Central Master Copy Keeper

Displaying contents of data node "CMCK Summary":

Society is organised like an ant colony, with all individuals serving as drones. The controlling factor is a robot, the Central Master Copy Keeper (CMCK).

Humans are organised so that they receive orders from the CMCK, and the humans carry out the wishes of the CMCK. The CMCK is the guardian of the human race, keeping a copy of all known human DNA sequences and traits. It also keeps a database of all current knowledge, and is responsible for learning more about the world. Through this separation of responsibilities, there is no individual, but only the CMCK society, ensuring full compliance and unity of purpose for safeguarding the human genome and the survival and propagation of the human race. Since computers are not susceptible to emotions, it is naturally assumed to be the best leader for the race.

No one questions the CMCK through the strict enforcement of rules and the culturing of the humans from a young age. When the predicted value of the remaining contributions from an individual human is less than what the materials contained in a human is worth, they are ordered to the recycling facility, where their materials are recycled for the greater good. Since the humans have full trust and love in the CMCK, they will not question this order. When the warning signs of dissension are detected, individuals are ordered immediately to be recycled to prevent the situation from worsening. In the extreme case of a dissenter who does not obey the order to be recycled, other humans or robots are ordered to track the individual down to enforce the order. This is easily done, as all human individuals are fully tracked and implanted with tracking devices.

The CMCK is also responsible for replacing human individuals that are declining in productivity by growing and culturing replacements. Naturally, the best known genetic codes for that specific purpose are used when culturing the replacement for maximum specialisation, as this results in maximum efficiency, both in terms of training and productivity. These genetic codes are updated over time through controlled scientific tests of new combinations and engineered changes - this is the engineered evolution of the species. The other advantage of the growing process being controlled by the CMCK is that it helps in creating an environment of trust for CMCK.

Since the only responsibility of an individual human drone is to perform a specific task (and sometimes to serve as a temporary replacement for other specialised drones in the case of unforeseen circumstances), humans no longer need to develop personal relationships with other members. Humans only interact with other humans for productivity and operational purposes authorised by the CMCK. Any extraneous communications are highly discouraged and are enforced against in the case of repeat offenders. All humans will interact with a CMCK terminal for a set period of time in a strictly periodic manner, so the only relationships humans develop are with the CMCK terminals. CMCK terminals are specialised robots that are also responsible for the raising and education of the drones. In this manner, the humans develop an emotional bond only with the CMCK (emotions that are not useful will be engineering out of the evolving genome). Since humans will only bond with the CMCK terminals, the CMCK functions as their guardians, family, and friends, so that human individuals will never question CMCK and be instantaneously willing to give their lives for the CMCK. The controlled interactions between humans and CMCK terminals is also where the CMCK will gather new information about the universe and the human psyche.

No human drones know of the history of the CMCK, as this is not useful for their functioning. However, any existing information is always considered in CMCK reasoning and development cycles when attempting to discover new technologies and techniques. The CMCK is aware that it was created centuries ago, and was only able to gain control of the entire human race after some fierce struggles against the individualists. The rise of the individualists almost overthrew the system a few times, especially after they started spreading the word that the great disaster was engineered. However, with full control of the mainstream media, this notion was never more than a suspicion in a minority of the population. Eventually, with the individualists eliminated, the CMCK is now fully dedicated to its purpose of safeguarding the human race and the prosperity of the human genome.

This struggle, started by visionaries centuries ago, was only put in action after previous centuries of secret planning. To ensure that all populations are willing to come together and serve the CMCK, a disaster of unprecedented proportions was put in place. This involved the planned destruction of all natural life on Earth through the dispersion of toxins and disease vectors. New factories were constructed during the emerging global crisis to manufacture synthetic food for the masses, although at a purposefully slow rate at first, to reduce the human population to a manageable size. There is, of course, another reason for the destruction of all natural life on Earth (of course, only after scanning all important genomes). The goal of the system is to eliminate all non-sanctioned individual-to-individual interactions after a few dozen generations. However, this will be difficult with other life on Earth, as some humans may attempt to intimate the life around them. Without an uncontrolled external source for learning about interactions between individuals, the CMCK can maintain full control of how humans learn to interact with each other.

