Wednesday, June 30, 2010

FEED or FAIL

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Intro: This essay is going to unfortunately be jumped upon by conspiracy theorists from La La Land. My apologies. By this I mean that mankind is so fundamentally floundering and bumbling that what is more likely than an intricate diabolical plot among people is a mess of intention, mistakes, luck and lots of after-the-fact obfuscation. For example, the US NSA (National 'Security' Agency) may have effectively destroyed the US Constitution's rights to privacy, thank you Bush League. But you can count on them being incapable of effectively dealing with all the private data they've stolen from us. IOW: Count on The Stooopid Factor. This is both a cynical concept and a realist concept.

What is FEED or FAIL?

It is a limited, 0 dimensional, binary thought concept to deal with both naiveté and psychopathy within our social systems. It also is both cynical and realist. As a 0 dimensional concept you can count on it being as bare bones and incomplete as possible. It takes into account so little about the system it is applied to as to be merely a first blind step in comprehending the system. It is guaranteed to be remarkably wrong in a remarkable number of aspects. Nonetheless, first cuts can be useful. This one is useful if only to make clear the difference between deliberate deceit and detrimental innocence. I find it to be equally frightening on either sides of this metaphorical coin.

A FEEDer is a deliberate liar who plans and perpetrates disinformation to other people. Typically the purpose is manipulation. In any kind of marketing moron system, manipulation is a prime lever, a mental machine for obtaining something surreptitiously from another fellow human being. As the victim, you are FED garbage that is meant to cause you to respond in a predicted way that benefits the FEEDer.

In advertising there are plentiful examples. An ongoing example as of this post is the Toyota FEED that it wasn't their faulty auto acceleration systems that killed over a hundred people. It was the floor mat. As a victim, you are FED that you don't have to have your car's pedal system replaced. You only need to replace your mat. Happy happy, joy joy. Toyota benefits from your ignorant belief in their FEED.

A FAILer is someone who inadvertently tells wrong information to others. The FAILer believes the information to be true. The information is NOT true. They have FAILed to comprehend and communicate facts. The most dangerous of FAILers are those in positions of authority. We're counting on them telling us factual information. They don't. They FAIL. I find the most sad and frightening of FAILers to be those who share new information to others, where the other person has no ability or resource for comparing this wrong information to any correct related information. This literally is the blind leading the blind. Good luck with that system. This is one reason I get upset at people in the technology field who don't do their homework and end up telling ignorant people a set of ignorant information.

A very popular example is when Steve Jobs of Apple put a metaphorical gun to the head of Bill Gates of Microsoft and made him invest $125 Million dollars in non-voting Apple stock. (The 'gun' in this case was a lawsuit that would have cost Microsoft well over $125 Million. It was in regards to Microsoft being caught red-handed stealing Apple QuickTime code. Meanwhile, Apple had $4 Billion in the bank and hardly needed the investment). How was this fact blundered in public? Ignorant FAILers told others that Microsoft had saved Apple from bankruptcy. Of course the ignorant then fed the ignorant, and you got an insane form of the game 'Telephone' or 'Gossip' where not even the original information was valid. Anyone who bothered to do their homework on the subject could discover the facts of the matter on the Internet within one minute. Hyper-FAIL.

I realized the FEED or FAIL concept while I was watching a TV program called "The Spy Factory." It is about, among other things, the demolition of US Constitution guaranteed rights to privacy during the Bush League era. I found myself listening to authoritative people telling me that having these rights stolen from me provided some sort of security from bad guys. The FEED was that it was OK that the NSA were able to intercept and analyze all unencrypted phone calls and Internet data transference WITHIN the USA by US citizens. It was OK because it made the US more secure, which is bullshite. Therefore, I found myself asking whether the speaker was a FEEDer, who wanted me to believe a LIE that benefited others but not me, or was the speaker a FAILer who ignorantly believed the pathological lies he had been fed by some FEEDer? I knew the information I was being told was blatantly wrong. But what sort of person was telling it to me? Naive or evil? Innocent or psychopath?

Another way to look at the FEED or FAIL concept is from the other side of the communication, the side of the receiver. From this perspective, the FEED is of your mind. Think of the FEEDers as sociopathic zombies who want to eat your brain. You believe their lie, they have fed on you. You have lost a part of yourself to their control. Similarly, if a FAILer has messed you over with misinformation, you now also FAIL to comprehend the facts of the matter. It's a FAIL contagion.

Here is a list of some spectacularly 'wrong' people. What are they? FEEDers or FAILers? What if they're BOTH? What if they're NEITHER?!

