Tabletgirl in the Senate Chamber

Did you see Tabletgirl in the Senate Committee? [1]

Oh man. Who didn’t? Unbelievable! You may not yet know what she did: she produced a realtime, simultaneous .ppt, and accompanying .pdf 'whitepaper,' complete with bookmarks, hyperlinks, addenda. While testifying. The materials accompanied her testimony, and were incorporated by express reference. She was nearly flawless. Comparable to the work product of a whole think-tank team over the course of two months. Both document streams were instantly uploaded and globally mirrored, with adequate throughput, even before the senators finished articulating their questions. Time & date stamped to facilitate coordination with the C-SPAN a/v feed. (And then rendered simultaneously into various standard formats, suitable for re-broadcasting. OK, she had a little help with that, outside the committee room, but it all happened in near-real-time is the point, with the most minimal infrastructure, accomplished by a tiny handful of people.)

So, when the witness displayed her .ppt summary (bullet-wise) to the Committee in her first breaths after the first senator's 'question,' the world saw the URL for the first time. News agencies started scrambling to the site & its mirrors. Before long, several were streaming the data out with only a short lag from the live feed. Others had to follow suit, and did, ASAP.

With each successive update from the witness, the lag got shorter and shorter as the newstechs worked out the kinks. The story of this story broke in dozens of outlets, essentially simultaneously, and highly consistently. This resulted in an rapid cascade around the country and the world. Tens of thousands (at least) accessed the feed directly, and millions more are doing so as we speak, further corroborating (and exemplifying) the unanimous media account. Just turn on the TV, or better yet, the Internet, and see for yourself. I haven’t looked in 20 minutes; who knows what’s going on now?

Imagine the truly enormous numbers of people who will have heard and read all about this phenomenon by tomorrow. And what was the substance of her testimony? In true self-exemplifying fashion, she was testifying in support of the notion that such phenomena are not only possible today, but in fact exist!

What? She what? I heard what she said, and I know that it’s right on the money. But what are you talking about, simultaneous feeds, indexed video. What?

Oh man. Oh man. You don’t know yet. Well, one key aspect of this was that she accomplished it primarily by herself (on standard XP apparatus, lightly customized and tested with the assistance of a few trusted experts). So, the set-up is available for anybody to use, in business meetings, board meetings; in court, in legislative debates, inside government agencies, military, grass roots organizations, everywhere. Various skills and habits must be developed, and one’s mind must wrap itself around various unfamiliar concepts, so not just anyone can do this, even if they have all the stuff. Instructions are not provided. The digerati truth set has gotten a big a jump on the noise boys, and she really brought that point home today.

And in the hearing room, the Senators were the last to know, impatiently brushing aside incomprehensible whispers from aids rushing into the hearing room. They just kept trying to get the best of their witness, and speechified, as usual. Oblivious.

This is the collective talking, the collective making its presence felt, displaying the new ability of the truth to obviate spin.

Every rhetorical and political trick can be and increasingly is exposed in realtime. It was evident in the hearing room and to the audience, due to the competence & articulate, calm presentation by the witness, and hugely augmented by the realtime .ppt projection – you see, staffers agreed to allow her to display anything precleared by the committee or created on the spot by the witness. (I guess they were thinking along the lines of hand-drawn charts on the overhead, like their college professors used to employ in the lecture hall.)

So, as you well know, this habit has been spreading, and digerati truthpeople have emerged everywhere, and are indeed getting the jump on the noise boys.

Truth and reason are on the offensive. She catalyzed the effort in a big way today. She imagined that such a thing ought to be possible, and then she wrote it into existence.

What does it look like when rigorous reality comes back to roost? Doofus-boy goes down hard: what does it look like?

First tell me what you mean by “Doofus-boy.” I am not familiar with that term.

Oh never mind. That’s just my quite unhelpful shorthand. In a nutshell, Doofus-boy is anyone whose thinking is guided by misleading labels like ‘Doofus-boy.’

Like your own thinking, it seems.

Right. It is shorthand that serves two purposes: For sure, it’s a hyperlink to my increasingly consistent internal model of the human behaviors I am witnessing.