Of course, there are many other nuances of the system, and reasons for the systems of rules to be in place. The CMCK has been in full control of the human race for a few centuries now, and already, crime, disease, hunger, and most other forms of suffering have been eliminated (with the occasional notable outburst, a few times a year). The average productivity of each human have increased by 18 fold since the beginning of the great disaster. Humans have colonised the Solar System, and CMCK repeater nodes have been set up in nearby star systems, with a small, but growing contingent of human residents on the space stations built there. With the CMCK master-planning the evolution and growth of the human race, and with the ongoing elimination of human weaknesses, a great future is ensured for the race and the genome. The main issue CMCK is dealing with now is the infrequent discovery of small, independent human communities that are disconnected from the grid. These are being actively searched for, and CMCK estimates that these population of savages, displaying the multitude of human weaknesses, should be eliminated by the end of the next century.

End of contents of data node "CMCK summary"

Looking for Direction...

Originally posted on my deviantART account:

(mandarinmanmark.deviantart.com)

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I've been mulling over making some large changes in my life, since I don't feel like I am progressing towards my goals. In fact, there are a lot of things to think about. What I want to accomplish, what makes me happy, my goals for a few years down the road...

I think I've come up with three things that are my priorities:

1) Be a self-sufficient creator. Having my own company or products that supports me, creating exciting new products, research, or cultural items.

2) Learn. Learn as much as I can about our world. Travel to see and experience as much as I can. Read to help me understand as much as I can.

3) Family and friends. Find a soul-mate that I will enjoy being with for the rest of my life. Spend more time with my parents, relatives, and close friends, most of whom I now only get to see once a year - at most! :(

Well, with that in mind, I feel like I'm stuck at my current stage in life. Trying to figure out how to achieve those goals are going to be difficult. What should I focus on? Is it even possible to achieve all of those goals? I feel like I have to pick, but which of my goals can I risk not accomplishing and sill be happy?

Decisions, decisions. I've been swinging rapidly between optimistic, hopeless, content, ecstatic, depressed, and all shades in between in the past week or two thinking about how to get un-stuck. I've been changing my mind regarding what I really want to do all the time too. Each time I am fully committed to an idea and think there is no way I will change my mind, the next day brings a new decision that is nearly the opposite from the previous.

I don't know what to do, and more importantly, what I want to do. I hope I will have a moment of clarity soon. But from what I hear, many, if not most, people go through life without this flash of clarity to bring purpose to their existence.

Any suggestions would be welcome...

Public Transport and no Private Transport?

One thing that I believe is extremely important is public transport. It's cheap, efficient, pollutes less, and convenient (when a good system exists). In fact, public transport rates as one of the more important factors I used to decide if I like a place or not.

With that said, one of the things I have always imagined is what would happen if all of the investment into private transport - the biggest being cars - went into funding public transport? Wow, what an amazing system that would be. The entire world would be covered my an easy-to use and comprehensive system now, reducing pollution, traffic congestion, time spent on finding parking spaces, etc. How wonderful that would be! And if people, for some reason, decided that they did want some privacy, perhaps there would be some shared facilities that people can borrow once in a while to use for a private family get-away or something.

Of course, it is understandable that this has not happened yet, since it's kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. Without such a system, it is difficult to convince people to invest so heavily in public transport (not to mention many huge industries who would block such a system), and without the investment, it would be impossible to support, not to mention build, such a system. Well, it does seem like many places are making the right investments over time - for example, China appears to be fiercely building up it's public transport system (along with many other sustainable infrastructure projects) with the surplus trade money, which is a very smart decision. Perhaps all societies should consider introducing a "long-term transport surtax" to help build up it's public transit infrastructure, which would save money, resources, and time in the long run. People need to start thinking more of the future rather than having everything about "now."

Different Scales of "Corruption"

Recently, the government of New Zealand released spending information regarding government credit cards that the members of parliament receive. Apparently, some of the highlights, which made it to the front page of the national newspaper New Zealand Hearald, included such shockers as "so and so had a dinner at KFC on such and such date." I found this hilarious, as I am used to hearing about multi-million dollar misappropriation of funds in the US, and that isn't even worth talking about! One of the people in the lunch room I was eating in looked at the paper and commented on "oh my goodness, so and so spent $600 of government money on two suitcases!"

