8BitKid: Living Bit by Bit

I have been in the market for an ultra-portable laptop that would serve as a lightweight travel companion and coffee shop buddy. I am a rabid Apple fanboy, but while the Macbook Air is incredibly lightweight, its footprint is no smaller than many other notebooks. Also, it lacks built-in mobile broadband, and has a glossy screen which provides a high degree of glare and has over-saturated colors.

So, since Apple can’t give me what I need, I have been on the prowl for another UMPC. Luckily, the success of Asus’ EEE PC has spawned a host of competitors. Recently, I had my hopes pinned on HP’s 2133 Mini-Note. The specs were right (bluetooth, 6 cell battery, 1.6 GHz Via processor) and the size seemed perfect. I was all set to time the purchase with the latest Ubuntu release (8.04) and get myself a perfect road warrior machine.

The laptop was finally officially announced last night, and within minutes of reading the initial reviews, my dreams were dashed. It turns out that the Mini-Note doesn’t just have a reflective screen, but it actually has a full glossy surface on top of the display to offer protection (click here for the review). While this might be a good feature for the educational market they are targeting, it is a deal-breaker for me.

So, now I am back where I started. I need a lightweight laptop that has a matte screen, bluetooth, preferably mobile broadband, and enough juice to get me from LA to DC. My only hope is that the next round of UMPC’s heed my call. Otherwise, off to Dynamism I go.

- image courtesy of engadget.com

Last night I put myself through the psychological trauma that is Hideaki Anno’s re-imagining of the ending of the anime classic, “Neon Genesis Evangelion.” This is the second time I have watched this film. The first was 4 years ago after a non-stop binge with college friends where we watched the whole series without interruption in a marathon session.

While on the surface this series may seems like yet another mecha story, it really is the manifestation of Anno’s own bout with depression that delves into heavily philosophical questions around the nature of the ego. It asks what do we do to prove our own existence to ourselves versus how we gain our sense of reality through others. Shinji is challenged to choose between giving up his individuality in order to find solace through becoming one with others, or to live selflessly and accept that life has pain, and in that altruism gain a sense of individuality. The former is route of complacency and emotional stasis, while the latter will bring about inevitable personal pain, but also the potential for great joy. Shinji’s choice will literarily determine the fate of the world.

The key to the film’s ideology lies in the line: “the beginning and the end are one and the same”.

Four years later, the iconography and imagery still struck me. It continually pushes you with poignant commentary, and it reminded me why it was such a formative viewing in my development as an anime fan. The only downside to this film is that you really should watch the preceeding 26 episodes to truly appreciate this masterpiece. A third take on the series will hit DVD in Japan this April.

“The current state of the net, which wasn’t around before humanity established its existence, loosely forms a subconscious mind; one which is split off from mankind’s consciousness. This mental level net and the electronic network now cover most of the world. The subconscious mind they give rise to is done so in the form of the general consensus of the whole.”

- Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex: Season 2, episode 15

If it isn’t obvious through the limited exposure you may have had to me through this blog, I am a fan of anime. Specifically, of philosophical anime with sci-fi themes. One of the shows that struck a chord with my mind is “Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex.” The series is built around the idea that a collective subconscious can give rise to copycats that are mirroring each other while lacking a singular shared source to mimic. In other words, since the near-future society of the series is a place where the internet enables people to constantly share information with each other, multiple people arrive at the same conclusion simultaneously.

This notion of how the internet can function as a collective subconscious had a marked impact on my own outlook as someone who works in web tech. In this age of del.icio.us, Youtube, and Facebook, we are, as users, continually aware of what others are doing. This is the power of non-verbal communication (a theme I will delve into at a later date). Just because people may not be consciously and intentionally exchanging information, the very nature of the internet gives rise to its more current incarnation as a largely crowd-sourced medium. Since the internet itself is a product of collective shaping, its content, in turn, seeps back out to the users, thus redirecting this collective pool of thought.

To me, this is not just a theoretical concept in a TV show, but an idea that has implications that are relevant to building a model of understanding why we seem to be rapidly moving towards certain conclusions simultaneously online, even when existing in isolation oblivious to the others. It is because we are all being exposed to the same information that the probability continues to increase that a subset of similarly-minded people will encounter a high percentage of the same data. The substantial extent of the commonality in ingested information leads these individuals to the same terminal point. This is a philosophy that can provide insight into how we currently interact with particles of information and illuminates the truth about the impact of the inevitability that we will, as a collective, be continuously linked through the web in the future. As we accelerate the pace at which we become interconnected through the fibers of the internet, it will, in turn, increase the osmosis of the digital collective subconscious that guides us independently towards a singular conclusion.