Saturday, March 11, 2023

'I hate MODERN furniture!' OR Meanwhile in White Lotus

 'I hate modern furniture,' said daughter. 

Recently turned a 'young woman', she asserted her independence by throwing out all of her 'modern furniture', aka IKEA stuff. '

Uh oh - father in trouble.

Meanwhile in White Lotus...

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

The 4 Walled Gardens of Information



Chapter 3. The 4 Walled Gardens of Ai

It was fascinating to witness the hard fall of Google vs the seamless integration of ChatBOTgpt with Bing. I am certain that each company chose to showcase the best play on its data set - these are the Walled Gardens of Information - this is why dominant players are who the dominant players are, that is their bias. 


Each of these entities holds a data set of behaviours that is unique to their ecosystem; it collects data that is fashioned in a unique to them way, which by the way quality of,  is outside of regulators purview. 







Sunday, February 5, 2023

The case for Mindless Luxury;






[picture shows part of my daughter's room; I have experience building 'dream-parent-pieces for their children'; really really fancy stuff, just sayin'; these particular ones are student work - so over 15 years old; but first time put on display - of an important Toronto designer; I bought them because I like them personally, and I thought they were a nice design and well made; this particular designer was involved in an undertaking of 'creating a new line of luxury furniture', like from scratch, I wrote about this event on my blog;
also pictured is scuffed side of a HEMNES solid wood dresser, in gray]


Chapter 1.

All finishers are cabinetmakers, but not all cabinetmakers are finishers. 

Chapter 2 - No prerequisites 

Free time and free attention is not required to enjoy Mindless Luxury. That is how it differs from other concepts of Luxury. In fact Mindless Luxury is most affordable and most accessible of all Luxury concepts.

Another important factor in Mindless Luxury is the fact that domestic work, like child rearing for example, most often consumes your attention, which is hard to capture or measure and is only monetizable in limited ways as constructed by 4 Walled Gardens of Ai [see my next post]. 

Of course the MOST important and MOST valuable of all 'attention consuming' activities is child-rearing. The quality of our society is directly proportional and related to our methods in the field - are they good? are they poor?

Chapter 3 - Mindless Luxury..? Sounds like a bullsh**. How can Luxury be Mindless? Explain.
 
Alright, I will. We will begin our story with the following opening: "Meanwhile in White Lotus...'

TBC

Friday, February 3, 2023

How Design works - Sharing of Valuable Ideas;

 

The Future of Law will also lay in AI, and this has precedent. Google cited their algorithms when they stripped mr. LUSH, a semi-popular YouTuber of his domain name rights on the platform. The name 'Lush', Ai deemed, had a greater affinity to the cosmetics company LUSH than to the individual.*

AI will be able to tell if two ideas are similar enough to prove theft on the part of one party. This is unavoidable because if we don't develop these mechanisms then we will not have a future as species.

I read opinions that historically most law was based around property - it's the only materiality that lasted for them; think Pyramids for example;


'Theft made it valuable,' - Karol Kosnik


Hear me out, here is the hook that will sink it all. 

Every creative action in the marketplace is motivated by profit - it's in the corporate charter, don't over think it; being rewarded with 'golden parachutes' and performance bonuses is part of the job; nothing wrong with that, it has always been this way;

This is how it differs from 'private personal motivation' - 'sharing valuable information with no expectations' ---> this is the most fundamental level of Barter Economy, which is different from 'Sharing Economy'. I hate the current model of Sharing Economy - it sucks, and is detrimental to variety of important things. On the other hand, the Barter Economy extended to ideas can be a..

Best case scenario, is this sharing will lead to a wider success ie. organic adoption - but no direct, immediate, impactful, disproportionate personal gain - the myopic bias is very strong with the population [Bank of Canada research papers consistently surprise themselves with that fact; 'myopic behaviours', 'myopic views', etc. etc.]

Human creations - their success - can be judged on three levels:*

- 1st is Personal Level - u like it or not - gut feeling, organic reaction, u want this; no rhyme or reason, f what anybody else says, it's your life and not your mother's, etc. etc. 

- 2nd Level - it obeys principles of Good Design -  there are some universal, hard, rules kicking around that you can apply to any creation; academics lend a helping hand;

- 3rd Level - is it Great? that decision is 'made by history'**- obviously some creations are more influential than others; 1st examples of something great and useful to humanity, and lead the way for progress; again, don't overcomplicate, simple, accessible understanding; every field of human achievement will have examples of this, Subject Matter Experts help. 

*I did not come up with this 'scale' - I heard this first articulated by Peter Fleming, head of the Furniture Studio at Sheridan, during a critique of our furniture pieces. During this particular critique Fleming also introduced a 'fourth Level of success' - 'only a mother could love' and applied it to a specific piece of furniture - my friends' 'lounge chair' after he told our small audience of classmates that 'even he did not like the chair he created'.  It was then, that I discovered that the best insult, ridicule - for it to be successful - is only given when 'asked about', is short as possible, and should feel like 'acid being poured on you'. Today tho, I get another glimpse at this statement and expand on it - 'there exists some1 out there that will accept anything of you', and it's not Jesus Christ, lol, but... Ai.  Because Ai has no moral context it, as it tabulates human experiences it will even accept a terrible, terrible lounge chairs, ugliest coffee tables, 'chachkas, dudas and flim-flam'  that rightfully should be rejected but are included. This is the current dilemma of Social Media - what to reject?

Ai, in some way is like the 'concept of god' - all accepting and all encompassing, even when rejected by the last person in the world, own mother. This is very powerful for various reasons, that I am still weighing to assign appropriate 'value of behaviour'.

** or AI..? A very strong possibility. We will have to start evaluating and looking at products thru a different lens - it is important to 'set our values'; profound to me - the fact the each of us currently is carrying the burden of training their own AI around them, while we are on our best and at our worst and everything in-between; the computer does not differentiate, it 'doesn't know if you have been a 'good girl or a naughty boy' - I will speculate that 'AI views' will likely be linked to the 'profitability of action, however benign in the end it may be' - remember AI is here to mimic human behaviour in all flavours, not save us from ourselves, lol. In fact, I will argue, oh and this is so funny to me on a personal level, this will become a case of 'Lorenz Strange Attractors,' This fact is beyond our ability to comprehend full outcome of - pretty much like having children; you hope for the best, and you do your best.'