Being Persistently ADAPTIVE (You are travelling THROUGH the Environment)

When on a journey of expansion or moving into new paradigms of being, we can get get tunnel vision and feel like the vision we are working to transform into existence is going in slow-motion. Those of us who identify as Type A personality can probably identify with the feeling that we are the odd one going against a lot of societal pressures and cultural norms. This is why we have to be independently strong and really believe in the vision we have for ourselves number one before anything else. We need ways of being personally validated about what we believe and being personally stabilized and persistent.

It can be an easy mistake to mix our business and culture-changing ideals with our personal sense of well-being and value as a human being. We may begin to feel as though we are victim to the cycles of business and culture which is actually far more "friendly" to our personal development process and attitude than we may realize. By friendly, I mean that the way that we experience the world and the way the world experiences us...is very dependent upon how we are living out our pattern. If we begin to believe that we should be owed more by others and the world then we are going to start placing the emphasis of action on others and upon the environment. We must take ownership of our actions and the results we get.

The wise course of action is to continually practice the art and sciences that we know are personally developing oneself as a human being on all levels of being including our spiritual self-development. The way we interface and interact with the development of our dreams and aspirations is highly-important. Many people have been close to achieving success and given up on their dreams shortly before they would have brought them to life.

Being able and willing to adapt in order to remain strong (or grow stronger and wiser) is one main key I believe is crucial to the long success game. Sometimes we feel like we just have to be more persistent. But if persistence morphs into negativity about the current state of things then it is morphing into a "give-me attitude" instead of a gratefulness attitude and positive work ethic.

Be like this water droplet that can flow as water and also refract light and shape our environment so strongly as water does. Also notice how water can cling together as a stream and also break off into a smaller bead drop and flow across a surface.

Water and light both follow cycles as well on an atmospheric, physics and biologic level which is another reason why these are both ideal analogies for how a person should ideally adapt throughout the process of creating business success in their lives and their community.

A person must have core-values and integrity and for this to exist within a person, they must believe in themselves and their value in whatever shape they take as a person. If they believe they are only valuable if they are acting in a certain capacity or way, they can become stubbornly set on a rigid view of how their life should be playing out. And that's following a script that is almost surely doomed to failure. Our actions and emotional/mental strategies should never be conditioned (or contingent) on such a fragile, singular result.

The essence of any creative pursuit is being able to see the big picture. I will add to this metaphor. It is being able to see the big, MOVING picture and being able to see it from multiple angles and perspectives. But what about when you can't? How do you move and create within a landscape when you are using imperfect maps? You have to be able to adapt to streams of information and to your surroundings as they emerge to you and be able to extrapolate extra data from limited, incomplete patterns. It also helps when you realize that preparedness is one of the greatest keys to the Universe.

We are constantly co-creating the conditions for our success. We are the creators of our lifestyle. The story we write and the movie we create is dependent upon us believing in our innate value and the value we transform in the world around us.

Launching out into the Creative Flow

There is the meme of the starving artists..those who are fanatical about creating for the sake of interacting with the creative forces, working with the beauty of natural archetypes and design patterns and such. And these are people who love to generate delight in those who view their artistry. They themselves are in love with their work. They are perhaps more in love with their work than any monetary gain. And yet the greatest business successes take advantage of the principles of artistry and delighting their customers.

When a businessperson truly harnesses the creative force within themselves and takes careful notice of the needs and desires of their target demographic..they become responsible for delivering something almost as sacred and natural as a swift summer rain at the peak of growing season. For their customers, they become the perfect answer, the perfect solution. They find the niche in the market space and they bring an energy to that space that wasn't there before.

Successful people live their personal lives this way. Whether they are conscious of it or not, they are in a kind of alignment with the forces of influence surrounding their lives and in their environment. They aren't playing victim games. The successful person sees opportunity where others would see nothing.

The successful person brings these seething forces of power and furls them into twisting vortexes of positive pulsating energy that becomes ready to burst forth with its seed and deliver value to their company and ultimately to society. And in return, as almost a natural law, there is the potential for profits to return to the creator of this value.

