I’ve been set on making Ruby my next big geek hobby for the last month or two. It’s a programming language that reads like a language (e.g. 6.times { print “Olé!” } actually prints “Olé!” six times!). This could come in handy as I expand upon my teaching career — creating curricula, games, grading programs, online collaborative projects, etc. Also, it’s a good way for me to model tech-savvyness to my kids. They are growing up in a digital age in which everything is touch-based with huge buttons while coding and programming knowledge is actually becoming even more valuable because of all the tools and platforms, like NetBeans below, that allow you to create nice new things without having to know all of it. It’s an exciting time to be alive and to teach and I am glad to find a programming language that seems so logical, readable and comes with a huge community of open-source type people.

Enough about the why, here’s the how. And do see the guide on their site (link below).

Hello World
Finally, a working Ruby IDE for me!
How hard does it have to be for a noob?
Thank god for NetBeans.

My guide: http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/ruby/quickstart.html

Katie Salen on creating a school that teaches through games.
Wish I could have gone to her school…
Wait. Katie – Can I teach there with you?

Watch the interview here on bigthink.com. (7 minute video) (TRANSCRIPT after the jump.)

From the Quest2Learn website: An Overview.

“Mission critical at Quest is a translation of the underlying form of games into a powerful pedagogical model for its 6-12th graders. Games work as rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others. As is the case with many of the games played by young people today, Quest is designed to enable students to “take on” the identities and behaviors of explorers, mathematicians, historians, writers, and evolutionary biologists as they work through a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum with content-rich questing to learn at its core.”

Read the rest of this entry »

All things considered, you will reach Level Three…

CONSIDER ATTRACTION

In the beginning, there was attraction. Things attract each other because they like to be closer to some things than to others. These inherent preferences are the root of all change in the universe. Because of attraction, new things emerge.

You see: Sometimes like attracts like and sometimes opposite attracts opposite. When opposites attract, you’ve got a pair, a couple. That pair is now another unit and the process starts again.

The pair, the new unit, can attract an opposite or a like, or it can just drift along. When like attracts like, it can end there, like an oxygen molecule made up of two oxygen atoms, or it can continue to attract like, like a carbon atom. When things continue to attract like, bigger and more complex things get created.

CONSIDER SELF-REPLICATION

Sometimes a thing will attract enough of just the right stuff that a copy of itself is produced. This is self-replication. Self-replication is one of the most powerful forces in the universe because of exponential growth. One becomes two, two become four, four become eight, and soon the universe is full of things.

Now, sometimes a self-replicating thing makes a copy of itself with a mistake in it. The thing with a mistake will either be better, worse, or the same at making copies of itself. If it’s better, there will soon be more copies of the new thing than the old thing in the universe. The only way for new things to get created is by a complex series of mistakes that turn out to be better after all.

CONSIDER THE EVOLUTION OF HOMO-SAPIENS

We are self-replicating things. We are the result of a billion years worth of mistakes that turned out to be better after all. Yeah for us!

CONSIDER COMMUNICATION

One big mistake that turned out to be better after all was that, of all the animals, we alone can communicate complicated ideas. We can tell stories. We can share recipes. We can make complicated plans. Even dolphins and whales can’t do these things, we think.

CONSIDER THE EXCHANGE OF IDEAS

These ideas that we communicate are called memes. Memes are a kind of thing. Memes live in our minds.

CONSIDER MEMETICS

Like all things, memes have inherent preferences; they fit better with certain things and they repel certain other things. Some memes naturally fit better in people’s minds; some memes naturally fit better with other memes.

When a group of memes fit well together and pull the strings of someone’s mouth and vocal cords so that they pass them on to others, a new, self-replicating thing gets created. This new thing is called a memeplex. Again we can see the power of self-replication in this: One person tells two, two tell four, four tell eight, and pretty soon the whole universe is full of people sharing the memeplex.

Sometimes even a self-replicating memeplex makes a mistake in copying itself (murphy’s law!). The memeplex with a mistake in it will either be better, worse, or the same at making copies of itself. We can see the pattern: If it’s better soon there will be more copies of the new memeplex than the old in the universe. The only way for a new idea to gain acceptance is by a series of copying mistakes that turn out to be better after all.

CONSIDER HUMAN SYSTEMS IN TERMS OF MEMETICS

All our belief systems, religions, and governments are the result of a series of mistakes that turned out to be better at making copies of themselves after all.

