The Hidden Road

The Gnome – a 100 word story

The fawn couldn’t see them hiding in the bushes. The arrow was quick and painless, tranquilizing shot penetrating, inducing sleep. The Gnome ordered the two hooded men to upload the fawn onto the cart. The three of them took the hidden road, delivering the sleeping animal to the laboratory. The mechanical chicken lay motionless on the table, a lifeless shell, nothing more. The Gnome connecter her to the machine. Carefully, he connected the fawn to the other side. Buttons were pressed, levers pushed into place. Life energy was transferred and the mechanical chicken awakened, ready to serve her new master.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 20, The Hidden Road

It seems like there’s a limited amount of things that exist in this world and that they tend to disappear as they are used by us. This is the essence of the idea of scarcity. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at scarcity. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about scarcity. When we talk about a limited amount of something like food or trees, we are talking about scarcity. We say that wood is scarce and we should preserve as much of it as we possibly can because if we don’t, there won’t be any wood left anymore. That is not the whole story though. When you cut down a tree and make, let’s say, a chair out of it, you are merely changing the shape of the tree. If you then burn the chair, you are changing the condition of the tree from matter into energy. You can’t really get rid of the tree. You can only change its shape, definition or state.

Food seems to disappear when we eat it, but that is not really the case. It becomes part of us, blending with us completely when we eat it. The saying “you are what you eat” has much truth in it. Science shows us that matter and energy are interchangeable. It also shows us that there is a finite amount of matter/energy in the universe and that amount is constant. It cannot change. This means that the amount of food and trees can’t truly change. Only thair shape and condition can change. Things can blend into each other and change their essence and meaning, but they don’t disappear altogether. On the other hand, a tree is not as useful to us as a burnt-out chair, and food can’t be used again after it blends with us. In that way, those things are scarce. I’m going to check the scarcity of things in my fridge. I’ll be right back.

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Wildcards – a 100 word story

The Queen looked at the multi-colored roses in shocked amazement. Seven and Five giggles softly while Two just stared madly at her. “What are you doing?” she asked, her amazement turning to anger. “Why the fact is, you see, we are painting all your roses” answered Two. The Queen turned the perfect shade of red, the one she liked for her roses and shouted: “Off with their heads.” “Not this time,” said Seven and Five in unison and started splashing colors at the Queen. They splashed her, then splashed her some more until she was completely devoured by the colors.

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Welcome back. So we made a chair out of our tree, then we burned it. Can we get it back? Theoretically, this is a possibility, and here we will be going into the future of scarcity. We are currently mastering the ability to move atoms. The field of study that concentrates on moving atoms is called nanotechnology. If we could get back the energy of the burnt tree-chair and somehow convert it back into matter, then rearrange the atoms of that matter back the way they were when we first found them, we could theoretically get our tree back. This way of getting back the same tree might prove to be too difficult to accomplish and too expensive. There might be a more practical way, but you won’t get the same tree. What you will get though is the end of scarcity.

3d printers are on their way to becoming a household commodity. This idea of printing actual everyday objects is becoming a reality. Currently, those printers are very limited by the materials you can use, but that is going to change in the future. When the ability to move atoms makes its way into 3d printing, imagination would be the only real limit. You would take one material and change it to another by changing the composition of its molecules. This means you would take cheap materials and make everyday objects from them. Your only limit would be the composition of the atoms themselves. You would have to use atoms that can compose the right kind of molecules for the materials you want to use, but then if a certain material is missing you could always create a new one to replace it. In that way you would be able to print any object you could think of.

Our economy depends on scarcity. When you can print any object using a 3d printer, there is no scarcity anymore. You would be able to print out food, trees, chairs, cloths. You would be able to use 3d printers to print 3d printers. You could even be able to print money, but money would be useless. The age of 3d printing and nanotechnology would truly be the age of abundance. Something that’s already being worked on is the ability to print replacement organs for the human body. Eventually, we would be able to print a whole new body for ourselves, staying young forever. We would be able to rearrange the atoms in our brains, becoming more intelligent. This is just one of the things that might herald what is called the technological singularity, but this is a topic for another episode. For now, let us just remember that trees never die. They just change their essence. This concludes episode 20 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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Arranged in a Circle

Forty – a 100 word story

Forty butterflies are dancing on my grave. Forty red flowers are arranged in a circle on the cold stone. Forty paid maidens are mocking me. I scream “I’m alive, let me out,” but no voice comes out. The earth tastes sour in my mouth. I’ve been here for forty years. Still, there’s no sign of me becoming hungry or tired. I’m forever doomed by a spell to stay alive in my grave, a spell whispered by the woman I betrayed. The walls of my grave disintegrated long ago. I’m now part of the soil, here forever, paying the bitter price.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 19, Arranged in a Circle

Money is the most agreed-upon symbol of exchange. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at money and the monetary system. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about money. From the dawn of time, people exchanged stuff. You had a cow, you needed five chickens. Your neighbor had five chickens but he needed a cow. You exchanged your cow with your neighbor’s chickens. There was a problem though. No one knew how many chickens a cow was worth. As roaming tribes turned to city dwellers and then collections of cities turned into countries, a method was devised by the rulers of those countries for the exchange of goods. This method is called the monetary system and it evolved from something called a debit note or the “I would give you later what I promised you” note.

