Google April Fools for 2015 & beyond

[Paul D. Fernhout]

See:
http://www.xda-developers.com/googles-prank-roundup-for-april-fools-2015/

Looks like I missed the reverse com.google site, which just redirects to
google.com now. I would have liked to try that.

I found this April Fools by Slashdot most interesting though:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/04/01/0315234/tatooine-youth-suspected-in-terrorist-attack
"Imperial investigators are still trying to piece together what happened
in last week's horrifying terrorist attack on our largest orbital
defense station. Over a million loyal citizens, scientists, and medical
staff lost their lives in the grisly attack while the station was being
put through training exercises near the Yavin system. Billions more are
in mourning, while a number of powerful senators have renewed calls to
increase defense spending. Initial reports have confirmed Rebel
involvement, and officials are making inquiries about a young insurgent
from Tatooine with known ties to religious fundamentalists."

That was redone even better in a comment:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7184377&cid=49385949
"Desert Youth Radicalized by Bearded Religious Zealot
He seemed to others like a typical teen; having fun with his friends,
going into town to pick up some power converters. But the boy's foster
parents were worried he would follow a local anti-social,
desert-dwelling hermit on some "damn fool ideological crusade". There
are reports the old man may have lied to the youth about his birth
father's involvement in the religious movement in order to gain his
trust. From there, the two joined up with a couple of mercenary
smugglers involved in human trafficking in an attempt to sneak past
coalition blockades and gain access to military facilities. The old
cleric apparently martyred himself in the initial attack on the base,
which only strengthened the youth's resolve to follow in his mentor's
footsteps. Even the mercenaries appear to have been radicalized,
abandoning their business interests to join up with the movement."

Also of interest from today, but probably not April Fools?
"Google 'Makes People Think They Are Smarter Than They Are'"
http://search.slashdot.org/story/15/04/02/178220/google-makes-people-think-they-are-smarter-than-they-are

But, I'd tend to disagree, even admitting truth to that. I think in many
case Google (and other search engines) used well does make people
smarter than they were. As I suggested a decade ago:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html
"First, as a side note, I could not have written an essay like this
before the World Wide Web -- I just would not have had the time to cover
so many areas in a couple days writing from home, far from a university
library, and relying on Google to make solid ideas that were just wisps
of memory (from years of reading broadly on the web); nor would I before
the wide adoption of the internet and email and the world wide web have
been able to provide immediately accessible links for further
exploration by readers, all at essentially no direct monetary cost. That
is an example of the sort of exponential increase in technological
capacity this essay is referring to."

Better tools could always help more with that in terms of making sense
of search results and other information, and I continue to work on such
on and off as time permits. Recent example of such a proposal:
https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/healthdata/entries/health-sensemaking-software-tools

And some related infrastructure and experiments:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/Pointrel20141201
http://twirlip.com/

With more ideas under construction (still hidden away behind a login
screen at the moment while under construction...)
https://narrafirma.com

But that has something to do with this open source project:
http://www.storycoloredglasses.com/p/narracat-tools-for-narrative-catalysis.html

Anyway, our society continues to move towards increasing abundance of
all sorts of things. D3, for example (which I'm getting into right now),
and so many packages build on it like Plottable or dc.js, are just one
of many examples of an expanding "gift economy" on the internet.

A "basic income" is in the news more and more as a way to deal with
economic changes due to technology reducing the exchange value of most
human labor. Most recently, a basic income was suggested in a NY Times
op-ed by Mark Bittman.
"Why Not Utopia?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/why-not-utopia.html?_r=0

My parable about that from 2010:
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment
and a basic income"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

That is, a "basic income" is in the news *again* as something like a
"Basic Income" passed the US House but not the Senate under Nixon in 1969.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/specials/moynihan-income.html
"But before the robots replace us, we face the challenge of decreasing
real wages resulting, among other factors, from automation and
outsourcing, which will itself be automated before long. Inequality (you
don’t need more statistics on this, do you?) is the biggest social
challenge facing us. ..."