CONSIDER FILTERING AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF IDEAS

Every new idea we think of immediately becomes transformed by copying mistakes that change it into something that is better at making copies of itself after all. A key part of the idea may be sacrificed to something better for copying. The only control we have over the spread of our ideas is in making them as resistant to copying mistakes as possible.

CONSIDER BABIES AS MEME SPONGES

When we are born, our mind is courted by meme after meme after meme, all the result of thousands of years of practice (on the part of the memes), practice at getting themselves copied into fresh new minds.

This is Level 1: We have our instincts, born of millions of years of our genes and bodies striving to make copies of themselves — soon our minds become filled with memes and eventually we may develop a map of life that mostly makes sense. So we start with our instincts, a body, and a developing memeplex.

As we grow, we learn to speak a language that we believe expresses anything we want to say. We use geometric and physical concepts that we believe explain anything we encounter. We know stories and myths that we believe relate to all of life’s trials and tribulations. This is Level 2: Our inherited trajectory. We have our roadmap, born of thousands of years of the memes in our minds striving to make copies of themselves.

CONSIDER THE UNHINDERED MIND

Each of us has a purpose here. When the memes are quiet, it is possible to feel when we are on purpose and when we are off purpose. Conversely, when memes run the show, it is the purpose of the memes that gets served.

CONSIDER THE POWER OF META-COGNITION

Once we realize that there are millions of memes battling inside our mind, there arises the possibility of influencing the outcome of that battle. Until we realize it, there is no possibility. The battle can be influenced in three ways. First, by noticing the memes. Second, by detaching from them. Third, by obtaining clarity of purpose. When these three steps are achieved, we can begin to select our memes consciously. We select memes that keep us on purpose. This is Level 3: Conscious Selection for a Purpose.

CONSIDER DETACHING FROM THE DISEMPOWERING MEMES

A purpose is not a goal. A purpose does not feel like guilt, shame, or vengeance. Guilt, shame, and vengeance are emotions used by memes to gain mastery over your life. By choosing memes consciously, we can eliminate the control that memes have over those emotions. A purpose feels fulfilling, satisfying, joyful, and powerful.

CONSIDER WHAT YOU SHARE

A purpose mostly has to do with other people. A purpose must inherently be fulfilled by spreading hardy, beneficial memes. Every time we speak, write, create, or act we are spreading memes. To fulfill our purpose we must be conscious of which memes we are spreading. Life is largely composed of conversations. Conversations are composed of memes.

In Level 1, we are unaware of this.

In Level 2, we see the world as a solid, understandable body to be interacted with.

In Level 3, we see the world as a canvas to be painted, an instrument to be played, or a block of marble to be sculpted by us for our purpose.

We choose to do this for good or for evil. If we choose good, good is returned to us in unexpected ways. If we choose evil, evil is returned. Either way, it looks like the way we choose is the way of the world.

CONSIDER STARTING WITH YOUR VISION

In Level 1, we do not understand the world and consequently fear it.

In Level 2, we replace the fear with understanding. The price of understanding is limits. Our approximate models of the universe are never completely accurate, never useful in all situations.

In Level 3, we start with a vision of what we want to create. From there we choose our models.

Sometimes a chosen model may seem insane to the other inhabitants of the little patch of space-time we happen to occupy. No matter. Men with a vision of goodwill have often looked insane in times of mistrust and scarcity.

But in Level 3, we realize that the universe is not a maze to be navigated; it is a baby to be brought up. When we give it love, clarity, and opportunity, we raise a child universe to be a joyful, giving, and successful adult universe. It is only by starting in this 3rd level of consciousness, by starting with our vision, that we have the opportunity to sculpt our little patch of space-time as we see fit.

*This meme shamelessly sculpted out of memecentral.com/level3.
**May it spread far and wide.

I’ve decided to start a new project — learning Ruby.

Ruby is an object-oriented programming language. It is open-source, freely available on all operating systems, and is meant to be easy to learn and read, similar to Python (but without the disjunction caused by the non-backwards-compatibility of Python 3.0+).

Why would I do such a thing? Simple. I want to be able to create useful tools and know exactly how they work. This is my own (little) extropy building project. Can I create useful, intelligent tools and contribute to the lot of humanity? We will see…

The first steps will be to get the Ruby language ready/installed, and then learn the basics.

I’m starting with the 20 minute quickstart guide, which teaches you math, and how to print “Hello World”, the staple ‘first program’ for any programming language.