In fact, the successful value-creator or entrepreneur is more than a creative or a creator. They are really orchestrating these creative forces and designing larger flows of effect (or power) out of the combination and recombination of multiple smaller flows. The word "success" itself has its meaning rooted in going from one accomplishment to the next which is actually a related concept. But the true point of value here is that a value-creating individual is one who becomes adept in satisfying the needs of the many but doing so with a more generalized or efficient design pattern which is repeatable and robust.

What they are really doing is seeing the potential for transformation. The key to success is being able to have a vision for what you'd like but simultaneously being able to see past certain rigid mindsets and being able to flow "like water" around apparent obstacles. Being able to shift the mind and shift your actions..you..and your business..become unstoppable.

It's about the structure. It's about the structure but it's not. There's a careful tension..a careful balance of power that must be observed and maintained in balance and harmony. A certain amount of chaos and yet some amount of containment of that chaos. Some semblance of narrative, of routine, some absolutes. But even these are changeable.

The important thing is recognizing failure when it's there and yet not succumbing to its continuation. For that's exactly what seems like the default when you are in a failure mode, doesn't it? You're at the point where it feels like there's no return to basics. You feel invested in the way you've been looking at the problem or the goal or whatever it is that you're focusing your energy on. And it feels like if only you just put more energy into the thing you've been trying to get working that maybe you will hit success.

And this is why we need metrics..so we can see the truth of our position. If we have not map of what it means to be successful or now vision of what we are doing, we will become isolated in our ways of working and wrapped in the fears of loss..and being lost. Only when we create for ourself the surrounding vortex of power that we can come to depend upon as reckoning device..we will know high amounts of success.

It's important to have imagery in our mind to guide our way of thinking and our actions. The energy we surround ourselves with is like the clouds that cling to topographic features like mountains or along lakes and then precipitate our their various action potentials: rain, snow, thunder, lighting..Likewise, the man or woman can be surrounded with emotions that take him or her to the depth or height of his or her choice. Being persistent to send out value to your workspace and into the market and building connections of value..with sincere close friends, with potential customers, with other businesses that may tie in somehow with your field of choice..these are avenues--streams--pathways--by which you can channel a dynamic flow of energy. A stagnant energy doesn't have the capacity to create value. A stagnant energy cannot bring you a return on value delivery because it lacks the deliver and lacks the return.

There's a very real level of passion that must be kept in constant motion and yet be under a kind of control or containment. For each person, each business..this will be a different synthesis, a unique formula for your success. Every successful person and business goes through stages and lifecycles where the conditions for success change and the metrics change. If you run into failure, sometimes you need to find new ways of thinking and working.

Unlock your success. I hope this encourages you.

P.S. It's not all about the perfect process, perfect grammar, or a perfected synthesis or discovery of ideas that you can somehow package into the "one right answer" or "the way." It's also about the delivery of value. The sun comes up many different ways. The clouds rain many kinds of drops. And there are lots of different kinds of snowflakes. Make your successful process repeatable but not frozen.

PROCESS Your Way To Your DREAMS; Don't GOAL Your Way There!

The change of year is a time when a lot of people declare their life a battleground. People make goals. How successful are people at making these goals reality? Not very. Maybe for a few weeks. But why do people write off as a failure what they undoubtedly succeeded at for at least a few days? That should at least be seen as some kind of success. Or what if the goal is so big and intimidating that we fail because we measure ourselves in comparison to a finished product and feel hopeless? We are not merely products in stasis and we shouldn't underestimate the power of slow but consistent changes over a period of time. The tortoise wins the race...

If I say I have the goal of writing a book in the next year, most people find that a totally intimidating idea. How can we ever do great big things then if human psychology wimps out so easily? What's the secret? How do some people achieve success in their life? How come some people seem to be able to summon from deep within their will power the manifestation of their dreams into reality? How come some peoples' lives are so congruent with their dream world?

