TokenStars and UBI

I just read an article about a blockchain project called TokenStars. I thought it was kind of weird at first, but then I reconsidered. What if instead of all this nonsense about taxes and redistribution of wealth to pay for a universal basic income, we just start a blockchain foundation dedicated to the creation of funds to pay people in bitcoin?

Then it struck me to do a search for that very idea. and I found this: http://www.grantcoin.org/ So I signed up. If you're curious, please use my reference code: yknrfpz7tg. If you sign up, you'll get one as well. There are other site attempting this as well, but I thought I'd try this one first.

Social Burn-Out

I knew this moment was coming. The one when you realize that for all the time you spend engaged digitally, fooling yourself into thinking that you can keep up with everything you have joined online, you really can't.

I was looking at Instagram when it happened. One of the guys I follow there, which I follow almost everywhere else as well, said "I suppose I'll start using Instagram more often". To which I replied out of the blue, "Heh, I'm thinking about deleting my Instagram account". You can't really delete Instagram if you're using Facebook, as it's part of Facebook. Unless someone had found a way to do it. I just decided to count how many social networks I AM a part of in one way, shape, or form. I'm sure you're list is similar:

Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
Google Plus
Foursquare
Amino
Fur Affinity
Tunblr
Deviant Art
Second Life
IMVU
High Fidelity
iBotta
Kik
Facebook Messenger

And a few others that I can't even remember, and maybe have closed up shop and left the internet. I know in a previous blog I said that we all need to get on social networking. But wow, there has to be a point where we just say "enough is enough"!

At my age, I'm throwing in the towel, and admitting that I just can't do it all anymore. Over the next few weeks I'm going to be scaling back. I've already stopped using Foursquare and I'm eliminating my use of Instagram. I gave up on Flickr quite a while back, on the principle that Yahoo was willlingly evil. Even though Verizon owns Yahoo and all its properties now, I still won't return there. And I will be giving up on Tumblr as well. I just can't do them all.

For those of you that follow me on all of these, you're awesome, but I need to consolodate in order to keep my sanity.

NY Times Rebuttal

I just read an article from the New York Times about another "AI is gonna destroy humanity" concept. Ho-hum.

I'm kind of getting tired of people crying "wolf!", and hollering "the sky is falling!". The only reason I'm taking issue with this one is the concept that the author, Kai-Fu Lee, makes in his second to last paragraph:

"So if most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable A.I. companies to subsidize their workers, what options will they have? I foresee only one: Unless they wish to plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with whichever country supplies most of their A.I. software — China or the United States — to essentially become that country’s economic dependent, taking in welfare subsidies in exchange for letting the “parent” nation’s A.I. companies continue to profit from the dependent country’s users...."

Seriously?

Why does the rest of the world still think that we are some monstrously rich nation-state that can just pay for the rest of the world? Granted, AI is eating our lunch right now. But come on, people, let's use some common sense. There are hundreds of thousands of people in America that are just as displaced from AI and machines taking their jobs. Do you hear them hollering that India needs to pay their way? Well, some actually are, but most of us know better. And frankly, Mr. Lee, you should too.

Massive taxation will NOT solve where the money will come from for a universal basic income. What WILL solve this dilemma is all the stinking data that EVERY individual human on this planet generates. Even the smallest backwoods company taps into that data for streamlining their operations. What needs to happen is tieing that data into a blockchain that places a monetary value to it for the individual that generates that data. Then the individual gets a portion of the payment that the backwoods company paid to XYZ megacorp that audits and compiles the data stream.

Until this happens, the mega corporations are gonna fight taxation tooth and nail. You think there is a problem with offshore holdings now? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Acronym Soup

I'm watching a Miku Miku Dance video by Anonymous Boat F***er in YouTube today, and I read this comment to him:

lychanking 13 hours ago
Have you thought about doing these kinds of vids in vr?