But mostly the term ‘Doofus-boy’ means, “Don’t be Doofus-boy!” That’s a rule I set for myself and try to follow. To the point of necessarily reminding myself of the perils of facile classification of the world in the very act of engaging in the practice. It’s aspirational, nobody is perfect. When I figure out, for example, why certain irresponsible behaviors emerge, that means I think I’ve put my finger here and there on how not to be, or what not to do. If I really believe my own conclusions, they must guide my own actions. But again, it’s aspirational.

Tell me more about your increasingly consistent internal model of human behavior.

I just mean the sense I make of how people behave, how communication habits impact behavior. I say it is increasingly consistent because, for one thing, you yourself have often said that my observations resonate with your own experience of the world. So that’s another vote, outside of my own head. I have many such votes, explicitly communicated to me. No surprise there, as the sense I try to make of the world is as consistent as possible with the thought product of the whole world.

Thought-Product?

Whatever the world has to show for all of humankind’s big-brained activity. Anyway, I am more and more successful at communicating my understanding to others, with you as the prime example of such success. This means I have achieved efficiency in my own thinking, using fewer clock cycles to harmonize more and more observations, which I tell you is perceptible to me as a sort of emotion. You’ll have to take my word for this.

But here’s the key point: Focus on the collective. Not the individual. (And good luck to any individual trying to make that assertion. It’s not generally permitted. Obsession with individuals is the norm.)

Can you bring this back to Doofus-boy?

OK, so Doofus-boy, who I don’t want to be, who the more I am not him, the more standing I can achieve to do something about him. That guy. What does he do? Oh, I could write a whole book. But a unifying theme is that Doofus-boy leverages (and perpetuates) this norm, this taboo against transcending the limitations of individuals. Doofus-boy employs a small collection of rhetorical tricks as both shield and sword. Doofus-boy, for example, when cornered by logic, appeals directly to bare statistical possibilities. He plays his cards close to his vest to preserve his ability to confront individuals with their inability to read the cards. They cannot prove that Doofus-boy is not holding a straight flush, and cannot know or prove that Doofus-boy’s conduct is not entirely justified.

Now, Doofus-boy may be playing the cards close to his vest to mask ignorance or incompetence, to mask an ulterior motive, out of disrespect, or a combination of these; or for other reasons entirely. But the rhetorical bag of tricks is strikingly similar across the board. So, that’s what the term means: it’s a shorthand for my best understanding of how to slice through all of this noise, in all of its guises, and a reminder to heed my own critical thinking in the process.

Well, if I agree to work on this project, I hope you won’t mind if don’t adopt the term. It may enhance your own understanding (and mine, now that I understand what you mean), but it’s a bit off-putting, don’t you think? Hurling epithets does not enhance communication.

Oh, I absolutely agree. That’s why I think you should be the one to take the lead here. You have a cooler head. But do you see? Doofus-boy is the hurler of epithets! The sticker-on of labels, the derogator of the truth through transparent rhetorical trickery. So, tagged as ‘Doofus-boy,’ he is snagged with his own barb. Which fixes it in my consciousness, enabling a correlation of Doofus-boys everywhere, despite their dogged insistence on the uniqueness of every circumstance and every individual. It is possible, Doofus-boy, to achieve a perspective that reveals what you have in your hand. And if you are holding garbage in your hand, Doofus-boy, as is often the case, it will be apparent. Now more than ever, Doofus-boy, in this information age. Do you understand what is happening, Doofus-boy? To the extent you truly do, you are in denial about it, or else are cynically attempting to exploit technology to enhance your ability to noise up the channel and play your rhetorical games. You are certainly being forced to take the gloves off more and more, in public. Your actions are more and more transparent, and more and more outrageous as if to compensate. Do you get away with it, Doofus-boy? Or does the light of reason catch up to you? The light of reason, along with reason’s mushrooming data storage and processing capacity, interconnectivity, and emergent automated signal enhancing capabilities. The light of reason is an increasingly powerful precision laser cannon, aimed at you, Doofus-boy.

What’s to stop Doofus-boy from grabbing control of the cannon, and using it to maintain his position?