These questions are important if we want to make our dreams happen. If we want success. If we want to stay on the right path, the path we set before us. Rather than fall short of the full vision we have for ourselves.

I posit to you that it's not the goal that leads us to success but the process that guides our present actions on a daily basis.

If I want to write a book, I could have a process where I often write one page of text. Or two pages. I think it's important to be realistic though. If you're not good with consistency, I'm not so sure you should set out to do something every single day. Because you'll probably fail before long. Rather, you could look at it like an easy-medium-hard kind of game or expedition. I like the term 'expedition' because wrapped up in the definition of the word is the idea that there is some purpose to whatever it is you are setting out to do. So there is an aspect of 'goal' in the concept. But there is also an element of game or hunting or exploration involved such that you are looking for something; you are not just tossed around completely by external circumstance...you are exercising some will power...but you are also not completely sure what will happen. It's like if you go out into the woods and go hunting. If you get a smaller deer (or whatever type of animal you are hunting) than you are hoping for or have gotten before, you don't become discouraged and go home and ball your eyes out. If you don't even find a deer, you say "better luck next time" and go again in a couple weekends.

There are elements of our life story which we can change but we can't change everything all magic-like with ritual dark magick in our circle of candles in our basement. That isn't to say that rituals aren't important though. On the contrary...that's actually kind of the point of this article. Rituals, ie. maintaining a process that you can truly find delightful and joyful rather than some kind of heavy burden...that's your secret. That's the good news. That's the recognition that can take you from victim to victor.

To change our life requires will-power and experts say we only have a limited amount of will-power much like we only have so much we can pay attention to at any given moment of time. And we only have so much time. Changes are possible usually so long as we have the right kind of expectations and a healthy mindset.

But how do we MAKE these changes? Through goal-setting? No way. Goal setting might help us plan. But we can't completely accurately predict the future.

You have to make your process fun and enjoyable. You have to make it addictive. You have to build a habit that engages your attention...

Something as simple as a list of things to do in a word processor or Google Document which you paste checkmarks into after each complete task might be more compelling and engaging of your attention than some to-do app where you click a button. Maybe the feel of the click of the keys on the keyboard is more satisfying than the click of the mouse. Maybe you like the feeling of freedom when you use the word processor or Google document to track the things you want to do more than the perceived limitations in functionality of to-do apps. Maybe even interacting with to-do apps imposes a psychological perception of intimidation at the mere suggestion that you should be focused solely on producing and doing work, etc.

It seems weird but seriously research shows that our environment and what we interact with effects our brain and mindset in strange and sometimes subtle ways. A trigger for forgetting something on our mind can be something as simple as walking through a doorway from one room to another room. The reason seems to be that our brain organizes our memories based on what our location is and what the environmental conditions are like. We like to think that we are 'objective' and 'rational' whatever those are supposed to mean. We don't necessarily realize that our brains have a different idea of what is objective and rational. To our brains, it probably actually is rational and productive to be subtly effected by our environment.

Then there's the whole Dopamine aspect. What's the reward for making changes in our life? Change can be stressful. One thing we can do to reward ourselves is eat a small piece of chocolate after we do something that takes some effort on our part. Like writing a blog post :) Plus, I suspect that the simple action of tying together different kinds and instances of minor accomplishments in our life, via following the accomplishment with a small reward, ties certain neural pathways used to achieve each various minor task/accomplishment into a stronger related network in our brain which generally seeks out BEHAVIOR and REWARDS (OPPORTUNITIES & COSTS). I suspect this network pathway would make us more confident, successful, and have stronger more consistent will-power, etc. But you don't necessarily have to only use chocolate. And the beauty is that you don't have to even use chocolate every time. Once you do sometimes, your mind will automatically think of chocolate when you do something productive on a subconscious level. But you could additionally/alternatively use other means to reward yourself. You could read a chapter of a fiction book after you complete a task that you normally put off doing or find yourself frequently becoming distracted from. You could also play a game online or on your phone. A fun one I like is 'Bloons Tower Defense 5.' It can last a little bit longer than I'd sometimes like to spend on a game all in one sitting but once in awhile this is not at all such a bad thing. It's good to work hard but also to play hard.

