sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Utopian Speculations Page 6 of 10

How To Get a 1000% Return on Your Investment

Multiply your money with zero risk!

Have I got an investment opportunity for you!

Sit down, relax, and pour yourself a cup of coffee. My idea might sound strange at first, but hear me out.

We’re going to make a film. A short, more accurately. It will be about one minute long. We’ll do some thirty second versions as well.

We’re going to spare no expense in making this movie. We’ll hire the cleverest, coolest director, an experienced crew, and we’ll splurge on location, talent, props, and special effects. We’ll get famous actors, athletes, and pop stars to be in it.

Watching Open Source Destroy Capitalism

Theft, or post-capitalism?

About twenty years ago one of my college housemates, Jerry, had an idea.

“What if you could send music over the internet?”

This was the age of 2400 baud modems that made crazy high pitched noised while they tried to connect to the internet. My 20 megabyte external hard drive for my MacPlus computer had set my parents back about five hundred bucks. High quality digital audio files were about the same size as they are now (about ten megabytes per minute of audio). In other words, I couldn’t even fit a single digital audio track on my expensive hard drive — I worked exclusively in MIDI.

So I forgive myself for my lack of vision at the time. I thought Jerry’s idea was ridiculous, and I let him know. Digital audio files were way too big, bandwidth was way too narrow. It would never happen.

Jerry persisted. What if a music file could be compressed? What if bandwidth increased? He pointed out that it would change everything about the way music was distributed, maybe even the way it was made.

How To Prioritize by Getting Your Heart and Mind in Synch

Spock and Kirk -- sci-fi archetypes for mind and heart.

Once in awhile I read a blog post or essay that actually changes the way I live.  That’s happened more than once reading Steve Pavlina’s blog.  While I don’t follow all of the practices he advocates (like raw veganism, or abstaining from coffee and alcohol), I consistently find that Steve hits the nail on the head when he writes about emotional processing, creating/manifesting the life you want, and generally following your heart path.

Steve makes a great point in a recent post; trying to set your priorities via logic alone will yield inconsistent and unhelpful results.  Life priorities made from a purely logical basis, without achieving resonance from the heart, can leave us pursuing goals that we aren’t entirely committed to.  From the post:

Generally the way you’ll notice that an adjustment is needed is that you’ll notice a nagging feeling that something isn’t right with the way you’re currently living.

Another clue is that you won’t seem to be making much progress in your top priorities. If you look at your actual results in those areas, you’ll see evidence that you’re drifting or even declining.

Often this happens because we like to assume that we can improve some area of life by making it the #1 priority. For instance, if you feel that your finances are weak, you may decide to focus on making more money for a while. But then a few years pass, and your finances don’t seem to be that much better. Overall you feel more stressed too. The main reason you failed here is that making money wasn’t a true priority. It was actually a distraction from a deeper, more important part of your life.

The Main Effect of Occupy Wall Street Has Already Happened

I’ve been thinking about the Occupy Wall Street movement and where it might lead.  Up until today I entertained the view Chris Hedges expresses in the interview below, that we may reach some sort of tipping point where the police “cross the line” and refuse to follow orders (to disband protest encampments), leading to who knows what (revolution? new government?).

The more I thought about this possibility, the less likely this scenario seemed.  Why?

Cultural Clawbacks — How We Regain Quality of Life After Technological "Improvements"

"Progress" often makes life worse, but we claw back quality of life.

The history of civilization has seen a number of innovations completely change the human way of life.  Each major change creates enormous real wealth, but also comes at a great cost to health and well-being.

For example, the shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural way of life created a giant leap in food security, and enabled us to build large, permanent, useful buildings, villages, and cities.  The existence of currency and trade centers allowed us to become more specialized in our work, leading to greater efficiency and higher quality goods.

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