Mayan depiction of a flying deity

Our history is filled with astonishing myths and legends which till today are taught from each generation to the next. From an early age, every  organized society had plenty of myths involving Gods and deities which come from the sky and the stars. On my personal search on the extra-terrestrial hypothesis i have stumbled upon numerous contradicting incredible interpretations of well known and unknown myths. Throughout time, history was mostly recorded and embedded within myths. Even today we have to admit that history is not objective and there is no perfect way of recording history. Even in the 20th century in some cases there historical events are recorded within urban myths and legends.

During my personal research i felt somehow lazy and downloaded all the episodes of the Ancient Aliens (History Channel TV Series) which consist 3 seasons till now, with numerous episodes. I admit i sometimes get put off by the Hollywood style directing of this series though i was amazed of some new historical data i was not aware of. Ofcourse as i would agree with most archaeologists the conclusions which all the “experts” which star in this series are belong to the pseudo-archaeology category. Authors and TV personas such as Erich von Däniken, Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, Graham Hancoc and many more claim that ancient civilisations had contact with extra terresrtial races using assumed historical clues which in many cases contradict themselves in order to fit everything in their abstract  teenage method of leading into plausible conclusions. Phrases like “They may as well do…” or “To my view this may serve this purpose…” show the lack of scientific method and iquiry into leading into a robust scientific  theory. Their naiveness reminds me of that many religious groups have, which in order to form their abstract worldview, they neglect basic scientific evidence which contradicts their theory. They percieve ancient societies as ultimately non-capable of percieving notions and using technology a 10year old can easily understand or use today and that their advancement can be explained only by assuming extra-terrestrials were the reason of their great accomplishments.

Nevertheless to my view the ancient astronaut theory is a modern myth to me, not because it may be 100% untrue, but because the conclusions are made with a total lack of scientific inquiry. The authors of various books which consist this theory do not use systematic scientific evidence so that the above theory accepted by the scientific community. To me the “ancient alien” theory shows how modern man, thinks that his technology and understanding is far superior to that of the ancient humans so that when a megalithic archaeological site could not have been constructed by modern technology, immediately claims that an extra-terrestrial must have built it. Even in mythological depictions of human/animal hybrids they neglect how far human imagination and art can go. It would be rather narrow minded of our descendants two thousand years from now to look out our art and theological depictions and assume that all of that must be perceived literally.

The extra-terrestrial hypothesis seems like a maze to me. A rather complex maze which requires plenty of analytic and scientific means of examining this hypothesis. By no way i am willing to use ancient alien hypothesis to build my world view. It is a hypothesis still to me and a rather plausible one indeed. Fear and ignorance may only make us inferior to any other intelligence race that may as well be out there in space or within our planet. We can mostly rely on what we can study and examine today about the UFO hypothesis. Numerous of recorded sightings cannot be treated as something fake or neglected. Something strange is out there and society frequently tends to silently deny it. With very few people around me i can hold a serious conversation about all the above and even wish someone can prove me wrong on my conclusions through robust arguments. My personal research seems sometimes to lead me to more questions and doubts which frequently happens when searching for a certain truth.

The path to understanding everything strange and new by no doubt is science. The reasoning of things around us, though a hypothesis, examination/experiment and which finally leads to a conclusion using all the scientific knowledge which is already proved through the above method. Most of the technologies we use today are a product of this scientific method we have learned to use. Hypothesis and conclusions with no scientific proof, according to what we want to believe to,  do NOT stand in the scientific field. The extra-terrestrial hypothesis today is based on numerous sightings which in most cases defy conventional physics and understanding. Relational speeds and mass show that what ever intelligence is behind has already produced technology of the theories modern cosmology struggles to prove today. Consciousness could not be left outside of all the above. We grasp to understand how consciousness works and strangely enough how our own is affected by mysterious forces around us.

In order to understand any intelligence greater than ours we ought to progress as a species. That consists of social, scientific, technological, political and conscious progress. We still live to some extent in Plato’s cave. All the sightings of strange objects are by no doubt the shadows of reality which we think we perceive to a satisfying extent. The truth is that we aren’t really aware of the true nature of reality itself. We are not able to fully understand what energy and consciousness essentially is, and how it reacts to our physical universe. Modern cosmology is the group of cutting edge scientific fields which may be able to help us start to comprehend the UFO phenomenon which by no doubt is linked to our earth itself. I have to admit that till now i have not been  witness to any single unexplained phenomenon. I cannot really doubt and believe anything till my own eyes convince me of a greater intelligence than ours existing somewhere near us.

I’ve embed a recent UFO sighting in Brazil which to my knowledge has not proven fake till now:

East Kennett (2), nr Avebury, Wiltshire. Reported 22nd July 2011

Intelligence can by no way be credited only to human activity and existence. Intelligence has always existed far before humans started to evolve small numbers into simple and eventually into complex societies. All our social evolution could not have existed if we were not able to produce food easily through agriculture and not spend all our time and intelligence on filling our stomachs. Nevertheless ancient civilizations existed, flourished and perished throughout history. Babylonians, Egyptians, ancient Greeks, Mayan, Atlantean and many more civilizations seemed to strange and evolved to the inferior ones which happened to be more primitive compared the elite societies.

This article though is not devoted to human intelligence rather than anything else which may seem to be more sophisticated, secretive and enigmatic than us. From an early age i was intrigued by mystery, unexplained phenomena and whenever i could doubt about the establishment. There were numerous of unexplained phenomena which eventually through scientific inquiry were analyzed and interpreted and became common knowledge by society (meteorological phenomena, psycho-physical phenomena, astrological myths etc.). Today the west, including my home country, Greece, take for sure that almost everything has been explained or the answers are know and kept secret by the army, government etc. To my knowledge and personal research there are numerous of unexplained phenomena which are documented and partialy studies and by logical inquiry are not human related:

• Unidentified flying or submerged objects that vary in shape, speed size and behaviour, which have shape shifting and invisibility abilities (UFO’s or USO’s)
• Crop circles and crop formations related to hovering light balls when formed during nightime
• Testimonials of abductions by non-human being or human hybrids etc
• Strange implants which have been reported by doctors and hypothetical abductees
• Sightings of cryptic human like beings which we all know as the greys (Big head, big black eyes and small body compared to human anatomy)
• Documented animal mutilations where organs have been removed with bizarre methods without scaring the animal

I personally have to admit that have never been witness to any such strange phenomenon mentioned above or have never taken part into field research after the event has taken place. Many strange phenomenon to some, to me through my scientific knowledge can been easily analyzed and explained. Nevertheless i sense there is numerous of evidence which points the way that strange things are happening in our sky, within our planet and in many cases to our subconscious itself. We can all sense that society frequently tries to distract our attention from some events and tries to persuade us that we ought to focus on the “important” things in life. As a 26 year old citizen people around me remind me to find a well earning job, get married and go on with life the normal and the regular things ought to do. I don’t blame them, because life is all about surviving and multiplying of course thought to me life is far more than all the above, it’s about doubting, researching and inquiring notions.

The indigo child curiosity never fails and ceases to stop. As a proud heir of the ancient Greek civilization and land and all its wondrous mysteries and scientific achievements, i spend my adult life in this mysterious and beautiful corner of the Mediterranean sea. As an informatics graduate, i believe and trust in science and crude proof of a hypothesis. Mythology though, especially ancient Greek mythology is a labyrinth of stories, tales and places which i have the luck of being into a striking distance. Till now i have not been able to visit and spend the night at any of these secluded mythic passages of the greek earth and doorways which many of, to our surprise the orthodox church, nazis and air force sealed. The hollow earth hypothesis though exists only as a myth and a daemon of the christianic church. Ancient greeks which i try to understand through their writings and  community with greek nature itself when going camping excursions i so much enjoy going.

My search is not that of despair of finding the truth rather product of the endless curiosity of a childhood. I’ve seen almost every alien and ufo documentary there has been produced though they seem to stopped to giving any clues of the truth and give me no more pieces of the puzzle. Books may be the best way to solve some of my questions and most important raise many more. There are some on my wishlist on ebay which i ought to order soon enough and some which i have at my possession. A greek classic is the ” Hollow Earth -  Κουφια Γη” which is mostly and mix of ancient mythology, suburban myths and testimonials. There are pictures though of places and earth passages i ought to visit and if brave enough dare to camp overnight. Places where are linked to ancient Greek myths, Christianic myths and modern UFO sightings.

All this search has led me to believe that some strange “alien” phenomena hasn’t have to do with advanced civilizations from other galaxies, rather than a homo-cryptic species which in some ways may be more advanced and secretive than us which if any thing has a integrated view on consciousness and energy itself. Their origin may be extra-terrestrial and for some reason inhabit our earth or even be a part of our evolutionary line which for some reason became cryptic and secretive. I by no way want to be drawn to conclusions without thorough examination and thought. There will be surely a second part of this series of articles which ofcourse will follow on several months after i have read some books i ought to and visited some places linked with mythology and modern unexplained sightings. I cannot be sure about anything till i have seen something with my own eyes. Humans are always iclined to want to believe in myths and propaganda of some sort though i personally want to be skeptic before i am drawn to any astonishing theory.

This is a small part of a documentary by UK’s Danny Dyer for BBC : I Believe In UFO’s: Danny Dyer, which to me is quite convincing and confusing at the same time

The title of this blog entry may sound absurd in a first glance, someone may think. What has sound to do with connecting to the essence of things or to our inner self or otherwise source. Well as you may be aware till now everything i write in this blog express clearly personal view and notions and by no means stand as unmistakable truths. Eitherways one of my passions in life is sound itself. My life is a constant expedition in order to discover the most cutting edge soundscapes and experiences having to do with this form.

Sound itself is nothing else than a vibration of the molecules of air around us and bass may  also be transmitted through earth itself when being outdoors. Music ofcourse is an artform of our human culture and society which uses various techniques in order to produce a well formed and melodic sound. Our primitive ancestors used rough means into achieving that goal. Wood hit on a rock or wood hit against a primitive drum made the first sound forms. Today the instruments someone could use for producing music are uncountable. The music gerne i mostly dig into is electronic music. Crude and unartistic may sound to many, though it is true that a lot of electronic music produced is unbearable to the ear. In the last 20 years, and especially after the dawn of the new millenia numerous electric albums have been produced which blend various classical music elements and instruments in addiction with cutting edge electronic sound. I can name some artists like Shpongle, Makyo, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Cell, Ott and many more as well as many cutting edge psychedelic and progressive trance artists.

My quest for the best sound experience is everlasting. This obsession started from an early age when i was given a Sony Walkman as a birthday present. My first cassettes and radio programs were my first personal music digs i did as a young teenager. The Walkman became a diskman which used CD’s, then in the late 90′s i started using the Internet and the innovative mp3 music format. Since then it is the standard way i listen, aquire and share my music. The earbuds i used in the beginning became computer speakers and now a high fidelity digital sound system, using optical fiber directly from my usb soundcard connected to my macbook, to my 5.1 amp which gives power to a pair of technics speakers and a set of quadral home theater set. It is the best home sound i can get and i don’t think i will upgrade this sound system anytime soon. I try to buy sound equipment that lasts in time.

Sound forms around me are something essential. From the music i listen to to the surrounding noise. Polluted noise like traffic, car horns and random irritating sounds to be act as something mentally pollutive. The sound of nature, crickets, birds, the wind or the sound of sea waves tend to rest my mind and make me feel closer to me. This is the reason i try to go camping in nature as frequent as i can. The camping experiences which i get hyped so much about are the Open Air Psychedelic Festivals i so eagerly tend to go, in Greece where i live or throughout Europe when i have the chance. They are the ultimate holiday break for me, that combines all the elements that give me to much mind food. Cutting edge electronic sound, pure and wonderful nature surroundings and all sorts of stimulants like psychoactives, colors, ethnic food, all this combined with the psychedelic community of each place you go. I usually come back home with my mental and physical batteries recharged in order to do what society expects from me (work, money etc)

If all the above does excite you as well and you want to experience a psychedelic festival yourself here is a small guide in order to do so:

• Before going to a openair psychedelic festival a basic camping set is required in order not to end up sleeping under the trees (tent, sleeping bag, torch, clothes etc). I have compiled a previous article concerning camping in general so i advise you to have a look at that to know what to expect and carry with you when being in nature for days.
• Going to such a place can become more fun when you have the right people as company with you. Not many peope, i knoew tend to spending many days in nature especially when being in a psychedelic festival. Even being alone is always worth it, something a i have attmpted in the past. Nevertheless try to go with people which enjoy nature and electronic music as much as it required in order to feel comfortable and relaxed during your stay in a openair festival
• The planning. As almost everything else today, the internet itself is the best source for information around. Psychedelic festivals could not be an exception to that rule. There are many websites and communities which list parties and festivals which are held in almost every major country and contintinent in the world. From Europe to the US , to africa and asia are places where the global psychedelic culture can be found. The major websites that list such festivals are the following: Goabase, Isratrance, last.fm festivals, Psychedelic Traveller
• Going there may as exciting as the festival itself. Going around Europe is fairly easy, safe and cheap nowdays, if you book in advance ofcourse. Airlines such as easyjet etc make things dead easy to travel around, though train or by car can also provide a mean of going where the festival is held.  There are also numerous flight search engines around the net, which can help you go wherever you wish. When travelling outside Europe planning and booking several months in advance will be required in order to make an intercontinetal journey feasable. I myself plan for heading for the 1st time outside europe and i may need to book flights at least 6 months in advance.
• Deciding where to go and what to do before and after the festival. I personally enjoy going for sightseeing and just being a tourist before going to a fest. Going somewhere outoside my country is always a chance to see places which i only see on documentaries. Eaitherways a good way of getting an rough idea of where to go and what to expect is by using Google Earth and Wikitravel. Having common sense and being more streetwise than usuall is also essential in order for your trip to end out as smoothly as possible
• Interacting with other during your stay in a festival always makes them more memorable and enjoyable. Meeting people like me, who i share the same passion for electronic sound from alll around the world, as well as flirting with wonderful psychedelic ladies which i may have a chance to meet make open-air festivals a peculiar social playground, which i don’t usually experience everyday.

Fortunately i am compiling this article a week before heading to Hungary to Ozora festival during August 2010. One of the best annual psychedelic festivals in Europe held in eastern Europe. So as by tradition i embedded a small trailer of this fest which gives you the vibe of this wonderful experience i am going to live for once again.

Nature today is treated as something foreign to us. Bugs, dirt, sun & the  temperature makes us feel uncomfortable. Modern capitalistic society mistreats it, pollutes it and over uses its resources. People nowadays, generally avoid spending time in nature and not try enjoying it to its full extent. It is really sad to find out that most people prefer watching documentaries on TV but never go spend some days outdoors even when the weather is good. My friends usually react enthusiastically to the idea of free camping but never got down to actually planing or even wanting to come when i decide to go somewhere. I try to avoid other people making me not do stuff, because of their lack of interest or courage to go a long camping trip. I feel so much happy i went to some places even alone and saw it was not so hard as i would have thought of. Outdoor psychedelic festivals fullfilling experiences which take place in nature. Some of them are: Ozora fest (Hungary), Transision fest (Spain), Aurora (Asprovlata, Greece). Though festivals are camping sessions accompanied with plenty of KWatts and the local psychedelic society of each place it is held, free camping as it is called in Greece is an equally fullfilling experience.

Here are some basic tools for enjoying quality time in nature:

• Transport. Going by car is the easiest way for going somewhere where public transport is not available. Also very convenient because carrying around stuff is required when there is no catering facilities. Using a bicycle is also an option though requires a good physical condition and someone with the same stamina. Public transport though is more cheap, fun but may be more tiring when having overbooked and delayed transits. It is also very tiring when carrying heavy backpacks around
• Company and friends. I have numerous of friends which i regularly hang out but few of them are willing to live an outdoor experience to its full extent. The idea always excites them though i may end up going to a open air festival alone. Fortunately i regularly get round to organising expeditions, during weekends or preferably for an anual open air festival
• Camping Gear. Having good and light gear always makes an outdoor expedition more comfortable. This gear involves: Rainproof tent, portable rolling mattresses, a sleeping bag, inflatable mattress (optionally), cooking gear (gas stove, grill, small ports and pans(, water containers (15L plastic water containers, camping bottles), an mp3 player + portable speakers, solar charging equipment, hygiene pack (small shampoos, soaps, toothpaste etc), portable fridge preserve food, backpack bag (small [40L] or big [70L]). Ebay is very cheap way of purchasing innovative camping gear, though sometimes local stores may have better deals.
• Psychoactives. I generally prefer to include all sensations when being in nature so i sometimes use natural (hemp, mushrooms) or synthetic (LSD, mescaline). Nature itself may be the best psychoactive experience therefore so all the above are mostly optional
• Physical Activities. They are essential in order to make the most of your time outdoors. Usually for me tin festivals i mostly dance and spend time generally experiencing the psychedelic event. When camping freely fishing, canoeing, beach volley, rackets etc are some physical activities which can  make time in nature really enjoyable
• Mental activities. Being in nature can become mind expanding voyages. Reading a book while resting in the beach, talking to your co-campers or others why you may meet there and even lying down and gazing the stars may all become ways of unlocking our minds of the daily urban routine and the transfixed superstitions  and ideas of our society
• The before preparation. Preparing some exciting is always an enjoyable. Research of your place or outdoor festival which you may want to attend is essential, in order to not regret your stay there. Google earth, flickr, forums and even asking other who have already been there are very important for knowing what you should expect there and what you may need to take with you in order to make your stay there mostly enjoyable.
• The after memories. For me every stay in nature is always memorable and enriches why overall life experiences. Some places i go again, some i judge that its not worth going to again. Nevertheless by your mistakes you learn and judge better on your future expeditions, making you be more prepared and organised

I know i will go on going for camping and outdoor festivals, because i feel nature so close to me. I feel really disappointed when people disrespect nature, when littering and destroying it. I even think of myself to blame for the industrial destructing of it. Western society and economy is based on infinite natural resources, and constant consuming of goods is essential to its stability we are all to blame for the destruction of it in such large scale. When we buy and industrial product we ought to have in mind that everything has a cost, a cost that is not measured in economic terms, than to environmental damage. The biological richness of our planet was there long ago we stepped our foot on this planet. We today act really narrow-minded and act like we own everything and have the right to destroy it. Nature is our home and we ought to protect it. This is the only home we have even known and we act as we don’t care about those who are to come. All those before us, gave us some elements intact, though today we misuse everything like we own it.