I wonder. I’d like to believe that truth hangs together. The collective intelligence, enhanced by information age technology and the emergent behavior it produces, is a truth-seeking machine. If it ain’t true, that means it cannot be harmonized with the great thought-product edifice, and will drop away (unless bolstered by some force that is in derogation of the truth, such as dogma – official, enforced opinion, or actual repression). I fantasize that there is a physical underpinning for that assertion (there is a view of the universe according to which information is the fundamental physical quantity). In any event, an untruth must swim upstream against the current of the truth. Doofus-boy depends on the putative inability of anybody to adduce sufficient, timely evidence of what is true and what is untrue. So you can’t ever say with certainty whether something is going with or against the current, or which way the current is going, or whether there even is a discernible current.

Has the information age changed that? Is the current now a torrent, manifestly against Doofus-boy’s attempted trajectory? Or, to keep my metaphors straight, an increasingly powerful laser cannon, aimed at him? If so, it is still possible for Doofus-boy not to know it yet.

Or is Doofus-boy sitting securely on a great concrete dam, impervious to this puny torrent of truth.

Well, that’s what Doofus-boy thinks, if he even acknowledges that there is such a thing as truth. And there is no question that Doofus-boy has a fairly secure historical footing to undergird this dam impression, given the manifest success of the Doofus-boy strategy set during the whole history of humankind up to this point.

Now, some Doofus-boys do indeed believe that there is such a thing as truth, and they believe that they are in possession of it. They believe they are holding a royal-flush of truth, which enables them to understand what to do, and fully justifies what they do. They cannot show their cards, however, because to do so would be dangerous: the great run of people cannot handle this truth. So they take it upon themselves, the holders of the secret truth cards, to do what needs to be done according to the light of their truth.

But you know better? You are tapped into the real truth, so you can pass judgment on their defective truth?

That’s why it’s not about me, personally, or any individual. It’s the collective consciousness, recorded, available, interconnected, alive! This is the laser cannon. It flows through individuals, but it is not limited by individuals. It is coherent because truth coheres. It corrodes and obliterates untruth. Or at least it can, if given the chance. And circumstances now exist, for the first time in human history, that enable the storage and instant availability of our collective thought product. It started changing the world several years ago. Doofus-boy doesn’t fully know it yet, even though virtuoso information-age Doofus-boys are legion.

Doofus-boy frequently goes down hard, however; history also teaches us that. And Doofus-boy can get arbitrarily brutal, as necessary, to maintain the status-quo and achieve his ends. So, that is the state of play. I cannot predict how it plays out into the future, but possibly I can influence it. That’s where you come in.

I see. First you get me sufficiently focused, then I can do something about it that you can’t do, or in addition to whatever it is you are doing.

Right. And it should be a material inducement to you that you will gain a perspective that is hugely useful in the world, which will assist you in any endeavor whatsoever, however many Doofus-boys remain in the world in the future.

Well, that I can already perceive for myself. I cannot tell you what a revolution you have sparked in my own thinking. Not you, not you, sorry: the influence of the ideas you brought to my attention has been very great.

Ok, so with your label-free lexicon, go see what you can do. I’m tired. I have to rest. You go out there and see what you can do. I will help you. I am here to consult, but I have to rest. It is too much strain, all this battling Doofus-boy.

I move in a remarkably Doofus-free environment, at least compared to you. I have fewer Doofus demons to contend with, that’s for sure. I’m going to need your help, but I think I see what you want me to do. I see the trendlines, and that’s how I place my bets. My money is on the collective consciousness, which will continue to morph the world in its image. Truth will gain market share, even if it does not gain a monopoly. I have been making that case, effectively, and I have evidence that the idea is percolating, cascading in my little corners of the networked networks. And such a thing can be self-catalyzing and self-fulfilling, in certain environments. I have observed this to be happening, I can’t ignore the signs.

Ok, then write it, do it. Exemplify it. I have to rest.

Well, where to begin? I can tell the story, but only from my perspective. You can chime in with corrections, amplifications, additional information, whatever. But I will be entirely honest, and you may not be uniformly flattered by my words.

What does that matter? It’s not about me, remember? And flattery has nothing to do with it.

