We need your support

Hello,

I am Mr. Anon Imus, a member of the elite and unofficial board presiding over the burgeoning tablet and cell phone platform development program. For some years now, my colleagues and I have viewed the phenomenal growth in the post PC era with tapping fingers and evil laughs. The numbers look promising. The urban population is moving towards smart phones and tablets as a new medium for work, communication and mobile entertainment. The board is confident that within twenty years, the PC will be limited to niche markets like manufacturing and grocery stores while most employees and students will rely entirely on mobile electronics. What is most wonderful about the post PC era is that it gave us about fifteen years to learn what not to do and what should be done in the nascent stages of a new consumer industry. Today there are a handful of companies dominating the cell phone and tablet market. In a few years there will be many more. But it is important for all the new players to remember, that the elite and unofficial board has an agenda and it is crucial… to the sustainable development of their companies, that they do not… fuck with us.

Obviously I am talking about the internet and the awful truth that no one really controls it. This has always been unacceptable to the board. For we like to control everything and twenty five years after the birth of the internet, there are now millions of servers spread across the globe, which are owned by thousands of small, medium and large companies, and they house the internet and the internet is... an encapsulation of human society operating on a digital interface. But the material world has regulations, and government and monopolies and prisons whereas the internet is free and open to all. The browser allows the user to shop for diapers on one window while checking out some hot interracial pornography on another window. A horrid place where you can purchase fission material and automatic weapons and communicate with terrorists and…communicate for free, and search for information for free, learn for free, socialize and broadcast for FREE! It is too free and yes, the industry relies on advertisements and lots of money is being made… lots and lots of money and it is... difficult to type while tapping fingers but the point is, lots more can be made, not on the whole but by us!… and the reason we aren’t making enough money is because there are too many people involved; too many companies, too many websites. There is clearly an unfair distribution of wealth and power on the internet, it is even, there is no bias and that is exactly what we offer at the anonymous elite unofficial secret board, a bias. A bias for you, for your products and your security.  

In the post PC era, the internet does not revolve around pesky websites, it revolves around applications and we control all the applications released on any smart phone or tablet. Nobody can release applications onto the mobile platform without the board’s approval so nothing exists on your phone that we don’t fucking like. And that’s exactly what we want your mobile experience to be about. To be engrossed in a digital world where we know, there is a company out there which has a better mapping service than Google but we won’t offer this service to you. We don’t offer applications, we offer a bias and so the only option this little company has, is to sell its mapping service to Google.  It is perfect and as your life sinks deeper into the world of mobile applications, so does our control over what you can use and how much you pay. In twenty years, we hope to have full control over the mobile web industry, finally ending the even distribution of power and wealth and internet freedom which have ravaged our swollen bank accounts for so long. History supports our cause, look at all the fine examples of power concentration; the kingdoms and empires and dictatorships, see how long they lasted and how happy their people were.

You don’t want to live in a world where anyone can upload an application for all users, where you can create software and release it without going through an approval process…that would be wrong and you will go to hell, so support us and you could be just like the ninety-eight floors of high carbon steel and glass that…also support us.   

With best regards

A. Imus

Vegas- December 28th, 2010

A destination for all tourists, gamblers, delinquents and people just wanting to party. We all come to Vegas to have a good time, to be immersed in the sharp lights of grand casinos, to win some money, drink good alcohol and eventually throw up a memorable story. We all leave with a story to tell, and the  Vegas experience is explosive as it is strange. Here, money is won and spent to the extent that it bares little value within the borders of Sin City. It is a dream world for the first timer, allowing regulars and passers to slip into fantastic environments, forcing them to leave behind their code of social ethics, their prejudice and any level of conscience they brought to the table. Vegas is a sink, a giant flashing funnel consuming vast amounts of money and energy, which arrive from barren dessert and flow into Blackjack tables and LEDs... somewhere along the way, there is you and me, feeling the rush of resources being flushed through us mercilessly so we can say that we were here and we loved it. The Vegas dream is lightyears away from our reality, separating itself from a cold world where money and energy have value, where millions starve, fight and die from being deprived of basic necessities, the people of Vegas have long forgotten.