It is to our responsibility today, to protect our home which was here so long before us and should be kept as it was in order to sustain the biological diversity it holds, in order to hand it over as it was given to us.

All the pictures in this blog entry are from my last camping excursion in a magical location in Greece

Distractions. They are all around us. It’s all part of the fabric which modern society is constructed upon. They consist of what we have artificially created in order to expand ourselves and our everyday abilities. Technology, entertainment, fashion & trends, occupations, architecture, transport,  economy, arts and uncountable other elements of our society that we spend time & money on, in order to expand our capabilities as a species. We sometimes get over occupied with all these, through our occupation or everyday routine. They may sometimes cover a need we have or most of the time tend to make up false ones.

I myself become frequently distracted with artificial stuff like technology, music and generally possessing things or forget to spend time and energy with activities of more higher importance. It is very important never to neglect activities having to do with the original source. What consists this source? Surely not the central computer in the Matrix movie, or maybe  something resembling that concept. Source is everything having to do with physical nature, from the distant galaxies, the solar system, our biosphere and our selfs as a unity. It is everything that is not created by people and consists of the physical world and universe around us.

Almost every advanced soctiety which marked the global civilsation with cultural and technological advancements had an excellent knowledge and understanding of the night sky. Astronomy always stood as a highly significant activity and knowledge field. It was frequently carried on by the spiritual leaders of each tribe or civilasation. They were called shamen, a spiritual elite who had great understanding of astronomical facts and figures. The night sky always stood as cosmological compass in the spiritual explorations of every civilization. Astronomical elements like the Sun, the Moon, the planets and their periodical movement in the day and night sky played a crucial role in the religion they formed. Our star, the sun always played a leading role amongst all the rest deities which the religion consisted of. Even christianic philosophy today inherited its close connection to the sky. Certain dates around the year which corresponded to soltice celebrations arecarried around in modern societies and most of the time to our full ignorance on their original meaning.

Astronomy though has come much far in our days and has blended with numerous other scientific fields like biology, neurology, informatics, quantum physics etc. This new blend is called new cosmology. It can be conceived as a scientific religion itself where it often comes to a standpoint where is manages to answer many fundamental philosophic questions. The nature of matter, energy, time and space are demystified and analyzed through scientific reasoning. The special theory of relativity for instance uses the above elements in order to make a reasonable and experimentaly confirmed conclusion on their connection. Matter stands as a local curvature of spacetime itself. Spacetime itself is the 4-dimentional reality in which the universe excists in. Time is the projection of the 4th dimention in our 3-dimentional reality. We tend to perceive in our everyday lives as the progressive evolution and decay of matter. This statement was first observed during the 20th century through eclipse observations. We can clearly see that modern cosmological theories which are able to explain numerous philosophic inquiries may otherwise contradict or agree with fundamental religious beliefs.

In every way though, observing the evolutionary process of science and religion the night sky always stood as a keyhole for searching the “truth”. It sometimes stood as motivation for the creation of myths and gods and other times as a logical patern which needed to be further analyzed. The only piece of night entertaitment where humans were able to enjoy 99,9% of our existance on this planet. It’s not strange that it stood as the driving force behind many cultural references. Most of the time these myths were altered throughout time and borrowed from each other, being frequently incorporated within many different religions. We can see that it played a crucial role on social evolution and expansion of human culture. Today unfortunatelly we tend to take the sky as something granted, neglecting its impact on our every day life. Light polution in big cities, stands as a blindfold to modern man, who mostly lives in urban areas. Even though if humans can study astronomy indirectly, the dotted night sphere itself when rising your head up always stands as the ultimate inspiration artwork of the cosmos.

The two dimential skydome as we mostly percieve it today, in which the eliptic rotation of the galactic and solar points of light stand as a limit to our understating. Telescopes were invented in order to overcome our vision limits. Telescopes today can scan the sky almost to any spectrum of radiation contrary to our biological perceptive capabilities. All these advancements in radio-astronomy have produced magnificent images of the cosmos itelf, which were are unable to enjoy otherwise. Systematic observation of the universe has led to astonishing discoveries and the need of expanding physics beyond the Newtonian and Eclydional perception of the physical world as we tend to perceive it in our everyday lives. Reichman geometry which states that all space itself is curved and actually no straight lines exists whatsoever make it hard for us to visualize and fully understand. The field of “New Cosmology” is consisted by numerous of cosmological theories, which revolutionized classical astronomy. It is so hard to learn and keep track of this cutting edge field of science. The hardest thing is to transform your belief system according to this new field. Taking all the new scientific advancements in mind old superstition barriers can easily be crossed.

The cosmos as whole is a mind of itself. Extra terrestrial (non human) intelligence can be found everywhere. From the fundamental particles themselves to the clusters of galaxies, to every structure in our physical world. Everything acts to certain laws or may act chaotically. Even so all behave according to pre-programmed patterns which all add up to the evolution of biological life itself. This cosmic mind in which our biological minds physicaly exist, mysteriously enough have a very close connection to each other. Our mind observes this greater mind through vision, telescopes etc and analyses this information with the use of artificial computing machines, filling in for our arithmetic limitations. The interaction of the cosmos and us known in its popular form called astrology mainly consists of generalizations and incorrect facts, shows the need of most of the people to feel connected to something greater without using a religious path. Each one to one extent or another feels the need to understand and connect to the cosmos, the source where matter and physical elements were originaly created, where energy in the stars molds the buidling blocks of life.

He was alone. Alone though extremely comfortable with that idea that because he was glad he was there. All this felt so close and strangely familiar to him he never hesitated to explore his surroundings and interact with other people around him. Strange as they may seemed all these geometrical patterns filled with colours that surrounded him, glowed  delicately in the night blending with harmonically with this transcending place he seemed to be.  Numerous individuals sharing all great enthusiasm about all this place were there, scattered all around the place or just resting on their personal spaces. Each one was using a different communication code than each other, styling and acting according to his own expressive capabilities, though all this felt so natural and accordingly to this whole experience  that took place. Everyone could feel the vibration all across this mystical place from any distance. All came from the part where the main ritual held place. The ritual held there was the epicentre of this whole act and everyone emphasised to its taking place. It was the main reason everyone was there, in order to be a part of it. Each one with his own expressive colour of vibration became a part of this megascale ancient ritual accompanied with the energy that came from the drum of the shammen, the main coordinators of this whole happening. This energy was an amplified vibration which could be felt through the ground and ofcourse through the surrounding atmophere. All this he knew, was too important to ignore, too important to pass away. He knew all this was something that would eventually shape his existence and personality.

Moments of pure joy piled up and emotions spilled out from him. All this although made him also so sad deep inside. Why? Because he was unable to truly share all this tremendous feelings he experienced with someone else. He knew though he had to ignore this loneliness and just walk on. Although he felt bad about that he  just walked on as everything was ok, back to his reserved resting spot. On his way back as if in a dream he started to perceive things differently. Colours, feelings, smells, and sound came not only from his surroundings, but also were reproduced and mixed in his mind forming patterns unknown to him till then. A whole new way of perceiving the world and nature around him felt more real and right than he could before. Was all this something he had forgotten all about? He knew that his mind was capable and deep inside built for experiencing in such a lucid manner. All these hallucinations did not make him uncomfortable but rather seen as a great opportunity to feel the essence of all the elements that surrounded him. He eventually after that enormous burst of sensations, felt that he needed to be physical alone. Too many thoughts dripping from his mind and speeding upin his head. He never the less felt very capable of dealing with them, in his resting bubble away from the occupants of this small village he mysteriously became  and felt a part of.

To his way to his bubble the night sky stood as his navigational compass. He just walked by the sea, lay down and just tried to have some rest and become inspired by the view above him. Hallucinations gave way to deep and existential thoughts. Just facing his head up, was enough to make him hold his breath from the beauty of all this image he saw. This jewel (κόσμημα) as his ancestors called was a small part of something greater. The cosmos (κόσμος) he knew, was all that was, is or ever will be. He very deep inside felt a part of all this greater beauty. His heart was filled with enthusiasm every time he looked up and sometimes made him spill tears of joy. He could not face his eyes away from this eternal cosmic canvas which he knew was there much before he himself lay foot on that planet. It lay there almost eternally, standing as an inspiration for all those who lived before him and all those who will love after him. Looking at all this that lay above him as something to remind him of his origin, made him feel so little and big at the same time, knowing deep inside that he came from up there. He catched notice of the bright star of Sirius which for no apparent reason made him feel homesick. All this was too silly to explain, though it felt so right to him.

Joy gave eventually way to sadness. There was no apparent reason of feeling sad, though he knew why. He was there alone. Physicaly alone, just he and himself under all this beauty. No one there to hand out this jewel he was given just like that as a present only by being born. Somehow facing up he knew deep inside that he wasn’t alone to appreciate all this. Only someone who was meant to take part on the same ritual could share all this with him. Was that person there in that small colourful town but failed to notice each other? Maybe yes or maybe not. Nothing was sure enough. The only thing he was sure was  that he felt deep inside that he belonged in that summer solstice ritual and only  a person that could become a part of all this as well , was worthy of earning what he wanted so eagerly to give. All these hidden secrets he kept in the deepest corners of his mind. all the complexity and structure he held inside him was needed to be shared, but he was afraid to do so. All these puzzling thoughts made him feel so uncomfortable and uneasy. So heavy and sad thought he wanted to avoid facing himself and these  troubling thoughts. Sleep was the only cure for all this sadness. He decided to head back to his resting place and just try to sleep and dream of finding that person he had in mind. His dreams were his only shelter. The physical exhaustion was so great he lay down, and fell to sleep with only with comforting thought: he deep inside knew that soul is also walking on this planet and through time they will  eventually meet. This soothing thought erased all the fear and sadness of loneliness. He could now sleep and rest into the sea of  tranquillity of his dreams under the endless sea of stars that hung just above him silently, almost as if they stood there eternally.

He woke after the alarming chime that had been transmitted to him by someone or something he was unaware of. He could clearly remember a dream he saw. Pheanor was happy to see that he now he was able to take his task closer to completion. He was convinced deep inside that he was capable of reaching to that point and had devoted his whole existence and finally someday soon he would achieve his  goal. The sleep had lasted for several days, the frequency of which changed progressively according to the completion stage of his task. His sleep could be described as a deep state of trance. Waking up abruptly when sleeping was almost infeasible, though when that happened the consequences could be irreversible. The interruption of such a deep mental state disturbed the rhythm of all this process, where in many cases made the sleepers suffer irreversible consequences. Sleep was required in order to preserve the inner rhythm of the body they were born with. It was an ancient mechanism which altered the individual’s mindstate, and originally served the purpose of provideing physical and mental rest in order to strore energy of everyday aphysical ctivities. Now it resembled hibernation, a process which they had implemented in their genetic information in order of achieving higher goals of conscious awareness. Their sleeping booth were placed deep inside the ground of the celestial body they inhabited. That was done so in order to sync with the energy frequency patterns of their planet.

Pheanor clearly knew that without this time consuming process he could not achieve the goal of enlightenment which he had devoted his life and purpose and existence. When he woke up he vaguely remembered some dreams he had, which most of them were lucid, a technique he had steadily perfected throughout time. Remembering all the details of his dreams could be only done through time where he narrated to his teachers in order to guide him on his mission. In his dreams he regularly confronted his fears and needs and consciously altered the outcome of them. He knew all these were lessons he ought to be tought, though was somehow unsure who or what actually affected his dreams and paved new paths he ought to cross in his deep sleep sessions. He was unsure of the true origin and nature of this parallel reality he experienced every time he slept, though deep inside he felt safe and sure that whatever shaped and affected his dreams, led him to deeper understanding of who he was and what he ought to achieve. He could not remember all his dreams in high detail, though he was aware that all those even if he could not recall them, made him more mature and capable of reaching to a higher understanding of everything. They subconsciously affected his decisions which consequently opened a new path in his life. The only thing that he ought to do was to learn from his dreams and take advice of the elder and wise individuals of his community, on what he ought to do next. All this was essential in order to unfold the prophecy that was about to become true which he somehow strongly felt he would play a protagonist role in it.

We now, without doubt live in a phenomenal fast pacing and highly dynamic era. Even from the beggining of the 21st century the internet as a technology was wide spread mainly in western societies. The hype was so big ack then it led to the famous dot com crash. During the 90′s this new medium was introduced enthoysiastically though in many cases it was treated as something dark and corrupted and addopted after a lot of sceptisism although in mos of those cases it led to its systematic use as time passed. This new medium or in technical terms a wide network web which it’s main use is to transimit information from one computer to another today is used by many different electronic devices and appliactions (mobile phones, embeded systems etc). I could go on examining all the technicalities of this complex distributed network though it not one of my aim in this article. This technical term or better enough concept which originaly the internet was created is called information. Infromation stands as an illustration that comes in many forms today. A piece of paper with a text printed on it, a colourful picture in our case an organised flow of electrons througha a cable or silicon or even an electromagnetic wave transmitted into the atmosphere consists what we call information.

Information of course prexisted before the biological formation of the human consiousness or mind, even before our main information chemical stream was formed, our DNA. It comes back to the days the first forms of organised matter were formed, just after the big bang, with the formation of particles and organised patterns of radiation. Ofcourse the human consious arose into being much after this long cosmological evolution in order to observe and define what we know today as information. Without any doubt it is a concept that is able to explain and describe  every form and pattern that can be observed in our physical reality and beyond our biological capabilities of observtion. From the particles of matter to the groups of galaxies that form the cosmos, information is embeded into every pattern of this physical universe.

It was and definatelly still is today the main driving force behind the everlasting increase and organisation of our society. Originaly we invented speech as a very good tool in order to transmit information and ideas to each other, a very effctive tool which is embeded into our evolutionary line and probably transformed our DNA into making us more capable biologically of speaking and understanding speech. Speaking alone was not enough into making information last in time and was not able to be transmitted in different moments in time and location so writing was invented. This led to the increase in complexity of ancient languages as babylonian, greek, latin ettc. Historicaly then with the use of  differnt matterials each time (stone plates, papyrus, paper) an effective information transmittion took place. Sciences and culture was widespread through written language and generally a systematic and organised way of representing information. In every cases the quality of this knowledge in addition with the cultural level of each time and place or society played a crucial role on the progressive evolution of  the economy, science, culture, technological achievements of its people in addition with the geopolitcal turning points of each time.

The introduction of large scale typography during the 16th century accelerated the cultural and scientific evolution o western societies. Modern media such as magazines, newpapers, radio, television etc during the 20th century highly impacted the way we tend to learn and educate our selves today. In this everlasting evolutionary timeline of techniques and ways of transmitting information the internet holds its own special place in all the electronic media and has succeded on rediging on how we percieve and do many things.

It connsists of a highly dyanmic and distrubuted medium where the end user can interfere and interact with the formatiion of a given piece of information and contnt. With the use of specialized tools and abilities we are able today to contribute to a very high level and be a part o this new medium. Today the content that can be found on the internet covers alomst every part of human activity. It’s very important for us to understand the undermeaning of all this revolution that comes after the wide use of this new tool and use this challenge in order to evolve into something better as a society. We ought to see all this with a maturity which we ought to have after thousand of years of social evolution and avoid recycling old and problematic attidudes and ideas of the past. This ought to stand as a great challenge of world wide coopoeration and commonly trying to achive our defined goals as a society. Technology today is maybe more than we can use effectively and productively. We lack of proper oganisation on forming common interest communities which can impact societty outside the sphere of this electronic medium itself.

You may wonder why i have not examined extensivelly on the ways this new hypermedium affects our every day lives. I try to avoid repeating myself on this blog because i had published an article on that matter before almost exactly one year:  The Internet: The Ulltimate Hypermedium

In this life i owe to a lot to many, mostly my parents to what i have done with my life till now. I have almost ended my IT degree and finally finished with my army duty in the 12th of August ’09. After getting over with my army duty and turning 24, i decided that it’s about time to stand by some decisions i ought to stick to, in order to achieve some goals in my life. Creating and learning are two things i want start get more systematic with through a job and some hobbies i wish to expand. These resolutions can be outlined to the following:

• Find a job that could make me financially independent
• Finish all those thing i ought to do in order to get my IT degree at last
• Become accustomed with the LAMP web architecture and some web programming languages
• Buy a new Laptop and really make some creative use of it (Preferably a Mac with also Linux installed)
• Learn a music instrument and a piece of music software and dare to produce some piece of music
• Start a programming/applied tech blog
• Become involved in graphics and actually have something to publish when opening a deviantart.com account
• Not forget that life is all about being happy, having a good time, seeing new places, travelling  around, enjoying yourself  and falling in love.

I should not have any excuses anymore, why i should not work in a somehow permanent job. In this country finishing the army means that you ought to confront life more seriously especially when having to earn your own money. It is for me the next challenge i ought to take, in order to express my full potentials in the skills and abilities i believe to have. I tend to try to think outside the box and i dont think that i am meant to do anything but only if i feel like it.

All the above dots are expanded bellow, outlining my goals and expectations:

• Find a 6month practice job which is required and furthermore is subsidized by the government which earns you  living of minimum wage plus the extra money my college gives. Also want to eventually finish with my degree, which mostly because of laziness has taken me so long to acquire. Because money is important, thus not the most important thing in life a permanent income from working may be the best way to come around.

