In my last post I talked about how technology seems to be making a run at human intelligence. Well, that may be so, but I am also seeing that people have an amazing ability to adapt to the new situations and realities created by these technological advances. Look at music, for instance. Over and over again, I have heard people expressing a fear that digitizing music, and the introduction of downloading music, has had a negative effect on the art form. The argument is that, advances in technology have made it more difficult for artists to get paid for recorded music. I don’t argue that fact, it is clear that the ability to download and distribute music (and news, and anything else that can be broken down into 1’s and 0’s) has made it very difficult to get paid for the content produced. However, I would argue that the ability of individuals to easily create and distribute creative content has actually had a positive influence on our culture and on various art forms.

I have had the pleasure of meeting and befriending some of the most amazing and talented people around. Some of these amazing people are shining examples of our ability to adapt to this technology-saturated world. In my opinion, these adaptations have had, in many cases, an amazingly positive effect on all of our lives. While the advent of digital music has made it more difficult to get paid for recording music, it also pushed us to find better and cheaper ways to record music. This, in my opinion, has had a beautifully democratizing effect on the musical landscape. There are now so many ways to create music cheaply, and more channels to distribute it, that it has brought the “camp-fire” back to our lives again. Just as everyone in a village would sit around and share their music with the community, now more than ever before, people have the ability to share their music and creativity with the world in ways we could have only dreamed of just a few years ago. For instance, even I have recorded a song. Now, maybe that is not a particularly positive effect :) but, I think that the fact that even I have the ability to share my music with others in this way is amazing. It may be more difficult to become a “rock star” in this climate, but I think the overall effect on music and other types of creative endeavors has been positive.

Let me give you a few examples of my friend’s awesome projects that may not have been possible without these new technologies.

Mpls.tv: This is an amazing re-imagining of what public access TV can become. A friend from college, Chris Cloud, and an apparently amazing group of creative thinkers has come together to promote and showcase the city of Minneapolis’ creativity, in all its forms.

Fishdoctor: This is a music project put together by some of my friends in Brooklyn. They created these tracks all in their bedroom! Pretty great stuff.

Breakoutband: This is a project that allows people to create their own music online.

I actually helped them create this video and they ended up as finalists in promotional contest. They are now at SXSW in Austin to show off their project.

Readygoes: I remember Bryan Shackle taking me to the Readygoes practice room in a warehouse where they were actually mixing their own tracks.

Derek Olson: My college friend Derek Olson has been able to create his own movies and music videos and distribute them without the help of a big studio.

Funkanomics: When I was living in New York, I took classes at the amazingly awesome UCB theater. There I met some awesome people who have subsequently co-founded a comedy troop called Funkanomics.

These are just a few examples and I apologize to my other friends who have projects that should probably be included here. It's not that these talented people would not have found other ways to share their creativity, had there not been these new technologies available, but I for one am glad that they had these tools available. It has undoubtedly allowed them to share that creatively with a broader audience...including myself.

Sychronicity and the Singularity

About a week ago I had an interesting experience with Synchronicity, you know, when a bunch of things happen in a row that seem to be causally related, but there is no evidence that they actually are. Here’s what happened:

First, my Dad sent me an article from the Atlantic Monthly about a guy who had gone to the Loenber Prize Convention in England. At this conference they administer the Turing Test and then give out a prize to whomever does the best on the test. The Turing Test is a test that was thought up by a philosopher named Alan Turing in 1950 and published in a paper called, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. This was obviously long before there was anything even close to resembling a computer so when wrote this paper it was just a thought experiment. I had read the paper numerous times in college so my dad thought I might find this article interesting. He was right.

The test is brilliantly based on a simple question, “Can machines think?” In his paper, Turning proposes that the best way to answer that question is to sit a person down in one room (room A) and put a machine and a person in another room (room B). The person in room A then gets 5 minutes to ask the machine and the human whatever questions he wants. The person in room A can’t see anything in room B. When the five minutes are over, the person in room A has to choose which conversationalist is the human one. If the person in Room A chooses the machine, then we are in big trouble because machines can think and we are all doomed to become their underlings, which is a huge bummer if Asimov is right in "I, Robot".

This convention actually uses instant messaging to administer the Turing Test. Remember when you used to be able to chat with bots on AIM that would respond to you in strange ways when you inexplicably cussed them out because you were an easily amused teenager? Well, I do, and it was pretty fun the first few times, so don’t judge me. Anyway, these bots have gotten pretty good. In fact, apparently at last year’s conference, they almost won the competition and brought an end to human dominance on this planet!

