The Web Enslaves Us With Convenience

In The Matrix, Neo learns that humanity is enslaved by machines. The populace “lives” in a virtual world, unaware that their body heat is being used as an energy source. I see a sort of low-fi parallel of this in our relationship with Facebook. Every member operates in that “free” forum, largely unaware that they’re powering the thing by relinquishing their user data. This scenario is in stark contrast to what we once hoped the web to be. We imagined it as a means of liberating peo...

 Pastafarianism

Most of us do not believe a religion – Christianity, Islam, Pastafarianiasm – requires literal belief in order to provide spiritual enlightenment. That is, we can be part of a community without becoming indoctrinated. There are many levels of belief. By design, the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma. That is, there are no strict rules and regulations, there are no rote rituals and prayers and other nonsense. Every member has a say i...

 Zhodani Religion

Death, to the Zhodani, is not a complete ending. The "evil" (that is, failure of duty) of the individual spirit will be lost. The "good" of the spirit will merge for a time with the universal energy field, the Tavrian, and then return to another member of the race. The more dutiful the spirit, the more personality (and possibly even memory) will remain; this resembles reincarcation. An undutiful spirity will be diminished in proportion to its failures. However, actual demotion on the "chain o...

 Community vs. Culture

Communities often have a culture, but there is an important distinction between culture and community. Culture is a set of rules, perceptions, language, history, and the like. It is embodied in books and songs, people's minds, and Websites. Culture can be learned, even though there are some communities that believe you need to be born into them to be a member (as in Germany and many Asian countries, as well as certain Jewish groups). By contrast, a community is a set of relationships. You oou...

 An Empirical Research Model for Software Development

2cThe research approach is strongly empirical. At the workplace of each member of the subject group we aim to provide nearly full-time availability of a CRT work station, and then to work continuously to improve both the service available at the stations and the aggregate value derived therefrom by the group over the entire range of its roles and activities. 2dThus the research group is also the subject group in the experiment. 2d1Among the special activities fo the group are the evolutionary...