DRAFT 1 — A Work in Progress
Introduction
Here’s an idea I’ve been thinking about: it’s a concept for a new philosophy, or perhaps just a name for a grassroots philosophy that seems to be emerging on its own. It’s called “Nowism.”… Read More “Nowism — A Theme for the New Era?”
I have been thinking about the situation in the Middle East and also the rise of oil prices, peak oil, and the problem of a world economy based on energy scarcity rather than abundance. There is, I believe, a way to solve the problems in the Middle East, and the energy problems facing the world, at the same time.… Read More “Peace in the Middle East: Could Alternative Energy Be the Solution?”
This article discusses recent research into encoding short 100 word messages into the DNA of living organisms. The error-correcting characteristics of DNA enable such messages to be passed down without degrading across generations. By embedding short messages into hardy organisms such as particular strains of bacteria, it may be possible to preserve information over longer timeframes than by using any other known storage media.… Read More “Using DNA to Send Messages into the Distant Future”
I read the an article today about how Brazil is gradually losing the fight to save the Amazon. The worlds’ rainforests are a global resource — not only are they
directly important to the air we all breathe, they also harbor a huge,
still untapped, reservoir of species diversity which could be of
profound importance to science and future medical and pharma research.… Read More “How to Save the Amazon Rainforest”
This is an idea for a new way to navigate interactively through large audio sets, such as collections of thousands of music tracks, and to automatically or interactively learn and evolve interesting trajectories through such spaces.
If you’ve ever tried writing a business plan, you know what a chore it is to locate statistics about industries, markets and products. While there are many market research firms that charge huge sums for their reports on particular segments, one quickly realizes that the wide degree of variance in their statistics means that just getting reports from one source is not very useful — one really needs to see all the statistics normalized across all the sources that project them about a market.… Read More “Idea: GRASP — The Statistics Portal”
In August of 2003, I posted an article that suggested the SETI folks ought to look at our own DNA to see if there happens to be a hidden message from aliens in there waiting to be discovered. Putting a message in human DNA, particularly in the junk DNA regions, is guaranteed (a) not to degrade significantly over long periods of time and (b) to be found by humans when we reached a suitable level of technological development, and (d) to go with each of us wherever we went on earth and beyond.… Read More “Messages in DNA: You Saw it Here First”
There has been much recent discussion lately about alleged evidence that the Bush administration is issuing terrorist alerts for political gain. While I am not taking a position on this issue, I do have a suggestion that could eliminate any doubts, and in the process protect our upcoming elections.… Read More “How to Save the Upcoming Elections from Terrorism Alert Manipulation”
by Nova Spivack
Originally published on July 28, 2004; Updated on October 10, 2011
http://novaspivack.com
Should there be a Constitutional Separation of Corporation and State?
Today our American democracy faces a new threat to its integrity, a threat even greater than terrorism in the long-term.… Read More “Proposal For A New Constitutional Amendment: A Separation of Corporation and State”
by Nova Spivack, http://www.novaspivack.com
Original: July 8, 2004
Revised: February 5, 2005; February 28, 2010
(Permission to reprint or share this article is granted, with a citation to this Web Page: http://www.novaspivack.com/science/a-physics-of-ideas-measuring-the-physical-properties-of-memes)
This paper provides an overview of a new approach to measuring the physical properties of ideas as they move in real-time through information spaces and populations such as the Internet.… Read More “A Physics of Ideas: Measuring The Physical Properties of Memes”
Forget about DRM and legal action to prevent piracy — there is a better way: Superdistribution harnesses basic human drives to save money and make money. It’s more powerful than copy protection, more powerful than ethical arguments, and more powerful even than fear of legal prosecution.… Read More “Superdistribution is the Solution to Digital Piracy and Marketing — and a Venture Opportunity too!”
Is it possible to send messages backwards in time? This may actually be a testable hypothesis today. Here is a possible way to test it. Let’s assume this is possible and that at some point in time in the future, humans on earth develop this technology.… Read More “Can Messages Be Sent Backwards in Time?”