To which I replied to lychanking:

Joe Nickence 1 second ago
I understand your question, but I had to smile and suppress a chuckle. Think about what you just asked. XD

Miku Miku Dance is broadly defined as Virtual Reality. Albeit more of a gaming engine for dance motions, along the lines of Unity and Unreal.

For a while the industry had it all figured out. We had "Virtual Reality", "Augmented Reality", and "Mixed Reality". These separated us from "Real Life". Occasionally I started to see "3D". Not too bad. Most understood that it meant old style flat screen virtual reality. I read a page many years ago by a person that used the term "Default World" to define what many call RL. I personally like that definition, so I use it a lot. And I prefer to use MR whenever possible. Now we have "Internet of Things" to add to the list, being powered by "Artificial Intelligence". But now I've recently come across a definition called "eXtended Reality". I actually do like that one, because it attempts to pull in and combine the blending of MR, IoT, and AI. Let's add "Immersive Computing" to the list. Oh, let's not forget "eSports", perhaps the most blended activity of the last five years.

Confused yet? You're not alone. As the big four, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and now Apple, attempt to jostle each other to be the ones to precisely define this hodge-podge of acronyms. Microsoft, perhaps, should be lauded for stubbornly sticking to the Mixed Reality label. However, they are choosing to simply ignore the individual acronyms AR and VR, that make up MR, never mind that they want to be your hub platform as well for IoT in the foreseeable future. Mixed Reality just doesn't reach far enough to blanket IoT as well.

I'm going to go out on a limb in this post, and officially say that I believe that XR, eXtended Reality, will eventually be the acronym that triumphs. So I'll be using that as I move forward.

Don't anticipate the gaming industry to capitulate to that one any time soon. For them, it's VR, with a respectful nod to AR. And most people that haven't curled up in a whimpering ball in the corner will keep to MR. IoT will interchange between commercial and residential applications and trudge along in parallel to MR, possibly dipping into XR as needed. It's an uphill fight, folks. One that has no clear winner for some time to come.

Backpedaling

Every once in a while I sit back and take stock in some of the things I've popped off about that irked me. The last one I posted about in my blog was about apps. I wasn't going to use apps anymore. they distracted me from what I perceived as a pure internet experience. I was going to do everything through my browser. Yeah, right. That lasted about two weeks. I'd find something, and I was encouraged to use my app. It turns out I needed the apps more than I realized. Most are back in my daily routine.

Another rant I did that was posted on my Facebook page. That concerned my use of the Steam platform. I felt it was becoming more of a nuisance than I cared for. Then I read an article about how Valve was allegedly ripping it's player/members/partners off. So I uninstalled it. Sorry I don't have a link. You'll have to do a search. I'm now seriously reconsidering reinstalling Steam. There are some things on it that I'm discovering that are becoming increasingly necessary to me, in terms of social interaction.

I equate these actions to the last century's dilemmas with railroads as they expanded across the continents. You knew the industrialists were taking excessive liberties against cultures and resources in order to achieve their goals. But that stopped no one from continuing to use the railroads, because it was something that had woven itself into the very fabric of society quickly. If you stopped using the railroads, you were missing out on opportunities. And outright sabotage was met with heavy handed justice in both the courts, and public opinion.

Apps are at the stage now that the railroads were at in the 1960s. Still quite necessary, but increasingly irrelevant as newer technology and concepts surge forward. Insiders are starting to whisper about how immersive computing is changing the way of the app economy. Which I feel it is as well. As for social networking? We are a social species. People used to gather around a communal fire in caves. We gathered in outdoor forums to spout off our opinions about senator's excesses. And now we are fully absorbed in our social apps. But apps are going to take a back seat in our lives, They will never go away. They are just computer programs, after all. Just like the railroads, ribbons of steel crisscrossing the globe was expected to evaporate as ribbons of asphalt took over. Railroads still serve an essential function, running in our background, and still annoying us when we need to wait for a train to go past.