Well, you asked for it. Thing is, another reason why I have to do this is that you are borderline insane. You lapse in and out of coherence, talking sometimes to me, sometimes to invisible Doofus-boy demons. I can’t always follow you. Plus, your self-accusation of being Doofus-boy yourself appears to be warranted. I’m not saying that it is warranted, just that it appears to be warranted. You are frequently not the master of your passions, which get the better of you, and interfere with your ability to transmit meaning. You lose sight of the gulf between your own mental models (however successful), and the thought processes of your interlocutors. Communication suffers. Misimpressions abound. I know (and you know) that this goes with the territory: if Doofus-boy indeed believes that every individual and every circumstance is unique, then you are starting from scratch in each new conversation with each new Doofus-boy. There isn’t time in life to start from scratch every time, which is part of why the Doofus-boy idea set is successful. Doofus-boy doesn’t have to be doing this on purpose; this just emerges from Doofus-boy’s dogged imperviousness (however explained) to the perception of underlying themes and explanatory frameworks that could reflect negatively on Doofus-boy’s conduct. So you’re starting virtually from scratch each time, enabling Doofus-boy to stay in his comfort zone of continuing to do what is congenial for Doofus-boy.

So much for not adopting the term “Doofus-boy.”

Banished be the term. You are quite right to nominate me, at least over yourself, for the role of chief communicator. I know you are well aware of all of these criticisms; you have told me so explicitly. But now I get to hammer you over the head with them, in print! And all for a good cause, so it’s not gratuitous. This is beautiful. You have to be held up, in my narrative, as an example. Not as a paragon. But an example, a real-world example, of an important aspect of the information age, one that will have to be understood by each individual.

And the aspect is?

An aspect fundamental to any phenomenon involving people, any social phenomenon.

Namely? How messed up you can get when you fence with Doofus-boy?

Well, leaving that disfavored terminology out if it, yes. We’re asking a question whether masses of people will become increasingly rational, and it’s important to focus on what that would look like. What does it look like when an individual behaves more and more rationally and consistently than the norm? What range of behavior is elicited from others in reaction? How do these change from person to person, from circumstance to circumstance, and through time? Real-life examples are important, and you are the one I know the most about. You also happen to have commissioned my participation in this project, so I have access to as much additional information as I may need about to you flesh out my example. And it is not necessarily a good example; it is a cautionary example. I can have my way with you, with your permission! Marvelous. This alone would fuel my enthusiasm for the project, which I admit is growing with each passing second.

Whatever floats your boat.

I can tell you right now that this story is going to include the business in front of the Senate Committee this morning.

Well, duh.

So here’s how I think it should go:

[{Exposition of events, scope & significance, as outlined in first bit above} black-ink guy only aware of what went on in the Senate chamber, ending mere hours before. Saw brilliant Tabletgirl testimony, realtime bulletpoints on overhead, etc., but was not aware (and hasn’t had time to get back to office or see news anywhere of the broader phenomenon), because, like the Senators & their staff, he has spent all morning inside the chamber, with mobile device switched off. Red-ink guy’s account trundles in however much network, sync, emergence, etc., stuff as possible without getting too bogged down, in a nice, self-exemplifying fashion. Black-ink guy sticks with his “I’m master communicator, clear-head master of passion boy” bit throughout, never fully getting over himself (which is fine!), but this fuels much energetic dialogue between the two. If possible, neither black-ink guy nor red-ink guy gets the better of the other, but something greater than both emerges from the interaction. Exemplifying the power of the collective, natch. And appropriately de-emphasizing the individual in favor of the collective.

We get the Senate thing, we get black-ink guy’s truthboy practitioning, we get a wholesale self-similar information cascade (i.e., the idea set spreading is explicitly about the dynamics and impact of idea sets spreading), and we get to peek at what it looks like in various forms, as far as Black and Red ink guys can make out. They have free recourse to the idea-sphere, and they may occasionally cite their references.

They range far and wide over a big broad canvas. They fill the pages of whole ‘books,’ very quickly. The ‘books’ will be extremely congenial to a wide range of people, strikingly transcending conventional divisions of opinion. It will give such people a path to each other, and enable them to join forces in reaching others. A tall order.