Sometimes, you just didn’t have the cow to give to your neighbor in exchange for his chickens at the moment. You would write down “I owe you a cow for five chickens” on a piece of paper. That was held by your neighbor as proof that you got the chickens but didn’t yet give him the cow and he could come to you at a later time with that piece of paper demanding his cow. That piece of “I owe you” paper evolved into a law binding document called a debit note and that, in turn, evolved into money. You didn’t have to actually own a cow anymore. All you needed was a piece of paper symbolizing the idea of a cow as an exchange unit. You could get that cow later. In time, the cow was forgotten altogether and that piece of paper called “money” took up a life of its own, becoming a symbol of the exchange of goods. You can still buy cows and chickens with money, but it’s not attached to them anymore. Money has become a thing of itself, it’s own entity. I’ll take a moment to count all the money I don’t have. I’ll be right back.

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Pod – a 100 word story

I live in a pod. The smell of peas drives me crazy, but the rent is good. The landlord is reasonably flexible. The living space is a little dense, but I get along. It’s amazing how spacious a place can seem if you organize the furniture just about right. Still, one day I hope to buy my very own carrot. Sure, it’s long and a little thin, but I like the space better and anyway, green is not really my color. Another thing, if I forget my keys, I can eat my way in. Try doing that with a pod.

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Welcome back. Money is changing, evolving. As a symbol, it was always attached to physical objects. As the monetary system evolved, it was decided to attach the value of money to metals that were considered rare at the time, such as gold and silver. The amount of money distributed was decided by the amount of metals the country had stored. Some of the money was then made of those metals. That’s why we actually have coins. As time passed, the amount of money far exceded the amount of metals it represented and money became even more of a symbol then a representation of real tangible objects.

When computers came alone, a means of virtually storing money as numbers was devised, and a means to access that money was created, called a credit card. Money was now stored in banks in the form of numbers. Today, the amount of printed or “real” money is greatly reduced. While some money is still getting printed, the amount of it is shrinking considerably as time goes by. Money as a physical thing is on its way to disappearing altogether and as it does, new forms of money that are completely virtual from the get-go are starting to appear.

The Bitcoin appeared at the beginning of the 21st century as one of the first cryptocurrencies, a money exchange system that is completely based on computer encryption systems and artificial scarcity. This points to the problem with the monetary system. It depends on scarcity. Abundance is the enemy of monetary value. Money is moving to the virtual world, becoming mare numbers on a computer screen, and as it does it needs to find a new form of scarcity if it is to survive as a symbol. The value of money depends on the fact that there is a limited amount of it. This means it might not survive the move to the digital world. The ability to copy and paste numbers that is inherent in computing might finally kill money altogether, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We might be heading for the end scarcity. Things won’t exist in limited amounts anymore when the printing of physical objects would become commonplace, but this is a topic for another episode. For now, let us just remember that one cow might be equal to five chickens. This concludes episode 19 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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Little Popping Sounds

Rusty Steel – a 100 word story

Don’t bring me those shiny steel rods. I like my steel rusty. I like it crunchy. I like steel that makes little popping sounds when I chew it. I like steel that slowly dissolves inside my body, leaving a warm sensation in all the right places. I used to nibble on rocks, but it wasn’t the same. Tiny pieces would get stuck in my teeth. It would take hours clearing. It was messy, and the taste was kind of stale. Now I’m on a steel diet. I’m telling you, rusty steel is the way to go. Here, try some yourself.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 18, Little Popping Sounds

Augmented reality is starting to supplement our everyday lives. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at augmented reality. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about augmented reality. Reality comes to us on a “what you see is what you get” basis, but what if we could add to it? That is where augmented reality comes, and draws added layers on reality. Today, most of the augmented reality you would experience would come through applications on your phone. You would hold your phone up to reality and it would draw additional things on it, from little pokemon entities to furniture. The augmented reality of today is used for everything from gaming to more practical uses like interior design.

Projects like Google Glass take augmented reality even further by placing augmented reality right in front of our eyes. It draws images on the lens of our glasses. Our glasses become little computers adding images to our everyday reality. Developers are already looking into using contact lenses as computers. The next step would be to embed computers right into our brains, and the day that happens is not as far as one might think. Computer graphics are becoming more and more realistic by the day and distinguishing what is real from what is actually augmented reality would eventually become very hard. I can’t really distinguish if the break I’m about to take is real or not. I’ll have to check that out. I’ll be right back.

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Knock-Knock – a 100 word story

Janice was a practical joker. The number of times we had to ask her “who’s there?” was ridiculous. We tried to stay away, but she would follow us, never understanding the hint. When they fired her, we all cheered. It was later that we read about it in the papers. She jumped off some bridge or another. Now she wanders the office floor telling us her knock-knock jokes. If someone refuses to play alone, he suffers dire consequences. Only five of us are left now. Here she comes. Let me utter the words that would keep us alive: “Who’s there?”

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Welcome back. Today, augmented reality can’t really be touched. It lives inside our screens. This is going to change once programmable matter becomes available. The idea of programming matter itself emerged in the 1990s and is currently being researched in various laboratories around the world. This would enable us to augment our reality with tangible matter, one that can be touched and shaped at our will, or rather, the will of skilled programmers.

Games are where the application of programmable matter would probably start, making gaming more exciting and real. Entertainment is a very profitable market and where there is profit, there is often groundbreaking research. Augmenting our reality by programmable matter would then bleed to more practical applications like designing your home or education. Unfortunately, military and crime are also very profitable so research into programmable matter and augmented reality would prosper on those two very questionable fields too.

People have a tendency to group into “them versus us” groups. When technology becomes too tangible this can become dangerous. Currently, augmented reality is drawn on our computer screens and is pretty harmless. Once it leaves our computer screens through programmable matter or gets drawn directly into our brains through implanted computers, it becomes dangerous. Programmable matter can be programmed to kill you and images can be put into your very brain that induce madness. This kind of technology can’t be stopped. It will come whether we want it or not. It’s inevitable. The question of how we decide to use it is, unfortunately, not really up to us but up to the people who profit from it. This concludes episode 18 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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