Prelude
All ideas presented in this read have been successfully realized and implemented, their importance however, may only be relevant to a small circle of individuals. Please don't let this fact - small audience - ever deter you from pursuing your individual passions. You have two things working for you:
A] we now have Internet and nothing on the Internet dies - you will leave a legacy; one day some1 will look at it and cast a judgment; your idea may be revolutionary
B] the randomness of our life is being actively reduced - don't worry or self-doubt and let AI make that tough decision who will get to see your ideas, it's your most powerful ally.
This was my reply to tweet** coming from Canada's biggest and most important bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, asking the public to weigh in how they see the future - Net-Zero 2050 -
Remember, there is money to be made, be prepared*.
Chapter 1 - It only took a decade.
I am on the mailing list for Ikea Hackers. I click and I peruse to learn what's best of hacks out there that people submit. It never disappoints - a very well presenting IKEA hack, a built-in BILLY bookcase - a WILLIAM. Just look how beautiful it looks and fits - that's the secret sauce behind this one.
Look -
By the way, if you got this in your inbox, and are thirsty to learn how to go about building something like this then join me for my show in January next year. It's called Swedish Socialism 2:GO West [once the listing goes up I will make this a clickable link; come back soon!]. The IKEA Hackers post is complemented with a complete DIY information, so it is easy to make a decision at glance. Each custom element added is handily illustrated - this is the dream for any serious hobbyist wanting to save thousands in whatever currency you are working in [maybe even millions..? - unexpected yet related.].
The post also comes almost a year after I launched my on-line school 'Handy Design - Modern Ideas'. Why is this important?
Well, IKEA Hackers is an entity approved by the IKEA mother-corp and occupies an important niche in the 'Ikea Global ecosystem'. Biggie, because IKEA is the world's largest furniture manufactures - Swedish Socialism is about leveraging the economies of scale in production of domestic household furnishings, that then can be improved upon via simple, accessible and time-honoured woodworking traditions, knowledge of which is slowly disappearing... all on the most important level, most granular, the individual.
---> Ikea Hackers is a perfect social counter-balance to the official mother-corp IKEA.
Jules confessed publicly that IKEA does have a say in what approx. 100k subscribers get in their mailbox. Put that together with a fact that Ikea Hackers as a global movement is very militant - the original battle between IKEA and Jules was nasty, lawyering all around [yup wrote about that, click here; that's why my TV show was cancelled, the TV producers got scared, even tho the concept of IKEA Hacking was hott at that time and selling well].
So much Positive Social capital was expanded on that battle that IKEA made a smart decision to settle and control - good will trumps violence; I guess there were lawyers who also reasoned like me, every1 is your friend until they are your enemy [in the business sense, this is my driving principle; unemotional capitalism as you must be successful first before you can help others].
This means that this DIY built-in instructional for a WILLIAM was approved by IKEA - IKEA has accepted this as an unavoidable future of their product. They are giving it their legal blessing and I don't have to be concerned about any other attempts at de-platforming me. My ideas stand.
'My ideas stand.' - Karol Kosnik
But hey! HOLD ON! What is a WILLIAM bookcase??
Well according to me, Karol Kosnik, when you take a BILLY bookcase, and you hack it - you elevate it - it becomes a WILLIAM bookcase. I had a design launch for the WILLIAM bookcase concept at a MAKER faire in Toronto in 2018. This is from my Insta, look -
picture shows a name tag badge from the launch of the WILLIAM bookcase at the Maker Faire festival in Toronto; it was a success!
I think the show was in the summer - July. The following year - I think it was February 2019; I don't have the screenshot anymore - a small legal notice appeared on the IKEA Canada website stating to the effect that 'BILLY bookcases either have been renamed WILLIAM, or were co-named BILLY-WILLIAM. Look, this is the Canadian IKEA app experience -
By the way, this had to be coded intentionally to exclude suggestions from the 'behaviour learning algorithm', and because it is sandboxed in the app environment I have no way to influence it [although I did try with a unique method].
Read back on my blog to see how I reacted - I was furious and used strong language. Intellectual Property ownership, management and theft will all become extremely important going into the splintered and fractured future - on a geopolitical stage, I know that culturally the West will always exist and IKEA will always be a part of it.