_______________________FEED__________FAIL

George W. Bush ________[ ]___________[ ]
Paris Hilton __________[ ]___________[ ]
Phyllis Schafly _______[ ]___________[ ]
Johnnie Cochran _______[ ]___________[ ]
Dr. Timothy Leary _____[ ]___________[ ]
Adolf Hitler __________[ ]___________[ ]
Filippo Marinetti _____[ ]___________[ ]
Karl Marx _____________[ ]___________[ ]
Pat Robertson _________[ ]___________[ ]
William Kristol _______[ ]___________[ ]
L. Ron Hubbard ________[ ]___________[ ]
Sun Myung Moon ________[ ]___________[ ]
Kim Jong-il ___________[ ]___________[ ]
Rush Limbaugh _________[ ]___________[ ]
Clarence Thomas _______[ ]___________[ ]
Fidel Castro __________[ ]___________[ ]
Bill Gates ____________[ ]___________[ ]

Please note that I am not interested in comments about my selections for this list. That's not the point. Thoughtful comments about the concepts are welcome.
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Saturday, June 19, 2010

Thank You To Loving People

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Today I have some thank you posts. These are people without whom I would not be me and would not be here. I know this is boring stuff to general people. It's the part of awards programs that drives us insane. But to those I love...

Thank you 'god' for the synchronicity classroom. It's more remarkable than I could imagine.

Thank you Gordon and Jan for putting up with me and always loving and supporting me.

Thank you Graeme, Iain and Colin for being a remarkably kewl diversity of brothers. I'm grateful we have each other.

Thank you Peter Perlso and Jesper Ørsted for the greatest friendship possible from afar. [Folks, these two guys got me my Mac laptop amidst my personal poverty and have directly allowed me to keep up with tech and write about it on the net. I've never even met Jesper! What an incredible friend he is]. We are three brothers from different mothers.

Thank you to my other brothers: Michael Mehnert, my spirit brother, how could I be more grateful to know you. Jim Richards, another spirit brother, your patience with me has been boundless, your generosity infinite. Mark Grube, may we ever support one another. Blake Sampson, you're a brother from afar I wish I could know better; you have been such loving support. Thank you Mark Sager for being the kind and giving spirit who kept me sane during my early years; you gave me optimistic amidst cynicism.

Thank you to sister Lorraine Downes Sinclaire. I could not have grown up and out without you there as my companion and guide. Sister Jeanne Bottomley, we went through probably too much together; thank you so much for years of joy and wonders.

Thank you to Michael Peres and Margaret Holtman, the greatest professors I've ever had, transcending into kind friendship.

Thank you Jeannette Angeloro for kind patience and shared wisdom, my catalyst of wise mindfulness. Thank you Naraya Reddy for fulfilling your loving self and going beyond the barriers to care for my well being, helping me find my medical survival.

Thank you Kay Silver and Leonard Silver for such remarkably loving friendship, given to a bedraggled stranger at your doorstep. I will ever love your spirits and keep your lessons of kindness in my heart.

Thank you cousins Brock and Louise, two secreted miracles of my family who have been so inspirational in my recent life.

Thank you to all my Hawley-Green neighbors who are the greatest collection of remarkable spirits within four city blocks I could ever imagine. I love you all and thank you for your patience with me and faith in me during tough times. Mitch, Michael, Nick, Phyllis, Nancy, Peter, Frank, Brian, John, Joan, Jeffery, Karen, Chris, Meagan, Mike, Debby, Scott, John, Glenn, Mary, Mary Ellen, Ben.... What a wonderful place for me to land, recover and thrive all these years.

Joan Allen, thank you for sharing your spirit of giving and being such a great companion in sharing that spirit with others.

The entire Friends Meeting of Syracuse, what a wonderful company of spirits with whom to share and grow.

Robert Newman and Katherine Hughes, fellow brave hearts, thank you for such loving support and wisdom.

Dick Newman and Kristen Carpenter, what a strange journey we have all had, and what great people with whom to share it. Thank you so much for your faith in me and your sharing spirits.

There are so many more kind people along the way, like Paul, Jan and the entire Central New York PC User's Group, the entire Apple CIDER group of Rochester, my mentors at RIT and Kodak, Frank and Arturo, my teachers in Pittsford, USF, UF, Allegheny, UR, YMCA, the Mac Advocacy newsgroup...
**MUSIC BLASTING**
**HOOK DRAGGING ME OFF STAGE**
THANK YOU EVERYONE!
. . .