System Engineering & Design Architecture - Sander R.B.E. Beals (books to get back into reading txt) 📗

out the connection, if not our entire system, unless we guard against that, which again is built-in safety in the system.

Once electrical match is made, it is time for the carrier match: and then something out of the ordinary happened, which struck a match for me: the thought of it made me want to light my little orange Buddha, since it has the ability to light my desk via a little candle. This is much like association out of the blue. Then in order to illustrate it for you, I went hunting for an image of the Buddha, rather than acquiring one through the use of my computer-enabled sensor, the digital camera that rests on my desk. While looking for it in my photo folder, I came across a bunch of Chaikovsky music files I never thought I had! (who put them there? ;-) In order to hear more I queued them for listening, and went on with my search. The synchronistic part came when I found the image I wanted to use: when I cut out the rectangle showing the buddha without its non-relevant parts, the one thing 'irrelevant' that remained was the shadow of my headphones hanging on the thermostat (top-left of the image), which sets the comfort of my home....

Now this is a great example of a carrier match: the match made me think of some usage for it, that felt relevant to me at that time. The finding of a bunch of carriers that obviously had the name Tchaikovsky in common made me accept them as input because of prior experience with the guy: hey, as a Dad, who doesn't know the Nutcracker Suite from his or her children's favorite Disney movie? Basically, the recognition of the carrier triggers the acceptance of the message, much like that one example of it in the movie Contact, where the blind guy is listening to the alien signal, and then says: "I'm hearing structure here!". Basically he connected the prior knowledge acquired by his auditory subsystem (which in blind people is better developed than in normal people) to an unknown in order to make it known...

Once the structure of the information is known, we can decode it in the comfort of our own knowledge. Let's just rephrase that in normal terms: we speak the same language. But this by no means guarantees we speak the same protocol. Now basically, we could reverse these two and put the protocol match first, but they are only labels connected to the obvious. But since language is needed in order to express protocol, let's keep it this way: regardless how we value both types of humans (if we have to value them at all), a diplomat will have a hard time talking to a dock worker, and vice versa.

And just at that time (on my movie screen), Spock punched out the lights of one of his classmates, for finally reaching the condition that was the target of their shared game: him being half Vulcan and half Human, he was their target in eliciting an emotional response from him in the movie Star Trek, which I'd just started to replace Tchaikovsky. This only made me come to the conclusion that the term 'Connect OK' does not necessarily mean the system receiving the information will feel good about it... But still, I cannot agree with a friend from my past, that learning systems can only learn from pain. Because if they would, what would be their incentive to develop further once they have overcome fear? Much like the young rascal James T. Kirk is now trying to chat up the deadly serious lieutenant Uhura....

OK, so we're connected now, and we are still watching our system from the inside. But let's not forget, that the many systems we are part of far exceed our material boundaries: we connect to others through an interface that is mainly energetic in Nature, given the fact that all our matter is made up of of atoms, that are guarded against contact by clouds of negatively charged electrons. And given that negative Cosmos, all matter is negatively charged on the outside, thus repelling each other, unless a larger force like gravity keeps them together. Still though, the signals coming through are only energetic, not material.

And yet, like any connection, it is not intrinsically stable once it has been formed. Any time during the exchange of information, one of the systems at any end may decide to break off the connection, it is simply a matter of whether it chooses to remain in the alliance, or sever from it because staying in there no longer serves a purpose. So let's look at the communication aspects of a working communication next.

Talking to Friends

Why would I want to call this chapter 'Talking to Friends'? Maybe it is because the Star Trek crew is now discussing their next move against the 'evil' captain Nero. The fact that Spock eventually tires of Kirk's emotional onslaught in wanting to attack Nero head on even leads to him throwing Kirk off the ship, which in turn showed me an oversight in my previous statement: we can of course also be kicked out of the alliance, for not adhering to the protocols of it....