Find a way to split up a task into a chunk just small/easy enough that you're confident you can probably achieve it without taking too much time (I'm thinking less than 45 min-1 hr.)

What you can take away from all this is that your work, your productivity, can and should be fun and exciting. Whether you have to spice it up by being creative and snacking on some highly pure antioxidant-rich chocolate or some other decadent treat or reading some fiction or using social media or playing a game or taking a nap...whatever...the important factor is the expedition, the journey, the process.

Your process needs to be designed for humans not for machines. You are a human, not a machine.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Your environment and your future are basically convoluted reflections of your inputs & outputs right now. The more that you can crystallize and focus on the vision of your desires/needs, the better this will be reflected in your actual outputs and your environment will be expressed by the deeds of your hands and the spoken words of your tongue. Let thy hands fulfill the deepest expectations of your mind. You gotta believe. Whatsoever you believe will become your reality. With few exceptions. You're one of the biggest influential players in the story of your life. If you don't enjoy the processes and rituals of your daily life, you're living in a system of massive resistance to your own creativity and your own capacity to effectively create the changes you desire. Be attentive to what you want and use each small step of fulfillment as fuel for further change-making. Your results are your reward. Don't like them? Morphogenesis that crap then.

Change the game. Change the process. Change the way you think about managing your life. The way that your body, mind, and entire life is instructed...or programmed...is not limited to only your conscious wishes or even your conscious awareness but by the deepest, most recessed aspects of your self, including your shadow self...the parts of you which you wished didn't exist. You can't continue to allow those parts to exist or to give those parts of yourself positive attention if you don't want them to rule your life. You need to purge yourself of those things which are doing you self-harm.

We can be our own worst enemies so often.

Nurture that part of yourself that is essential to your true success just as you would nurture the watermelon plant and cull the undesired weeds and toss them into the rotting pile to be restored to raw biomass potential.

Free yourself by removing the bonds of former patterns and reconnecting the aspects of yourself in other more productive configurations. This is the process that feeds itself with its own desires. Do you feed yourself the dung of beetles? I surely hope not... Mentally we need to feed ourselves and our own processes with that which will integrate us into a more deep union with ourself. This is called being self-consistent in systems terms. If we are not self-consistent, the results are horrible. We do that which we do not want to do and are double-minded like a bipolar person.

If we want the results that we want (to go meta), we need to see that the person who we are when we do not succeed at fulfilling our desires is the same person we are when we do succeed at our desires. Just different parts. And we have to prune back the parts of ourselves that are hurting us as a whole.

Seek those things which will give you lasting fulfillment. Those things which are sustainable. If what you say you seek is not sustainable or does not bring you fulfillment but you insist that it is better or best for your life, perhaps reconsider whether this is true to your inner purpose. Maybe this is not actually good for you, in other words. What is good for you?

Many times we have dreams and we immediately assume that they must be what we really want. As if the heart really always know what it wants. These thing we so often think of as truisms are more like mass delusions...

Just like the music you liked when you were a teen probably isn't the same as the music you like now...The heart changes. The heart doesn't know what it wants. Why does that matter for success? Success requires a strong consistency aspect. Search out your dreams and interpret them looking for flaws.

Before you change your life, change your goal. Before you change your goal, change your process. Before you change your process, change your attitude/mindset...your entire mode of awareness. Have gratitude. Be aware of negative valence emotions though. Look deep within you for that shadow self. That person you deep down know you are but wish you weren't. That psychological part of yourself that you project onto others but inwardly ignore in yourself and avoid admitting you have problems with.

We like to think we are better than average. Better drivers, better informed, better mannered, etc., etc. Doubtful. We judge the world. Others are so stupid, so ignorant, so lazy, so this or that... Yeah the world is ugly but we are not exempt from that ugliness.