So, this article had gotten me thinking about this robot/thinking machine issue and then, the next day, I open up nytimes.com and see this article. Again the robots are trying to mount an attack! This time the robots actually won, but I (with the help of a friend) I beat this version of the "test" and saved us from complete annihilation at the hands of the soulless robot overlords. You’re welcome humanity.

The Atlantic Monthly article was actually really good and had some interesting points and perspectives. One of them was, “if everything that we thought hinged on thinking turns out to not involve it, then … what is thinking? It would seem to reduce to either an epiphenomenon—a kind of “exhaust” thrown off by the brain—or, worse, an illusion.” Here he implies that it would be a bad thing if thought were just an illusion. There are many who would disagree with this and argue that all thought, and indeed all existence, is merely an illusion… but I digress.

The next stop on my little synchronistic trip was the release of an album by one of my favorite artists, Bright Eyes. In one of the songs, “A Machine Spiritual” the lead singer of the group, Conor Oberst, refers to the idea that machines may be getting uncomfortably close to human thought. The song begins,

The people’s key

Riding through the arena seats

The black machine

Played it all from memory

When he talks about the people’s key he is referring about the key’s of C and E on the piano and guitar respectively. These are supposedly the easiest keys to “stay in” when playing those instruments. As you can see in the song, he is specifically referring to a time in the future when songs could be written and performed by machines. In a Huffington Post interview he refers to a future in which, “artificial intelligence will pass human intelligence and we sort of get to a stage of existence where our bodies are no long required and death becomes obsolete. It sounds far out, but it's really pretty conceivable.” This is a direct reference to ideas advanced by Ray Kurzweil and others such as the Singularity and mind uploading. These ideas propose a hypothetical future where there will be an explosion of technological advances that will result in superhuman intelligence and even the ability to upload our consciousness to a machine. This may sound crazy, but there are people at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence who are taking this very seriously.

You can stream the entire Bright Eyes album, The People’s Key, here:

In other musical news, I went to a festival this past weekend in Bangalore called the The Fireflies Festival of Sacred Music. After all this talk of technology eclipsing humanity, the idea that music is somehow sacred resonates with me. As I stood under the open sky and looked up at the moon on the outskirts of Bangalore, music did seem sacred. Even though I was surrounded by people from all over the world and listening to music in a language I didn't understand, I somehow felt connected and it was the music that brought us together on that farm in middle of the night.

That Atlantic Monthly article also refers to Daniel Gilbert’s, “Sentence” vow in which every psychologist should complete the sentence, “The human being is the only animal that _______.” at some point during their career. If we are really getting to a point in history where there are going to be different kinds of thinkers, maybe we need to alter that sentence and begin trying to complete another sentence, “The human being is the only thinker that______." In his song One for you and One for me, Oberst refers to a Rastafarian concept, "I and I" which is intended to remind us of the oneness of humanity. He sings, “you and me, that's an awful lie, it’s I and I” Maybe, just maybe, the human being is the only thinker that can overcome that awful lie.

Tommy G or Tommyji: Part 2

Swamiji, Tommyji, and the Dalai Lama

I went to see the Dalai Lama two weekend s ago and, I must say, it was pretty amazing. His talk was entitled, “How to find happiness in troubled times,” but really he was just seemed to be free associating without much structure. The Dalai Lama is supposedly the reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion and is certainly the acting political and spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhists. Whether or not you think that he is the Buddha of Compassion or not, there is one thing that is difficult to deny, this guy knows something about compassion. In his talk he spoke of the Chinese in positive terms, pointing out that there is more religious freedom there now than there has been in many years. This is the same China that has forced him to remain in exile in India for the past 52 years. It takes some compassionate chops not to use his platform and extensive influence to continuously bash the Chinese, who could reasonably be held responsible for the economic hardships described in this less than compassionate ad from Groupon:

Aired during the super bowl

He also talked about India, mentioning what he considers to be the two greatest attributes of the country, namely, its commitment to non-violence and its amazing ability to maintain religious harmony. I have to agree with him on these points, particularly with respect to religious harmony. There is no other place on earth where religions live so closely, and as peacefully, as they do here in India. It is so refreshing in this time in human history to come to place where you can look around and see people who are religious, but not fanatical; devout, but not bigoted. That is not to say that there is no bigotry or religious violence, there is, but for the most part people live and let live in a very real and touching way. If you are religious or spiritual or agnostic or atheist or whatever you are, seeing people give a damn about each other, despite where they are on that spectrum, is beautiful.