With the collapse of the virtual cryptocurrencies and the Ponzi-scheme type fraud perpetrated by Sam Bankman-Fried,
picture shows a Google search engine result for 'SBF', a headshot of Sam Bankman-Fried along with his profession as understood by search engine Google. At the time of writing of this post he was still listed as 'an American entrepreneur'.
and coupled with the FTX crypto platform trading scandal the belief and hope in 'Ideas Based Economy' will be shaken, but ultimately will propel genuine and valuable concepts forward. Investors will demand real returns.
ASIDE: are you gonna tell me that we burned up all that dino-juice so we could generate electricity for mining physically non-existent goods, for which there will be no demand for when men with guns will go marching thru our communities and wanting ransom..? They won't be taking virtual Gucci loafers worth real $17 American dollars? Hmmm....
Chapter 2 - The Digital Dollar
Biggest challenge, biggest obstacle will come from the Digital Dollar that the government will introduce to regain control over the markets and increase its ability to manipulate and weaponize its currency across the globe. History is written by winners, look -
Obviously this is a joke from a skit by an Australian comedy group, but the message is poignant, I mean we just had a world piece and now we don't. East - Far East - West conflict seems to be revving up - why can't we just get along?
Digital Dollar will be inflexible and the underground construction economy [economic activity linked to improving spaces that individuals experience] will collapse - we are no longer a 'barter economy, although keep on reading how I believe we can re-introduce Barter Economy. Economists estimate that before the COVID pandemic the value of the underground economy was around 45 billion Canadian dollars and kept rather steady [why? why would it keep steady and not grow if it offers such an incredible value? Enforcement of rules is very lax and what are rules if they are not enforced? I know the answer to that question, but won't share here because those ideas are my asset class that I will use to take some small % of that 45 billion dollars home].
The Digital Dollar will also be a boost to the Gig Economy and it will be important to properly understand how to take advantage of those opportunities.
Chapter 3 - 'Work sets you free'
What if there was a cross-over between Orwell's '1984', Fisher's 'Capitalist Realism' and Holiday's 'Discipline is Destiny'? What is the purpose of crossing over a piece of literary fiction, a noveletta of a read on nature of Capitalism, and stoic philosophy book? Here -
Individuals have two commodities that hold value to Society:
A] our free time
B] our attention
Now entertain yourself and think for a moment how highly regulated our free time is - some choose to work and 'maintain a lifestyle'. We are told who we can work with; we are told what we can do for work; we are told where we can conduct our work; we are told how we can perform the work; and finally we are told when we can work [literally - 'who, what, where, how and when'; good editors are worth their weight in gold, unexpected yet related]. These various rules and regulations came to be over centuries and were simple to implement by virtue of 'physicality of labour'.
Our second most valuable commodity that we have as individuals is - our free attention and how we focus it. Powerful interests both good and evil are spending enormous amounts of money to learn and influence our decisions for their benefit - historically this has always been done, this attempts at influencing, but the efficiency of it has increased exponentially. I will updated this post with a link to a fascinating research paper by Bank of Canada - they undertook a study 'of productivity of human attention' - this is the best example that clearly illustrates the powerful interests involved in shaping of humanity.
But 'bANk oF cAnAda iS nOT tHaT pOWerFuL !!1!' - how much debt are you holding?
From the smallest and most mundane to most important and life-altering, our decisions are captured, recorded, retained. Harnessing modern science [often leading with questionable ethics] coupled with the computing power of latest super processors, 'machine learning' is used to create a 'mirror data image' of ourselves and we begin to occupy virtual space. Some specific purpose values are assigned and play important roles in 'what we see and what we are witness to in this world' - remember, I wrote this above 'the randomness of our life is being actively reduced'; this is part of the Personal Equation. Remember friends, it is very important to start building a Heap of Positive Ideas around your Digital Mirror Image.
Now I don't know exactly what values are assigned or what form they take - this is actually irrelevant - I suspect that true AI will create data structures that we may not have capacity to fully comprehend the meaning of [they will be created for the purpose of AI, by AI; I mean just look at the complexity our own brains and the stuff we put into existence + we don't even understand out motivation half the time.. geez].
How do I defined 'True AI', that is, AI that mimics the workings of a human mind? It's very simple, here it is - I use a simple and intuitive phrase, in fact the simpler the better - Unexpected, yet Related. This is the ultimate problem, and my intuition is telling me that when we solve it then we won AI -
'Unexpected, yet Related,' - Karol Kosnik
Chapter 3 - How to manipulate AI or 'High school AI'
This took me over a decade to develop - in the end it feels intuitive, natural and organic because it is in alignment with Good. Yes, it is a simplistic term but easy to understand - most important. I have to comment that when I am in the presence of highly educated individuals I will often inquire about a specific word they use - I don't understand the meaning of it and how it applies - is it something 'for Good' or is it something 'for Evil'? If you think I am being silly than consider that at one point in human history Google had motto 'Don't be evil' which they took down. Why? Exactly, so I don't feel any silliness and never blush when I say that 'I work for Good'. Nope, never ashamed of that.