You want change? WHO ARE YOU?

This article is meant to get you into a philosophical mode of thinking and really grapple/wrestle with what it means to be consciously aware of yourself. We humans like to pride ourselves with the idea that we are conscious but really I think we are far more blind to our inner workings than we would hope was the case.

Be Inwardly Aware. But don't over-think or flood your mind with worry and chatter.

I hope my thoughts on this matter fuels within you an urge to change your life circumstances for the better and maybe paints a better picture than the oft-recited memes about habit-change that give the illusion that life changes reliably snap into place like Lego bricks or K'nex rods.

Cheers to your bountiful success and to optimization!

Much Love,
Andrew

Seamless & Infinite App Ecosystem

A Dystopian Digital Experience, Why it Exists, and How to Fix it

I want apps to more or less go away and be replaced by dashboards and apps that control multiple company's functionality. I don't see the sense in having to open up an app just to scan a QR code, look at the weather, play music, etc. Furthermore, the data and the protocols for controlling devices should tie into a layer of abstraction on top of the Web.


So far...the "Internet of Things" is a "dystopia" of proprietary hardware and incompatible, siloed, experiences.


Digital odometers on bikes and the sensors on treadmills should wirelessly communicate with fitness trackers. Music and other media should be easily streamed to car audio systems or home theater systems. Eventually, more homes will be built with automation-ready technology for controlling the lights, fans, climate control, locks, appliances, windows, blinds, etc. and so far that is a dystopia.


Just as the Internet creates a unifying experience between different types of computers with the use of the Internet Protocol (IP system) and the Web unifies digital Web Resources like webpages, audio, video, images, text, CSS, etc....I have been a proponent for some time now, pushing for not only better open platforms for data compatibility (for Science and Semantics, etc.) along with a layer for unifying our Experiences as we use devices...predicting the use cases and features of devices and making open standards for using them...together...


Additionally, similar awesomeness will bleed through in the form of Venues...becoming more contextually relevant for the digital age. Classrooms, stadiums, homes, libraries, conference halls, workplaces...these areas could potentially make use of open standards as a layer on top of the existing Web standards for doing amazing experience based things. Such as...participating in a mobile based game/contest, etc. automatically at a sports event. A little alert pops up on-screen letting you know there is an interactive feature at your event. (tied into Google Now or something, for instance)

And you can probably imagine yourself how this would be used in other places. The point is...right now, currently, apps are reinventing the wheel all the time. And why should we have to search for an app, install it, and add a huge multi-megabyte app to our phone every time we want to participate in a new, experimental "experience" that has been designed.


These experiences are not so completely unique that it doesn't make sense for there to be a very special layer of abstraction on top of the existing Web as a starting point for this stuff.

Digital Currencies

Technically, digital currencies have been around for awhile depending on your perspective. That is, if you consider the fact that the world's currencies have been being traded and recorded in ATM networks, stock exchanges, and over the Internet for decades now.

However, what I'm going to write about today is alternative digital currencies such as Bitcoin. It is interesting, to me at least, to note that Bitcoin actually doesn't really differ much from traditional mainstream currencies in terms of how it spends. In technical terms, of course, it's quite different.

But what if we want to completely change the way that society uses money? What if we want to create a currency (or credit system) that actually gives us alternatives? Well I've been thinking about that. And I think I've come up with some viable ideas regarding alternative currency systems.

One of the main properties of traditional money seems to be the high degree in which it seems to be tied to the global markets and inflationary processes. It doesn't seem to be very conducive to decentralization strategies.

One of the main features that I would like to build into (or see built into) an alternative currency/credit system is a sort of natural independence from the whole...such that everyone can get a fair shake...an opportunity. Think about how each and every one of us has the same amount of time each day. We can spend it how we want. It's often one of the main determining factors of our monetary income, in fact. But what if there is a credit crisis/crunch, a bubble in a market or industry in which you are a professional, or some other global economic phenomenon?

