who enjoys eating grapefruit, his well-balanced citrus spoon had a finely serrated edge so fruit separated easily from the membrane.

First Post

I'm going to tell you a story about my unique, disturbing, and somewhat likeable antagonist - Cheslov...

Cheslov once had a man on his vessel, Charles Johnson, a successful American businessman. Charles was a prominent citizen in the community, active in the megachurch and local politics. Charles promoted family values and thought the best way to reduce teen pregnancy and venereal disease was pure abstinence. If not factually accurate, well, it didn’t matter. God did not want American teenagers to fuck before marriage and He surely didn’t want man to lay with man or woman with woman. Hell, it was right there in the bible for anyone to read.

The megachurch where Charles was assistant minister believed he made his living as a wholesale shoe distributor. Business took him to Russia two to three times a year. For years Charles lured beautiful young Russian teenagers to America with empty promises of stardom as models and entertainers.

Though a man of questionable ethics himself, Cheslov harbored a protective streak when it came to children. Like a pack leader, he possessed a strong paternal instinct. One that he did not entirely understand.

For fun, Cheslov pretended to be a smuggling agent who could help Charles snare girls by acting as his point man in Russia. He took Charles fishing hundreds of kilometers into the Gulf so they could enjoy secure business discussions. On the second bottle of Stoli, Charles really opened up.