However, as I say elsewhere, our economy is a mix of subsistence, gift,
exchange, planned, and theft transactions (and probably others), so it
is the balance between the various types that is at issue as the formal
exchange economy breaks down as the proliferation of robots, AIs, and
other forms of automation decrease the value of most human labor.
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

Anyway, not sure how much has changed at Google since the "Virgle" days
of 2008, but I can remain hopeful:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
"And it is likely fear that holds Google back from becoming a
post-scarcity organization despite the continuing rush of exponential
growth in technological capacity its planners surely must be predicting:
... Now some fears are good to have. But some are not. And one of the
few antidotes to fear is ... humor. :-) ... And I'm glad to see
Google-ites still have some, even given the insanely long hours at
Google (which frankly are illegal in other parts of the world. :-) ..."

See also:
"Working hours: Proof that you should get a life"
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/12/working-hours

James P. Hogan in various books, especially "Voyage from Yesteryear"
pointed towards something better with a shift between generations.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
"An Earth set well into the next century is going through one of its
periodical crises politically, and it looks as if this time they might
really press the button for the Big One. If it happens, the only chance
for our species to survive would be by preserving a sliver of itself
elsewhere, which in practical terms means another star, since nothing
closer is readily habitable. There isn't time to organize a manned
expedition of such scope from scratch. However, a robot exploratory
vessel is under construction to make the first crossing to the Centauri
system, and it with a crash program it would be possible to modify the
designs to carry sets of human genetic data coded electronically.
Additionally, a complement of incubator/nanny/tutor robots can be
included, able to convert the electronic data back into chemistry and
raise/educate the ensuing offspring while others prepare surface
habitats and supporting infrastructure, when a habitable world is
discovered. By the time we meet the "Chironians," their culture is into
its fifth generation.
In the meantime, Earth went through a dodgy period, but managed in
the end to muddle through. The fun begins when a generation ship housing
a population of thousands arrives to "reclaim" the colony on behalf of
the repressive, authoritarian regime that emerged following the crisis
period. The Mayflower II brings with it all the tried and tested
apparatus for bringing a recalcitrant population to heel: authority,
with its power structure and symbolism, to impress; commercial
institutions with the promise of wealth and possessions, to tempt and
ensnare; a religious presence, to awe and instill duty and obedience;
and if all else fails, armed military force to compel. But what happens
when these methods encounter a population that has never been
conditioned to respond? ..."

Perhaps I could argue though that such an extreme bottleneck is not
needed, and there are aspects of the internet that are like such a new
world with new ideas and new (actually, really old) ways of being and so
on? "The Skills of Xanadu". Related by me on that:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7004497&cid=49118427
"BTW, Theodore Sturgeon wrote that story [The Skills of Xanadu, 1950s]
about abundance about a decade after writing "Thunder and Roses" about
the Earth being destroyed by a nuclear war; there is an interesting
possible connection that at one point Xanadu had a population of three,
down from billions, which echoes what would probably happen in Thunder
and Roses. So, he moved to future optimism, even accepting a difficult
and pointlessly painful transition time."

I'm guessing Google may at this point never become a true post-scarcity
organization, whatever such a thing is. It's roots and processes may be
too deep in the old economy. However, that is not to condemn it. Like us
all, it may help serve as a bridge to something better -- even if, like
the story of Moses, it perhaps can't enter the "promised land" itself.
:-) And perhaps neither can so many of the rest of us, stuck in old ways
of thinking. Maybe the best most of us can do right now is compromise,
like I spent 2.5 years supporting NBCUniversal's broadcast technical
infrastructure to pay the bills (which helped prop up part of the status
quo), and which bought enough time for my wife to finish her (freely
licensed) book and then for the two of us to spend the last nine months
or so working together on a new project based on that.
http://www.workingwithstories.org/

And at least it wasn't Fox News. :-)

In any case, I'm glad to see the original Virgle site is still up though:
http://www.google.com/virgle/

And I'm glad that the "Open Virgle" energy that moved into the "Open
Manufacturing" and then "Maker" movements is still going strong and
increasing. 3D printing, for example, is doing every more amazing
things. Robot Magazine just started a column on it. One of the times is:
"3D Print Your Own Space Wrench with Plans from NASA"
http://www.botmag.com/3d-print-your-own-space-wrench-with-plans-from-nasa/

So, the "Open Virgle" ideas continue to grow in various ways, just under
different names.

All the best to people at Google and elsewhere who still are on this
list. Hope you all are staying well, and that we all get to personally
travel or live at Mars, the Moon, the Asteroids, and beyond someday if
we want to.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies
of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.