• Evidently IT is my field of interest and study so someone would expect me to have an occupation in that field. I have mostly web service developemnt in mind, though i do not exclude any other IT field that my come around. It is hard to know what ill be invloved with before starting to work, because it really has to do which field will become promising.
• I cannot say that i was the most hardworking student there was around because i tend to leave things i do not like to do behind from scedule. Having finished my army duty, the next thing i should do is to finalize all the elements required in order to gradute. That invloves a 6month paid work as an learner in a certain field close to my field of studies. I also have to take on a διπλωματική which has to do with developing something.
• I tend to use opensource software and tend to think in the same philosophy generaly. Many web services and websites relly on the LAMP (Linux – Apache – MySQL – PHP) platform which has proven very successfull. The field of the appliaction that can stand on this platform are broad, so getting use to setting up and administrating it would be an advantage in the job market and would also be a very powerfull tool in case i want to develop any idea of my own.
• I never go anywhere far without my beloved laptop. Now i own a small netbook, the Asus eee pc. This time speaking it covers all my needs, although i do not have the ability on spending a lot of time with it because of the army. It is fully portable though it lacks to stand as a machine which could make me fully productive (small screen, low cpu speed). I have been using GNU Ubuntu Linux as my main OS platform. I am very happy with it, though it lack support from the multimedia software vendors (Video, Graphics, Sound). A MacBook would be a good choice for me, which will give me the ability to use the very powerfull MacOSX and take advantage the great support it has from multimedia software. Offcourse i will not forget to install Linux on it, in dual boot mode. The quality of its design combined with these two powerfull operating systems will be the first step on becoming involved on the IT fields i hope to make a living from. A laptop alone is just a tool as any other, so being productive invlolves a lot of hard work and imagination as well
• Evidently music is one of my passions and addiction in everyday life. I spend a lot of time listening to music, which on one thought could be considered as a waste of time, though i mostly percieve it as my main creative inspiration and favourite relaxing passtimes. I find it hard to read a book, write or me involved in any mental act done when being alone without listening to some tracks from my music collection. For me it is a good way to concetrate on what i am doing and sync my brain with what i am doing. Because i consider myself as a creative and expressfull person, being involved in music production may be a good challnge and passtime which i should stick to. The main music theme i have in mind is some form of electronic music which does not lack the imagination of bleing in natural sounds and instrumnts in it. Ofcourse everything show up when trying to produce something and may end up somehow different than originaly imagined. Trying offcourse never hurt anyone so it may the best piece of art i ought to be involved with
• Blogging is maybe a new hobby i have taken up, though i consider my style of writing rather general and not of any imediate practical use. I tend to express notions, ideas and thoughts which are not in a certain thematic category. That may prove that i like to be involved any various thematic categories, each time digining something else which has come to my notice. I dont think by any chance of stoping this blog but rather to make a more specialed programing one, which will have to do mainly with opensource, programming web services and applicable knowledge stublembled upon when working with something. Many time i have found random troubleshooting information when searching the web usefull so it would be usefull to and out anything that i may consider usefull. Ofcourse this knowledge will come progressively, through my job and projects which i hope to be involved with.
• Visuals and grahics always arouse my interest so why not learn the tools in order to produce something myself. Photoshop, gimp and 3Dmax may be some examples of these tools, which ofcourse demand skills, work and imagination in order to produce something pleasing and creative
• I tend to forget that although in life achieving goals, earning money and being more serious on somethings is important, having a good time and enjoying yourself is also utterly important in everyday life. Money is only a mean of having a pleasant life and we many times tend to percieve it as the most important thing. Partying, going out with friends, laying back and just enjoying the monent are something i dont want to miss out in  my everyday life. Life for me is just a bag of experiences that pile up, which are obtained throughout time, through my need of having a good time, travelling, meeting people and interacting with them and generaly experiencing the world to its full extent. Till now the numerous experinces i have lived have shaped my personality and helped me to percieve the world differently tha before. So another goald of mine is to pursue a life with all its chills and thrills there are but never forget that i should also work hard on achieving my goals so i eventually become a part and contribute in the best way to the global civilation

From the age of renaissance and after the rebirth of science and classical thinking, the mainstream religious authority of its time was consisted by the catholic  and Byzantine church which frequently used its power and influence in order to fight against new ideas and views of the physical world. Bold scientists and thinkers, contrary to the everyday perceptions dared to make the step ahead in order to introduce new ways of analysing and perceiving the physical world around us. In one hand mainstream Christianic religion lead by the catholic church based its cosmological model on the Judea-Christianic writings of the old testament and never let anyone question the common spread analysis of them.

Through the book of genesis the 7 day process which the cosmos was created was literally perceived and preached by the church as the  plausible explaination of how the universe came to be. On the other hand Western scientific thinking which led back from Ionia and classical Greece was consisted by various theories of how the world came to be. Through logic, logos (Λόγος – Pure Though) many thinkers managed to introduced a new ways of how things came to be. Of course all this was done clearly through observation and analysis of nature and the phenomenology of the physical world around them they managed to lead to trustworthy conclusions. Technological means for experimenting were obsolete compared to today’s standards. Nevertheless it still stands astonishing the great leaps on just theorising about things. During the renaissance a systematic effort to revive this way of thinking was made by mathematicians, physicists, biologists and theoretics. Introduction and quantitative analysis of concepts such as gravity, matter and energy are some examples of the leaps some minds in that era made using mathematical and logical tools in order to come to trustworthy conclusions. A mechanistic model of the universe was steadily introduced where no greater power (otherwise god) was needed in order to make thinks work. That scientific concept was the main reason of the up to this time opposition of the church towards fundamental scientific theories.Originally the fight against these new ideas were widespread throughout Europe with the burning of books and handwritings. Today though, science is not treated like those days and is more likely to be controlled by various other economic and political factors. The church nevertheless still stands by its old views about the world and universe through its mistaken analysis of the symbolisms and parallelisms of the bible itself.

Till now through scientific method and reasoning, in order to explain some physical phenomenons there was no need for the God hypothesis. Each event could be systematically analysed and explained through logic. New advances in cosmological theory and observation introduce new challenges to our way of thinking. They consists on their own a new revolution. Astronomy, mathematics and modern physics blended together & evolved into what is called New Cosmology. Modern cosmological theories have come to a point where they can analyse and explain numerous metaphysical phenomena, where traditionally classical science just ruled out as non scientific. With the use of neurophysiology, biology and psychology ,some metaphysical phenomenons which have to do with humans and their interaction with their physical environment can be fully analysed and explained with the use of the above scientific methods. Phenomenons like telepathy, telekinesis, aura, healing powers, clairvoyance are some examples of phenomena that have been analysed, each time to a different extent, showing how new cosmology and  science have come so far in our days.

Traditional scientific areas like astronomy, mathematics, physics, psychology, biology, medicine and informatics which seemed to have little to do with each other, now collide and blend together into a new way of thinking and analysing the world. They manage to come to revolutionary results and conclusions which defy traditional views of the world and cosmos. Many of these conclusions strangely enough seem to be very similar to views of non-Christian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. Originally a coherence with the Christianic church was made when the big bang theory was introduced , which was compatible with the book of Genesis. So in the middle of the 20th century the pope came to agree and approve this fundamental scientific discovery which explained to a great extent the formation of our cosmos. That to the church maybe meant the proof of god event through scientific method, though for scientists themselves it made no proof of anything more than the big bang theory itself. Research continued independently of whether god was agreed to exist or not, because science itself is not a philosophical research but rather a research using logical and analytical tools. It very frequently though comes down to very thoughtful philosophical inquiries through its findings and conclusions giving way to new discoveries and research. Theology itself is the evolution and wide spreading of a certain esoteric philosophy and way of viewing the world which during time became religion through the need of using a tool in order to control a big sum of people. When looking religion itself neglecting the way it was forced or misintreprited it stands as a very strong philosophical and ethical tool which if examined without preduces, can lead to very interesting results which in many cases come very close to new scientific discoveries.

During my stay in the army which is expanded through the article published just before this one, i had the chance to read some very mind-expanding books during my idle time. These books revolutionised to such big extent how i tended to perceive things that i have not fully indulged into my thought system. This new cosmology needs extensive examining and studying in order to come to a point to grab that enormous leap in our way of thinking. Some of the books were called: The Universe and cosmological evolution, New Science and the akasic field, Cosmic Consciousness, Chance and Chaos in addition to 2 sci-fi novels of Arthur Clarke (The city and the stars & Childhoods end). From all the above i read i have not come to any organized conclusion in order to form an article. I know though all this is just too fascinating in order to ignore. Time will regain my previous creative and explorational mindstate that i was in before the army. Ofcourse i did not have the tools and personal space i needed in order to use this revolutionary information during my stay in the army. All this though will be the driving force in order to compile some new articles, based on new cosmology, singularity and inter-consciousness.

The fascinating cosmological voyage has just begun!

My activity on my blog has been stalled because i had to join the Greek army. Of course in there i could not use a computer, have the suitable mind state and desired personal space in order to form any kind of article. Now in July ’09 when all this non sense came to an end, i decided to restart expressing my thoughts through what i lived and thought in the past 9 months, via this personal electronic journal.

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Till now, after the formation of the modern Greek state, each young man has is legally obliged to spend a part of his life in the army. So decided after my college life was almost over, to continue with this chapter of my life and join the army. I found out that being employed in the IT field is really hard without having this done, because employers don’t want to see you go away for a year after you start learning to be productive in the field.

So in June i decided to end my army postponement so i could start serving my so called army duty , starting in November. I really did not know what to expect, although i had heard a lot about it, through friends and relatives. It is hard to realise that when joining the army for one year or less you have to report your absence every now and then. The army is thus another system of control over the lives of young Greeks like me. I soon realised that i could not have any long term plans for a year, no holidays, no uncontrolled travelling and nothing that really consisted free and unplanned movement. It is a controlled environment which an individual is not treated as a free citizen, rather than a soldier in training who is obliged to obey and follow orders.

Logic and reason is something that is not a virtue in the army, especially for the soldiers who are not paid in there and rather pay through tax and manual labour in order to serve the country. In every reasonable question, no reasonable answer corresponds. That is a paranoid statement, which may make someone frustrated on how the people in this environment tend to act and think. Eventually you have to live with that way of thinking and not ask or be worried by all the pointless time you have to spend for this part of your life. You have to live with the idea that contrary to the constitution and laws you are deliberately put in an environment that contradicts them. In the army environment democracy and rights no longer applie. Your personal freedom of actions, expression and way of life are confined in this pale hacki colour, making you a part of the place of eternal nothingness. I could go on days narrating the amount of pointlessness of this place, though eventually learned to ignore it, knowing that i could never belong in that place and i was just touring there for a small period of my life. Through all the frustration i sometimes felt  lucky because from a small age till now i learned to avoid locking down my thought system and felt just sorry for those people in the army who do so even in a personal level through the influence of how they choose to make their living in.

During the first months of my army duty, i found it somehow hard to adjust to this place, logic and everyday routine. Somehow though i strongly believe that everything has a reason to exist and moreover everything i happen to live has a reason as well. To be honest luck was by my side and i fortunately did not have to bare any hard training and living condition whatsoever. I spent one month in a recruit army field just 20 mins from my place, then spent one month in Giannena which resides in the Northwest part of Greece and eventually stayed till the end of my duty in a field just 5mins outside Alexandroupoli. I strongly felt that the army was something so not compatible with my state of mind and way of living, though i found out that i could use this serving time in order to en richen my experiences and knowledge. As most say that the army is a big school, in the aspect of having to live and coexist with people of different ages, places, educational background and personality. I found all that diversity rather intreeging and enjoyable because everyone was moreover different to every aspect to each other, thus treated by the same manner as plain soldiers.

Throughout my stay in the army i had the chance to meet some very interesting personalities from different backgrounds and share the same thirst for acting outside the permited lines of action and the everlasting need of self expression. The most important thing i gained from serving my army duty are the thoughts and experiences i shared with the people i met, who were just like me, struggling and trying not to forget who they were, what they loved and what they dreamed of. Through the process of projecting  ones mind into each other and sharing ideas i think my time spent did not go in vain after all. I had so much free time to speak, listen and think about almost everything you could imagine. Ofcourse my freedom of my psysical actions was limited and given the fact that certain creativity tools were not so easily accessible i could only use my memories and experiences in order to make something worthwhile.

As the days and months passed by i tended to ignore all the foolishness and pointlessness around me.  I just mechanically acted like i ought to do mostly in cases where it was impossible to avoid  doing so, which would end to my punishment through charging me with extra days to serve. Ofcourse wherever i could and was possible i did as least as i could. Generally i need to have a  motive when trying being active and productive, though in the army i deliberately avoided doing chores because in reality the army profits through manual labour, so found no reason whatsoever in doing anything more than i was strictly forced to. It is very clear that forcing every young personal to serve the army is clearly for saving money on manual labour and has almost nothing to do about training him for the event of a war.

In the end of May i decided to bring my small car with me in Alexandroupoli, as a great opportunity to explore and experience the more i could of the north-east part of Greece. In June i was sent for one month to serve in an army guard house half an hour north of Ksanthi, into the mountains towards Bulgaria. I had the chance there to experience a much different culture and religion than i was use to till now. It was a village of Pomakis, a slavish origin minority who happen to be Muslims. Contrary to popular belief they were very friendly and willing to help out. My stay there could be characterised as a month of chilling time and experiencing a place i would never stayed else wise. After that i returned to Alexanroupoli where i just waited to get my last days off. I risked of getting punished through my not so army like behaviour, though eventually i got 22 days off till the 10th of August.

Details, facts and names that have to do with army life are not of such importance after you finish all this eternal foolishness. The people though i met inside, who also served time like me, the experiences, places and thoughts we shared i think is something priceless and pays off the lost time spent in there. Luckuly i was able to use my mobile phone which takes rather nice shots. I’ve embed a small flickr slideshow with all the flavours, colours and places i had the chance to live in this small chapter of my everlasting voyage in life

Click readmore to view slideshow

I have a tendency of getting bored of staying in the same place and environment for a long time. After my grand euro tour in August and the psy/ambient festival in Greece that followed it in August i had to go back to Crete in order to attend my course exams, in order to complete my IT course, something i have to get over with soon enough. During the exams in June i stayed at a friends place in Heraklion, Crete, though in September i decided to stay in an Occupied building in my college campus. The self organized residence has mainly a left wing political character. The main theme of this residence involves people who are against hierarchy, racism and control of any kind. It is a place of free expression, political, artistic or existential, a group of people highly tolerate to alternative lifestyles and belief systems. Eventually i decided to stay till the end of October, afterwards stay some time in my hometown, Khalkis and then join the army in the 12th Nov, as i am obliged when being born in Greece

Luckily enough i found it rather easy to fit in this group of people, each one with different though systems, political views and lifestyles. The building use to be the old college dorms and was abandoned after the new ones were built in another part of the campus. Before 3 years as i was told this building was occupied forming a place called an occupation with mainly a political character. The inner need of expression could be seen in any part of the building, from colorful wall paintings to political flyers and posters. The building involved the rooms each resident had, the kitchen, the main lounge, coffee place, outdoor kiosk, studio, inner garden, toilets, showers as well as rooms for visitors which i lived in during my 2 month stay. Every room had Internet access, which combined with the 2 speaker set i brought with me could, made my stay more enjoyable and productive during the time i stayed in my room. In the beginning of September i bough a cheap eee pc, which will probably cover my needs till next year. I brought with me my car, packed with the essentials, from speakers, clothes and accessories i would need for a 2 month stay.

I myself political was never active in any leftist political group, though i found many common ideas with my political identity of decentralized and unhierarchical systems. For me it is important to keep a distance when learning about something new and not incorporating it immediately to your belief system, but rather to reason with it first. I do not consider myself an anarchist and i don’t tend to get involved in political activism, though i tend to incorporate this belief system when dealing with various systems and structures (software, energy etc) Nevertheless personally it is very important to be able to experience new things and learn from them without getting directly attached to them.

I had the chance of meeting some very interesting and diverse personalities, ideas and views from people highly stimulated from injustice and unconformised with the systems of control, governmental or capitalist. Each resident with a different life style and way of viewing society altogether. Each one came with a unique personality, thought system, music linking and appearance. I used to walk by that building viewing it with a hostile manner, though eventually figured out that despite the negative image it may project to the outsider, the atmosphere was very friendly if you get to knew the residents. They were a mix of students, workers, dreamers, political activists, hippies, musicians and travellers. I myself have a small mix of all those, so i managed to have a common ground with most residents i had the chance to meet.

The residence was organized in an unhierarhical fashion, where decisions were ade during the weekly meeting in the coffee room. Tasks and jobs that were needed to be done were handed out volunteraly during that weekly meeting as well as issues which bothered the residents and had to do with buidling as a whole. Most of the times the resident were able to discuss reasonabely though many times the opossite occured.

Overall it was a great 2 month stay, where i experienced so much and will consider living again in order to finish my IT course next year. I will also consider visiting some similar residences in Spain and else where in Europe during my 2009 summer eurotour. It is a great example on how people with not much can live trully live out their everyday. Just by combining something few you have can sum up for the benefit of the many. Thinking that our society could be transformed in such manner may seem utopic, decontructing the western capilistic system, though i find it realistic to build unhierrchical and community driven social structures. It mostly has to do on our willing to cooporate, interact and communicate with each other defying our short term benefits, through deep social tranformation and progression we manage to gain a better living for all.

Evolution and change is always persistent in any form of biological species. Studying the evolutionary timeline of biological species on earth we can note according to Darwinism, that through natural selection simpler biological forms evolved through random changes in their genetic information, adapting to their surroundings according to primal survivalist and reproductive instincts. Simple forms of biology progressively evolved, forming complex immune systems, neural networks and specialized organs. All this process carried out for millions of years, had mainly to do with the ability of biological species to store information with the use of genetic code. Our genetic code, the DNA may be the most efficient way of storing million strings of information , in order to carry it on throughout the generations. The progressive state that steadily perfected this information according to outer circumstances and survivalist needs led to forming of the human species. We as a human species are the product of the ability of biological species to adapt, evolve from simpler lifeforms to something as complex as ourselfs.

From an very early stage of our inhabitance on this planet technology was always the key to our survival. Hunting for our food and keeping warm could not have been done without the use materials found locally and though reasoning we could build our first tools in order to achieve our primal survival goals. Our survival depended on it and mainly expanded our physical abilities which were not given through evolution. Many people when hearing the word technology think that it has only to do with electronics and computers. In fact it was a term with ancient Greek terminology. Τεχνολογία (Greek) is formed by Reasoning and Technical. Through reasoning the first forms of technology were formed using technical elements from nature. The axe, spear, fire, clothing are all primitive forms of technology. The way this technology was built was carried out through generations only by our ability to communicate the techniques (information) so this technology could be built. The forming of technology was carried out strictly because of survivalist reasons, because as a human species we are physically inferior to other animal species. The means of carrying out this information was done through spoken and written language. It is still today the most efficient and human like way of communication. Many times the communication medium changes when using telephone landlines, mobile phones or the internet. The principle though remains the same.