As I learned, to do this in Ruby, simply open your terminal or text editor and type:

puts “Hello World”

You should then get back this:

Hello World
==>nil

So, there we have it. My first Ruby program. But hold on. Let me tell you about getting to that point…

Firstly, I’m using a Mac. Ruby 1.9 is the current version, so naturally I want that one. In order to get it working, however, I need the developer toolset (or framework, whatever) called Xcode. Now, this Xcode includes a text-editor in which you can create Ruby programs, so I hear…

The problem with this is:

1. Apple requires you to register in order to download Xcode (plain annoying; may turn into a pay-model later on).
2. Apple doesn’t tell you about version control (very annoying: I downloaded Xcode 3.2.2 thinking it would work for my Leopard 10.5.8 system, when, in fact, it is solely made for Snow Leopard (OS 10.6). So I wasted some 3 hours downloading the 2gb file, only to have it not work).
3. Finally, the older version, Xcode 3.1.4, was both very hard to find and, for whatever reason, didn’t correctly compile into a useable .dmg (install file), so I couldn’t use it at all.

So, I said: Screw that. Screw Apple. Screw Xcode. I’m going to install Ubuntu as a Virtual Machine and use Ruby as a real hacker would, in Linux.

So then I wasted a bunch more time with Virtual Machine software. Tried the free VirtualBox, but it looked terrible. I’m an aesthetic type, so I ditched that one. Then a few more hours trying to get the nice-but-optional extra tools to work for VMware Fusion and then Parallels 5.

Finally, after learning more about Ubuntu Terminal usage than I ever expected, and still nothing about Ruby, I couldn’t get the extra graphical tools to work — I abandoned them and got my real goal back in sight: Writing the one-line “Hello World” program I had intended to write. And here’s the proof and product of my hard, spine-bending labor: about 10 hours in all. You will notice I actually said Hello to Ruby…  (click to enlarge)

I will continue to document my exploration of this language and post my progress here on my new Ruby Page: thrivenotes.com/ruby. I hope to make a game like asteroid soon enough and then put it up with Ruby on Rails after I learn a bit more… Let’s say by the end of May this year. I do have a day-job after all… : )

Hello Ruby World!

UPDATE, 04.27.10: Maybe May is too soon… How about as a summer project. Yes — Much better. And I’ll call it the Adam Summer of Code!

“Am I part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?”

Don’t Fear the Singularity

By Ran Prieur, 2005

“The Singularity” is the biggest idea in techno-utopianism. The word is derived from black hole science — it’s the point at the core where matter has contracted to zero volume and infinite density, beyond the laws of time and space, with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. They apply the word to the future to suggest that “progress” will take us to a place we can neither predict, nor understand, nor return from.

At least they have their metaphors right: that our recent direction of change is about contraction, not expansion, and leads inescapably to collapse and a new world. Their fatal pride is in thinking they’ll like it. Basically, they think computers are going to keep getting better faster, until they surpass biological life, and we’ll be able to “upload” our consciousness into immortal robots or virtual reality heaven. The engine of this fantasy is the “acceleration,” which supposedly includes and transcends biological evolution, and is built into reality itself, destined to go forward forever.

The weakest part of their mythology is the part they take for granted. If civilization is part of evolution, it’s not like birds getting wings — it’s like the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global catastrophe that prunes the biosphere down to the roots so it can try something different. Civilization has been a great evolutionary event for bacteria and rats, who are leaping forward through human attempts to kill them. But it hasn’t been good for humans. We can only guess how people lived in the stone age, but most primitive people observed in historical times enjoy greater health, happiness, political power, and ease of existence than all but the luckiest civilized people. Even medieval serfs worked fewer hours than modern people, at a slower pace, and passed less of their money up the hierarchy. Even our medical system, everyone’s favorite example of beneficial “progress,” has been steadily increasing in cost, while base human health — the ability to live and thrive in the absence of a medical system — has been steadily declining.

Conversely, the strongest part of their mythology is where they focus all their attention, with careful and sophisticated arguments that there are no technical limits to miniaturization or the speed of information transfer. This is a bit like Easter Islanders saying there is no physical limit to how big they can make their statues — and since the statues keep getting bigger, they must be an extension of evolution, and will keep getting bigger forever. Meanwhile the last trees are being cut down…

Read the rest of this entry »

Thank you Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and of course Alan Watts, for this epic short film.

It is a film that touches on: Evolution, the nature of intelligence and the self, and the hoax of our modern success-centered lives.

It is a video meant to put us in our places, and also ask us to evaluate what we have built for ourselves.

Is this what I wanted to be doing?
Am I missing out?
What is my focus?

And hopefully we can, with honest answers, begin to shift our trajectory or maybe just dance a little more in life; have some fun, eat drink and be merry, that’s where I see the value in this film.