Each of us are born into The System, a social organization of rules and conventions developed and deployed by our fore bearers. Having been progressively adopted in the past, The System is always obsolete and in need of tinkering; the assumptions upon which The System... Continue
Public Citizen
It was recently announced that millennials now outnumber baby boomers in the United States, a milestone in the history of American demographics. For nearly all our roughly seventy-five years, baby boomers have dominated trends in fashion, economics, technology, science and environment, but this chapter is... Continue
As modern life progresses and introduces new cultural forms, our tendency leans to retrieving artifacts from the past. This process of retrieval softens the shock of obsolescence; through names, shapes or designs, outdated cultural artifacts lend their comfort and familiarity to newer, less familiar ones.... Continue
In the brief time we spend on earth, each of us goes about our business in whatever particular way we do, placing one foot in front of the other as the days and years roll by. "Waxing philosophical," as my late father used to say,... Continue
Our pursuit of a machine that can think for itself -- gather experience, learn and apply that learning to new situations -- is long standing. The earliest computing machines, designed to calculate numbers, gave rise to fantasies of artificial intelligence through their faultless operation. As... Continue
Welcome to the I Am Larry Barnett Show. I'm your host Larry Barnett, and like you, I'm making it up as I go along. Hey, this is The Improv, right? I know, you're going to tell me you're busy starring in your own show, and coming... Continue
I'm not a dog owner. As I frequently quip when asked if I have a dog, "I don't have a dog, I have grandchildren." On my daily walk around town I do encounter many dog owners; in some cases, the dogs are so large and... Continue
Sense of "self" is just one among a constellation of mental states, and the experience of "I" varies considerably. "I" is described by some neurologists as a stable form of hallucination, which is to say, a subjective experience of being "in here" that seems to... Continue
Despite the cultural arc of history of the past 500 years -- the efforts toward emancipation and the relentless rise of science and technology -- humanity appears terribly, one might even say, hopelessly, stuck. The habits and predispositions of our past -- religious conflict, otherworldly... Continue
Whenever there is wealth and property, (and for the past 5,000 years when has there not been?), theft and corruption accompany it. Greek mythology prominently features Hermes' theft of Apollo's cattle, and virtually all major religions include prohibitions against theft. The Ten Commandments includes it... Continue