The “stop” lights on the back of a car should change color from red to green depending on whether the car is decelerating or accelerating. This way they can function as both “stop” lights and “go” lights. This is an idea that was also recently mentioned on Should Exist.… Read More “Smarter Tail Lights for Cars”
I have been using Earthlink’s built-in spam filter on my personal email — it works really well. It is basically a whitelist system: Any messages from pre-approved parties get through to me while anything else goes into a “suspect email” folder for me to look at and potentially approve or delete.… Read More “How to Make a Smarter Spam Filter”
Mar 26, 2004
This evening I had an interesting idea for a new way to look for patterns in the distribution of numbers such as the prime numbers and the digits of Pi. In a nutshell I propose that there may be patterns in these number sequences that might not be evident to a computer but could be evident to the human eye and human intelligence, which among other things is tuned to find order in chaos, even when that order is “fuzzy.”… Read More “A New Way to Find Patterns in Distributions of Numbers”
This article discusses new research in how the brain makes buying decisions and other choices — what is now called “neuromarketing”. Neuromarketing researchers seek to discover, and influence, the neurological forces at work inside the mind of potential customers. According to the article, most decisions are made subconsciously and are not necessarily rational at all – in fact they may be primarily governed by emotions and other more subtle cognitive factors such as identity and sense of self.… Read More “Neuromarketing and Memetic Attenuation”
I am having an interesting conversation with Howard Bloom, author, memeticist, historian, scientist, and social theorist. We have been discussing network models of the universe and the underlying “metapatterns” that seem to unfold at every level of scale. Below is my reply to his recent note, followed by his note which is extremely well written and interesting…
… Read More “Social Networks, Physics, Civilizations — Do they All Obey the Same Underlying Rules?”————
From: Nova Spivack
To: Howard Bloom
Subject: Re: Graph Automata — Is the Universe Similar to a Social Network?
Hello all, I have been thinking about the general problems of social networks on the Internet. It occurs to me that these issues are closely related to digital physics. For more on digital physics see the work of Ed Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, Norman Margolus, Tomasso Toffoli, and other pioneers of the field of cellular automata.… Read More “Graph Automata — What Can Social Networks Teach us About Underlying Physical Laws?”
Here’s an interesting follow-up thought on my suggestion of some Hypothetical Laws of Social Networks.
What if in fact there is an entirely new way to design social networks, based on the mathematics of tilings? A tiling is a method of filling a space with geometric shapes.… Read More “Optimization of Social Network Architectures Using Tiling Rules”
I blogged about this earlier, but here are some new thoughts about how it should work.
I would like my Weblog provider to auto-cache every URL I link to from my blog. When I put a URL into the content of a posting, my Weblog engine should strip it out and replace it with an intermediary URL.… Read More “More on Auto-Caching of URL's on Weblogs: Need for a New Service and API”
I keep hearing about various half-baked proposals for solving spam, so I couldn’t help but add my own half-baked proposal into the mix. Actually my proposal may be more than half-baked — It might be the solution we’ve all been waiting for.… Read More “A New Solution to Spam: "The Internet Member's License"”
Well I finally made the leap and got a 40 Gb iPod recently. Thanks to RipDigital the process of digitizing my nearly 1000 CDs took only 1 day and I got it all back on a nice new 250 Gb Maxtor external drive (as well as a stack of DVDs containing a backup of all the new MP3s).… Read More “How to Make the iPod Better”
CNN posted an article today about the potential risk of nanotechnology on the human brain. Basically some research shows that nano-scale particles such as industrial waste, or even components of nanotechnologies, can migrate through the human circulatory system and eventually lodge in the brain.… Read More “Using Nanoparticles to Augment Human Brains…?”
Here’s a wildly unexpected proposal that just popped into my brain: Humanity should intentionally contaminate Mars with Earth lifeforms — as soon as possible! The benefits vastly outweigh any concerns to the contrary. Indeed, it may be the smartest thing our species ever does.… Read More “Humans Should Intentionally Seed Life on Mars. Why We Must Start Now.”