Comparing the two progressing processes of transforming information someone could note some same basic principles. They are physical processes which:

• The ability of this given system to store and transmit information throughout time is highly efficient
• Use of elementary building blocks, chemical elements in order to form complex mechanisms and tools
• Simple forms, transform into more complex ones
• Causability is the basic driving force
• Randomness also plays a very important role
• The most simple but efficient-effective designs were those which lasted in time
• Designs that failed to adapt throughout time were lost once in for all
• The designs that last tend to use and transform energy very effectively
• Good designs tend to have the ability to reproduce this information very easily

Offcourse there are many differences between them though it is very interesting when examining their similarities. Human made technology though does not always as efficient as it could be and frequently is used for many harmful causes that affect us directly. It has to do with society itself, its basic forms and needs. It is a mirror of our needs, wants, mentalities and attitudes towards each other. Technology itself is the ability we have to use elements found on this planet to make tools for a certain purpose. It cannot be labeled as good or bad, and has mainly to do with how we intend on using it. The 21st century has shown profound new ideas and tools we are starting to use and build. Ecological and efficient systems, from LED house bulbs to solar-wind-wave energy producing islands, the internet, biotechnology and many other applications seem to make reality what we not very long perceived as science fiction. We have the ability to produce new ideas and concepts in a very high rate than any other time in history. A small change of information on our genetic code that took thousands of years now through technology is a matter of days.

Prometheus, a figure from Ancient Greek philosophy who stole the fire from the gods and gave it to humans stands as a good symbolism to technological societies itself. We seem to have a great ability on inventing new tools and tehnologies though we many times dont have the best causes and education on using them. so many people have the impulse on using new technologies without the proper education concerning their use. Consumer electronics seem to be thrown out very frequently nowdays. They end up in landfills because the consumers have no education on why they should recycle them in the 1st place. Causability concerning uses of everyday products has seem to lost. Most purchaces today are made through impulse and not through need. Modern concumer society does not regard that less is better and we tend to be satisfied by quantity and not by quality. Comparing the basic driving forces of how technology is spreaded and used with the biological diversity of our biosphere we can note several differences. In my view biology is far more sophisticated, complex and effient than man made technologies . Structures found in nature are the best teachers for implementing them. Through the passing of time formations and mechanism in nature steadily perfected in terms of efficiency and through the need of survival-reproduction. Human made technology has different driving forces, whereas many inventions are made just by luck, military uses, space and aeronautics uses or just for profiting by it when releasing to the consumer market.

Society itself though shows many similarities in a different scale with the natural ecosystem. They are both have a dynamic structure and somehow in both cases, the most effient and effective design lasts through time. So technology from carved wood to the internet is just a process of natural selection occurring in our society. There are needs and uses where technology steps in and fills that gap. Offcourse for once again the most important thing on developing new uses of technology is reasoning of it’s use, side effects and causability. We must not forget that the most advanced and complex technology/organ of nature today, is the human brain, which we ought to use more of these days.

The Map of The Internet as shown above

Throughout the human history i can note several critical transition points on our ability to express, distribute ideas to each other efficiently to a person to person level. It led to our ability to cooperate and know how to build primitive technology we would rely on our survival. The need of having a way to store and distribute this information led to the formation of written language, making information more resistant to time and  geographical area. These two points in human history were crucial in order to be able to form complex social structures like political, educational and technological systems in society. Written language at first was carved on plates of stone making it somehow an inefficient means of distributing information. With the invention of typography this barrier was brought down and when widely accepted books could be easily carried around making knowledge and information available to almost everyone. This led to the reinvention of science, social sciences and the rebirth of human spirit during the renaissance. This eventually led to an ever increasing development in technology paving its way to the industrial revolution. During the 60′s a new science was born called Informatics. The science of the technologies, teqniques and ways to store, distrubite and transform information on an electronic and electromagnetic level. A cold war bi-product was the network used to distribute this information called the ARPANET, todays internet’s presuccessor. After the end of the cold war during the 90′s this new sophisticated network was commercialized, making it an highly efficient way to distribute information globalwide, ina very short time.

During the first years of its commercial life it was mainly used for e-mailing and viewing static HTML pages through a web browser. The dynamic architecture of this new communication network always succeeds to its constant redefinion of its own form, web technologies and ways people can collaborate and distribute information. Web services we were never able to be predicted became reality like electronic shopping (eBay), collaborative encyclopedias (Wikipedia), collaboratively built software called opensource platforms (Linux, BSD), always surpise us of the numerous possibilities this new hypermedium will provide us in the near future. The quality and quantity of information stored on the internet is growing geometrically. Consumer electronics and computer’s started to become everyday appliances, leading to the mass reduction on the overall manufacturing cost. According to Moore’s law which claims that the computer power doubles every 1,5 year leeds to the reduction of computer power cost throughout time. Today it is feasible to buy a small laptop computer for under 350$ – 300euros. Storage has also become cheap and extremely flexible. Free network storage is also a new phenomenon, where it is able to publish and share large amount of information on the internet (Flickr, Youtube, Box.net, GMail etc). Offcourse there are alternative means of the storage suppliers to earn the cost of network storage through advertising, subscriptions and not charging the storage space directly. Google shows a great ability to buy and hand network storage for free in a mass scale. Complete desktop operating systems like Linux or MacOSX and Windows to a smaller extent, are built in a manner to have a close interconnection with this vast network. A new trend in software platforms like Debian Linux, iPhoneOS installer etc shows that through a well built package and feed catalog, software can be directly installed and used. It automatically updates with any new release and security fixes without almost any human interaction at all.

Offcourse when taking about software platforms we mistakelly think about desktop pc’s or mobile-portble devices. There are many to name Linux, Windows, MacOSX, BSD, Unix (PC Platform) Symbian, iPhone OS, Google Android (Mobile Platform) though we seem to forget to mention the forecoming and possibly dominant platform of the next decades. That is no other that this vast network itself, the internet. It was made because of the need of information distribution between desktop computers during the 70′s. The big turning point through was when the so called Web 2.0 which started after the .com boom in the begining of this decade. Wonderful collaborative and innovative services were formed, expanding the static html web pages into a dynamic and interactive service. Multimedia started to be widely used, apart from pictures and sounds, mainly with the use of the proprietary flash language. AJAX a relatively new web technology, which is opensource as most of the rest web technologies that exist today, shows gret signs of progress into making webpages, application alike. Google services where AJAX is widely used, manage to simulate popular desktop software like mail clients, organizers and calendars, office suites etc. Offoucerse their capabilities are limited compared to a complete office suite, though seem to be widely accepted because they are platform independent and accessible from anywhere. There are also some examples of web services which simulate a desktop OS to a very limited extent though. All these services though are mostly new, have only been around not longer than 5 or 7 years. Web technologies them self are not static as well, and luckily enough seem to evolve in an open manner, constructed one in top of another, mostly at first for practical reasons. As a decentralized network open specifications, on how things work, are crucial on the success of a technology and its wide adoption. Offcourse only time can tell of which web technologies will evolve from the existing ones and which needs will leed them on their creation. Dynamic web laguages for instance were made because there was a need for user interaction, flash because of the need of vector motion graphics and web video etc. The same manner will apply to any new web technology arises. Ofcourse in the internet sphere it is extremely hard for a software vendor to monopolize any given web technology because developers from all over the world which will actually use this web tool in order to construct web services need clear and distinct specifications of how this given technology works.

Appart from the everyday applications, uses and software tools the internet is consisted of, it is an interesting approach when examining the internet as a network itself. It is consisted of interlinks between servers, clients through switches, routers using many communication mediums like fiber optic cables, coper cables, wireless networks, satellite networks etc. Processing units which use this network such as desktop pc’s, servers mobile devices seem to act as a unity altogether, forming a worldwide neural network. This overall processing and storage ability seems to be in many cases redistributed with this network. Offourse when dealing with technology we mostly forget that various technologies have to do with us, humans using them. So in the case of computers, it can be considered as a technical tool to process, store and distrubute information we use in our everyday lifes. This information can consist almost anything from ideas, thoughts, multimedia, structures and pasterns in society. So this network has to do mainly with us and how the product of our intellectual can be stored, distributed, organized, restructured, transformed in order to reshape the impact of our thoughts themselves in everyday pasterns of society. Noosphere, is one expression of this consciousness unification via this new medium as it can be shown in the wikipedia quote below:

In the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, the noosphere (sometimes spelled noösphere) can be seen as the “sphere of human thought” being derived from the Greek νούς (“nous”) meaning “mind” + σφαίρα (sfaira) meaning “sphere”, in the style of “atmosphere” and “biosphere.” In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky’s noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements.

For Teilhard, the noosphere is best described as a sort of ‘collective consciousness’ of human-beings. It emerges from the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This is an extension of Teilhard’s Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, added that the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point—which he saw as the goal of history.

Some examples of how the internet has started to impact society can be found in educational systems, banking systems, everyday communication (IM’s) and has started to impact and threaten traditional mediums like radio, tv and newspapers. Offcourse the internet is in a very, very early stage, with just of 15 years of comercial addoption. It’s use has to do directly with the structures in society itself and always ought be so. The pace of its evolution can be seen in an everyday timescale, which also coresponds with the geomemetrical growth of computing power and storage capacity. Offcourse this system called the internet feeds upon itself and constantly gets rstructured and reorganized. Many science fiction writters i had the chance to read their work, seem to have predicted this new medium far before the initial introdution of the internets presuccesor the ARPANET. I guess it is a indespensible need of an organised society which many had seen so far ago. It is interesting enough to see how Arthur Clarke for instance throough a fiction book managed to predict an far more evovled version of the internet in the 1950′s. In his book “The City and The Stars” hs describes a developed future society that is forced to live underearth. Their own personal space, like our known living rooms are consisted of a floating spheres where personal thoughts and dreams were projected onto its surface. This idea mirror could interconnect with any other person in this city, and physical presense was not needed in order for human interaction. This mind tool could step in any place or time if the user wished to do so. It was unsure even to the people using this mental tool whether it was real or not. To me this which was written 60 years ago, instanstly strikes me as the internet evolved far in the future. This concept was percieved far before digital networks, computers in a home level, mobile phones and all the gismos of consumer technology. It was concieved through the need of our thoughts and mind to interconnect with each other and defy the limits of space and time. Time will show on how this new complex and dynamic system will evolve and how it will be adopted in various social structures. There is a big need of keeping this new medium open, decntralised and uncotroled from certain political, finanical and coorporate control. Offcourse all the above must be a part of this system though it is very important to avoid the shaping of it in strictly their individual intersests.

As usuall i have embeded a small video of the perspective of this new network to evovle in an intelligence itself:

Man was always an explorer and always will be. Starting from a simple nomad and collector of food, he organized, forming complex societies, institutions, science, technology, arts, transportation and just before 50 years we came to the point where we were able to defy gravity itself. Reluctant at first, the first humans just orbited into the higher parts of our atmosphere, just being able to see the earth from a very near distance, visualizing our small blue planet as a unit, without all the numerous divisions we tend to apply in every social and political level. Unfortunately though, through conflict during the cold war era, space technology progressed and we managed to explore the biggest part of our solar neighborhood. Several maned missions were sent to the Moon, although they had small scientific value. Numerous probes were sent to the nearby planets, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Uranus etc which managed to uncover so many secrets they withheld from us for thousands of years.

The night sky, always stood as an amazing piece of art of the cosmos itself. It was the only night entertainment for thousands of years, before electricity and amusements were invented. Through observation alone, we managed to understand so many things of our place and coordinates in space. The movement of the night sky is so accurate, it stood as an astral clock and navigational beacon for centuries. Sciences like mathematics and cosmology were introduced in order to explain and modelize this piece of art. Constellations were given forms from everyday society, pinpointing the most observable groups of stars in the sky. Every religion attempted to explain the origin of the cosmos and our place in it. Each religion managed to give a somehow plausible explanation of how everything observable came to be, though some succeeded to confirm modern cosmology. The Hinduistic model of creation comes in parallel to an amazing extent with the big bang theory for instance. Eitherways we can conclude that the cosmos was always incorporated in belief systems globally. The human species has always felt as a part of all this breathtaking picture we are able to see every night. The theoretic scientific work kept going for thousands of years, so we became able before just 50 years ago, to send something of our own technological achievements into our solar system. Voyager is already out of our solar system, heading to the stars. It holds upon it the basic information of the species that sent it, standing as a modern bottle into the cosmic ocean. We may someday stumble upon it when touring the cosmos in the following eons, making it a relic of our historic timeline in space.

The heart of civilization started in Mesopotamia (Babylonians, Sumerians), moved to the coastline of the Mediterranean sea (Ancient Greece, Egypt, Roman Empire), spread throughout Europe and finally head overseas (North & South America, Oceania, Asia). We colonized the whole planet, fulfilling our thirst for exploration, profit and being challenged by the unseen. Moreover today we stay home, preserving the old divisions and mentalities that have always held us back. Taking in mind the present state of technological & scientific progress, colonizing other planets and solar systems is just a matter of time. I personally am in favor of such an idea, though in order to do so, countless of obstacles have to be overcome. First of all we must redefine our motivation on doing to. If we take the colonization of the European nations as an example, it can easily stand as something we should avoid. Profit and exploitation alone will only led us to making the same mistakes, seen throughout history. Society today stands immature to act as a colonizer of other planets and star systems. The realistion that we ought to stand as a unity has not been fulfilled yet, where division and conflict can been seen in every social and political level everyday. We seem to find it so hard to agree, cooperate, and act for the benefit of the whole in the long term. Each political action in every nation is measured in short term economic and diplomatic profit, forgetting the anthropic values they ought to promote. Fundamental social values play the last part in the higher levels of decision making. So concluding i personally believe it is too soon to start talking or planing about moving to other worlds. Space colonization may be soon feasible technologically though there is a need for fundamental social and political transformation in order to do start doing so.We have just started to show signs of achieving that goal. Environmental issues like global warming which demand action in a worldwide scale have made us realize this need. The impact of closed cooperative and idea systems like the internet have just started to impact society itself. Time will only show if we are mature enough to fulfill unity in a large scale. Economy, media, society, communication are being more global, dynamic and fast paced. Each one with different aiming and technique.

As for space exploration itself it was initially boosted through conflict in the cold war era, though today great signs of progress can be seen overall causability is concerned. US, European, China’s, India’s and Japan’s space agencies very often corporate into achieving a common scientific and technological goal. Achievements as the International Space Station, Hubble, numerous space probes and many other planned  missions seem to show great signs of change of our ability to work together and pursue clear scientific goals. Mainstream science fiction most of the times fails to foresee social advancements and mostly rely on our existing forms. Though many sci-fi writers manage to invent new structures and mentalities in advanced hypothetic future societies. Space exploration cannot be treated as something distinct from society itself. Every human species and every country must play a crucial role in this process. Transformation and change will maintain our sustainability and balance on our heading into the future and finally to the stars. Nothing is set to develop into a certain manner, thus future is made today, constructed by every aftereffect of our present action. Finally i have to name a man which always stands as a great inspiration for me, where if it wasn’t for his documentaries and ideas i may not have started this article and blog in the first place. That man is Carl Sagan, a great scientist, exobiologist and most important of all anthropist, humanist and great thinker of our modern times. He was involved in many of NASA’s achievements and never ceased to note out the anthropic value every human action and achievement we ought to have in mind. The least i could so is to embed one small part of his documentary series which underlines man’s visions in space

From the dawn of human civilization, the way we organize any complex social, economical or any other system has the greatest impact to our future development. There are many examples of centralized social systems which in their principle have not changed after many centuries. Monarchy as a form of governmental system was one of a great example of how some few self elected people managed to conserve their authority over other people for many centuries in numerous occasions. Historically societies tend to hand authorities to the few, which in most cases led to the halt on social and scientific development.

The biggest social change that occurred throughout history began in my home country, Greece. In a time period of 400years numerous of social, scientific and political changes occurred, challenging the old thoughts and preserved mentalities. The most profound change in the political system was through the introduction of democracy. A political system which in theory everyone as an Athenian citizen had the ability to decide over or against any decision made in his town/country. Contrary to old Monarchic and Oligarchic political systems, it decentralized the decision making into the whole spectrum of the Athenian citizens. Ancient Greece was also one of the first civilizations that introduced the modern scientific method. Reasoning and experimenting were common in scientific circles. The expansion of this way of thinking was done through introduction of educational systems and social forms that helped the further development of any promising mind.

I can find numerous of other historical examples where society managed to overcome the old way of thinking and foresee new structures in order to head into the future. An interesting era to watch this transformation occurring is today. Most of the nations on this planet have capitalistic economies, democratic governmental systems and the dynamics of any country is influenced by global changes in economy, diplomacy etc. Although at a first glance someone may speculate that our complex systems are decentralized, infact they are not. I have tried to distinguish some of modern societies main elements and examine where to what extent they are centralized or not.

Economy

Western Capitalistic Economies rely on the dynamics of the free market and the ability of any private person to buy, sell goods or services. The value of local Currencies and their availability in a country are regulated in each countries central bank. Banks in general play the role of the money agents where they have the ability to buy and lend money for private interests. Someone may speculate that Western Capitalism as an economic system is fully decentralized because it mostly depends on the dynamics of the free market, it is strictly regulated by financial entities, the central banks, feds etc, where the structure of them can be visualized into a pyramid of regulators. Many economic elements in societies like inflation, unemployment, interest rates, value of money in order to lend, the cost of energy (oil) are strictly regulated by a group of banking and financial entities. Though capitalism may appear as a decentralized and a dynamic system, it is highly regulated and centralized. Before the introduction of banks money was invented as a practical way to represent the value of goods and services. Because of practical reasons a centralized authority regulated the printing and flow. I dare to be reluctant in stating the above because i have no economic educational background.