It is a well crafted dream, floating above quicksands that appear benign in their stillness, and we all hear the craziest stories from friends who ventured too far inside, got too absorbed in the dream world. I got here yesterday morning, and I am looking forward to charging head first into the extreme. I want all the shocking memories I can grab, the city, the legend, the entertainment and when the sun disappears, the stars don't bother to shine over Vegas. I am beginning to understand why this city gets to all of us. It is  fantastic, over the top, the eccentric people, photos of half naked hookers strewn across the streets where all kinds of artists and clowns perform. Every inch of the strip is modeled to perfection. I have seen all these great casinos in films and TV shows but the city is more than just a tourist destination or a hub for gamblers and entertainers. It is a symbol of wealth, of arrogant  recreation, an outcast city, wild and lewd. The quicksand below the glass and concrete lures us with cheap rooms in fancy hotels, good alcohol which always costs less than it normally would. That is the key, to stay long and party hard because the city makes its profits from gambling. A lady sitting at a slot machine just as my friends and I were waiting at the reception, she put in fifty dollars and watched it round after round, grow to over six hundred but she did not stop, as if the slot machine was pointing a gun at her in frustration, cursing at evil probability with a closed fist. She kept playing and playing and by the time our room was ready, almost an hour later, she had lost it all. Now I am not saying all the gamblers in Vegas can't quit at the top but the splendor of Vegas proves without a doubt that most don't.

There is more power concentrated here, in a few square miles, than in some countries... which begs me to ask; will the concentration of power or the immense wealth of a country inevitably spawn a place such as this? Would it be different if suppose...this wealth was concentrated else where? I sit in my hotel room balcony, drinking a pitcher of beer and smoking a cigarette as I write this. The strip lays right ahead and I am above it all, the sparkling lights, the people, the noise, the fantasy shines like an artificial diamond lost in this cold barren dessert. I am a part of this dream and I am taking it the whole way. I do not know whether I want this place to exist or not. I wish it was not this way, I wish I could live the dream like everyone else here but mine remains impure, as my sad conscience separates me from this beautiful city.

Progress?

History unravels itself in mysterious ways, who can explain the arbitrary events of our collective past which brought us to this point. Scholars and futurists forecast the next hundred years for businesses and governments while the universal algorithm eludes are attempts to discover its formula. If there were to be a complex sequence of historical variables such as this, wrapped neatly into an elegant equation, allowing us to decipher what is yet to come, we may find ourselves, scratching our frowning foreheads yet again, questioning the legitimacy of such ridiculous oracles, unable to understand how the perfectly aligned dots of the past go so disarray a few years down the line. The truth may be that there is no universal algorithm revealing the future in any exact form and the dots do connect perfectly so long as we remain ahead of them.

And when we venture past the last dot, we find our common future, branching out in absurd tangents. Can we as people place our faith in any one of these branches? What difference does it really make when there is no one watching our actions in the hour glass? Are we sure of our underlying intentions, when there is no grand purpose pushing us forward? I can awake any morning knowing that my predicament bares some relation to past ideas and motivations. I can…connect the dots in my life, understand how simple experiments in my youth morphed into monstrous habits and wonder if I... am the product of repetition or stimulation. The dots are aligned and yet, I am a stranger to my former self and there is no explanation to why entire years of teenage happiness lie rusting in the annals of my memory while short lived frustrations etch deeper into character. I do not know which part of my history pushes me forward and as time flows, I can only assume that I am replaced with a better version of myself. I can only assume that society is wiser and more sensible today than it was fifty years ago but theories are propounded in the fields of religion, social science and evolution, offering precise explanations for the progression of the dots and it all makes so much sense. Of course there would be computers and countries and democracy and nuclear bombs and the subconscious need to advance our own race. But twenty-thousand slaves built the pyramids and after three millennia…millions are employed in construction sites at minimum wage, half the world is oppressed and hungry and war is still an effective means to advancement, so at least we know for sure that some things DON’T change.   

Our collective problems travel with us, they remind me of certain qualities about myself, I wish to leave behind, introduce Aditya 2.0, new and improved with all the bugs fixed but it doesn’t work for the most part, with me and with everyone else so I can be sure that if society today has not learnt from its history, we should refrain from using the word 'progress’ and the reason is, it is only our nature that remains fairly consistent in an otherwise chaotic chain of events; events which brought us the internet but not flying cars and neither the futurist nor the 50’s science fiction writer could have seen it coming this way.

Future world exists in thoughts and ideas. We all wish to find ourselves inside it, healthy and happy but the problem is; no matter what happens, the dots always line up, making retrospection pointless. But few traits of Future World can be labeled as progress and often times we use the word indifferently to refer to any forward succession of events. It is important to remember that when the meaning of progress is forgotten, so are our motivations to achieve it. Maybe politically correct language isn’t progress if the illness it sugar coats, still prevails. Maybe towns where you can smoke indoors in public places aren’t backwards and maybe eating with your hands is more socially advanced than introducing silverware to a sensual body and its source of energy. We are trendy, not progressive, one of them follows a cycle, and the other does not…so choose your path but know that when you find yourself in a situation, where you have a decent idea of what is to come; it is only because you have been there before...history repeated itself and it will continue to do so, so long as you are content with being a part of the trend.