I'm sure I'll discover something that I dislike about immersive computing in the future. Some smarmy app will break the immersion. Or a specific standard to get everything to play nice together will stall in committee. But accept that I'll rant and fuss. It's who I am. It's who we all are.

Rabbit Holes and Millenials

This is going to be a rather long blog from me. But it's kind of important that I get this out, cause it is one of those things rolling around in my head that wants out. Bear with me as I ramble.

I tend to classify things historically by generations. I'm a Boomer. Before me were the Industrialists. Before them were the Agriculturists. Before them were the Hunter/Gatherers. I know I just lost a lot of you on that one, but do try to follow. I'm referring in parallel to humanity's cultural development. Back to the Boomers. After us comes the Gen X'ers. Then the current wave, the Millennials. I'm aware of the sub-classifications, such as "Flappers", "Beatniks", "Hippies", "Yuppies", and "Gen Y and Z". I would fall under the "Yuppie" category, if push came to shove.

Let's talk about Millennials for a bit, which is where this blog entry originates with. Their birth years span roughly between 2000, and 2012. They are a breed, apart. Everything they've ever known has been connected some way through the internet. Be it entertainment, to communications, to education. Now here comes good ol' "Joey1058". Hey, I'm hip. I'm with it. (Old farts terminology. Dead giveaway to anyone Gen X or younger that I am to be humored.) I know what's going on with the internet. I can relate to these kids. Or so I fooled myself into believing.

I first heard about something called "eSports" roughly 6 months ago. Before that, I only knew of twitch.tv, and the more recent YouTube Gaming pages. And before that, it was a quaint little pastime called Machinima. So I dutifully started my research. At a leisurely pace. After all, I was hip and with it. I knew about kids and their gaming channels on twitch. I was rather interestingly surprised at what I discovered about eSports. There are professional teams that compete anywhere from auditoriums to traditional sports arenas to play video games. For some serious rewards and bragging rights. And there are big name sponsorship's associated with all these teams, eager to discover what could be the equivalent of a new NFL franchise. So I've been digging a little more.

For those of you that only use social networking on a casual basis, like I was, you consider them nice ways to keep informed, or just keep abreast of current events. Maybe follow a topic that holds your interest. I tend to go to Twitter when I want to follow a particular company's current events. Otherwise I'd be in LinkedIn. I had been following random people mostly due to my own interests that I've held for a good number of years. So recently I've been following a businessman by the name of Gary Vaynerchuk. An awesome personality, that has turned my thinking about how to run a business on it's ear. His mantra is get your butt into social media. And specifically, Instagram. Which I did. 

I'm attempting to keep my focus in mixed reality in terms of where technology is going. I have been so far off the mark, it's staggering. Instagram is a beehive of professional networking that I never truly understood until I joined.  But, it's not just "professionals". Nor is it kids looking to waste time online. And that's when it hit me that I've been thinking about social networking all wrong. I was never able to wrap my head around the use of "hashtags". (Old fart's moment. That's the "pound" symbol to us.) So I went back to Twitter, and entered #eSports. That's when the ground collapsed under me.

Oh, my gawd.

Remember my reference to beehives? There are quite possibly many thousands of young, dedicated people, mostly Millennials, that use Twitter for conducting serious business. But on their terms. And it's quite a bit about the numbers. Numbers of followers, numbers in your scores, numbers in your PayPal Acct. These people flow as seamlessly between social platforms as I do from the house to the car, to the store, and reverse the process. I never considered PayPal as anything close to a social platform. Most still don't. but its not about communications so much as enablement. Which is what social networks are to Millennials. And for that matter, so is gaming.

Gaming is their profession of choice. The default world has crapped on their parade as far as employment is concerned. They grew up with a phone in their hands and a gaming app on that phone. I have watched dozens of YouTube channels now that showcase semi-pro, professional, and ex pros gaming styles. And the jostle for sponsorships of any sort and opportunities to join eSports teams. Those that missed a sponsorship collect the bounty of points, coins, or gold, or whatever treasure they earned from that particular gameplay, and trade it. And not just for fiat currency. If they get a chance to convert it to cash, a lot of it stays in PayPal so they can pay for better gaming gear. They have inventories full of digital goods that they can convert as the need arises. FinCEN be damned.

