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My answer : Why the hell not?

But to create something that will challenge Myspace will be something abit special. MySpace is trying do what Microsoft does; be everything to everybody, but in MySpace's case it seems to be a working formula.

What exactly is wrong with MySpace?

As much as MySpace is trying to be everything to everybody its still not being the be all and end all in web 2.0 to me and many others, I still don't have a MySpace and will probably never get one.

I aren't denying that MySpace can be a powerful tool but it is a melting pot for extremes, People with 3000+ friends (its physically impossible without the web to have a group of friends that big the maximum is about 100 for an average person) and then theres all the bad press it gets because of children being exploited through the network. If they'd have thought of that when they started out they could have put some policies even some code to help prevent it.

Then there is the fact the whole site is just messy, theres ads all the place and theres little in the way of easily accesible content. Why do all these so called "web2.0" sites, use very "web 1" ads, subtle ads win the day. Apart from the ads mucking up the design they just are irrelevant and people are so used to them they are ignored so why even bother putting them in? find another way to make money.

Keep It Simple Stupid ~ KISS
Why is it so complicated to find what you want on myspace apart from the ads, and why do they feel the need to replicate links and content images all over, A simple Menu system, maybe with a bit of AJAX magic would make it so much more bearable. Also the music player on peoples profile gets on my nerves why does it insist on playing on load, let the user on the end to decide.

Whilst I think that personalizing web-pages is good, personalizing MySpace pages is all wrong, MySpace should give the ability to this within there system that way they can keep everything cohesive and understandable no matter what page your on.

So That's What I Think
I tried to be objective and it looks as if a manage it a bit but not enough. It may seem like I am just taking MySpace simply because I don't like it, but it's not that at all I think MySpace is successful at what it does and should inspire people to see what they can do with an idea and some coding knowledge, but as with all thing I seriously think that it can be done a lot better, and the real question is why can't we do it better and be creative with it too.

We all know that piracy has ended up as a monumental PR mess for the record industry, and it is a undisputed fact that the industry in general were far too late and couldn't adopt the same model they do in the shops so invented DRM (lets not go any further into this)

I love music as much as the next man, but when a consumer thinks their being ripped of they will always find a new way, the internet provides such a way. So when Napster and Kazaa came along the consumers went there instead of going to the local music store, by the time the industry realised just how big this was they had only one option left to sue everything and everybody related to this P2P software. As a resulting pissing off there next generation customers and the ones they already had, and along the way giving themselves and P2P developers bad press.

As a knock on affect we see the labels only investing time and money and bands that they know will make money (yes the popular rubbish, usually based of Pachelbel's canon somewhere along the line)

I acknowledge the fact piracy is theft and I just think its too late for some people who are so used to just downloading music that its unlikely that even the Dell Marketing budget could change there minds. I also think DRM just locks you in the path of why buy it and have it locked down when I can download it for nothing.

As much as the labels may not be ripping us consumers off as much as we think, why do they need to get royalties from every iPod sold, this is greed and almost a stealth tax. There has to be better ways for the industry to still make money and let the cosumers get the media from wherever they like or at least get it for a good price, for example it is often cheaper for me to buy a CD then it is to buy from iTunes, how can this possibly work, it cost more to make a CD downloaded has no CD yet costs more (a sense a little greed here)

We then move on to how music is no distributed and listened to. Radio is taking a back seat, the associations wont license Podcasts, and only the popular blogs publish what people want to read and lets not even get into myspace. How do we discover really good new music?? Well there's a new section of my site (thats it check out the music pages when you've finished reading this) and then there is the IODA Alliance: http://www.iodalliance.com/ and the Podsafe music network http://music.podshow.com I also urge you to check out ReIgnition Records www.reignition.com

I will leave this post with a thought:

You and some of your mates are a band just starting out, you produce a CD and put your music online in the iTMS, napster etc. You find that your Album is more illegally downloaded than it is bought and you get no money for these illegal downloads. Would you be pissed off? I know i certainly would be.

Artilect: Artificial intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i.e. ) system. The term is often applied to general purpose computers and also in the field of scientific investigation into the theory and practical application of AI. Wikipedia

An Article that dropped into my feed reader at the beginning of the week, describes a system devised by Hitatchi which monitors the person haemoglobin levels in the Brain (Optical Typography) The use of this is very limited now but could have a large impact on the way we intereface with technology but also for people who are paralysed, a clear example of converging technologies.

As part of New Scientists' 50 year aniversary there are a number of comments about what may/likely to happen in the next 50 years assuming we don't all Kill ourselves first (war or global warming).