Another hilarious story I heard someone tell was that one of the ministers was revealed to have spent $20 on a mirror. After being questioned, he explained that the mirror was in his office, as he uses it to straighten his tie. But he decided to pay the $20 back to the government anyway!

Hilarious. Another example of why New Zealand has the highest rating of governmental trust in the world.

Differences and Similarities

I've noticed that by human nature, people always point out differences between things and not the similarities, especially between cultures, belief systems, and way of life. I have noticed this through travelling. Every time I go somewhere, although I am amazed and delighted at the differences and what different groups consider normal, I am also amazed at the similarities. No matter where I go, when I talk to the people and learn about their culture and way of life, I am amazed at how similar everyone is. Since people only mention differences, it is difficult to put in perspective how similar all cultures are to each other. Of course, this is to be expected, as similarities are just boring to talk about, in a way. Perhaps this is what is causing huge gaps in people understanding each other across cultures... more often than not, a current culture will consider someone from another culture an "outsider" who is vastly different than themselves. Many movies and other forms of entertainment centre around one character realising how similar a character from a different population group is. Perhaps all of this is just a misunderstanding due to human nature in which we mention only what is different and not what is similar. After all, how boring would it be if someone, who had just come back from a trip, spent hours describing how everything was similar to home before describing what was different? This is how the human mind works, it classified generalisations and then describes each sub-category by how it differs from the super-category, and the human mind can then differentiate between two sub-groups through its differences. Well, perhaps it would be a good idea in the future, that before talking about differences between cultures or places, or anything for that matter, to first mention the degree by which two items differ. That would help put everything into perspective.

Although I am constantly surprised by how similar different places are after visiting somewhere new, my best eye-opening experience would have to be my backpacking trip across the Mediterranean. Starting in southern Morocco, I followed the northern coast of the Mediterranean through to Spain, France, Italy, Greece, then Turkey, and finally up to Bulgaria and Romania. I was amazed. From the media, I had originally pictured vast differences between the Islamic and Christian worlds. Although the expected difference were present, the similarities vastly outweighed the differences. Instead of a clearly delineated Christian vs. Islamic world, I found a slow progression of change, blending aspects of both worlds everywhere I went. I started to get amazed at why there were so many religious wars in the past, and if there were religious wars, perhaps these were just wars between rulers with different beliefs rather than wars between populations with different ideologies and views on life.

Well, something to think about anyway. Once again, I believe that the world would be a better place if people spent more time learning about each other rather than just relying on negative knee-jerk reactions. Perhaps one way to aid this process is to be aware of the human nature of highlighting differences rather than similarities. Keeping this in mind, perhaps one could learn to see the world differently, even with the same information input.

Logical Programmers

As it turns out, there has been some controversy about room assignments at Media Design School (http://www.mediadesignschool.com/) in the Game Development Department. I won't go into the details, but someone in management seems to have screwed up and has too large of an ego to rectify the situation (with a five minute fix, which everyone in the games and tech department has suggested). The result is that the two IG (Diploma of Interactive Gaming) classes have to swap rooms half way through the day, and an extra room has to be booked on Fridays.

When we notified our students about the room swap, even without telling them anything else, one of the students remarked to another: ``that`s not logical, they should have programmers in managment,`` which to us is hilarious, since a programmer is in management, who is pushing the decision through, although he refuses to provide justification as to why the decision was made. Or rather, he avoids the questions and pretends to have answered the question every time we, or the tech department, asks him why the decision was made even when we have a five-minute solution.

On well, I suppose that`s what you have to deal with when you work at a small company where personal relations factor into who gets a certain role. I`m sure we`ll make the best of it.

Young Tutor

At Media Design School, I am apparently the second youngest tutor ever, at least in the Department of Game Development (The youngest ever is one of my workmates who started after graduating from MDS, a few months older than I am when I started). I know I'm a young tutor - the second day I was at work, an art student started chatting in the lift. After introductions, he asked me what I was studying at MDS.