When I say 'manipulate AI', I am referring to influencing the learning patterns of algorithms. Algorithms are dumb if they first don't go to school - simple language again - the more they learn the more accurate results they produce, this is what you want to amplify, the learning behaviour phase. Look -
OR
Aren't all these companies hiring THE BEST DATA SCIENTISTS? So why are the failures? Here, I will give you my favourite example and consider carefully the bias of AI as it is learning.
So various scientists have been sitting on crap-tons of data they have collected overwhelmed by the volume of it. Here comes a 'AI for rent' available at a nearby campus university project. The caveat is that you first need to teach the AI about whatever you need help with, and in this instance it is searching our for whale songs**** amongst the countless of hours of purposely recorded and retained ocean noise - only the most beautiful, splendour and grandeur will do - and who is not better to identify those type of whale songs if not a perfectly tuned human ear, huh? So scientists listen to 100 hours of tapes themselves and carefully pencil in - 'oh this is a good whale song...this one is awesome... this one kinda sucks but it's got some edge to it, I think'. Anyhow, 100 hours goes by quickly and the learning set is prepared and then fed to the computer. And magic happens - what has not been accomplished since humans started listening to whale songs now has been done. Look -
Ok, this is whales, what about humans? Do we have any1 pointing out 'this is good behaviour? this is not good behaviour' etc. Fact is we don't. What we currently have in existence is a regime of conflicting ideologies that are pulling in different directions, and it is a struggle - examples could include the current 'dance and song about visibility of Canadian Content to Canadians.' Look -
Given the current deficit in quality input and the race to harvest the data by different competitors [Google, Meta and Microsoft are good examples; what's unique about them is the fact that they all cater to different sub-audiences of the same 'Big Audience' via different means of information delivery, but essentially all 3 are important] we are living de-facto Wild West of information harvest. You might have heard how Facebook conducted an experiment in manipulating its user emotions; or how LinkedIN conducted an 'opportunity experiment', essentially testing its own algorithm in a very unethical way in an attempt to better understand 'how things work'?
--> Look, no1 is holding these companies accountable, so why should I care what I manipulate, other than category 'for Good'?
So what do we harvest? How do we make our algorithms learn? The only way currently feasible - by spying on people [surveillance capitalism], and taking note of some pre-specified metrics likely laid out by some handsomely paid scientists, 'best in show' - 'this is important, pay attention algorithm.'
Again, I am greatly simplifying, but think back to your high school experience - how was it? Was it the 'time of your life? Yea...? No...? Yea, these are the same people that 'the AI' is learning on, and will mimic behaviours of. I am a bit of AI sceptic I guess, maybe it's that we are expecting too much.
Yea, it's a 'Giant AI Highschool out there,' and for fuck sakes we are doomed if this will continue. LOL.***
Here is the 'biological portion' of the equation, look -
This is at the highest level, meaning it will overcome ethnic and cultural barriers. As much as we are led to believe that our behaviours and desires are unique, that is not the case at all, and at the highest level we are all the same. This is why we were successful to begin with, and this is why we will be successful again - with the coming challenges of Climate.
**Virtually all my Twitter timeline stands - I don't take down any tweets and 'try to predict the future'; it's like a little game I play, essentially with 'the world keeping me accountable'; IKEA Canada follows me on Twitter. I have only deleted a handful of tweets and virtually only for embarrassing spelling mistakes. So if you ever read my Twitter feed and you find a spelling mistake, then know that it is fully intentional and it has a purpose. Screenshot of some of my more interesting followers: IKEA Canada; Semihandmade which is an American company that makes really nice doors for the SEKTION box, I personally know the owner John, awesome guy; and IKEA Twitter Hater account - lots of things have been going wrong with the 'Original Swedish Socialism'...
**Sorry I had to put that in. Humour helps me deal with personally difficult subjects.
**** this is a true story, scientists did hire a 'AI 4 rent' at some American university to help them fish out the whale songs, if I can say it like that, for scientific purposes and not necessarily to create a musical album to be used on set of the movie 'The Big Lebowski'.