Talk of a scientific understanding of consciousness still evokes more sucking in of air than most other subjects. Sceptics are fond of saying that a "factor X" that cannot even be imagined at the moment is required. I would argue the opposite: it is here, and it will be commonplace by 2056[...]

The key for us to fully understand the ramifications of creating an 'artilect' (AI) is we first need to understand our own brains and how they work, and also the fact we are imperfect and no doubt what we create will also be imperfect (could this cause a problem? could we become so obsessed with perfection we end up some 'borg' like race; I couldn't resist throwing that in)

Computation is the fire in our modern-day caves. By 2056, the computational revolution will be recognised as a transformation as significant as the industrial revolution. The evolution and widespread diffusion of computation and its analytical fruits will have major impacts on socioeconomics, science and culture.
Within 50 years, lives will be significantly enhanced by automated reasoning systems that people will perceive as "intelligent".[...]

I personally would go one step further and say the above will happen in the next 20 years, and we will see the first true AI system by 2056. Why? because these prediction always seem like under-estimates, they never anticipate that one person who does a single thing, accelerating the field of research forward.

I also had a Computing Lesson in which the teacher posed the question:

Prove To me that a human is nothing more than a biological operating system

At first I thought we are, then I started to disagree. My Arguments against were based on the fact "Windows/Linux/{Insert Your Favourite OS Here} doesn't create something new in its likeness, it cannot learn (at the moment anyway), similarly it an OS cannot procreate with another OS (as silly as it sounds)Redhat can't go to Windows and say lets make a little OS called 'Widhat' but this could be possible with Cybernetics could it not?

The main counter argument being, if we can read the brain and interpret its code it is just infact an OS, the controlling of things without physical movement (i.e. Brain Control) would seem to support this theory partly, but I am aren't entirely convinced.

Am Leaving this post open ended because I aren't sure were I want to go next and don't want to come to any conclusion.

Links

• BBC Horizon - Human v2.0
• Ray Kurzweil Website
• Hugo De Garris Website
• NewScientist Article on Brain Experiments
• Miguel Nicolelis Website
• Train Controlled by brain interface
• 50 Year of the New Scientist

The Concept

Artificial brain designer and theoretical physicist ~Prof. Hugo de Garis raised the issue of whether humanity should build godlike intelligent machines. Because of technological advances, he foresees a time in this century when artificial intelligence can be developed at the atomic level, and an object the size of an apple could surpass human brain capacity to the trillionth power.

At this point, he believes humanity will break into two groups. The Cosmists, who want to build these massively intelligent machines, and the Terrans who are against it. A third, smaller faction, he labeled as the Cyborgists, who want to merge with the artificial intelligence. Prof. de Garis believes the conflict between the Cosmists and the Terrans will be so extreme that wars could be fought over the issue.

The machines he called "artilects", may become so massively intelligent, said de Garis, that they would regard humanity, in the same way we look at insects, and they could be so powerful as to create their own universes. He boiled it down to the question: Do we build gods or do we build our potential exterminators? In an on-the-spot Fast Blast poll that was conducted, 56% sided with the Terrans, and 44% with the Cosmists.

Intruiged so I am I So lets have a bit more information on these so called 'Artilects', What could these artilects be, well essentially a massive computer with power many times greater than the faster super-computers. Currently IBMs' Blue Gene Which Performs 280600 GigaFlops, To something that would have near infinitesimal processing power; the Quantum Computer.

The Quantum Computer

A quantum computer is any device for computation that makes direct use of distinctively quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. In a classical (or conventional) computer, the amount of data is measured by bits; in a quantum computer, the data is measured by qubits. The basic principle of quantum computation is that the quantum properties of particles can be used to represent and structure data, and that quantum mechanisms can be devised and built to perform operations with these data.
What is a quantum Computer

Timeline
The Timeline reads with a unnerving sense not 'if' but 'when' a full usable quantum computer is available. A comparison can be drawn with the current state of technology; rapid development and advancement over a relatively short period of time. The Q-Computer Timeline has the same sort markers that the current computer timeline has. Making the Artilect dilemma/debate something more important than you might think, its not just the realms of science-fiction, its well and truly science-fact.

The point of all this?

Its the background to something that will become, a very real problem within my lifetime. I think it will be interesting to see just what we can predict now and compare this to what actually may happen. Apart from that this stuff just generally interests me a whole lot, and a will be following this post with some more in the future that go into the details of the research, arguments, concepts and ideologies based around the problem of Artilects / god computers and the effect that will have on our race.