Posts of The Book of Threes

Posted on January 20, 2025January 20, 2025 by 3

The Next Wave for AI

We’re on the brink of three major shifts in Al: huge context windows, agent-based learning, and text-to-action capabilities.

Context windows are expanding sos rapidly that we can hand an Al something as large as a library of books and have it make sense of the whole set, even though it “forgets” in the middle, much like human short- term memory.

#the_local network

Meanwhile, agents are emerging as LLMs that can learn by reading, testing, and reconfiguring their own understanding.

Finally, text-to-action is where you’ll be able to say, “Build me the next (XYZ),” and the Al will code, iterate, and deploy it, instantly at scale.

Put all three together, and we’re talking about an impact that dwarfs what social media did to the world.

Imagine everyone having a personal programmer: not just for silly projects, but for real innovation or disruptive tools.

Right now, these systems are limited by cost and complexity, but those barriers won’t last.

The moment they come down, you’ll see a wave of new creations roll out in mere hours or days, things no single developer or team could’ve spun up alone.

That’s the power of big context, self- learning agents, and instant action, all merging in the very near future.

#information #communication #technology

Posted on October 1, 2024October 1, 2024 by 3

Nick Danger Third Eye ~ Firesign Theatre

Nick Danger is a fictional character created by the comedy group The Firesign Theatre, portrayed by Phil Austin. Danger is a parody of the hard-boiled detective, and is often announced as “Nick Danger, Third Eye”, a parody of the term private eye. Danger stories involve stereotypical film noir situations, including mistaken identity, betrayal, and femmes fatales. Danger originally appears on the 1969 album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All.

Press Quotes

“The Beatles of comedy.” ⁠—⁠Library of Congress

“The Firesign Theatre is a comedy group that uses the recording studio at least as brilliantly as any rock group …” ⁠—⁠Robert Christgau

“… [Firesign is] the funniest team in America today, combining elements of W C Fields, James Joyce, Lord Buckley, contemporary television and Thirties radio, scrambling it all up in a collective consciousness that defies description, and then spewing it out in a free-form half-hour epic presentation of sheer insanity … Their timing is dynamite, their dialog kaleidoscopic, and their satire is, so to speak, acidic. WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN … a masterpiece of paranoia.” ⁠—⁠Ed Ward, Rolling Stone

Video/Recording

Posted on September 26, 2024September 26, 2024 by 3

Life’s third act | Jane Fonda

“There have been many revolutions over the last century, but perhaps none as significant as the longevity revolution. We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did — think about that. That’s an entire second adult lifetime that’s been added to our lifespan. And yet, for the most part, our culture has not come to terms with what this means. We’re still living with the old paradigm of age as an arch. That’s the metaphor, the old metaphor. You’re born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude”.

But many people today — philosophers, artists, doctors, scientists — are taking a new look at what I call “the third act” — the last three decades of life. They realize that this is actually a developmental stage of life with its own significance, as different from midlife as adolescence is from childhood. And they are asking — we should all be asking: How do we use this time? How do we live it successfully? What is the appropriate new metaphor for aging?

I’ve spent the last year researching and writing about this subject. And I have come to find that a more appropriate metaphor for aging is a staircase — the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness, and authenticity. Age not at all as pathology. Age as potential. And guess what? This potential is not for the lucky few. It turns out, most people over 50 feel better, are less stressed, less hostile, less anxious. We tend to see commonalities more than differences. Some of the studies even say we’re happier.