Sept 5th, 2012

THE MATRIX (NET) PLUGGED IN I would believe that youd have to go a great distance before youd find a person or a group that has not experienced the net, a long ways. In addition I believe youd have to go an equal distance to find someone who didnt believe that organic life is a slow process, where the net is a virtual explosion of the new in our existence, i.e., digital information. This explosion of information is a non-linear event whereas every minute the data screams across the various nodes scattered across the planet like an out-of-control child in a candy store. The Matrix/Internet, or Cyberspace, is sometimes referred to as a fantasyworld, a world of make believe entities that become the reality of humans that believe or depend little in the physical world around them. Cyberspace is seen as a path through which one can navigate with the ease of a lumbering truck on a deserted highway, in reverse our physical life is compared to a reality that clogs our daily tasks and clouds our view of current events. The world of an explorer of Cyberspace demands orders of change of a magnitude one would not expect in normal life, an expert in Cyberspace has a never ending quest for more speed, more storage, and more power all dedicated to the mountains of information flowing over the communication paths from here to there he or she through whatever digital device at hand, expects instant gratification as they cruise the digital domain we all have come to love and embracea domain that is supposed to reveal the truths of the world and assist its inhabitants moving through their existence enhancing the

age old adage of natural selection as we zip across information plugged communication backbones across national borders and the town library. We all understand that natural selection changes things and we know the problems associated with it, add to this maelstrom the fast pace of natural selection in a network and we now not only see the change experienced in natural selection but the speed in which it is happening in our digital world of informationunfortunately some confuse the instant availability of information as a condition that guarantees it to be true, consequently the new information flashed across his or her device is accepted as being maybe halftrue so what can it really hurt? Because of this network full of half-truths having become a standard, a good percentage of the information has adopted the format of the consummate politician. Bully pulpit or not they have become the hawkers of yesterday twisting and stretching the truth beyond the working mans comprehension or even attempting to understand reminds one of walking the midway at the local carnival knowing full well the nine-foot teddy bears at the pop-a-balloon stall are just for show and really not a prize one can win. The growth of this tangled web of half-truths is astounding, albeit almost as fast as the application of Moores law, it is nevertheless sometimes beyond belief riding on this ever expanding climb to the stars and beyond is information and we know that information shapes and bends natural selection. Conversely, natural selection today bends and twists the information, consequently at times we experience a feeding frenzy we never would have believed even 20 years ago. The Matrix is not without its problems, one major situation occurs when data accumulates and then spreads such as a storm in nature whereas we find high-pressure zones, low pressure zones that conflict causing untold damage on the surface of the planet. Unfortunately there are things on the web that cause as much or more havoc than a naturally occurring incident one being the shifting of data to a site that overloads it causing a predictable denial of service, and then there are naturally occurring events whereas a site is bombarded with requests where a swarm of file-packets, from a myriad of different sources queries the site for information and the site has limited servers or too small of a communications pipe back to a network node.

The node concentrating or shifting its un-human presence to the requested site causes the other sites within its domain to slow to a crawl (so to speak), the word gets out that Node ###1 is an absolute zoo, and that Node ####2 is much better now we find the impatient (speed is best) crowd logging off of Node ###1, and it clears like a room recently filled with methane from the bowls of a consummate chilly consumer. But, now Node ####2 is beginning to feel the consequence and the gridlock shifts, and so forth and so on the storm moves across the network. As each Node is affected it is not without consequences, other than just some downtime, packets are lost or dumped, systems die as data is tumbled and lost in the midst of the storm financial markets scramble as they attempt to work around the data corruption, vital transactions are effected, bankruptcies spring up, contracts lost, in effect the list is endless in todays world this happens more than one realizes, albeit not on a catastrophic level such as a wide sweeping Hurricane it happens. Riding along the well connected world are things some of us label bugs or viruses, some well placed in the machinery that transfers a mixed up version of the information on the Matrix, while other mostly push and prod in an attempt to rip your personal data from your accounts all to the end of relieving you are some of your funds, or secret information on your whereabouts. In order to reduce (well never really slam the door on their presence) our systems create filters, meant to counteract the evil viruses that plunge into your personal life, or ID on the Matrix with all this going on we find ourselves back in a sort of arms race, problem being that compared to the Cold War the electronic network is 1000s times more complex than times gone by in dealing with the politics of that war. Education has taught us that natural selection creates change, growth in our networks translates into change happening fast, not over the millennia experienced by natural selection in nature. Today we see and experience a virtual explosion of information across the Internet, from second to second, minute to minute, and hour to hour the headlines change, the messages delivered at times being packed with valuable data, while at other times more fiction than reality.