Modern applications semi-decentralized economic technologies is internet banking, paypal where they manage to directly provide their financial services at a fraction of the original cost. Electronic economy is becoming global, faster and far more accessible to end consumers. Paypal for instance, n internet payment financial entity has managed to form a highly effective e-money system, which has started to widespread almost everywhere. Offourse it is still centralized though it manages to overcome the dependence of local banks and regulators.
Zopa, an emerging concept, involves social lending (p2p lending), where lending and borrowing money can be done from person to person through the internet. Borrowing money through this service becomes far more decentralized and personal, with also an amazing low borrowing rate. Numerous other internet financial services exist which manage to redefine old concepts.

Government/Political Systems

Throughout history though many thinkers managed to challenge the old and introduce new economic and political systems. Communism, a political system introduced in the start of the 20th century, in theory tried to hand the proletarian (the people) all the production and economic shares. In practice though to my view it led to become another oligarchic political system, having in many cases the same mentality as fascism. China today, and Stalin’s Russia were some examples of these practices. Today most agree that communism was a failed and declined political system that belongs to the past. US capitalism on the other side managed to contradict the above political system. It mainly relies on the dynamics of the capitalistic economy, it’s growth, consumer spending etc. It manages to achieve a freedom on private investments and generally a freedom of movements when private financial interests are involved. Today most countries have capitalistic economies which vary from place to place and have some form of democratic political system. Democracy as we know it today is one of the most widespread political systems. Unfortunately as many other concepts, in practice it has nothing to do with its original definition. In ancient Greece where is was first conceived and practiced it had to do about handing out the decicion making to the many. Today democracy invloves a complex electing and respensentative system where throuhg political parties accoring to their political plan and ideology are elected to form a goverment and alltogether are involved in voting for or against new govermental laws. With this way modern democracy is practices it virtualy confines the citizens into just electing a political party amongst few. They are confined just to decide every 4 years, virtually keeping them out of the decision making process. Offcourse in a democratic country there are many ways of being politcical active through various non-profit organisations, political activism, strikes, public referendums and many more. Democracy today is by principle centralized and confined to the few elected. Offource the constution defines in which way authority and dicision making is practiced. Decantralizing this system in every level is still a utopia. Public referendums are avoided mainly for political reasons, making them almost unexistent in people’s minds as a form of deciding about a crusial political issue. Redifing and reforming a more decantralized system is feasable with the use of technology, public awareness and acting local though this process cannot only be done through the redifinition of concepts in the constution. Offcourse the only one with the authority of doing so are the pre-elected representaives who by no means want anything to do with redifing their place in the pyramid of authority and handing it out to the many.

Information/Education/Software

Information, as strange as it may sound was the reason we evolved into human species today, through the evolution of our genome, the DNA. In social terms the distribution and spreading of information, initially through speech led to the advancement and increase of complexity of out local societies. The biggest boost of that everlasting process was done through the introduction of typography, books and modern educational systems. A new medium which was initially developed in the cold war era, was introduced commercially in the early 90′s. This medium is no other than the internet. Initially poor in content, it managed to evolve in a huge scale, and has become today the most dynamic, complex and well structured information sphere. Contrary to other preexisting mediums as the radio/tv etc it differs to the extent of user interaction. Information does not flow vertically, from the few that own a tv/radio station, but horizontally from the end users to each other. The web technologies and structures of this network led to the building of amazing services and knowledge databases like wikipedia, youtube and numerous special interest communities like forums, message boards and wiki’s. Offcourse no one could have predicted all the above. Some may say that the internet is a form of applied democracy, where each one can interact, change and form this new structure. To my view though the internet as a network/technology/medium is still in it’s early infancy though. The rate of it’s growth in size, complexity and userbase is surely profound and will start to impact everyday society/economy/politics/distribution systems worldwide. Offcourse everything we adopt should be done after some extensive reasoning. This dynamic and interactive structure of this network has surely started to impact the way software is produced and distributed. Open source software is a great example of this transform, where following an revolutionary philosophy, it practically managed to provide free software, as in freedom and price, through a decentralized manner. Unfortunately open source software has many obstacles to overcome, in order to become widely adopted. Nevertheless it is a great sign of how the introduction of a new way of thinking combined with the use of the internet started to challenge the old and had a positive impact on society itself. An observer could easily notice that through the wide adoption of the internet, it’s really hard to force the use of centralized techniques. The end user, to a different extent each time, has realized that the spreading, growth and evolution of this new medium, depends on his freedom and ability to fully interact with it, contrary to old centralized mediums. To me though the internet as i mentioned above is in it’s early infancy, not because web technologies are inefficient or underdeveloped, but because it has only just started to impact social forms and structures. Electronic democracy is still a utopia, although the technology fully exists. That is because politicians on the one side cannot imagine loosing any of their decision making authorities and handing them virtually to the whole spectrum of society.There is also almost no realization of this need and feasibility from the part of society. To me the progress of human civilization can by no way be achieved through progressing technology and science alone. The true progress occurs in society itself, on our ability to self- realize, reason, interact, cooporate and overcome old and preserved mentalities with the use of education, self knowing , technology and extensive reasoning.

Energy & Transportation

Energy distribution today unfortunately is one of the most centralized systems. Oil, gas, electricity is distributed and produced by a few corporate and government entities. Ofcourse this centralized system could not have been created by mistake. Some few, early realized that energy would be the main element of the 20th century society, so electric cars were never produced in a mass scale and fossil fuel was presented as the only way of gaining portable and efficient energy. This centralized system played a crucial role in the evolution of modern economy and industry. Not recently enough though, a side effect of all this was the destabilization of the global climate from the CO2 emission on a massive scale. The environmental hazards were realized decades ago, though industrialists and economists which influence global politics managed to persuade us of for the opposite. The environmental damage caused was named as science fiction, rumors, urban myths etc. The 1st sign of political realization of the hazards we faced from the existing energy distribution system occurred in Kyoto, with the signing of the well known Kyoto protocol. It was an ambitious atempt to radicaly change in the way we produce energy. Offourse the lobbyists were not persuaded once again, so it was almost neglected by the US government, the biggest CO2 emitter globally. Though in 2008 things have changed, realization of this environmental problem has started to spread and at last numerous political and technological practices have started to focus on the environmental problem. Eco friendly technologies and techniques though seem to be in most cases decentralized. With the present state of environmental technologies it is feasible for a home and car owner to be energy sufficient. Efficient solar and wind installations, electric plugin vehicles manage make this fully feasible. The electricity grid network has started to become more decentralized and horizontal. Offourse it is very early to say that the above are reality. Peer to peer energy networks may appear soon enough, mimicking the structure of the internet itself. To achieve this transformation it mainly depends on political will, where through new laws and regulations, monopolized energy markets will be forced to become open and horizontal. Environmental technology itself has progressed to a promising level, though to fully build a decentralized energy distribution network, energy efficiency must be the 1st aim. Ironically i predict that this transformation will occur mainly by need, because environmental hazards have become everyday reality. Achieving a decentralized energy distribution system is a very big task, that requires political will, realization from the civilians of this need, mass adoption of renewable energy technologies and long term investment on them. For once again change will be the key element to maintain and sustain our balance in energy demand and supply, where fortunate enough this decentralized model can only use renewable energy sources and technologies.

Products & Goods Supply

Historically the supply of goods was mostly done between small scale producers (vegetables, meat, clothes, goods etc). Societies used to be far more less demanding on specialized goods and products so they were more over selfsuffient on a community scale. Offourse human needs progressed so did the distribution and production system. It became more complex an global, leading to the global economy. Nowadays prices on basic food commodities like wheat, corn and sugar are somehow regulated by various economic entities. 3rd world countries which do not have direct access to these basic food sources have to bare this increase on food prices. Biofuels appear to be one of many reason of this price increase, though they probably are just the transitional tool to overcome our dependence in fossil fuel. In a local level food prices are most of the times regulated by the supply and demand from the producer himself and the buyer. Offourse when intermediate suppliers intervene with the food distribution, food prices are mostly regulated by them. That is mostly seen in large urban areas where it is not possible for the producer himself to directly sell his goods to the whole spectrum of the population. Local markets though seem to achieve this peer to peer selling system, where prices are mostly regulated by supply and demand. Intermediate suppliers are in most cases the ones that are responsible for high prices. Also a basic factor on price formation is the cost of producing goods. Water, machinery, loans, pesticides etc manage to affect the final price to a big extent.

An emerging distribution system on suplier consumer products are internet shops. Amazon, ebay are just some examples of this trend. Sellers who directly buy in bulk from product manufactures themselfes, manage to sell directly through the internet in amazing low prices. The same product in ebay for instance may sometimes cost a 1/4 of the cost compared to local markets. Offcourse this happens because intermediates, tax, customs and general selling costs are eliminated. This new distribution system is something fairly new, though is most of the times confined to products that can be easily sent through postage. Nevertheless it manages to challenge the old distribution systems, paving the way for new applications and decentralized distribution networks. Peer to peer product selling is much more feasible through the internet, where the end consumer benefits from the low cost.

Emerging decentralized technologies and networks

Offourse it is mostly up to us to rethink and challenge the old, where with reorganisment and existing technology we can redifine and decentralize  existing centralized systems. TV and wireless networking are some ideas i have expanded in some other blog articles, which unfortunately are still in a conceptual stage. My main impulse when dealing with this mind provoking concept is to make everyone realise that he/she has the ability to change and interact with any given system around him. Offourse this has to do mainly with the manner each system is constructed. The internet is a very good example of such system, but it is really important for this philosphy to be implemented and practiced in every level of society, so we could say that we are progressing as a whole and not just recycling old concepts and techniques.

Technology. It’s everywhere around us and defines our everyday routine and life. From paper to space shuttles, it’s all artificial, man made. It’s not a product of natural selection and evolution but a child of our thoughts, ideas and needs. People today think that the term technology describes only computers and mobile phones. That is somehow untrue though its a general term which involves digital technology as well. It all started back then when our ancestors soon enough realized that their hands alone were an insufficient mean providing them a way of gaining their food. Through a mental procedure ancient man used the materials and objects that were locally available and made stone and sticks into hunting tools. Man’s needs, thus his technology progressed in a very slow pace throughout the past thousand years. An increase of technological innovation started when organized and complex societies were formed (Babylon, Egypt & Ancient Greece) where knowledge and education was the key to their progress.

When studying the timeline of technological progression someone could easily note that after the Renaissance there has been a huge boost on our ability to produce, distribute and use our man made technology. Information and education have played a crucial part on this acceleration. Books and modern education systems made it able for almost everyone to reason and have the chance to achieve numerous things. There is no doubt that the 15yrs of the commercial existence of the Internet, has accelerated this growth. My main reasoning though when starting to compile this article is not to examine the technical and historical aspects of this growth. I feel the need to rexamine the philosophy of technology.

We most of the times reason when acting and progress in any level. I feel there is a lack of that mental procedure when dealing with technology. Modern capitalistic societies tend to make people think that the only way to progress is buying new technology and getting rid of the old. Mobile phones are a great example of that mentality. I cannot blame people’s choices when doing so, even because i many times tend to act in the same way. To me though people tend to spend a big sum of money on commercial products they know little about their usage and capabilities. There is a big educational gap and many urban myths involving some uses. People tend to fear using the internet thinking their money or identity might be stolen. It is true that these can happen though its very rare when you know how to use this new medium. Dangers do exist with electronic appliances though in most cases they are overexagerated. The pace of technological production seems to be far ahead our capabilities of knowing how to use the things we own. It is very important to confine your needs and only buying what we will actually use frequently. My generation, considering that i’m 23yrs old is moreover capable of digesting new stuff. Small children as my 8yr old sister was brought up in a household where my family was capable of using modern technology. She seems to find learning using technology more easy than everyone else. That proves that we ought to know and learn how to use our tools in order to make them work for our own benefit.

Another philosophical approach to this issue involves the way technology is constructed rather than used. As an IT graduate analyzing the techniques and the timeline of an individual technology makes it far easier to understand in depth what i use everyday. Especially in Information Technology, my main impulse is to deal and try to promote with technologies that are constructed in an open and user friendly manner. The term open source describes the technologies where collaborative and transparent techniques are used. This philosophy in technology has starting to widespread especially after the wide usage of the internet. Open source implementations seem to be more efficient, clean and free. Offcourse not everything can be constructed without any corporate involvement and not having profit as the main aim. Solutions for professionals are most of the time expensive and confined to one supplier.

A big drawback of the technology we used during the 20th century and are still using it on the 21st is the way we use and produce energy. Mass transportation increased the need of burning fossil fuel using a centralized distribution network which we are still using today. An internal combustion car almost everyone uses today, even me, needs gas as an energy input, a somehow inefficient way of producing energy, and exhausts greenhouse gazes and heat. The same principle of producing energy can be found on powerplants, household heating systems etc. Fossil fuel input, greenhouse gazes and heat as an output. That principle even to a non expert sounds unreasonable. A trend has started to grow, which will eventually become a need, is the ability to use a fraction of the energy compared with old systems and produce the same usable output. Efficient lamp bulbs, efficient home appliances, efficient homes, cars and mass transportation systems are some that come in mind. The ability to consume less energy depends highly on the adoption of more efficient technologies, market and government policies as well as our ability to organize and reason our actions, systems that demand great sums of energy.

Unreasonable Uses and Consequences of Technology

• Environmental Pollution
• Urban Traffic
• Computer Viruses
• Unprocessed Urban Waste
• Inefficient Energy Systems (Cars, Powerplants etc)
• Nuclear War
• Spam Mail
• Noise

Reasonable Uses of Technology

• The Internet
• Environmental friendly energy production systems
• Distributed & Free Knowledge
• Open Systems
• Recycling
• Urban Organization
• Electric Public Transportation Systems (Subway, Trains, Trams)
• Space Exploration
• Anthropocentric Scientific Research

We are today in a very crucial standpoint. Technology is widespread on western societies, though we still lack the education and reasoning concerning its proper use. We have forgotten that we ought to preserve our home, planet earth and tend to act arrogantly and seem to be so near sighted most of the times. We should always keep in mind that technology ought to work FOR us and NOT against us. Preserving the environment and the stability of our society is for our own long term benefit. Most of the problems today cannot be solved through progressing technology alone.  Each one of us has to realize the things we ought to do in order to change our present faulty state. That can be done through education, collaboration and redefining what we should aim as a person, society and species as a whole

I always wanted to consider myself as a traveler, in every level. Exploration, change and learning are considered for me essential for heading in the future. This summer or 2008 i decided to try something new to me, something i have always wanted to do for a really long time: A small tour of Europe. The main reason for my traveling was Ozora Festival, an annual psy/ambient music festival held in the countryside of Hungary. It is considered one of the most important psychedelic gatherings in Europe and worldwide.

I had planned & booked everything i ought to (festival tickets, flight to come back and interail ticket) and i though i should leave the rest as it comes. I surely didn’t knew what to expect, but i thought that would be the most exciting part of this journey. So it all started in the 1st of August, packed with only a small backpack, a tent tied to it, a sleeping bag and strictly some few traveling essentials

1st Aug > 11th Aug

(Greece) Chalkida > Athens > Patras > (Italy) Ancona > Rome > Firenze (Florence) > Milano > (Switzerland) Zyrich > (Germany) Stugart > Nuremberg > (Austria) Vienna > (Hungary) Budapest > Symotinya > 5days stay at the festival > (Slovakia) Bratislava > (Greece) Athens > Chalkida

11 unique days, each one filling for the rest. I had never attempted solo-backpacking before though i think it was worth it. It’s the best reason for talking and getting to know other people on your tour. The 1st night was spent on the boat from Patra to Ancona, Italy. The 22hour sea voyage was fairly long though fortunately i spent a good 10hours of sleep. I can say that i’m used to boat trips after 5 yrs of traveling to Crete back and forth in order to attend my college course. On stepping foot in Italy i was somehow puzzled at start, though i found out soon enough that the best way finding your way around is by using a rail map and just asking whoever looks likely to know English. The first part of the train ride to Rome was somehow unlucky because of the 1hour train delay and because i had to get off in a small Italian town because of technical difficulties. The next train to Rome left in some hours so i decided to find a spot in the countryside and camp saving some money for staying in a hotel and gaining a new second night experience. Now thinking of what i did may sound foolish but i don’t regret on doing so. After Rome i head to Florence for sightseeing and then i decided to stay at a youth hostel in Milan. Staying there was surely worth it, as i had never been to one before. I instantly met my South Korean roommate and eventually met a group of Brazilian guys outdoors. It was surely a great night whereas i had the chance to meet people from all over the world and share our experiences and thoughts. Unfortunately the next day i was late to wake and everyone was gone.

Having some more days ahead of me till the festival started i though of going to Switzerland. The train ride to Zürich really paid me off. The scenery on the Italian and Swiss alps was breathtaking. The train infrastructure is so developed it really amazed me. The tunnels & bridges seemed to blend harmonically with the Swiss countryside. Arriving at Zürich i managed to find information on going to the youth hostel there. It was surely more luxurious and organized but i disliked the fact the atmosphere there was not so pleasant as in Milan. I had the chance to meet a girl from the US and a group of Ukrainian people who knew very few English. The next day i head towards Hungary through Austria. I found out that the faster way of going to Vienna was via Germany (Stuttgart & Nuremberg). It was a chance to go through Germany and arriving there earlier than going directly to Vienna. The German countryside was great though i did’t have any time to go sightseeing. On arriving to Vienna 10 at night i though i should better stay at a youth hostel. Unfortunately they were all full so i went back to the station and slept for free there using my sleeping bag. The train left 5 in the morning to i think it was worth that experience as well.

