The Wrong Words – a 100 word story

There was a moment of awkward silence. All words stoped on their tracks, confused. Someone must have said something that lead to this, but no one knew what, no one seemed to remember. People were staring into each other’s faces in uncertainty. They were unsure about where to go from there until someone suggested pizza. It worked. Pizza was always a solution for moments like that. When the delivery guy came, he found a party without words, but with unsatiated hunger. Food made way to words and the party was continued as usual, until someone said the wrong thing again.

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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 30, Pizza Was Always a Solution

Wildcards and the butterfly effect can have a surprising influence on the future. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at wildcards and the butterfly effect. 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 wildcards and the butterfly effect. It is said that you can study the probable possibilities of how the future will be, by following technological trends, seeing how they reflect on society and how people use technology. Two of the things that can throw a wrench on the wheels of those predictions are wildcards and the butterfly effect. Wildcards in future studies are unexpected events that take us by surprise and have unforeseen effects on our future before they happen, like the terrorist attack on New-York in 2001 and the pandemic of 2020.

Wildcards change the world in ways that cannot be predicted by simply following technological trends. Take the terrorist attack, for example. Before the attack, society, in general, seemed to be on the road of enhanced tolerance and acceptance of others. The attack seems to have changed that trend and now our society became more paranoia driven. Surveillance has become a norm for governments and information is not as free as it used to be, while tolerance towards the other seems to be going down. That’s the power of wildcards to change the world. I’ll have to turn a few cards and see what’s in my deck. I’ll be right back.

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Hacked Brain – a 100 word story

The hucker read the contents of the mind. The brain owner didn’t suspect a thing. Memory storage was always the easiest to decipher. It was the more abstract side of the brain that always proved to be more problematic, the part that stored emotions and sensations, things like that, but the hacker had a specialized program just for that. Another problem was getting close enough, within wifi range. He had to rent an apartment on an adjacent building, but he could always do that under a false name. In the end, his clients always paid good money for the information.

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Welcome back. Sometimes a wildcard can be created by a butterfly effect. In 1963 a mathematician and meteorologist called Edward Lorenz published a paper called “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow” in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. This article became the foundation of Chaos Theory. In December 1972, during the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Edward Lorenz posed the following question: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” The idea this question highlights is that tiny changes in data can over time cause big changes in output. The change is not immediate and takes time, sometimes months or even years. This can make predictions of natural phenomena, from weather to the evolution of life, hard to predict.

DNA can be seen as such input data, the blueprint of a living organism. The genetic make of a DNA strand is one of the things that are prone to change and that change can sometimes cause a butterfly effect, leading to completely new species. Many things can change DNA strands, things like radiation, and simple mistakes in the copying of DNA done naturally within a living organism during and after fertilization. When we have such a mutation of DNA leading to a new species of, let’s say, a virus, it can be the cause of a new pandemic. In that way, a small change in DNA can create a butterfly effect that changes the future in unpredictable ways.

Wildcards and the butterfly effect are two things that propel our future into the unknown. They make predicting the future into a less accurate of a science. In that way, they can make things more interesting, but interesting is not always equal to positive. The phrase “May you live in interesting times” might actually be a curse for all we know. This concludes episode 30 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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