The fact is that there are a lot of times where the opportunities (real opportunities) seem to be far more abundant than the cash that people have to trade for those opportunities. We need to notice the dichotomy between real natural resources and wealth and the artificial tool called money that we use to trade our skills and products for other products and services that someone else creates.

Of course, there's always the possibility to barter. Unfortunately, bartering can be time-consuming and this effect is amplified in our global and highly complex markets with tons of stuff being traded in the free market. It's just really hard to keep track of value when bartering. (not to mention...how would one save up value if you're bartering) I'm not discounting the role that bartering and negotiation can play in our lives. I think it can have tremendously good benefits in a lot of circumstances. But, let's be honest. Money is a highly useful tool.

Except when it's not. Money's not too useful if you don't have access to a whole lot of it. So what else can we use?

Keep in mind that we live and work in an open system. Our bodies and the plants and animals we eat are powered by the Sun. There's constantly lots of new energy being pumped into our environment. That's not to say that it's necessarily easy to capture that. But we are constantly building new infrastructure to help us capture more useful energy. And experts in every field are constantly finding ways to make energy do more useful ways and to accomplish the same task with less energy and less materials. Computers, for instance, can do orders of magnitude more calculations with a fraction of the energy input that it once took.

To cut to the chase, what I've been thinking about is a currency or credit system which would be completely digital (out of necessity) and which would have a minimum and maximum balance for all account holders. (people) Let's use the example of 0-100 being the range in which you could go. Everyone would start out with the same amount of credits and these would become immediately available for trade among your local peers, online bloggers, or whomever you want to buy from or support.

A term I've come up with that I think aptly describes this idea is Opportunity Credits. Why do I call it that? Well, the intent is that this system would be a more ever-present token with which people could trade with and which would be, by its very nature, more evenly distributed among people. By design, people would not be able to collect great piles of that currency. People would be able to collect great wealth. But that is not the same thing as the currency we trade with.

Wealth is the stuff that we use. Natural resources, land, water, air, a house, rare earth minerals, skills, relationships, health, etc.

Paper money (or digital for that matter)...or even Gold (especially just sitting in your vault) is not really inherently valuable. Admittedly, gold has more inherent value than paper money but how many people have a use, want, or need for a hunk of Gold. Sure, there's probably trace amounts of it in your smartphone but I doubt there are many people that have the capability or the interest in manufacturing their own smartphone. So is it fair to say that real wealth is pretty separate from the stuff we commonly trade in?

Anyway, back on topic. all currency is a medium of exchange which functions as a representation and measure of the value that we collectively perceive of certain things. And of course profits and savings are mechanisms which allow for upward mobility and wealth building.

Money transfers signals. Here's the thing...there's a plethora of different types of signals that people are interested in. There's a lot of different kinds of value. There's monetary value, all the different kinds of natural resources, brand establishment, customer relationships, trust, social capital, skills, time, opportunity, etc. Just to name a few...

It's safe to say that one single type of currency probably doesn't have the innate capacity to carry all those different signals very well. And, no, various country's currencies don't really count as different types of currency. Nor do I think that Bitcoin is different enough to count as a whole new style of market signal. Sure, it's a little different but it still has much of the same features. That is, individuals who are early adopters or who get lucky can easily have their wealth amplified inordinately beyond others who worked just as hard or harder or who have even more value to offer.

Not all currencies are created equal. Currencies are what basically "represent" us. They reflect what type of person we are, how skilled we are, or how much work we do. Or, to put it more accurately, money is meant to reflect the perceived value that we create for others. It doesn't always seem to hold true though.

Is money fairly and accurately representing us? You can make your own assessment and come to your own conclusions.

My vision is that we can come up with at least one new kind of currency or credit system which has the innate quality of supporting the local, individual, unique value and opportunity that each and every one of us is capable of. And hopefully it can help us each gain access to those opportunities in ways that traditional money doesn't seem capable of.

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." -William Gibson

Let's distribute the future a little more evenly, shall we?