The 1st part of the traveling part of my journey was almost over though i was not disappointed at all because i knew i had a great festival ahead of me. I arrived in Budapest first thing in the morning. It was the first time i was so confused in my journey because i had to use the local currency, almost no one understood english and i had no idea how to get to the festival. I used an internet station in order to get more information and i found out that i had to take the subway to the other train station. On arriving there i met a Danish group that were also heading to Ozora fest and they told me that we had to take 2hr train ride to a village and then take a bus from there. So i did and was amazed when entering the festival area. Pictures and videos cannot describe that festival especially at night. For me it was the 1st major festival i had been to and surrely will consider going again next year. It was like living in an alternate society in a city of tents and music stages blending harmonically with the Hungarian countryside . The irony of this event was that everyone, involving me seemed to have a close connection to nature and technology. The dress code was utterly different to what someone would find everyday. People were far more willing to meet and help each other. It was literaly a tower of Babel. So many different languages could be heard though most of the people knew english especially those from western europe. I was glad to find some greek people as well. The music was so good and unique especially in the chill stage. 5 intense day filled with music, culture, diverse languages and a very inspiring vibe everywhere around you. 5 days is as much as someone could cope with, because of dirt and the exhausting dance stage timeline. It is really hard to describe this experience in words, but was surrelly worth the effort going there

The last day i decided to head towards Slovakia where was flight was leaving for Athens, so i woke up in the morning and packed all my things and head towards Budapest in order to find a train for Bratislava. Hungary left me with mixed feelings. A great impression for the festival and the countryside and bad regarding the fact that it was so hard to communicate with Hungarians in English even with young people. Slovakia seemed to have a better infrastructure from what i could see from the train ride. Finally i had to wait a couple of hours for my flight. The big journey all ended on the 11th of August when arriving back to my hometown, Chalkida from Athens

This 11day trip to Europe was one of the best traveling experiences i have had till now. I was far more easier than i had expected and is somehow cheap way for seeing so many places. The total amount i spent was 650 euros which is reasonable compared for a 11day holiday in Greece. For me this journey is just a begining and i’m surely willing to do so more exploring when i finish my military obligation next year. My main inspiration for experiencing this journey was i movie i was in June called “Into the Wilr”. It is a fantastic movie both in acting and photography. I cannot consider myself anywhere near to the true explorer of the protagonist of this movie, though i tried doing some extreme stuff as well. Throughout my journey i had the chance to meet people that were touring Europe for several months. Offcourse mine was in a smaller scale though i think for 11 days i saw and experienced as much as i could.

A slideshow follows if you click on the read more link

or just click here to view the map with the geo-tagged photos

Free software is not just a trend of IT but a need in modern days. End users demand transparency, decentralization and safety for their desktop operating systems, which Linux is able to provide. Linux has succeeded to some extent though it’s long term goals is gaining a 2 digit market share sometime in the near future and gaining support from 3rd party software vendors. Another notable market are the mobile users. Through time, since the mobile phone became a dominant tech accessory, Smart Phones were introduced, as a mini mobile operating system able to cover anyone’s computing needs when on the move. Today the following propetiary mobile OS are the most dominant: Symbian OS, Windows Mobile/CE, iPhone MacOS, Blackberry and some other that have a smaller market share. The iPhone as a newcomer has managed to stir the mobile industry because of its innovative interface and menu. The biggest downside of the iPhone though noted by most users and me is the persistence of its manufacturer (Apple) to lock and confine the end users almost to death. Locked network, no official support for 3rd party software, locked Bluetooth services, only sync with itunes and numerous other irritating and confining features. Symbian and Windows Mobile devices though are not so locked to a Software and Hardware level. Most policies of the major players in the mobile industry seem to follow to a different extent each time this restricting policy.

Till now no truly open and free complete operating system exists in a widely accepted and commercial level on the mobile platform. 2008 though is the year of change in this industry. Google, a silicon valley software giant, never lacks to show innovation and insight. It has been sponsoring and investing on Google Android, a Linux based mobile OS which aims to be 100% open and free. It is this time speaking in its end developing stage and will be introduced through various mobile devices in the end of 2008. Google Android has been so frequently talked about like any other mobile OS that has before it has been out yet. To my view this OS should exist for some years now because the rest of of smart phone platforms have already matured and are widely adopted.

Nokia, the biggest mobile phone manufacturer also shocked me with some good news. It decided to buy all of Symbian shares and form the Symbian Foundation, completely opening all of Symbian’s code. Offcourse nokia had some good reasons for doing this strategic move, though the whole process may take till 2010. To my view these reasons are the following:

Symbian OS has somehow come behind in innovation (still no support for touchscreens) and is clearly started to be threatened by the newcomer, the iphone. Also Nokia knows very well that Google Android is likely to dominate the market, proving a complete and cutting edge open mobile OS. So they say if you cant fight them just cooperate with them, or in this case adopt the same approach and philosophy. Symbian is likely to gain back from the mature and highly experienced Linux community or in this case the forecoming Open Symbian community. Opensource has proven to have a much better dynamic from any other model of software and never fails to show great innovations. Linux is a great example, with the only difference that Symbian OS has the largest userbase in the world. The scale of the opensource dynamics will clearly benefit Nokia, which will probably make Symbian gain it’s lost pace with innovation. It will cost less, making any Nokia phones cheaper to buy in comparison to any other smartphone surcharged with the cost of software ownership. The fact that Symbian will become open will not affect the existing 3rd party software developers, but in contrast will benefit them a lot, making their work more easy.

Today the mobile market has not felt the impact of the forecoming opensource OS’s, though the future beholds a dominance of free software. Desktop Linux may lack to hold a decent market share because Windows had predominated the desktop market and the switch is really hard because of the lack of software support. Also Microsoft’s strategy is to have Windows preinstalled in every Desktop or Laptop computer so it automatically builds its userbase. So talking in mind these 2 factors, the new open mobile OS’s Symbian has no need to worry about them because it has the biggest market share and will be preinstalled in most phones.

The above hypothesis which is likely to become reality in the following years is a step closer to fullifilling the need of any society to work with and use decentralized, free products that work in a transparent way, removing all the restraints concerning its use. Technology ought to made in such a way so it works FOR you and NOT against you, making this intellectual product belong to you, everyone and nobody at the same time

We are living in a very critical era, where our survival and energy sustainability will depend on our ability to adopt change. Humans sometimes find it hard to change but in the case of the existing energy model we will be forced to. A transition to means of energy other than oil will be done because the oil prices will touch sky high prices and the earth itself will show greater signs of distress. The fact that the globe is steadily warming up combined with the instability of the price of oil has led mainstream society to look into way for adopting alternative energy sources. National power grids get electricity supplies from comparatively expensive renewable energy sources (solar, wind & hydro power) though the maximum dependency of these sources can not reach further from a certain percentage because it affects the grid’s overall stability. Coal and oil are realistically cheap ways of producing electricity though a transition to alternative energy producing technologies is crucial, if we want a mild transition from the existing dependance on oil.

So what are the means we have today of adopting eco-friendly portable energy sources? A medium of storing energy through electricity has always been batteries which vary in their chemistry, oil and all of its products which has already stored energy in its carbon based chemistry.Hydrogen, a chemical element which unfortunately cannot be found in nature because it simply floats into space is also an option which will be seen soon enough. Today in 2008 there are many automotive technologies which rely on one or more of the above energy sources.

First of all we have the natural gas/oil/petrol internal combustion automotives: They have been used from the start of this century as a mean of mass transportation. Today we totally rely on them apart from some Hybrid Vehicles and electric trains. Biofuel production seems to fight low oil production, but as it has shown it leads to soaring food prices. To my view it is not something permanent, just a small placebo pill for a smooth transition from oil to electric cars. The good side: Oil provides a good way of portable energy already trapped into its carbon chemistry. The bad side: CO2 greenhouse emitions, non renewable source and dependency to a large network of oil producers and distributors

Electric Vehicles (EV’s): A not so new concept, though it has started gaining approval in the last decade. The concept is simple. Charge the car’s batteries from the electricity grid and use this stored energy to move a highly efficient and non polluting electric motor. The good side: High efficiency of energy transformation to the electric motor, renewable and non pollutant means of transportation. The bad side: Low millage independence because of the low capacity of the existing battery technology, unsifient charging infastructure exists today.

Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV’s): They combine a hybrid technology and use an internal combustion engine and an electric motor to give power the the wheels. The gas engine only kicks in when extra juice is needed, and also transforms the lost kinetic energy made into heat from the breaks, into electricity to charge the car’s battery. Today exist some commercial car models with this technology, though the Toyota Prius can be said that is leading this path. The good side: Very high Miles Per Gallon especially (50MPG for Prius) when your driving habits include driving in the city on low speeds. Low MPG equals to low transportation costs and low CO2 greenhouse emissions The bad side: relatively high cost of Hybrid vehicles. Their fuel consumption is not as good as it ought to in high speeds and open roads. The battery may also appear as a downback because in theory you have to replace it every 10yrs.

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV’s): They basically use the same technology with ordinary HEV’s with the only difference that they have batteries with a greater capacity and chemistry, with a slight difference in their electronic circuitry. Today there is no commercial car available though there are many Toyota Prius converted to support the plug-in feature through 3rd party manufactures. The car pictured on the top of this article is one of them. Toyota announced that it will be releasing the 3rd generation of Prius with a factory built solar panel in order to power the A/C of the car and also charge the battery when stalled. An astonishing 100+ MPG has been reached in certain conditions for these vehicles. They rely mainly on the power grid for providing their mobile energy needs. Some have also converted their roof into a solar surface so the car can be charged when unplugged and stalled. Ofcourse these vehicles rely on oil but nevertheless its the 1st transition phase to overcome our reliance on imported oil. Toyota is planning to release in 2009 the 1st comercial plug-in model available. The good side: It uses the already tested and full proof hybrid technology with the advantage of a greater autonomy from its bigger batteries. The best millage per gallon achieved by any vehicle of this category. Lower independence on oil giving the end user the ability to use alternative energy sources. The bad side: The high cost of gaining this technology and the reliance to power grid electricity which may at first may not be available in parking spaces, homes etc.

Hydrogen Vehicles: Another interesting way of making energy available in portable transportation is Hydrogen. The engine itself is highly efficient , though the process of producing Hydrogen from electricity is not energy efficient at all as the below picture shows. The energy cost of producing this fuel is so high to start with that we would have to pay several times more to move our vehicle the same distance than we would need with gasoline. Though the product of Hydrogen engines is clean water the environmental cost of transforming electricity to Hydrogen is so high, it makes it wortless in environmental terms. The existing technology also show that in order to store Hydrogen in a compressed tank in your car a lot of space is needed which is unable to provide the same millage as a conventional gasoline tank. The good side: Environmental friendly and renewable fuel. The bad side: The existing technology is not able to make it cost efficient, whereas the 60% of the energy needed is lost in the process. The whole fuel infrastructure must change in order to make it plausible to the masses. A vehicle which relies only in Hydrogen needs a large low pressure tank which is unable to provide a wide distance range. The same suppliers of todays oil will propably supply us with this new fuel, perserving their monopoly

Hybrid Hydrogen Electric Vehicles: Through the research i’ve done so far i have not come into such a vehicle although it would be a possibility when the Hydrogen Fuel Infrastructure has been established when oil can not been attained anymore in the following decades…

The main aspects of these emerging portable energy technologies which will be able to cover our ever increasing need for transportation are the following:

The network of suppliers of fossil fuels: It has been the most lucrative industry of the 20th century. Global politics today are leaded by every societies and nation’s need to consume an ever increasing amount of fossil fuels. Wars and military actions in a global scale are motivated by the strategic advantage of gaining power over the source oil. The price of oil we pump our cars has to do with the rate of its production, foreign exchange rates and a sum of factors we end consumers come close to be aware. This energy supply model must stop if we want a more fair, environmental conscious, free and informed society and must transform itself into something alternative

The electricity grid: Today we also relly on electricity which is also provided through a centralized system. The means of producing electricity is coal, oil, nuclear energy and a bunch of renewable sources like solar, wind and hydro power. Nuclear energy is the cheapest of all though it is not widely accepted by the public and practically may be enviromental friendly if all cautions are taken in mid. Oil and coal are also some cheap but highly polluting ways of producing electricity. Finally renewable sources relly heavily on expensive infrastructure but manage to some extent to achieve energy independence to a national, community and household level. So any plug-in vehicle’s energy source would be a combination of the above. Some may say that they just move the pollution from the cars to the factories but the truth is that not 100% of our electricity is from polluting sources and even if it was it is still more effective producing polluting energy in a mass scale in factories. Realistically today a 2 digit percentage is from renewable sources and in some countries a great amount is from nuclear power. Nevertheless todays technology has proven it able to achieve a household independence in electricity, making a plug-in electric vehicle owner to a big percentage unaffected by the network of Oil/Hydrogen suppliers

The network of Hydrogen fuel suppliers: This today is still science fiction but may soon be reality. The bad thing about thus network is that is will be built on the economics and policies of existing oil networks. Do we want that to happen? Hydrogen has been proven as an inefficient way of gaining portable energy. Do we want to rely on a bunch of companies for proving us overpriced fuel?

Our Sun: The everlasting energy source. We sometimes find it diffucult to understand that all the energy we use comes from our closest star. Todays technology has proven somehow unsuffient to cover 100% of our energy needs from the above source. The technology used in solar power can only convert a small percentage into electricity, whereas wind power an energy sources also triggered by the atmopshere heat differences which achieves to somehow partialy cover our needs. Innovation, research and investments are steadily increasing the technology efficiency so the impact on using this everlasting energy source will become greater. Large scale thermosolar plants in California and Spain, household installed panels, windfarms, hydroplants and a lot of examples in everyday consumer products like the plugin solar Prius.

Battery fuel cells: This is the biggest barrier of electric vehicles which actually limits their range. The charging can only be done over a big time period so, simple EV’s are not likely to become mainstream any time soon. Technology in battery cells is steadily improving and you can clearly see that on a 15 year time range since the 1st mobile phone and laptops were introduced. As for PHEV’s more battery capacity and means higher cost and extra car weight. Practically though converted Priuses can achieve a 50 mile range using only their power batteries, enough to supply the range needed for urban transportation. So realistically existing battery technology manages to cover the biggest part of urban transportation which covers a big percentage of the average car users needs.

My current transportation status: This time speaking i am a lucky car owner of a 1100cc Citroen Saxo. It’s a relatively light, cheap and fuel efficient car. Ofcourse i seek altrenative ways of getting around like using my good old bicycle and public transportation. Hybdrids were always on my mind, as a lover of sophisticated technology and environmental friendly solutions. I made a promise to myself for my next car having hybrid technology. Through the research i’ve done i’ll probably go for a plug-in solution and if it is possible i would love to install solar panels to it. Offcourse money in life is the biggest barrier to achieving your goals. According to Toyota the PHEV will be released in 2009. I forecast to going into a loan after 2010  for that purpose but i firstly need to have my IT degree, finish my millitary obligation and have a job that pays over 900 euros. Owning this car means that i must commit but i guess its a step that i will need to take finally.

Conclusion: My main philosophical impulse when dealing with this subject is the following: Store and distribute free and renewable energy from our beloved star called the sun and pay ONLY for the technology, which when widespread and openstructured will become cheaper, making people able to NOT relly on closed markets and monopolies. Charge your car from the sun, grid or home solar panels downsizing the overall transportation costs and making us independent of our energy supplier. A new era is coming where we have to understand that each one of us has the ability to change the way he/she was forced to do think and act till now, through information, adoption of new technologies and global awareness.

I try to avoid writing technical howtos in my blog, because i simply dont have any extra technical advice to give more than is allready there in the web and somehow find ready solutions to any technical problem by a simple search. Although i try not to bore myself on techtalk i though i should write about a fantastic linux distrubition i’ve been using for over a year now, which initially made me switch to Linux , a wonderfull, free & open desktop operating system. I have always been using a computer from an early age. Back in the mid 90′s, a small kid like me back then had the only choise on using Windows 95 or any of its successors. Adminitingly it was during the 90′s the only widespread complete operating system with a graphical interface. Through the progression of time an emerging operating system came to be, though it lacked a consistent graphical interface during the 90′s. In 1991 when the first lines of code were writen, so the birth of the GNU operating system was marked, know as GNU/Linux or just Linux. Due its open structure and the freedoms it gives the end users, Linux Distrubutions were born, which consist of a sum of free software neartly packed and easy to install. They do not refer to Linux’s version, but rather name of a pack of free software, which are installable in Desktop Computers. The three major distrubutions which drew the path to future distrubutions: Debian, Slackware, Redhat. Ubuntu Linux, a debian based distro, happens to be my current Linux distro.

Ubuntu has drawn a lot of attention in the past years fro the computer world, due its user friendlyness  and focus on simplicity. Though many people critisize its approach to simplicity, they must aqknowlege t,he fact that it is the main reason of Linux’s steady addoption rate. I have thought that the next step i should follow is changing my distro to something for more experienced users, but i have made some seconds thoughts only because Ubuntu has the better support fron anything else. Deb files and Ubuntu repositories are a common thing in 3rd party software providers combined with the quality of support provided by the ubuntu forums. which seems to cover my troubleshooting i have faced till now. The company behind ubuntu and all it’s successful forks (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu etc.) is canonical, founded by a wealthy South African Space Tourist (Mark Shuttleworth). His vision was big and he seems to have achieved his goal to a certain point projecting his personal philosophy to this project. After 4 years he initiated the ubuntu project he had managed to be the 1st distro which is bulded with Dell computers and in many cases has made govermental and other organisation to be able to easily switch to this free OS. Free and open software to me extendes far more from a technical viewpoint. Yes it is cutting edge, stable and extremly dynamic software though what mostly exites me is the ability of modern civilisation to manyfacture and distribute  a quality intellectual product to everyone free of charge with ansolutely no strings attached to its use. Linux is able to prove that people can gain profit from developing free and open software by not charging the software itself.

The main question is how we can project this community driven activity and final product could be adopted to more aspect of our society apart from software and knowledge? Money, energy, food and transportation is some elements we can’t do without as humans nowdays. We must firstly examine the complex systems work in order to provide us these elements and try to work our way around into addopting an open and unhirechical way to distribute them. The above statement surelly needs another entry for further examination but my main view is to avoid seeing any system (Linux etc) abstracted from society itself.