Although there remains the fact that a lie or fiction is an expensive and time consuming exercise to maintain, our dependence on the network today, leads to the proposition that if the information is in print it must be true, thereby making the originator of the information either an expert or a politician. There are some who point to the complexity of the net, saying that this alone makes untruths harder to maintain needing a constant input of energy, which is true but there is those of us who read the original display of information and call it good, casting aside any additional information that point to the facts behind the information as being untrue rather than the original posting, some dont give a hoot and live with the original display. Now what we see is a process tumbling downhill, it speed and bulk increasing as it zips down the hill gathering additional misinformation along the way, at the bottom of the hill it might smash into a wall of truth, with some of the stated misinformation flying off the ball yet when the dust settles the remaining jumble of data is proclaimed as being true and the original intent to misinform is accomplished. Today we read about the birth of the Fact Checkers, an independent organization that plows through this statement or that one, publishing their examination, which as true in any exercise, some of their stuff will be accepted or pushed aside depending on the mind set of the individual. Facts to some are rooted in the past, whereas fiction today is the possible dream of the future, which should put some of you in the say what mode, if certain ideas are presented as facts along with twisting and turning events that happened in our recent past, we have bought into the concept that the more recent the information the more accurate it must be. Remember what Ted Bundy once said, Try to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. Its not real. Its just a dream. Seems that a part of our society has taken that to heart, while on the other side we find the words of Philip Gourevitch questioning, This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real. We all know, or we should, that the Matrix has ripped sugarcoating off the wheels of our society, presenting unpleasant truths while inflating the evidence of the resident bogeyman for political expedience, every one a snapshot of what some others want us to believe. When you think about it not even the

most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force on its citizens 100% of the time, for this they depend on memory management, a more subtle form of control, creating in some instances a rose-colored refraction of reality. When it fails in one direction this network creates information that spreads contagious fears of threatening alternatives, alternatives that scream across the information highway, this information gaining followers in a non-linear fashion. It used to be that our archaic forms of communication, newspapers, radio, TV were all devices that allowed the producers to filter the news for our sheltered society. Today this filter network has been destroyed by our access to an almost instantaneous stream of information that zips past our eyes and ears straight into our grey matter. No longer are we given the luxury to assimilate this stuff, some distant from us, at a pace our parents were used to, now each individual who has access must run through it and make a decision based on what weve read, heard or seen on U-Tubetodays news is tomorrows history as additional information pounds against our senses. As weve seen now we employ Fact Checkers to tell us whether what is being presented, by whatever medium, is close to the truth or completely false, where entire entities scan the presentations checking this or that against the historical record, something that as an individual you might have done in your previous lifenow the information comes so fast and from so many varied directions the individuals capability to determine what is true, partially true, or a lie has diminished to such a point that some parts of our society depends on you not being able to check. No matter how much some people complain about Fact Checkers they are here to stay, their need created by the very same people who are now yelling about their interference by Fast Checking the Facts. Where were these organizations when our historical records were composed after all it wasnt the hand of an indigenous person who wrote the history of the Americas not yet anyway, but were not done are we? Our thirst for information in an instant format has changed our gathering of information we used during the past decades, in more than a sense all of us combined have created this change we now gather in data exploring far beyond our limits of human understanding. Some of this information is made of details that are too intricate for our brains to track, while at other times the

data whips past barriers that are dimensionally inconceivable to imagine thereby it must be true. Mix into this the morals of a rutting chimpanzee, give them a bully-pulpit to pound on and you have the mess were in today, where politicians spit on each other refusing to walk through the problems in our society only wanting the office of leadership to continue enhancing their wealth, real or imagined. No matter their altruistic or sustainable philosophies their primary goal is the brainless imperative of self-interest. As a junior member of our mathematical environment I understand the subtle and elegant equations that somewhat predict the behavior of the quantum world, using the very same mathematical approach it is very difficult to even attempt to explain the reality that exists in the minds of some of our politicians, yes, those that tell us they are so much smarter than the man-inthe-street who is busy punching out a living to support his family keep in mind that most of those high above the rest of us obtained their position the hard way, they inherited it. We are fast approaching the fence where we find ourselves lagging far beyond our technical creations, whereas our technical devices being asked questions by us are spitting out answers we cannot analysis fast enough, thereby since we cannot verify the results they must be true if not we take them based on faith. If not we fall back on the age old theory to flatten the information, creating a two-dimensional chart or in some instances a three-dimensional Klein bottle, in our attempt to simplify reality and then hit our knees praying to whatever God we choose that our honorable twisting of the truth hasnt ruptured the turtles back on which our planet resides. What is our answer? We employ Fact Checkers, march on and pretend that those who pounded the lies into our life just misspoke in a moment of passion, me, hangem from the highest tree to be found, just like we used to do in the Old West to horse thieves, difference being instead of stealing your horse, they are stealing your life which when you look at it stealing a persons horse on a hot desert was no different than stealing your life.