WHERE WAS THE MODERN ALGORITHM BORN?

Where was the modern algorithm born?  At the ripe old age of 32, Shannon wrote about the algorithm concept in a 1948 paper entitled “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” For the first time ever, he explored the idea of quantifying the previously qualitative concept of communication, transforming it from nebulous to numerical. He used the thermodynamics of light as his backbone.  Shannon did this by connecting the well-established measures of probability (statistics = quantum probabilities) and entropy (thermodynamics = transformation of energy) to a new measure of communication, called information. Once Shannon connected these dots mathematically, it opened the door to signal processing, compression, and converting messages into an algorithm code to transmit them digitally.  That digital signal is capable of corrupting many files in your brain below your ability to perceive it happening. 

San Diego, home of Qualcomm, is one of the most active places of algorithm creation even today.  Bell labs and Shannon made the initial quantum leap from analogue to digital, but Qualcomm was responsible for the leap from 0G to 5G technology.  San Diego remains the best place to see the United States labor pains as it gives birth to its latest algorithm creation called 5G.

People who create these algorithms only see the positive side of the equation.  

Almost daily those at Qualcomm would say that our enemies want the public to shudder as prophets of doom announce the impending end of civilization and universe. We are being "asphyxiated", they say, by the smoke of the communication industry; we are suffocating in the ever growing mountain of electromagnetic pollution. Every new project depicts its measureable effects and is denounced by protesters screaming about catastrophe, the upsetting of the land, the assault on nature. If we accepted this new mythology we would have to stop pushing roads through the forest, harnessing rivers to produce the electricity, breaking grounds to extract metals, enriching the soil with chemicals, killing insects, combating viruses, or stop using algorithms to create artificial intelligence to replace silly talking monkeys.......But progress—basically, an effort to organize a corner of land and make it more favorable for human life from our perspective—cannot be baited. Without the science of pomiculture, for example, trees will bear fruits that are small, bitter, hard, indigestible, and sour. Therefore, we see algorithm creation as proress, and progress is desirable.  It is akin to giving birth to a new child.  With birth there is some collateral pain.  We therefore, should accept it as a species without question.  

For the poet, these algorithms seem to be made of lovely stuff oozing out of cell phones and towers in a city near you.  The poet might suggest the resultant electromagnetic waves engineered out of these towers is now the lifeblood pumped from the heart of talking primates.  In today's world, communication algorithms have now replaced blood as our life force.

A more apt comparison for these algorithms might be a bad case of indigestion.  These algorithms keep being created and the talking monkeys who use them continue to chronically belch, vomit, and shutters, heaves and passes gas as we moved from 0G to 5G.  5G has turned the indigestion to GERD or SIBO and now they result in the talking monkeys is really nasty gas.  The funny part of this poem is that the silly talking monkeys and the 'vets' who care from them remain at a loss to understand why the algorithms are linked to the creation of the nasty gas. With a volcano or geyser we know nature algorithms and why these things happen.  

Whether from a pulsing heart or a heaving geyser, algorithms today is our only glimpse into the the molten core of communications in San Diego that uncover the genesis of our modern maladies.  When we look at these modern algorithms it is as if we are looking into the engine of creation and destruction of the silly talking monkeys that dwarfs all of the mighty power found in our planet.  It gives us a small glimpse into what lies beneath us. 

Algorithms are capable of amazing things, but they also carry the seed of extinction for the species who made and uses them without proper control or direction.  The king of the primates, the silly talking monkeys remain oblivious to their effect.  

All plants and animals have an electricity peculiar to themselves to which the name animal electricity is given.  This power comes from their colony of mitochondria.  
The organs in which animal electricity acts above all others, and by which it is distributed throughout the whole body, are the nerves, and the most important organ of secretion is the brain.  It is here where algorithms exert their largest effect.  They enter our brains via out senses but they alter it because we have no idea how the algorithms affects energy transformation in our colony of mitochondria as a collateral effect. 

People love getting something for nothing and this is why becoming addicted to algorithms became common in the age of information.

In actuality, nothing worthwhile comes free. Algorithms are given to us free every time we log on the net. Algorithms are not arbiters of objective truth and fairness. Algorithms give us things for nothing, by design.  When an algorithm gives us something free, we should realize that we're the product of the giveaway.  When you don't pay for a product, you become the product.  This usually happens below your ability to perceive it too.  Just as you are blind to the force of light, algorithms works in the darkness of human life.  

Algorithms have their own goals built-in by how the light they code for is shaped.  Light is capable of all possibilities.  Quantum mechanics teaches us this.  Claude Shannon figured out how to shape this light with mathematics.  Algorithms have the ability and means of pursuing their goals.  They are a bot, a puppet who operates without the strings of their puppeteer to create effects.

Algorithms begin as someone else's opinions embedded in code that is designed to imperceptibly change our opinion.   The problem is they cannot be controlled once they are let out of their box.  This makes algorithms problematic.  Those who create them do not see this because they too are subject to their effects.   Algorithms are optimized to someone's definition of success.

Algorithms create a market place that trades your future. without you knowing it is ongoing.  Our attention is being sold to advertisers.   In reality, most algorithms are a misuse of light which takes the form of the binary code.   Fear any politician who wants to give you something for free.  What they offer isoften worse than the algorithm delivers.  This is a trait of the FCC who auctions off spectrum to industry and it costs "We The People", nothing.  

Shannon thought that media — like photography — could be encoded into a universal language while people were still getting their news from ink printed on paper. Like a domino effect of brilliant proportions, Shannon's radical ideas created the building blocks for the smallest unit of data in a computer, which, in turn, paved the way for information storage and the proliferation of technological advances we have seen since.  He was the creator, but he never thought about the negative consequences of their power.  Nature's algorithms always come with built in controls for their power.  Nature's algorithms all have a rectified current.

Shannon laid the foundation for digital computer design theory.  Just as one cannot swim out of water, one cannot program without a computer. In the midst of WWII, Shannon joined Bell Labs to advance the fields of cryptography and fire-control systems as the video below shows. During his time there, he mathematically proved that any digital function could be systematically built as an arrangement of electromechanical relays. His findings were later used as the foundation for digital circuit design and — drumroll, please — electronic digital computers. The computers on our desks and in our pockets today still use the exact same ideas, only instead of large electromechanical relays, they use microscopic semi-conducting transistors. (Which were also invented at Bell Labs!) Shannon even co-invented the first wearable computer in the 60's with Edward Thorp, a concept that is still taking form in projects like Google Glass, Oculus Rift, and most recently the Apple Watch. 

Without Shannon's equation and its umbrella of uses, life as we know it would not be the same today. His ideas not only pushed forward the development of the internet, but also numerous technologies like ZIP files and sending the Voyager into deep space 

Creativity, which is the evocative visual storytelling of Nature's recipes, come at a price. Consider becoming a member of my tribe at www.KruseatDestin.com to find out how much time you have to sacrifice for your technologic addictions.  Once you do all my Patreon blogs are included in that entanglement.  I want to take your health game to new levels.  Are you ready?