Man has always kept a progressing pace of development throughout his excistance on earth, steadily accelerating his ability to produce, share and distribute goods & ideas. We want to think that our time we live in is special, because of our technical and social progressions that have occurred in the 20th century. To my view every era is special to those living in it, so i guess that i’m supposedly living in the most exciting era of all time. What actually made the past century special were the vast technological achievements thanks to the rebirth of science during the Renaissance and because of the dynamics and form of the capitalistic economic system. We managed to go to mars, explore the earth, produce vast means of transportation, make machines that think for us, build a global information network and many other numerous achievements that we proudly boast about as human beings. All the above came at a big cost though. In the 20th century we relied mainly on fosil fuel in order to produce energy for manufacturing products, electricity and for the needs of energy mobility for transportation. All this mass production could not have come without a big cost: The harming and destabilizing of our natural environment. Although we may think, because our population has becoming more urbanized than ever, the change of the stability of the environment will not affect us, there is a need for worrying and taking action.

Free and renewable energy is not something new, but practically comes back from the time of Nicola Tesla, a great scientist and humanist. The 1st realization for preventing climate change was politically expressed through the Kioto committee in 1997. Ironically the US, ironically the main producer of CO2 emissions did not commit to a nationwide scale in reducing them. European nations, either by national politics or either through the European Union’s environmental acts has shown to be an example of sustainable growth, combined with low CO2 emissions and environmental policies that show remarkable results. Though we may not fully realize that the environment acts as a unity and our biosphere is a global interactive organism, the pollution produced by single nations affect the balance of the whole biosphere. National politics always affects almost everything that occurs in a country, so decisions on environmental policy could not be an exclusion. At least in the European Union i am aware of nationwide policies on reducing energy consumption and plans on steadily decreasing every European nation from fossil fuel. Realistically this is a great example of sustinable grow model but unfortunately, the manufacturing power have been taken by the eastern nations. China and India for instance have shown great leaps on the growth of the value of their domestic product, but unfortunately till this day renable and clean energy production is more expensive so not much of that is used. Though some right wing politicians and industrialists are not yet convinced that we have harmed the environment enough in order to take drastic action, scientific studies and meteorologic data have started to make reality the need of transforming our economy to an environmental conscious. In practice though, the way we humans affect the planet and way we do things does not always have to do with politics and sophisticated technology. E

very human act originates from his state of mind and the way he perceives what is important and what is not. Action in a personal level is crucial for shaping the form of our society and our effects on the planet. Everything starts and ends from us, so the a new sustainable growth model depends on us. Natural and physical elements have given way to unnatural and synthetic ones. Actions we so easily decide on and have such a near sighted view upon, will make us some day pay the price of our narrow sightedness.

]]> http://anotherfinemess.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/why-the-transition-to-enviromental-friendly-means-of-energy-production-is-essential-to-our-survival/feed/ 1 anotherfinemess http://anotherfinemess.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/open-web-tv-platform-a-new-idea-is-born/ http://anotherfinemess.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/open-web-tv-platform-a-new-idea-is-born/#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:56:45 +0000 anotherfinemess http://anotherfinemess.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/open-web-tv-platform-a-new-idea-is-born/ ]]>

Official project wiki: http://openwebtvplatform.wikidot.com

Open Web TV Platform: This idea has been floating in my mind for some time now. This article is the 1st pre-stage in order to outline this idea, which will lead to the creation of the above wiki and when approved all the below content will be copied into 3rd person, laying the foundation for developing this service. The need of building this wiki is required in order to form collaboratively the idea behind this web service, an idea i have been thinking of, working as an early think tank, examining all the technological implications and aspects of it. This projects although its concept is expanded below, may need some extra expertise from people who have collaborated in creating opensource services and drawing the needed attention to this project so as they can build the appropriate team of developers. Because i don’t have the appropriate developing and financial abilities in order to make it, so i thought since i am aware of how open source is successful in achieving various services and software, i started this wiki as an idea mockup of this service: The Open Web TV Platform. This web service will be a blend of many unsuccessful web services that exist today in the internet, thus making a more user interactive web based platform for watching online video content. It’s key elements will possibly be the following: Consistent and easy to use fullscreen flash interface for watching online web TV content, semi automatic and smart choosing of the content, user content submissions, content is feeded from 3rd party video hosting websites, full rss syndication expanding its overall uses, community driven and opensource, collaboratively built. I have made the following categories in order to explain this concept with examples of existing websites:

This is the most important element of this potential service. Various web video technologies exist today (Quicktime, WMP Embeded video, Flash, Java) though Adobe Flash based video is most widely used by major video hosting websites. So i speculate that Flash is the most appropriate interface to use. Today many websites and services exist that use a fullscreen flash interface which show web video content. Some examples are the following: http://tubecast.tv, http://www.neave.tv, Joost Flash Version, http://www.xplsv.tv as well as many plenty more i am not aware of. For me the most clean cut and promising flash interface is tubecast.tv, which on mouse hovering shows an interactive menu with the next videos, dynamicly building the timeline. It probably is inspired by TiVO and other TV set-top platform’s interfaces which record digital content. Another worth mentioning web service that comes really close to my idea, which i discovered after conceiving it a year ago is FeedBeat. In simple terms it is a Video CMS, with a very effective flash interface. Though the content is not dynamically built and each channel provides a linear end user video choosing ability. It resembles a youtube channel, with a single user’s picked content, which streams through the FeedBeat interface, feed through the original video hosting page. This service provides RSS syndication features, making it able to connect via feed with Miro, an opensource IPTV viewing platform. FeedBeat strangely enough resembles my idea, though its content can only by viewed in user created channels, and does not provide an end user interactivity as the content is concerned

After several years since the 1st video hosting services appeared, thousand of user and TV network video productions have been widely available online. A great example is Youtube, Google Video, which hosts the biggest part of the online video content. Somehow though it is pretty hard to choose from quality content and quality productions, thats why many catalogs and linksites have appeared like: http://www.alluc.org, http://www.moviesfoundonline.com, http://www.peekvid.com and many other that list TV content and public domain video links, that are available online reducing the effort of having to search them. Some of them are hand picked from the webmaster and some rely on its community. The technology they use is rather simple but effective, just acting like a catalog of picked video links. So the Open Web TV Platform will be able to build its database, or even use one of them through rss from catalogs and then feeded through its interface.

Another potential aspect of the Open Web TV Platform, will be the smart content choosing ability. The whole idea is not to use a linear content system like classic TV or a simple playlist, but rather a nor linear and affective way of doing so. Examples of this technology is the last.fm radio and the video feature of the social bookmarking services. To make it short, these services learn from what you watch/listen to and adapt to your personal interests, without limiting your content. This feature will be the key to its success, and will make it differ from the rest flash video services. Firstly last.fm is a very mature web services that is labeled as a music community, with useful and personalized features. After submitting your the music you listen to it builds around you a smart personalized content system, proving you with a non-linear radio, event listing, user listing and music recommendation, all according to your listening habits. Social bookmarking services also use a smart content system, specializing on bookmarks, which include wiki’s, videos, blogs and much more. It also learns from what you like and not. To be honest i have only be using a social bookmarking service for a short while now, compared to last.fm so i may be not fully aware of it potentials. Another potential feature based on last.fm’s artist connections, would be the new feature of videos, linked from youtube to each artists page. This will provide the information on building on demand music channels, with a high accuracy on artists & music relativity, enabling it to easily build dynamic music channels

Another key element of the Open Web TV Platform, is its community, one of the reasons of the success of Web 2.0 services. This service will rely on its own registered users, on users who originally provide this content on the video hosting websites this interface feeds from (youtube, google video users), as well as video cataloging pages and offcourse from its developing community which will make its sevice possible. The end users, which will be a part of its community will build up their likes and dislikes through time, being able to submit themselves links with content. Offcourse a great extent on freedom of this service’s will be provided, though security is always an issue with web services

Price
The short answer to the answer of how much will it cost the end user is: it will be Free. The most successful internet services have no price tag, but nevertheless achieve in various ways to gain profit through time. The Open Web TV Platform could not be an exception to this rule, where profits will eventualy build up through personalized advertising (Adsense), subscriptions with extra features or instead by donations.

I have personally been involved with open software and open services for some time now, and apart from them being a moral and efficient way of building software or information tanks, it is in my case a good and feasable way of building the Open Web TV Platform i have in mind. Personaly the practically benefits of open technologies i have known are by using the following: Joomla Opensource CMS when building my brothers website http://www.downhill.gr a Greek Cycling Community, Ubuntu Linux Desktop OS which was the distro which made me do the linux switch and also plenty of open web services like Wikipedia and communities which have inrichened my knowledge or content i use. I have not participated in any other opensource projects apart from partial translations of Joomla components or various wiki’s submissions, so i don’t know how this collaboration works and to what extent it is effective. I have plenty of examples of successful opensource products so it leeds me to believe that it is feasible. Opensource technologies do work, are wide spread and are free (as in freedom and in money terms)

The most important part on building this service are the technologies that should be used. Although i am a graduate of an Informatics and Multimedia course i have not wide experience on building from scratch such a complex service. I’ll have to rely on the knowhow of the opensource community out there in the cyberspace, and i bet there is many regarding the quality of the end open products i personally use. Offcourse a Linux Based hosting service should be used, but the biggest cost would be in human work hours. I am willing to spend my time on this project but i like previously mentioned i have no core developing skills whatsoever. Making a rough guess the technologies/skills required are: Adobe Flash, PHP, MySQL, Ajax, XML as well as a lot of documenting, organizing and financial planing. In addition plenty apart from open web technologies, plenty of CMS’s and premade pieces of software could be used that are under the GNU/GPL license. This category, i guess needs a lot of expanding when the wiki of this project is approved

Offcourse programmers and people generally involved need money to live so this is an issue. Open source services and products in most cases are free of charge to the end users, so there are others ways of gaining financial backup. One way is by 3rd party funding, donating and advertisements. On the first developing stage i guess it will rely on funding it from co-minded companies that profit from opensource. Offcourse on laying out this project financial needs and goals in order to make it reality a project/financial manager should give us our advice. On the long term a successful reciepy of gaining financial support is by end user subscriptions with extra features and advertisement

Software Applications
An obvious application which will use this service is a web browser with Flash and Javascript enabled, thus making it automatically cross platform. A web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera) is the most widespread web tool used today and comes preinstalled with popular OS’s like Windows, MacOSX and Ubuntu Linux. It will be the main tool in order to support this service’s flash interface. Also the RSS feed technology has a broad range of uses, from news reading to watching online Video. Miro can clearly show that potential,using it as an online web video content feeder and viewer. Web widgets are also used for displaying video. An actual software application is also feasible, using preexisting open technologies like the VLC Video engine and Miro, thus making a Joost like interface. It will not rely mainly on the software application because the cross platform supporting of it will cost and will not provide the initial boost this service would require.

This article is not by any means final and is just a first mockup of this service’s concept. Please check the official Wiki of this project and please contribute your ideas and knowhow if you want to be a part of it, thus making it able to build the final concept of this project, so developing can start.

<Original Post from My last.fm Page>

Someone, on first hearing the words Electronic Music, almost certainly draws in his mind a bass driven and repetitive structure of music gerne. Unfortunately as it almost happens everytime, in almost every aspect of human civilization, quality musical productions are overshadowed by commercial and promoted artists. This phenomenon also happens in electronic music, one large category of gernes, that consumes most of my listening time. Strangely enough, through deep music searching that has lasted over 7 years, i’ve discovered plenty of talented music artists who seem to be unknown to the wide music audience. Offcourse the source for all this wonderful music was the internet and particularly through the SoulSeek Filesharing Network, which i have been using several years now. These artists seem to incorporate their own personal philosophy about life, the supernatural, nature and space. They somehow magically blend complex and detailed electronic sound experimentations with various world music samples, instruments and chants. This particular orientation to music production can sometimes be tricky enough because it’s quite hard to produce something unique with not too many ethnic elements and not too many electronic sound effects that overshadow each other. So i’ve tried to list 10 artists that have dared to blend two so unrelated music gernes and have captured my interest:

1. Shpongle
I have already mentioned this UK duo in my previous posts, though i think they deserve a place in this list. These two artists, Simon Posford and Raja Ram clearly reflect by their music, their religious background, their ties to nature, global civilization as well as their both talents on music production. With their 3 albums, and a 4th one coming soon enough in 2008 i hope they have greatly influenced the global psychedelic and ambient scene. Their music blends ambient soundscapes, electronic sound effects, natural instruments (guitars, flute), Terence McKenna voice samples, latino music, chants and plenty of outworldy sounds their mind come up with. Their name “Shpongle” is a word invented as a successful way of describing their sound. That word is used by them in various ways (Shpongled, Shpongleyes, Shpongolia, Shpongleland) somehow linking this word with a world that can only be described by their unique sound. Notable albums: Are You Shpongled? (1998), Tales of the Inexpressible (2002)

2. Ott
Also a notable UK artist, who has produced and mastered some of Shpongle’s tracks. His talent can been shown through his 2 personal albums and also through his debut Hallucinogen in Dub album, a collection of Hallucinogen’s (Simon Posford) mixed and redubed tracks. His sound can be labeled as dub and uses various sound elements in his productions. His music can be characterized as 21st century dub, always keeping a good balance of natural dub sounds, tribal chants and electronic sound effects. Notable albums: Hallucinogen in Dub, Blumenkraft (2003)

3. Entheogenic
This French duo seem to have a notable discography, where their music is often compared to Shpongle. They somehow share plenty of elements but nevertheless their sound is unique. Spacey synths, strings, female signing, natural instruments, some key elements able to describe their sound. Their inner philosophy is also expressed through their name, which reveals some pagan beliefs, love to nature and space contentiousness. They are widely known amongst the ambient scene and have built a notable audience throughout their discography timeline. Notable albums: Spontaneous Illumination(2003), Entheogenic (2002)

4. The Mystery of the Yeti / The Infinity Project
The Mystery of The Yeti and The Infinity Project were 2 pioneering ambient/psy projects of the 90′s. They existed before Shpongle and before the big psychedelic boom of the late 90′s. It was consisted by a bunch of psytrance artists and its main theme was a mystical and esoteric journey into otherworldly realities, altering perceptions with the use of psychedelic drugs found in nature. Creepy and earthly sounds could be heard across the 2 album releases. This project surely belong to the past. It litteraly made way for a whole ambient/psy scene whereas today dozens of psychill artists exist. Their most notable album is: Part 2

5. Celtic Cross
Simon Posford’s projects always take a place on my music list so this one couldn’t be an exception. This project dating back to 1998 was unfortunately not continued in the years to follow. As the name of this formation reveals the main cultural influence is Celtic music blended with psychedelic elements and various mysterious speech samples. Their first and only album Hicksvile (1998) had a big impact on the ambient and psychedelic scene and is considered a classic piece of 90′s electronic music.

6. Banco De Gaia
Toby Marks, a talented UK musician has a vast discography under his name. From 1991 he has been producing music, that incorporates techno/ambient/eastern elements. He is clearly influenced by eastern and Tibet culture and reflects that into his productions. He has released over 8 albums, making him able to build a large audience. His most noticeable albums are: The Magical Sounds Of Banco De Gaia (1999), Last Train To Lhasa (1995)

7. The Peaking Godess collective
A newly appeared ambient formation from Switzerland, that has released only a single album in 2007. This project is consisted by 4 talented musicians, where each one also produces music under their solo acts. Their debut album “Organica” was a notable 2007 ambient release, though they seem to be still quite unknown, according to the last.fm statics. Their sound shares plenty of spacey ambient elements, some terrence mckenna speech samples as well as natural instruments (flute, guitar, percussions). Their debut albums shows some very promising newly appeared artists who produce their solo work under the alias: Ajja, Master Margherita, Flootting Gooves, Dymons

8. Ganga Giri
For me a newly discovered Australian artist, who’s music cant easily fit into ambient or psychill. An accurate characterization would be “worldbeat”, where the sound of the didgeridoo and percussions he plays can be heard throughout his albums. He also uses electronic sound elements, and tribal beats. He has produced 7 albums till now, though his talent built up throughout his discographic timeline. His sound is purely indeginous and probably would annoy some listeners that are not used to this type of music. Notable albums: Tribe Vibe (2002), Beats Around The Bush (2003)

9. Outersect
Another notable artist that fuses Hindu music elements with electronic sound is this solo US artist who produces under the name of Outersect. He has produced only a single album in 2007, Caldera but nevertheless seems to be very promising. His productions are filled with eastern elements, layered with electronic dubs and effects.

10. Kaya Project
A solo project of Seb Taylor, a very talented producer. His name reveals his devotion to nature and can be clearly seen through his music. His most noticeable albums is: Walking Through (2004)

A video with the music of Entehogenic (only music) just to give you a rough idea what kind of sound i am talking about in the above list:

SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Inteligence was initiated 50yrs ago in the mid 60′s. As quoted from wikipedia:

SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) is the collective name for a number of organized efforts to detect intelligent extraterrestrial life. The general approach of SETI projects is to survey the sky to detect the existence of transmissions from a civilization on a distant planet, an approach widely endorsed by the scientific community as hard science (see, e.g., claims in Skeptical Inquirer). The United States Government contributed to early SETI work, but recent work has been primarily funded from private sources. There are great challenges in searching across the sky for a first transmission that could be characterized as intelligent, since its direction, spectrum and method of communication are all unknown beforehand. SETI projects necessarily make assumptions to narrow the search, and thus no exhaustive search has so far been conducted.

Someone may at first though think that there is absolutely no point on spending the time and energy in this project, something that may have been proven correct from the results of this search. The main reason i speculate that gives us the motive to do so is clearly existential. Contrary to traditional beliefs that the universe and cosmos was built in order to support human life, SETI is an attempt to refine this world view. From one side christianic creationism supports the idea that everything was made by a deity (GOD) whose existence was presupposed and the universe was created in order to some day support human life, contrary to Darwinist’s evolutionary theory where every form of life was developed through natural selection, slowly evolving by trial and error, by mutating throughout time addopting to its surroundings, where this information was stored in each lifeform’s DNA. I personally stand by the Darwinistic theory though my point is not to rule out creationism because belief is a matter of choice and inner searching. So if SETI actually had succeeded till now there would be some more evidence that Darwinism is a more correct way of explaining how life arose. A post product of SETI was the formation of the global SETI@home computer grid in 1999, one of the biggest distributed networks worldwide, which counts over 5 million users. I used to be a member of the SETI@home grid but have stopped using it for some years now. To my view, this search as the title of this article expresses it can be compared with the attempt of a monkey trying to communicate with a human. My reason on making the above statement, is not to underestimate our present technology and civilization but to point out the timeline implications of this project. We, as a human civilization have existed on planet earth for some time know, thus only recently made the leap on developing technology apart from the spear and sharp stone which were our main tool for 99% of our timeline. Only recently in the last 100 yrs we were able to develop radio communication technology, a very small fraction of the time there was available for intelligent life to have evolved.

