EveryLab Newsletter: September 2014

Announcements

Productivity Support Network

It will consist of a meetup for people to co-work together, physically, or virtually, and will consist of a Google Group, or something. If there is enough demand, we’ll start our own virtual co-working space, similar to the Less Wrong Study Hall. Please comment, or contact us at everylaboratory at google dot com, if you’re interested.

EveryLab Study Group: Introduction to Complexity

Complexity Explorer is an online educator offering free classes in the theories of complexity, systems, and chaos, which are frameworks explaining how mathematics, and information, underpin every science. Their next course, Introduction to Complexity, is an online intro course with no prerequisites, and acts as the gateway to all their courses in the future. It starts on September 29th. Evan will be taking this course, and he will host an in-person study group every week for people to work together. The first study group will be held on Monday, October 6th. You’ll be responsible for signing up for the course yourself, and completing the first week’s worth of assignments by yourself. If another day for studying works better, we can reschedule.

Contact Evan, comment, or email us at everylaboratory at gmail dot com if you’re interested in joining us!

Meeting Report

• Andrew and Evan drafted a model for a desk which can be converted between standing, and sitting, modes, and can be customized to fit the individual user’s ergonomic needs. Remarkably, it seems a workable idea, and they’re moving on to designing, and building a prototype.
• Carmen, Soleil, Kenneth, and Luke tried formalizing a problem graduate students face regarding the algorithmic categorization of their own thesis citations, or something like that.
• Evan realized that growing EveryLab into a decentralized multimedia collaboration platform is difficult, so he embraced his role as a currently de facto leader as every politician does: through force of will, and straw polls. If Evan asked you to fill out a survey, and you haven’t, he wants you to know that YOU SHOULD COMPLETE THAT SURVEY.

EveryLab Transparency Report, July 2014: An Inquisition of Its Associates

EveryLab is a lab for everyone everywhere to do everything. However, right now, the only active EveryLab associates are a few dozen people. Who are they, and what do they want?

• They’re largely currently based out of Vancouver, Canada, with a smattering of them spread out across the rest of the province of British Columbia. There are a few of them from Ontario, and, like, California? Geography isn’t much of an issue thus far.
• A lot of them have their worldviews substantially informed from content on an online community blog, and discussion board, known as Less Wrong. However, a lot of them have worldviews informed by content that is at odds with perspective presented at Less Wrong. So, it’s a net-zero cultural difference.
• A bunch of them are hackers. That’s great, though, so just don’t have a problem with that.
• A lot of them, by one means, or another. are transhumanists. Again, though, lots of them aren’t transhumanists, probably, so whatever.
• Lots of them are part of a secret group known as Thinkin’ Hard or Hardly Thinkin’, which also goes by the ominous acronym of THOHT. Some members of this secret group where t-shirts openly flaunting their association with it, sort of like the Illuminati, but friendlier.
• Sometimes university students will invite lots of their friends that no other active Associates know to themselves become active Associates. The names of these agents might be Kenneth, or Evan, or Rushil. Their motives remain unknown.
• Among the EveryLab associates is he who would bring the rest of EveryLab under the fold of what is known as the Dark Enlightenment. That man goes by the name Mr. Sandwich, and he isn’t actually very imposing, so there isn’t much to worry about.
• Within EveryLab itself is the secret cell the Manifold, and the not-at-all secret cell the Goof Troop. Unlike other internal cells, these would seek to infect the rest of EveryLab with mysterious memes. 

So concludes this report.

 

Why EveryLab?: An Open Letter to EveryLab from the Former Grand Ambassador

This is an open letter to EveryLab from Goofmonger (my server handle), co-founder of EveryLab, to EveryLab. This letter is about “why ‘EveryLab?”, about what I hope to see EveryLab become, and what we’re about right now.

