Nikio

A strange thought occoured to me today. I figured that most of the "giants" of the 20th century were born more or less at the same time. At first I didn't even believe my own self, but then I went on Wiki and found out that it is true. Just take a look:

Pablo Picasso (painting) - 1881
Le Corbusier (architecture) - 1887
Albert Einstein (physics) - 1879
Niels H. Bohr (physics) - 1885
Edwin Hubble (astronomy) - 1889
Carl Jung (psyhology) - 1875
James Joyce (literature) - 1882
Ivan Cankar (Slovenian literature) - 1876

And some a bit older guys:
Sigmund Freud (psyhology) - 1856
Nikola Tesla (electronics) - 1856
Max Planck (physics) - 1858


All of these guys are founders of new paradigms in their fields and are considered as fathers of the 20th century. If you think about it, it is incredible how a great number of such thinkers was born practically at the same time. And they all did their best work between WWI and WWII. It must have been really exciting to be a scientist or an artist back then.
So what is the cause of this? I believe that they just picked the fruits of the industrial revolution. It took almost a century for Europe (and US) to industrialize and spread better education system. But when it finally did, a much bigger number of kids got cheap(er) practical and academcical tools for their intelectual growth. Of course, their parents and grandparents did a great work; they had to build ground for all of that (who could neglect works of James Watt, Denis Papin, Benjamin Franklin and others), but they had to invent it. It is different if you invent or learn something as an adult or if you grow with it and take it for granted.

I thought this must be an analogy to what's going on today. We also have "founding fathers" of computer industry (like Gates and Jobs), but their "baby boom" generation had to invent it or at least learn it. And now there is a new generation of kids growing up. They take computers and internet completely for granted, they don't have to learn it, they just use it. Technology itself is nothing remarkable for them (like it is for babyboomers), so they will be using it just as a tool to create something remarkable of their own. Who knows what we'll witness in a decade or two, when they grow up!!!

Perhaps 2020's will be just as exciting as 1920's.

Today I thaught of strange but fascinating cartoon I have seen as a child on HRT (Croatian national television). The story tells about a beautiful city with happy people. One day a scientist finds out that the whole city is just some person's dream and if that person wakes up, they are all dead. So they build a special portal and send a team to kidnap that very person who is dreaming them and import him into his own dream. They put him in a specially built chamber with no noise and lights that could wake him up. And just as they do that, the guy starts to dream about beautiful pink flamingos.

The cartoon had a HUGE impact on my childish imagination and I still often think about it. I tried various words and phrases on google to find the title or perhaps even a DVD, but no luck. If any of you guys knows something about it, I would really appreciate.

Image source

It is amazing what goes trough one's mind when one finds it difficult to sleep. One thing that buggs me lately is teleportation. Of course this is more or less a fictional thing (in my opinion because of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, by which it becomes impossible to locate particles).
But let's just say it is possible. In most of the sci-fi cases, the person being teleported is usually disintegrated in the process. Perhaps that is not necessary. Imagine a 30 years old scientist beging sent to a planet that is 15 light years away. His body is being scaned here on Earth and the information then travels 15 years to that planet, presumably that there alredy is a technology in place to reproduce his body based on the information that is sent. As he is being "printed" there, his original is already 45. For the copy it was only a split of a second.
The copy then conducts some research and starts sending the data back to Earth. When the first data arrives, the original is already 60! Let's say that after 5 years of research, the copy wants to "go back" and train some future copys for this planet. He is being scaned again and the signal is sent back to Earth. Now while the original copy stays and lives there, the signal carying information about his body travels 15 years back to Earth. When the copy of the copy is printed on Earth, the original is already 65 (30+15+5+15) and the first copy is 50 (30+5+15), while for the copy of the copy it was again only 5 years since departure from Earth and therefore he feels 35. Imagine the conversation between those two who are then on Earth (65 & 35 version).