I had to step back to understand the full scope of what was happening around me online, as even now I have people requesting to be added to my network. Immersive computing has been going on beneath our noses. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are simply creating an awareness of immersion now for us Gen X'ers and Boomers. We have been smug, thinking "oh the next paradigm in computing is going to be Mixed Reality". Bah. VR and AR headsets are just going to be another set of tools for enablement to a generation that already lives completely digitized lives. 

I really need to echo Gary Vee in his imploring: Get involved in social networking. It's not the particular platform, but the empowerment. Or we're all gonna miss the boat.

Riddle me this...

Why is it that millennials and younger have no patience? I can't count how many times I've been contacted either by phone, or emails or SMS, with people trying to sell me something, only to have them not answer, or not leave some kind of message. Why do you assume that I'm not interested in what you have for me? Just because I don't answer you as soon as you are in my face doesn't necessarily mean I'm not going to interact with you. If you don't leave a message, I'm not going to answer with a follow up because I don't think you're worth it.

I'm a Boomer. Boomers are a dying breed that still believe in taking our time in doing things. I'm going to stop and consider what it is that you are offering.  It might be a few minutes, or it could be a couple of weeks. That doesn't mean that I've lost interest. Kids today trying to market anything want instant gratification. If I didn't buy their product, they move on. Whatever happened to the art of landing the sale? I've averaged 16 hour work days my whole life. I'm not going to take what I earned in those 16 hours and willy-nilly throw it at you for something that doesn't have value to me. Nor am I going to waste time pursuing you with a response if you didn't leave a message to begin with. I don't care how valuable your product is.

My Digital Manifesto, 2017

There is no small amount of hype concerning Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence lately. The three seemingly separate disciplines have been coalescing into an overall technology that encompases some important hardware and software developments. Many of us have longed for the day when we can pop in a set of contact lenses to interact with our tech. While that development is still on the drawing board, we have been waiting patiently for some kind of affordable head mounted device. I believe before we reach that point, the hype will settle down around to what has already been accomplished. Here is my timeline for the next four years. Your predictions might vary slightly.

     1.   Camera based AR
Facebook has committed to creating an augmented experience through the everyday smartphone. There have been numerous companies in the recent past that have had the same general vision, such as Metaio, which was purchased by Apple a few years back, and Niantic, the creators of Pokemon Go. Everyone has a phone with a camera, and the best way to make people comfortable with the concept of Augmented Reality is to get it to the masses. There is no better company to do that than Facebook. Period.

    2.   WebVR
I’ve been playing in virtual worlds since the creation of VRML back in the 1980s. With the addition of a web browser plug-in, you could surf to any site that ran VRML code. It was mesmerizing, and much of what was learned has been applied to gaming over the years. As VRML waned, there was a brief comeback in the form of updated web standards called X3D, and X3Dom. But it always remained a niche technology. Recently there is a renewed interest in porting VR to the web. WebVR will only help to align the different disciplines under a common banner.

    3.   Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
I can’t emphasise with enough strength how important blockchain tech will usher in true interoperability in the next few years. Most of the world is finally waking up to the concept of Bitcoin now. While Bitcoin is the dominant face of the cryptocurrency market, the real strength is blockchain. I will be so bold to say that most gaming currencies today will be slowly converted to an underlying blockchain system in order to stay relevant. If you are an investor, however, you really need to pay attention to blockchain development.