What the movie on my right just showed in quite a few examples, is that there is no such thing as a language that is separate from other concepts: any communication can result into an escalation of more or less material nature (less material as in "Beam me up, Scotty!") And just this minute, Kirk and his friends beamed on board the Enterprise, in order to elicit just such a response from Spock: if they can show he is emotionally damaged, then he must resign his command.

What is constant in this cycle of communi-cation, is the sixfold nature of it, despite its crossing over into other languages like armed combat. Just like 'Final Fantasy, the Spirits within' had one of their characters come up with the line: "Jane is negotiating with extreme prejudice!", as the lady in question unloaded her pulse rifle at the numerous spirits... Yes, any exchange of information is a negotiation, as long as the trust relationship (she trusts them to be a threat) is being built. Once it is established, it needs far more than just one mishap to break the chain of communication.

And thus the feedback is encountered immediately, unless the channel of communication is thought to be simplex in nature (one way). That still doesn't mean there is no eventual feedback though: just think of a radio controlled drone: it's radio controller tells it how to move, which may be a simplex communication. However, the resulting physical reaction of the drone and the result that is visible in the data which it sends back regarding its observations may well be considered feedback, even if the control stream is one-way: the five star army dudes down below will of course base their next command to the operator on what they see from up there, which closes the feedback loop.

Given the above, even food consumption could be seen as a form of communication or logistics, communication across our system boundaries even: from within comes a signal to indicate the need for food, and we humans raid the fridge, or go out to buy some. Eating it would just require a type of logistic interface, called the human digestive tract. We then get the reward of feeling fulfilled, which is definitely a driving force in the West. For third world countries this would probably be hunger driven, but for most westerners, there is more of a luxury feeling involved, which may generically be called comfort, or the lack thereof.

 

Heck, even the media are a way of communication! But just what can they do other than put the lens of their influence on the biggest problems they can find? Heck, apparently people don't read the papers or view the media in an effort to feel good, or maybe they do: if you see others having problems, you can either have compassion with them, or feel glad or grateful that you are not in the same situation. You might also think that you are in deep shit, but that will lead you nowhere. Maybe the media are all about that: making us realize that we are in a good position, even if we think there is nothing we can do against others or even our own misfortune....

Yes, the energetic exchanges are what may well be called emotions (electrons in motion): they may feel different over time, but that is just our adapting model of our environment as it changes. Learning systems like neural networks will develop the same adaptive capabilities as our minds, and as such will show emotions, if they haven't already: just think of the countless feedback loops we have defined in our urge to populate the Web and make our marks on it: social sites and search engines storing more and more of our specifics to make advertizing even more able to target the right audience. No problemo, because everything in Nature is balanced, including our well-developed ability to spot spam or an ad miles away, and discard it without further ado if it is not at all what we really want from life.

One observation about the feedback loops has not been made obvious yet: like Qui-Gon Jinn said in 'Star Wars 1: the Phantom Menace': "There's always a bigger fish." The same holds for Systems: any system will live in a bigger system, to which it is a subsystem. That Russian Doll scenario will go on and on, right up to the scale where there is no way up anymore: the One system that has no boundaries or outer environment, and is thus by definition Infinite. No matter what we call it, it must exist simply because of this observation. And if we believe that most of our feedback loops are out there, then we have absolutely no way of knowing just how far they extend! With Time and Space being mere human definitions, who are we to think our contacts on the outside are all earthlings living in 2012AD?

So yes, communications come and go, and we make friends and sometimes break (with) them as well. Nothing changes that, unless we all learn to accept the differences, and welcome them even. No more system boundaries on Earth, be they national, political, commercial or otherwise. I'm convinced we can get there, if in some way we haven't already. No Time and Space, remember?

So yes, I write, and those who don't get the message may consider it fantasy or even a total waste of their precious time! But to me it is an essential part of my reality, which I feel generating more and more feedbacks of absolute proportions! I might be carted off to the psych ward one day, but I am absolutely sure that is not what will eventually happen!

Still though, you cannot do it all on your own, as became very obvious from todays syncs: I'd been struggling to figure out the buying and selling mechanism, but got nowhere fast as long as I only stuck to self-observation. But this afternoon