One of the more interesting tangents he went on was about what he thinks religion is, and what its role should be in society. You would think that the religious leader of millions of people would be in favor of a specific religion, but really he doesn’t seem to favor any one religion or even any religion at all. In fact, his talk, somewhat strangely, reminded me of an article by Sam Harris, who is one of the anointed “new atheists,” a silly designation if you ask me, but I won’t go into that. Here is that article if you are interested: http://www.samharris.org/media/killing-the-buddha.pdf

So, he wasn’t particularly dogmatic in his talk, but he did have a point that he wanted to get across: A calm mind is very important. He told a story about how he was in the hospital to get his gal bladder out and the nurses and doctors where surprised that he was always laughing, jokinging around, and teasing them from the time he got to the hospital, until the time he went under for surgery. They were even more surprised that, at his age, he was able to leave the hospital so soon after the surgery. Ho contributed this healing time to nothing more than a calm mind. His ideas that a calm mind can affect the physiology of the brain are echoed in this recent NY Times article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/?src=me&ref=homepage

Another interesting religious/spiritual figure who has been around is a guy I call Swamiji. This guy is pretty groovy. He is about 70 years old and he is a monk who walks around in bright orange clothes all the time and is better shape than most 19 year olds I know. We were at lunch the other day and a friend of mine asked him what he meant when he referred to, “God.” You could tell Swamiji enjoyed this question, or rather that my friend had asked this question because he immediately giggled and asked him, “Well what do you mean when you ask me what God is?” He then went on to tell a story:

Many years ago I wrote a book. I had always wanted to write a book on this topic, but I could never think of the right title for it. Regardless, I decided that I would go ahead and write it, but then I would give the book two titles and release it under both names. After the publisher had agreed to my plan and the book was released, I decided that I would go to the bookstore and watch the people who came in to peruse the two books . This particular book store had put the two differently titled books in opposite windows so that you could see both titles from the street. As I watched the people come in from the street I noticed that some people would go directly to one side and the others would go directly to the other. Once more, unfailingly, the people who would go to the right side of the store would look to the left side with disgust as they were picking up the copy of my book that looked interesting to them. The exactly same thing would happen with those who went to the left side and picked up that copy. What these people didn’t know was that they were both reading the exact same book. The titles:

"God: who, what, when, where, why" and "The origin of the Cosmos"

Then Swamiji proceeded to tell us that he just thought of that story as he was taking a leak in the bathroom a few minutes before. I will let you take whatever you want from that story.

I will leave you with a quote from one of my favorite authors that I happen to come across this week:

"I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle." – Kurt Vonnegut

I certainly don't claim to be one of the people Mr. Vonnegut is referring to above, but thank you for meditating anyway...

Until next time, don't forget to keep a calm mind.

Tommy G or Tommyji: Part 1

Tommy G

Indian newspapers have a funny way of mixing in pictures of scantily clad women and strange articles, with legitimate news stories. For example, the other day there was an article about charges being brought against the Chief Minister of Karnataka State, a serious and relevant news story, and right next to that article there was a picture of two women, wearing very little clothing, and an accompanying article entitled, “Women don’t mind if men have gay affairs.” Yes, that is a real article. The fascinating study that was detailed in this article then went on to clarify that, apparently, men don’t mind so much if women have gay affairs. Thank you for the details newspaper.

In Bangalore, they also have a small insert in the larger national paper, the Times of India (a very well respected news source) called, The Bangalore Times. Now, I can only assume that the Bangalore times is supposed to be a place for the local news from Bangalore, but really it is just 6 pages of pictures of celebrities and socialites with titles like, “JLo’s cousin is a Bollywood item girl!” and “We’re the dancers!”