That concludes to the following hypothesis’s:

1. There may as well never be any intelligent lifeform before us and our search is just contributing to global warming thus proving biblical creationists right
2. There may be one or more forms of intelligent life who may have not developed any technology till now and are more primitive than us in technological terms.
3. There may be one or more lifeforms of intelligent life, they have developed radio communication this time speaking, but unluckily enough the time the signals take to arrive, may need several thousand years, so we in our present never find them out
4. There may be one or more forms of intelligent life, who have developed sophisticated technology, some time in the past used radio communication and are at this time speaking using some more advance form of communication with no time lapse at all. We are lucky enough to receive their radio signals from that early stage. This scenario would be the only way that proved the SETI project right

The last scenario though, taking in mind the vast time span of our universe is like trying to find a bottle with a message in a vast time ocean. Regarding our technological timeline we are using radio communication for the last 100 years and may be using it say for 50 or more, until we switch to non time lapse forms of communication. So 150 years contrary to the billions of years that intelligent life which led to technology is a drop in the ocean. So realistically speaking the chances of SETI succeeding even if intelligent life exists is under 1% but nevertheless it’s the only thing we can do with technology at it’s present state of development and may be better than doing no search at all whatsoever. Though in my view its more of an existential search than an extra terrestrial search, that could possibly refine our world view, leading to the redifintion of religion. Realistically speaking in 2008 non time lapse forms of communication exist in an early developing stage. To make it more simple researchers in laboratory conditions have succeeded on making two electrons interact with no time lapse at all. So the conclusion of this discovery is that information can be somehow transmitted from point A to point B faster than the speed of light. Though some may say that this brings down the law of Special Relativity it infact does not. From what i could understand of the theory explaining this strange phenomenon is, that these two electrons access the hologram that consists our observable world and interact as a unity. This theory is proven scientifically through various experiments but may take some time for society to fully adopt it. So the practical implementations of this would be interstellar forms of communication with no time lapse. Offcourse we would have to know which part of the hologram we should access in order to communicate with intelligent lifeforms if they actually excist in the first place and if they are also aware of the Holographic nature of our universe. The practical implementations of this new discovery and the theory of the holographic universe may show up on the following decades, thus making us a step closer to understanding the world around us. So concluding interstellar radio communication may shortly be proven to be unsufficient, giving way to new forms of communication technologies.

Article Update:

After publishing this article i read some wikipedia pages about the Fermi Paradox and the famous Drake equation. The Drake equation examines mathematically the chances of extra terrestrial life ever existing using some variants. The Fermi paradox is an indepth look into the possibilities of finding intelligent extra terrestrial lifeforms. It somehow says what i had speculated above, though giving an extensive examination of this possibility. The most interesting parts of that wikipedia definition, which i had not examined above, were the statements that other civilizations may: Tend to experience a technological singularity, Earth is purposely isolated, They are too alien, They are non-technological, Are here unobserved. I don’t find any reason expanding the above and i recommend that you read this wikipedia definition of the Fermi Paradox. Though i was many pages long, i read it to the end, which made me learn some thought provoking hypothesis of this paradox. The one that stood up from the above styled as bold, is the hypothesis of the technological singularity. In short words it is the hypothetic point of sometime in the future were the unavoidable consequences of Moore’s law about the increase in computing power leads our civilization to a Technological Singularity. The first part of this technological singularity transformation started happening when the first tools were invented, which was the starting point of our slowly but steadily increasing our scientific and technological achievements. Though through time the 20th century was noted by the biggest technological advancements of all time from space exploration, expanding of global transportation, increase in energy consumption and the overall increase on the standards of living, the achievement which will lead to everlasting acceleration of the growth in complexity of human civilization was the invention and spreading of use in personal computers combined with the commercialization of the internet in the mid 90′s. Though the internet did not show on having any major impact in society in the end of the 90′s, in the first years of the 21st century, the mechanisms of peer 2 peer information, money, file sharing and special interest community formations, which in common terms are labeled as Web 2.0 have shown an explosion of user generated content, which in long terms through through the steadily increase of this content and internet use will start to show some major impact on everyday society, boosting our society’s complexity growth. This hypothesis demands an indepth search in order to expand it in another article, which i will be possibly publishing some time in the future.

As always i’ve embeded a video of Carl Sagan, explaining what the SETI project is all about:

The term openness may as a first though be related with software and digital implementations. Practically it refers to a basic human right of knowing and being able to transform every complex system that affects him, from software he uses to the core of governmental mechanisms of the country he lives in, through information freedom. Through the lifetime of human society knowledge and information could only be distributed through material constructs like stoneplates, papurus and paper. The big leap of human society and the geometrical growth of its complexity may be because of our ability to regenerate and store information. An objective observer may point out that this constant increase in complexity coincided with the growth of information technologies through the mid 60′s which has led almost 50 yrs later of the unmitigated digitalization of human knowledge. The true revolution though came in the mid 90′s when this new and highly sophisticated digital medium became commercially available more commonly know as the internet. This hypermedium as i like to name it, differs from the conventional TV, Radio and Printed Press networks because it provides the ability by certain circumstances to change, edit and contribute to this digital information sphere. These lines written here, which are able to be broadcasted throughout this global network is one example of this new revolution. Practically some examples of the openness of this new Hypermedium are the following: Linux OS, Wikipedia, Youtube, Creative Commons as well as many other services/technologies are labeled as Web 2.0. You may think that software and information are not the same thing but infact they are. Software is information that only a certain computer architecture can understand, which in most cases deals with processing and transforming human information. Web 2.0 as many proudly point out is the sum of web technologies like wiki’s, blogs, tags, web communities and generally whatever gives the end user the ability to interact with this new hypermedium. Though nowdays our everyday life and our ability to generate profit depends on information we are only able to see the end product of this procession. thus there is a great deal of uncertainty of the way complex structures work, from digital technologies to social and governmental formations. This need lies as a basic democratic principle, if we want to call our western society as truly “Democratic”. Some may say that democracy is only a utopia and the right of voting is just an illusion. I may agree on that, because unfortunately modern democratic systems are built in such way where everyday interaction with this system that is supposed to govern us , is non existent. In my country for instance i have never witnessed any public referendum and i bet there are a lot of matters that would be worth having one. A main excuse for that is that it costs too much etc. And i ask, what doesn’t cost in a governmental scale? Electronic voting is not science fiction and is practiced in various developed countries and there are realistic ways of keeping the results of each vote secure from potential intruders. I may wonder why this most practical way of democratic expression is not known to the public by conventional media and the answer is simple: The governmental systems and conventional media are not constructed by democratic principles and thus are not open. So taking the openness of the Internet as an example and a basic need in order for human society to progress, the need to demand transparency in every system that affects us in any way is crucial.

By tradition i’ve embedded a small video underlining the main thoughts expressed. R. Stallman back in 1996 and talks about the free software movement, strangely enough predicting the future:

<Original post from my last.fm page>

So what are the means of achieving traveling without moving? Here are is my personal guide to all of you fellow travelers out there. The following list includes everything from music, to software, documentaries and wikipedia articles to make you interconnect with the cosmos. Please read on…

1. Ambient Music

1.1 Artists
Shpongle
The Mystery of the Yeti
Biosphere
Carbon Based Lifeforms
Aes Dana
Solar Fields
The Future Sound of London
Boards of Canada
Steve Roach
Robert Rich
——————————-
You can also check out my short Extreterrestrial Electronic/Ambient guide or
Beyonds Zero’s group Artist Connections
..or anything under the ambient, psychill, psydub tag

1.2 Web Stations

Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast
Bluemars – Music for the space traveler
Cryosleep – Zerobeat guaranteed
Drone Zone – Atmospheric textures with minimal beats
Dark Ambient Station
Mixing Particulate Solids
OEM Radio
Groove Salad

[All above can be found in Shoutcast]

1.3 Labels

Ultimae Records
Twisted records
Em:T
Hypnos

1.4 Ambient Music Guides & Reviews

Sleepbot: Ambience For The Masses
Star’s End
Psyshop.com – World & Chillout
Ambient Reviews

2. Visualisations

Visuals for Winamp
Visuals for WMP
Visual Software for Linux

3. Animations

Fantastic Planet
Star Shpongled Banner
Flashback with Albert Hoffman as the Shamman

4. Documentaries

Carl’s Sagan Cosmos: Pale Blue Dot
Carl’s Sagan Cosmos: All Episodes (Stage6)
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: All Episodes (Guba)
Alien Planet (Discovery Channel)
The Universe I Loved (60+ Greek Astropsysics/Astronomy Documentary Series)
Visions Of The Future (BBC Horizon) Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The Legend Of Atlantis (All Parts)
BBC Horizon – Time Traveling
The illusion of reality
Ufo’s = The Secret Evidence
Thunderbolts of The Gods
Secret Space
Sacred Weeds

..or anything related by searching:
Stage6 Divx
Google Video

5. Astronomy Software

Stellarium
Celestia
Google Earth with Sky View
Starry Night Backyard

6. Movies

2001 Space Odyssey
Contact
The Matrix
Waking Life
..or anything under the gerne sci-fi

7. TV Series

The X-Files
Lost
The Twilight Zone

8. Mind

Sleep
Lucid Dreaming
Out Of Body Experience
Hypnosis
Meditation
Astral Projection
Yoga Practice

9. Outdoor Activities

Observing and reflectin the world and cosmos
Star Gazing
Attending Local Raves and Music Festivals

A small part of the legendary Cosmos documentary series by Carl’s Sagan explaining the visions of mankind for space travel:

<Original article from my last.fm page>

I can surely say that a great part of my listening habits involves music which can be categorized as ambient and soundscapes involving several gernes: ambient trance, dark ambient, acid ambient, morning trance, psychill, psydub, ethnoambient and whatever else incorporates ambient and atmospheric sound elements. I have heard many albums and individual Artist’s relases and also plenty of Label Compilations so i can say that i am in place to make this short list of “extraterrestrial artists” of alltime. That term means that the following artist’s music productions have an outergalactic-extraterrestrial sound, are highly innovative in all ways ,mostly use electronic sound experimentations and highly detailed soundscapes. Please read in order to view my top 10 artist list…

1. Shpongle
Yes the 1st place can easily go to this project, for me the most innovative and inspirational electronic projects of alltime. Somehow the best musicians i know come from this small part of the planet earth called the UK including artists 2,3,4 listed below. Shpongle’s 1st album was released in 1998 called “Are You Shpongled” whereas back then i wasn’t into the gerne at all. Nevertheless it is simply a halmark in ambient music taking the psychedelic audience aeon’s ahead of its music present. 2 amazing Shpongle albums followed talking their sound production to the next level. Their label also released an album with their tracks remixes. Their sound to my experience is like describing an alternate reality where spirit and matter exist harmonically in nature.

2. Boards of Canada
Boc’s music style can be characterized as UFO music, where you can find many weird videos accompanied with their music. They reside outside the psychedelic music scene and belong to the IDM Warp label. They have a unique soothing warped ambient sound covered with phat baselies and weird voice samples from children’s educational shows. Their sound is utterly unique and they seem to be such an enigmatic electronic duo giving almost no live appearances. They influenced a broad range of electronic gernes and have succeeded to build a large audience with no commercial effort whatsoever

3. The Future Sound of London
This electronic duo enjoyed a commercial success but nevertheless was the most pioneering project of the 90′s. Some of their albums are hallmarks in electronic/ambient sound. Though their early work sounded rather primitive their albums that followed led to high sound sophistication. As an ambient fan my favourite album is Lifeforms

4. The Mystery of the Yeti / The Infinity Project
The Mystery of The Yeti and The Infinity Project were 2 pioneering ambient/psy projects of the 90′s. They existed before Shpongle and before the big psychedelic boom of the late 90′s. It was consisted by a bunch of tag]psytrance artists and its main theme was a mystical and esoteric journey into otherworldly realities, altering their perceptions with the use of psychedelic drugs found in nature. Creepy and earthly sounds could be heard across the 2 album releases. This project surely belong to the past. It littearly made way for a whole ambient/psy scene whereas today dozens of psychill artists exist.

5. Aes Dana
This is a French morning trance artist and is the owner and founder of one of the biggest ambient labels called Ultimae Records. His music production differs from ordinary ambient/psy sound. His sound productions are consisted by highly atmospheric elements, slow morphing minimal textures, 3D structured soundscapes accompanied with a lot of clean progressive trance elements. The sound productions are very high. His “Season 5″ album took ambient music to the next level. To me his best album till now. The sound frequencies span to amazing extents. His music is like a 3D voyage into spacetime sensing all sound dimensions.

6. Carbon Based Lifeforms
This swedish duo is also from Ultimae Records. Their sound differs from Aes Dana but share some elements common to morning trance. It can be characterized as acid ambient having a lot of swirling sound patterns, distant voice samples, science fiction sounds and hypnotic baselines. They produce cutting edge ambient sound and give you a feeling that they are describing an alternate highly developed society, visual textures far-far in an altrenate future. Another notable solo project is Sync24 consisted by a member of CBL

7. Bluetech
This artist’s sound can’t be described as pure ambient but rather as psydub. It has many ambient and atmospheric elements but the main impression of it are the rich and phat progressing baselines with crystal clear electronic effects that ripple across the tracks

8. Solar Fields
This is also a notable swedish ambient trance artist from Ultimae Records. He has produced both ambient music and progressive trance. His first two albums could be characterized as ambient trance. They are consisted from bass driver ambient, with swirling sound patterns and various science fiction sound effects. His productions always provide a high sound quality giving you the feeling that you’re trapped in an interstellar spaceship touring the cosmos and exploring otherworldly realities and timelines. His last album was not ambient music but rather cutting edge neo-progressive trance.

9. Biosphere
Biosphere is a contemporary Norwegian ambient artist though seems to have an outworldy and earth sound. His albums are considered “classic” to the conteporary ambient scene which grew out of Brian Eno’s art rock experimentations and not through the psy trance scene as all the above artists mentioned. My favourite album is “Ciqrue” giving a true touch of nature. His discography involves many ambient album classics and is an artist with a high impact on the global ambient scene.

10. Sattyananda
I tried to keep this list as short as i could so my latest recent addition involves this very promising ambient artist. He may be the only artist in this list with a single album to his personal discography. Nikhel Mahajan is newly appeared indian soundscape designer who produces music with plenty of transcending effects and inspirational speech samples. The title of his album “Internal Activities” reflects his main philosophical theme which he incorporates and tries to reflect throughout his electronic soundscapes andspeech samples he uses. It can be characterized as meditative, spiritual and healing music

A small fan video with the music of Shpongle:

A lot has been said about Linux, and how it differs from mainstream Operating Systems like MS Windows and MacOSX. It is in some aspects better and in some worse. I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux for the last year as my main OS and i have come to a conclusion that it may be the most well formed, stable and fast growing operating systems around and is virtually free as in beer and as in freedom as R. Stallman never forgets to remind us all, Linux’s main ideological brain father. In practical terms it consumes a very small amount of system sources contrary to Windows and provides a transparency on its internal structure in every level. My main point on this article is not to say if it better or worse, because every piece of software and even a complete OS is a tool and it depends on how you want to use it, in order to say if it is good or not. Linux developers, from its core to additional software by 98%, code under GNU/GPL or any other variation of this software licence. By doing so, every piece of code that is written under it, differers according to the rights and “freeness” it provides to the end user. Linux was built as a GNU operating system and is a brainchild of this intellectual freedom. That does not make it practically better than any other OS system, thus it’s openness provides a transparent and dynamic way of this piece of software to be modified giving end users a much reliable product to use. Nevertheless this obligation to this so called software freedom at a big extent leeds to its free distribution, with no money charge whatsoever. This is a good thing in most cases because money is a big factor when choosing a product, thus it may have led Linux to be trapped into its opensource sphere.

I personally know very few proprietary software that is native linux made. I could give a brief explanation to that: First of all Linux OS has a very low market share amongst other desktop operating systems although it is free and extremely well built. The main reason may be is that Linux is not owned by anyone thus it does not have a universal marketing strategy. It also gets overshadowed my Microsoft’s products so desktop users find the transition hard, though it practically may not be hard at all. Another main reason of low desktop adoption may be because it lacks the support of the biggest software manufactures like Adobe, AutoDesk etc. Wine, the Unix implementation of the Windows API may provide a solution on some cases for running windows software in a Linux/Unix/BSD environment, but in reality it’s a placebo to the lack of 3rd party software support. Software vendors may use Linux in their infrastructure as a less costly way for their server needs, but don’t provide support for that particular OS because simply a native version of their product may cost too much and because GNU software is free in charge in most cases, so they expect to get virtually nothing in cash from that particular market of desktop users. So my conclusion is that Linux may be the most fast growing, cutting edge and costless OS that excists out there but the lack of a main marketing strategy in addition to the lack of commercial/propetiary software support fails to make it able to grab a decent desktop OS share. As the title of this article remarks the intellectual freedom that Linux and any GNU software stands by may be the reason it lacks a decent share amongst desktop users. In my opinion freedom in any sense is always a good thing but Linux users might want to start paying for native proprietary software solutions (AutoCAD) if they want to make it a realistic alternative to the dominating MS Windows. Offcourse an open source alternative is always preferable (Firefox as a great example) but in cases that no decent piece of native linux software is available users must be willing to pay for it and sacrificing their commitment to the GNU/GPL licence in order to make linux be supported better. Windows and and MacOSX users have been doing it for some time now and these OS have an excelent 3rd party support.

I’ve embeded a small video commercial of Linux, made by IBM, one of its commercial supporters, which points out the dynamic and addoptive nature of this particular OS