    4.   Assignment Servers
This is a concept created by an insane little man by the name of Philip Rosedale. His newest current venture, High Fidelity, uses it. To quote their FAQ: “The Assignment Server is a High Fidelity service that allows people to share their computers with each other to act as servers or as scripted interactive content. Devices register with the assignment server as being available for work, and the assignment server delegates them to domain servers that want to use them. Units of a cryptocurrency, will be exchanged by users of the assignment server, to compensate each other for their use of each other’s devices. The assignment server can analyze the bandwidth, latency, and Network Address Translation capabilities of the contributed devices to best assign them to jobs. So, for example, an iPhone connected over home WiFi might become a scripted animal wandering around the world, while a well-connected home PC on an adequately permissive router might be used as a voxel server.”

In a nutshell, this is a form of peer to peer networking. I won’t go into all the explanations of the other terms used in this paragraph. I encourage you to visit the High Fidelity site for yourself to learn more.

   5. Microsoft Mixed Reality
Can you say “One ring to rule them all”? The recent Microsoft Build conference has revealed that they get the idea that everyone wants a piece of the pie. And MS says “yeah, you can haz pie”. Hardware is forking all over the place right now, thanks to Asia’s aggressive tech developers. And one thing that Microsoft understands well is that hardware is secondary to the goal of the experience. You can’t have an app work on an android device, and not on iPhone without two different versions of it. I use them as an example, but envision the myriad of devices already collecting dust in your game room right now. Microsoft wants to change that. And they’re doing it in small steps so they don’t scare anyone into screaming “monopoly”. Keep your eyes on the changes coming to Windows in the near future. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

UBI

Consider for a moment all the networked devices you use on a daily basis. Now think about whether you have them secured against hacking. Most of us do, of course.

Now consider this: Most, if not all, of those devices are generating gigabytes of data at the very least. That data is based on our usage of the devices. The parent companies that sell the devices are harvesting every kilobyte they can get out of them hourly. And what do they do with that data? It gets sold to companies that compile that information in ways we consumers can't even comprehend. This is OUR data, folks. Whether or not you opted in or out, the device is still sending a minimum of data to the parent company.

Now consider this: As technology in aggregate continues to improve, it will be next to impossible to avoid working with some kind of networked "smart" device over the course of your day, either at home or in your job. And there is more data harvested about our habits.

There is a movement brewing pertaining to something called a "universal basic income". This is supposed to meet the needs of every individual on the planet over the course of time. But what scares the bejesus out of both government and corporate officials is, where will the money come from?

Well there is an answer. All that data that is generated from every person on the planet. It's our data. Wouldn't it make sense if we were personally compensated for it? I'm not saying that we should be paid the hundreds of thousands of dollars that it's valued at. It would be nice, but it's unrealistic. What would be nice is a stipend of say $400 or $500 weekly?

What do you think, Facebook? Google? Samsung? Let's get a discussion going.

Universal Basic Income

The buzz lately has been about where we will get money when the jobs dry up. The biggest candidate now is a universal basic income. but what scares them at the same time is where exactly will THAT money come from? I was half asleep one night when this struck me, and i typed it on my phone in OneNote. I present it here as written with a bit of editing:

Funds for basic income can be generated on a percentage basis according to how much personal data is used by a company, and paid to that individual. Example: John Q. Public turns his phone on X number of times. The phone manufacturer wants that data to be able to determine how to design the next power switch. That data is worth X amount. And since it comes from John, realized initial profit gets paid to John as part of his basic income.

Granted, this is a simple example, but hey, its another idea that can be implemented

I am hereby serving notice!:

When did having an RSS feed suddenly become anti-productive? I used to be able to read any of my news feeds in an RSS tab in my web browser. I just realized today that I'm spending WAY TOO MUCH TIME in my e-mail for news stories, which then open an "app". EVERYTHING that an app does used to be done in a browser window. I am sick to death of being manipulated by my tech.

I am hereby serving notice!:

I refuse to deal with apps. Apps are walled gardens that specifically want to control your content. I'm tired of it! Unless you can give me a significant reason to use your stinking app, it's being uninstalled by me. If you cannot give me your content in an RSS feed, you are not worth my time, nor are you a company worth dealing with. You have become "persona non grata" to me.