What’s particularly fun about this insert is that there is a section colloquially known as, “Page 3.” Page 3 is collection of pictur

es of socialites from around the Bangalore party scene. One of the groups that have parties that end up on Page 3 is called the Bangalore Expat Club. The group is pretty groovy and there are some really cool people that show up for the events. I happened to catch wind of one of the Bangalore Expat parties a couple of weeks ago and decided to make an appearance. While I was there, a guy was taking some pictures for what I thought was the club’s website, but lo and behold, when I was doing my daily check of the Bangalore night life a couple of days later -- there I was! Apparently Tommy G is a socialite. If you will notice, there is a caption on one of the pictures I am in that reads, “easy people” Pretty presumptuous if you ask me…

Contrasting and Relaxing

I fully realize that much has been written about the fact that India is the land of contrast, but I’d like to give you just a couple of examples that I have seen in the past few weeks that speak to the truth of that sentiment.

So, here goes:

Front Window vs. Back Window

If I look out of the front window of my apartment, it looks like I am at a resort in Florida. There are palm trees,

nice grass, swimming pools, and even a tennis court. The only thing slightly out of place is the guy seven floors below who is, “mowing the lawn” with a pair of sheers. I don’t know how he does it but, I must say, he displays very impressive perseverance.

Then, out my back window it looks like I am in one of those cities that Jason Borne is always jumping around in. You know, he steels a motor cycle, ramps up onto one of those roofs out there and chases the bad guy through people’s living rooms… but I digress. The point here is that if you just look at these two views, you

start to get an idea of how this country can offer you vastly different points of view in a space as small as a living room.

Garbage vs. Luxury

There are a herd of cows that like to hang out right outside to the gates of the pleasant little community described above. For the most part they don’t bother anybody, except for the occasional rampage such as my colleague experienced on his way to work the other day.

These cows hang out in this particular spot because they are eating from a reasonably sized garbage pile on the side of the road. Mind you, this is the same road the runs just outside my resort-looking apartment complex. This garbage pile is anecdotal evidence of a problem that India is facing, namely that there are a billion people here and even though they, on average, probably produce a 10^th of the garbage we individually produce in the US, that is still a lot of garbage. On top of that, India’s infrastructure is lagging a bit behind it's growth, making it difficult to meet the garbage picking needs of the people. As a recent New York Times article points out, they are looking at some interesting approaches to solving the problem: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/world/asia/20iht-letter20.html?ref=world

About the same time that article was posted I saw this report: (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/21/indian.design/index.html?hpt=C2)

Again, the contrast struck me. Here we have two major news sources publishing articles, days apart, about the same country. One of the articles is about how India being filled with garbage and the other about how India is expected to consume a large portion of the worlds luxury items over the next 10 years -- pretty amazing if you think about it.

Justin vs. Chair

The last example I have for you is a contrast of size. I will let the picture speak for itself, but let’s just say Justin had a nice tea party J

Have a great week everyone and, remember, when you see a rampaging bull, get out of the way.

Sagarwhat?

The Decision

I mentioned in my last post that I had an unfortunate call from my doctor’s office telling me that I needed a CT scan because they had seen something a little off in my X-ray. Well, a week had past and my “cold” was still lingering, so I had a decision to make.

I want to stop here and let you know that this is not a medical blog. I promise I will stop with doctor talk soon, it just happens to be high on the priority list right now.

So, I told my Doc back home that I was not feeling 100% and he said, “If it’s available, you should go get the CT scan.” It turns out, it is available in India and at a fraction of the cost that you would pay in the US: http://www.incredibleindia.org/microsite/medical/indicative_costs.htm I must admit, I was a bit hesitant, but what the hell. Let’s got our Indian-hospital-visit on!

The Hospital

I didn’t really know what to expect when I got to the hospital.

(http://www.sagarhospitals.in/ )

If there is one thing I have learned about India, it’s that you never know what you’re going to get until you are there and see it for yourself. Even then you don’t know what you’re looking at half the time…

Doctoring

The first doctor was a jumpy, eccentric South Indian man. When I entered the room he initially ignored me while taking a couple of cell phone calls and finishing up some notes. Then, he turned to me suddenly, “so what’s the problem, why are you here?” I would begin to tell him, but he would interrupt me every time and begin to extrapolate from my symptoms that I had about every random pulmonary ailment known to man. Then, when he finished speaking, he would close his mouth quickly. When he did this he would click his teeth together, it was actually very unnerving. His sermonizing finally ended and he decided it was time for the examination, although he didn’t see fit to tell me he was going to start. He just popped his stethoscope on and started right in checking my breathing – about half way through he said, “sorry I am just examining you” – Thanks for the update doc, I thought you might’ve just needed a hug.