Cheers to Optimization...

-Andrew

Google Announces Calico: What does it mean for the future of Health?

With the notably vague announcement of Calico by Google, pundits and nerds alike are left wondering about the details of what this will mean for emerging healthcare trends and life extension technologies in general.

Larry Page, CEO of Google, who originally made the announcement on G+ here, had this to say: "I’m excited to announce Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases."

The startup involves Art Levinson, the Chairman of Genentech and a director of Hoffmann-La Roche, as well as Chairman of Apple.

I thought that my good friend Gideon Rosenblatt wrote up a great encapsulation of what we know so far in his post over on Google+. Gideon suggests that Google may leverage their significant search capacity and expertise as an entry-point into the genomic (genetic) bio-informatic sciences. If there's one thing Google's good at, it's big data. They index it, graph it, and use algorithms to help people find what they're looking for within that massive set of data.

Gideon says, "What do you want to bet it has to do with smart approaches to managing the data in our genetic code? That's my bet, but it will be interesting to see how this story unfolds over the next year and beyond. I just don't see the company straying that far from its core competencies and this bet is by Google, not Google Ventures."

Some are wondering if this announcement has something to do with Google's semi-recent hiring of the famous visionary, Ray Kurzweil. Ray Kurzweil is well known in the Transhumanism circles and is well respected as an accurate predictor of famous trends such as his Law of Accelerating Returns. (definitely well worth your time if you haven't read about it yet)

And others note the similarities with the work of Aubrey de Grey, a renowned anti-aging researcher and evangelist...also well respected in the Transhumanist, technological, and life extension communities. He's the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation, (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) a non-profit devoted to researching "negligible senescence" and rejuvenation therapies.

de Grey has come up with a framework for classifying, studying, and targeting various types of aging processes which he believes to be comprehensive:
Cancer-causing nuclear mutations/epimutations—OncoSENS
Mitochondrial mutations—MitoSENS
Intracellular junk—LysoSENS
Extracellular junk—AmyloSENS
Cell loss and atrophy—RepleniSENS
Cell senescence—ApoptoSENS
Extracellular crosslinks—GlycoSENS

Increasingly, the bottleneck in science and health is becoming information-based. We have so much data we don't know what to do with it all. Biological organisms are extremely complex from a "static" viewpoint and significantly moreso when you realize that biology and chemistry are anything but static. If we have any hope of reaching a more useful understanding of what causes aging and the associated diseases, we are gonna need a lot of professional research, the right digital tools, and a large research effort.

The truly beautiful thing about science these days...or any subject/field...is the incredible access we each have via the Internet. The World Wide Web is really changing the landscape of science. Ideas can come from anywhere; anyone. Projects can be initiated and supported by ad-hoc "virtual" teams from around the Earth. Questions can be asked from experts in fields we know very little about. An altruistic individual can help disseminate knowledge and raise questions and spark conversations about virtually any topic and anyone interested can chime in. Google+ is a fantastic blessing we have and I'm extremely grateful that Google built that amazing social network...and indeed this very blogging platform I'm typing this in.

Open-Source is a concept, philosophy, movement, and more...practically speaking, it is one of the many wonders of our digital age. An enormous opportunity for volunteers to achieve huge milestones, projects, or even breakthroughs by simply collaborating, hacking, and co-creating together. Small contributions add up to sometimes become world renowned public services, products, knowledge, etc.

So what am I bringing up this optimistic view of self-organizing online interest/topic-oriented communities for? Well, I think that citizen scientists, research hobbyists, and nerds who like to dabble in various subjects that interest them at the time...are a key ingredient in humanity's mission to get everyone healthier and (more) immune to aging.

There are scores of startups and even big established corporations moving into this space. There are numerous fitness trackers, such as Fitbit, the Nike Fuel Band, the Jawbone UP, and the MyBasis that have sprung onto the market recently and more to come. There is Watson by IBM. They are doing some amazing things in healthcare.