Now; there is a hard question of whether or not the copy is the same person. The atoms used to make the copy are "not the same" as the atoms creating the original. Well; it turns out, that our body completly changes ALL of it's atoms every 7 years as we eat food, go to toilet and also reproduce our cells. You can think about an event that happened 7 or more years ago and try to picture yourself there... Well, none of the atoms in your current body were acutally there, but your identity and it's continuity remains valid. We are more or less like waves on the sea surface that travel trough space and time, but the watter of which they consist always changes (from the wave's perspective). From the perspective of the watter, each wave is just a temporary state... The same might be said for our body which is just a temporary state of the matter, while from our perspective we carry an individual identity, whatever the matter is building us. So yes; the reproduced copy is exactly the same person and if you were sent there (and perhaps even disintegrated here on Earth), you wouldn't suffer. You are doing it all the time. But after that, a copy finds him self in the new environment with new experiences which define him in a completly new way. So at the end we have 3 scientists with the same memory utill their 30's but different future.

Image source

I wish you a very happy, healthy and creative year of 2008*! Have as much fun as you possibly can!


I am not really sure what exactly are we celebrating. I was doing a little bit of research and I found out that the dates for the New Years Eve vary from one era or culture to an other. I personally believe that it initially has to do with the pagan celebration of the southern solstice after which the day is getting longer (and the Sun wins over the dark forces of the night) on the northern hemisphere. This logic is no good for the modern people of the southern hemisphere who are now forced to celebrate New Years Eve and Christmas during their summer, when the sun is highest in the sky and now the dark forces of the night are getting stronger. Richard Dawkins often mentiones northern hemisphere chauvinism, and he must be right on that (see the quote below)
However, some callendars are having new year's eve around equinox in March, which sounds more fair for the both hemispheres, but I quess the symbolic meaning is less significant then. I was trying to find some data on Australian Aboriginal calendar, but failed. If anyone has some decent link on that, please post it within the comments.

Originally posted by Richard Dawkins:

In a science-fiction starship, the astronauts were homesick: "Just to think that it's springtime back on Earth!" You may not immediately see what's wrong with this, so ingrained is our unconscious northern hemisphere chauvinism in those of us who live there, and even some who don't. "Unconscious" is exactly right. That is where consciousness-raising comes in. I it is for a deeper reason than gimmicky fun that, in Australia and New Zealand, you can buy maps of the world with the south pole on top. What a splendid consciousness-raiser those maps would be, pinned to the walls of our northern hemisphere classrooms.. Day after day, the children would be reminded that 'north' is an arbitrary polarity which has no monopoly on 'up'. The map would intrigue them as well as raise their consciousness.

(Dawkins, Richard: The God delusion, Bantam Press, Great Britain, 2006, pages 114-115)

PS: It is 2008, AND WE STILL HAVE NO FLYING CARS!

As you know, my job last week was not just to blog at Ummi camp, but also motivate other participants to do it. I think it was successful. . Many of them are now getting their own accounts at my.opera.

To make a long story short. These camps are fantastic opportunity to meet the most amazing people. One of them is Ksenija Benedetti, Chief of state protocol at Government of Republic of Slovenia. After her mindblowing lecture on nice behaviour, table manners, dressing code (etc) - which was all backed up with her professional experience - I seat down with her to talk about Slovenian presidency of EU. As Chief of state protocol, she will be in charge to organise all the events connected to it. The translation is kindly done by Maja Petek.

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This post is my little contribution on understanding contemporary art, especially architecture and design. It is not written for architects and designers (they are supposed to already know that), but for normal people who want to know something more about what's going on now in architecture and understand it. So I have to warn experts and "experts" that some simplifications are neccecary, but basicly the point is there.

Click below to continue...

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I just found out about this, and i was quickly addicted to this small 22-minutes videos of the most remarkable people speaking about future and new ways of thinking. I strongly suggest you see them. This one is just an example:




And there are many more here: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/