Scanning

Have you ever been in a CT machine? It’s pretty crazy actually. There was an automated woman with a British accent telling me when to breath and when not to breath. It reminded me of those GPS machines that default to the British women’s voice. Stop telling me what to do you crazy old bird!

Laughing

There was a moment in hospital when I literally burst out laughing. I was laying on an examination table staring up at the cracked brown paint of a hospital in Bangalore, India with my hospital gown pulled up to my chest, petroleum jelly lathered on my belly, and waiting for an ultrasound. I can honestly say I would have never imagined myself in that particular situation until I was in it. Sometimes life is fun (or at least funny), even when it’s not very pleasant. By the way, I am not pregnant. Woohoo! – That was a close one.

Paying

There was a booth in the hospital that I had to visit about 6 times during the course of my 8 hour stay. The booth was a payment station with an ATM right next to it so that you could pay for each bill before you moved on to the next treatment. It was like paying for tickets to amusement park rides except, instead of gravity defying cable cars, I was getting needles in my arms and doses of radiation.

Diagnosing

I ‘m fine. All the tests came back and it looks like I just have some harmless calcifications on my lungs.

Wrapping (it up)

Over all a pretty good experience with the Indian medical system:

A visit to a pulmonary specialist
An X-Ray with diagnosis
A CT Scan with diagnosis
An ultrasound with diagnosis
Blood tests
Medication

_____________________________________

$125USD (that’s total, not the deductible)

Flight(s) to India

I put all my stuff in storage and I am headed to India for awhile. I am going to blog about it. This is my first post. I hope you enjoy.

The First Flight: Pierre - Minneapolis

I left the Pierre "two-destination-airport" at the lovely hour 6:50am on Thursday (1/6) morning. Now it should be noted that I showed up for what was essentially an international flight 35 minutes before the plane was going to take off. Understandably, they were not used to travelers flying internationally out of this airport. So, they had some difficulty checking me in. But, after a few false starts they got me checked in and then -- and this is the best part, they APOLOGIZED for the wait. To which I responded, “you guys are so slow, what the crap!” Not really – If I showed up at Philadelphia International an hour before an international flight they would probably gather their friends around for a good laugh – “hey look at this jerk, he thinks he's checking in to an international an hour before. Honey, you aren’t even going to get an inappropriate search by TSA in the next 60 minutes. Go home and try again tomorrow.” By the way, another benefit of the Pierre airport -- no molestation what-so-ever. I love the Midwest.

The Second Flight: Minneapolis - Paris

I had gotten a bit of a cold in Pierre that was still lingering at the time of my trip, but I decided that it wasn’t worth canceling. I had even gone to the doctor where they did blood tests and took x-rays and whatnot. They gave me some drugs and I seemed to be getting a little better. Here is the kicker though. Literally, as the airline is announcing boarding for my 9 hour flight to Paris, I get a call from my Doctors office, “our radiologist has had a chance to look at your x-ray and he said that we need to follow-up with a CT scan – he saw something we need to take a closer look at.” NEAT! He saw something in my lungs that needs further evaluation! I am excited to be a part of this plan! So, here is where we cue my insanely over active and anxious brain. So, I am thinking to myself, I know the MSP airport has a Rocky Moutain Chocolate Factory and one of those harps that plays by itself, maybe they have a 20 minute CT scan machine. It would be kind of like a claustrophobic shoe shine booth with radiation. Unfortunately, the closest they had were those massage chairs in the main concourse. Great for a back rub, but useless when you need a three dimensional image of your lungs. Anyway, the Doctor ended up telling me that I should go ahead and get on the plane and that we could check it out when I get back to the US. I will keep you posted on whether or not I have some sort of incurable lung disease.

The Third Flight: Paris - Bangalore

When I got on my last flight from Bangalore to Paris, there is a woman standing at my seat row. Now, most of the time, I don’t care where I sit. As long as it’s not a middle seat, I’m cool with it, but this time I was sick and drinking a lot of water to stay hydrated – I was going to keep my aisle seat and its easy access to the loo. She was pretty insistent, but I ended up just saying no. She was not very nice about it, so I am going to tell a funny story about her in retribution. Remember this scene:

Tommy Boy - Airplane Scene

- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Oh yeah, ladies and gentleman, I had to help her figure out her seat belt. And sadly, it wasn’t an easy task. Til next time, remember -- To fasten, take the little end and stick it in the big end or Tommy here will come and hit you over the head with a tack hammer.