Not to mention the whole lifehacking movement and bio-hacking. (I find bio-hacking incredibly exciting by the way.)

I will shamelessly mention that I am also personally invested (time-wise...not so much financially) in this whole health/anti-aging scene. I spend a lot of time reading and researching about cutting edge science about disease and nutrition. This is an area I'm paying close attention to. I think we can each contribute in our own way. And indeed health really requires personal responsibility anyway. We can't just pay for it. We have to put in the effort, go to the gym, go on a run, do pushups in your room, do pullups at the local park, eat right, get quality sleep...whatever you've gotta do to take yourself to the next level.

So this definitely appears to be an area that is growing rapidly. I'd really appreciate some feedback and would love to hear what my readers have to say about this new venture by Google. Are you as excited about the possibilities and opportunities of radical life extension as I am? p.s. sorry if my thoughts are disjointed. I'm working on it.

Cheers to Optimization!

Think for yourself, with others in mind...

How can I write?

OK, so I have really been working my mind over an anvil lately, trying to mold something not so transient but destined for something bigger than myself.

This global village, this world wide web, this vast but small feeling sphere on which I live is a magical, curious place filled with intriguing mysteries waiting to be discovered and reinvented and retold and rediscovered by still someone else. But I must admit, I have a strange quirk, a little angst, knowing that somebody, many, have already written about the subjects I so dearly and passionately want to write. And I almost feel like I am a little cog in a great machine, or I certainly would be if I stretched a little and reinvented the wheel. Or would it really be a reinvention, or maybe an innovation? For although hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of hits can be found on various search strings corresponding to various fascinations...or ...obsessions of mine, still, maybe my own words, the ones I add, replace, or drop off...maybe they might take these ideas to new minds, new audiences, new heights. And I suppose that the practice of writing and learning what to do, how to do it, and how failure works in yet another way of life, maybe I really will accomplish something. Something real, substantial, and lasting.

I made this blog, found a name so divine in my own eyes, like a beacon for a cause, a crusade for the next generation, a blank page for things yet to be. A dual meaning it is, unbound by math, infinite possibilities, and also unbound by cover or binding. The pages have no scrawling on them.

The future, as abundant and inviting as I believe it one day will become, is yet quite an uncertain path. Guided by our imagination, we lay hopeful, tentative steps towards a point undecided, knowing so little about the dangers and opportunities and hoping beyond hope that our imagination, our distinguished ability to visualize the possibilities and the impossibilities, and to piece together a plan. Can we master the fear and muster the courage to make our way, to choose a destiny for our children Let us find out what lies ahead. The sooner we know what we don't know, maybe we can fear less, knowing then what we don't now. Ahead we find ourselves and we lay stakes not on land but on patterns of human thought and what it means to be alive. We begin to choose the destiny of mankind.

If there really be some master creator, some divine architect, to which I owe great gratitude for this existence...as some believe, I ask that being for strength of mind, of spirit, and of character. Specifically for grace to deal with surprises of life with a confident, resourceful, engineering attitude rather than a defeatist attitude.

I think I have expressed previously and in other places my inclination towards wanting to solve other peoples' problems sotospeak. I call it humanitarianism. Some would call it a waste of time, a mistake, or a crazy obsession perhaps. No matter what catches my interest, there is always an overarching theme, how can this help other people? How can I make the world a better place? I probably put too much pressure on myself in some ways or have unrealistic expectations and demands but it is definitely important to me that I do whatever is in my power to improve the human condition.

Technology is certainly a factor, and admit food and nutrition likewise. But there is another factor. Some call it spiritual. We can also call it wisdom or culture. It matters not how prosperous we cosmetically may seem for if we are not sustainably functioning as a society, and not stable and sure, we will fall. Of that there is no doubt. It is always something a society should guard against.

For the sake of my own future and generations to come, I hope with all my heart that we can get ouf acts together, that we can strive towards a higher excellence than simple industrialization, and achieve the full bounty that lays possible even right now.