To be human is to be disabled

The great Italian philosopher specializing on the informational revolution, Luciano Floridi observes right in the beginning of his 4th Revolution how disability is becoming one of the biggest health related issues for humanity in the years to come .
 But, philosophically speaking, what does it mean to be disabled?  In my weaker moments I like to think the hardships I have been through are due to my color blindness, I am one of the ca 8% of Norwegian men being red-green color blind. Objectively speaking, this color blindness is not a big problem, but it pops up now and then, just to remind me that I am not like the others, I do not understand, I cannot dress myself, I am disabled.

What is a human being? What is his ability and dis-ability?
Comparing a human being to an animal  - at the most basic level - what does it look like?
Animals don't wear clothes. Why not? They are readily equipped from nature to live in their environment without need for the protection  offered by clothing.   A human being is weak compared to the forces of nature he inhabits. Through creating tools and artificts she(he) enables himself as an agent into his environment. This is a fundamental trait of what it means to be a human being. An astronaut is nothing without his space suit and shuttle. Disabled people over the world are in a similar situation, the environment which they are in is more or less hostile to their happiness. But with the correct equipment, it can be done.
To be human is to be disabled. A human being grabs the tools it can to make a worthy life.
Computers are one of the most ability enhancing invention ever,
due to their complete programmability of function.
The living soul and mind of man utilizes whatever it needs to flourish. Being human means to use, extend and adjust whatever is given from nature,  to try to meet the concept of the optimal model of happiness and enjoyment.

The Heraclitus Machine is dead.

As the regular reader must have noticed some time already now, the Heraclitus Machine facebook edition is dead. But don't worry, it is going through preparations for a new life. A lot of water has entered the ocean since it first saw the day of light. The tools and technologies available today that can enable driving the heraclitus machine is totaly radical. But, nevertheless, it also gives plenty of room for failure. Some preliminary musings include the amazing server side javascript technology node.js, the ubercool graph database neo4j, and the beautful javascript chart library D3.js. Time will tell, or as Heraclitus said Time (aion), is a child playing (pais paidzon), moving counters on a game board. The kingdom (basileie) belongs to the child (paidos)

Time re-enters HTML5
It would be really cool if the virtual world of computers and the physical could truly merge together.
With HTML5, the Internet has gotten a lot of features that makes it more immersive into the physical.
  THe Geolocation API lets websites know where in the world you are,   given by longitude and latitude. There is also a standard that lets a web page inform you of  a related physical location. It is the micro format "geo" specification, and you may see an example of usage on this site about where I grew up, Våler i Solør (Coordinates on the far right).
Also, the video and audio tags allows for a wider use of content that feels more "alive", in adding several dimensions to the internet experience: Sound, pictures, and time.
But really, the content on the web is still very static. Although it has become a "nice practice" to include information about when a page was last updated, there is no agreed upon or implemented standard way of doing it.  Browsing a web page often feels like looking at something that does not change. But we all know it does, it changes all the time. Adding and using TIME information on web pages is an important step for the web going forwards, as the searchable content on the internet increases, it will be more and more important to be able to separate and analyze according to date and time.

What is philosophy?

Philosophy concerns all matters that can not be decided by facts. All such matters are open to discussion, and may be explained in light of other theories, other facts or whatever. When new information is discovered that sheds new light on the problem area, the question will gradually cease to be a philosophical question.

science deals with discoveries of nature. Philosophy is an invention of the human mind.

Since the human mind is an object in nature, there could be a science of philosophy, investigating the nature of the brain and the physical conditions that make thought possible.

Philosophy of science, on the other hand,deals with the fact that facts are unreliable. as we discover new facts, scientifical theories must adapt.

"Men asleep are fellow-workers in what takes place in the world"
(Heraclitus Fragment 75B (Diels-Kranz) )

This is just a short comment on the book

Program or be Programmed

TEN COMMANDS FOR A DIGITAL AGE

Douglas Rushkoff

A quote from the book, which is probably central:

"The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it?"

I would argue that all use of a computer can be said to be "programming" at some level. Even the designers of the microchip are "programmed" by the physical constraints of the material they are working on. From there on, to the level of bits, assembly language, higher level languages, up to word processors and internet browsers, everybody has to rely on some code submitted by somebody else. Therefore, there is no real distinction between a programmer and a non-programmer, the real distinction is between those who use a computer and those who do not.

That is where Heraclitus and his vision of the cosmos might fit in. A more thorough review might be posted here when (if) I get to read the whole book

The Heraclitus Machine is down!

I am sorry to inform that the Heraclitus Machine is down. Somebody hacked their way into the LOGOS and chaotified it, it might even have been myself.

Not to worry, though, it will be back again sometime.

This time, it will not take several years.

Πάντα ῥεῖ !

Explode fragments

The Heraclitus Machine has now received yet another element of gameplay.

Just as a child moves pieces in a game, the player of the Heraclitus Machine double clicks to shoot down a fragment he dislikes, only to see another, more likely than not, even worse one suddenly appear.

I wish you all good luck in exploding the last of these fragments. Someone should put an end to their misery.