After I hit Mindbreak during the 16-Hour Civil War, thus splitting into the schizoid entities of the Grand Ambassador, of the Chaos Legion, and the Dark Arbiter, of the Serious Revolution, I went full Poe’s Law, full Stephen Colbert, not being able to tell if I was a satire, or a maniac, and I teetered on the edge of an identity crisis. So, fearing my own power, and understanding the power of labels, I’m not calling myself the ‘President’, the ‘Grand Ambassador’, or the ‘Grand’ anything, anymore. My new phenomenal occupation is that of the Liaison Officer, since I’m already so good at that, and otherwise I’ll be the host of the EveryLab webseries (naturally). That being stated, my vision for EveryLab is that EveryLab is not your identity, but that EveryLab’s identity is you. I founded EveryLab as a social movement of satire, and experimentation. In terms of science, and technology, EveryLab exists to show people that through learning, they don’t have view the objects, and artifacts, of science as mysterious. In terms of ideas, ideology, and culture, it’s about showing people that they can control the flow of ideas in society, that it’s not necessary the ideas control you, and so, you don’t have to fear them.

EveryLab is itself a self-referential example of that last point. We’re actively creating something that had no right to be anything before, raising questions about what it means for something to be a concept, or a category, to humans. If Canada, Google, socialism, computers, and science can be real, so can EveryLab. Yet this started as a half a joke, and half a loose bunch of ideas. Now we use joke labels in the construction of a real bureaucracy, and we have a list of project ideas that is hundreds of items long. Even if there is something in the world which you yourself don’t feel like personally creating, or exploring, but only which to see happen in the world, you can throw it up on the ideas list however you want, and one day someone may take the mantle up themselves. Depending on how fast EveryLab gets things done, you could see what you proposed completed as a project, or started as an ongoing process, in a manner of days, or months. However, it seems fascinating to me that someone might do, or think about, your proposal, without knowing who you are, because you both think it is an awesome idea. That’s a connection without communication. EveryLab is about empowerment.

I personally like videos as a medium on the Internet, because it’s a manner for us to exploit the loophole that is shortened attention spans of contemporary times so that we can still educate people. I’m inspired by the likes of the Mythbusters, the Vlogbrothers, Bill Nye the Science Guy, CGPGrey, PBS, and VSauce. If you want to film a project, contact us, and Kytael, and/or I, will come film it. We will help you script, edit, and figure out the video for free.

You’re reading this on the WordPress site. If you want to post to this blog, contact EveryLab, and you will receive a log-in, so you can start sharing your thoughts of EveryLab.

If you don’t know what you want to do, but you know you want to do something, ask what’s going on, someone will respond, and you can be added to one of the active project teams.

EveryLab has a Manifesto, a foundation document which outlines EveryLab’s principles. However, it’s open-source; if you let us know your Gmail, we’ll give you access to the Google Doc, and you can edit the FREAKIN’ CONSTITUTION. Yes, EveryLab is ridiculously serious about being seriously ridiculous. However, if you go too far, someone will probably rapidly change it back. Such internal struggles are called shenanigans, and EveryLab condones them, in addition to promoting collaboration between all its associates.

What is EveryLab? Sometimes it feels like a bunch of green software engineers, a salesman, and a dentist eating snacks at my house, talking about wormholes. One day it might be something crazy. However, I’d like EveryLab to be a lab for everyone everywhere, labbing about everything. By the way, ‘labbing’ is a verb now. I want others to see EveryLab in the mirror, and to believe it’s whatever they’re thinking about. From there, we become some sort of leviathan mutant hivemind, and we’ll see what happens.

You can contact EveryLab at everylaboratory at gmail dot com. Welcome!

Server Construction Progress Report: IT’S ALLLLIIIIIVVVEE!!!!

• EveryLab already has running hardware which is ready to serve as the infrastructure for a server. Edit: THE SERVER IS AAAALLLLLLIIIIIIIVVVVEEEE!
• EveryLab currently doesn’t have the hardware to construct a server cluster. The use of Raspberry Pis, or Android smartphones, to be part of a server (cluster) has been discussed.
• EveryLab hasn’t yet set up a git server, but the Server Construction Team intends to get started on that at its earliest convenience.
• EveryLab hasn’t figured out how it would handle load balancing if it grows to house multiple servers.
• The precursor to the server is currently running on CentOS. After the construction of a unit server, other PCs may be used to compare, and contrast, different OSes, as we learn to use them. Other OSes to be tried will likely be a kernel based on Linux, or Unix, such as Sun Solaris, “or some other esoteric sh*t” [actual quote from the Server Construction Team].
• Other suggested implementations on the server include using Docker, Jenkins, Red Hat’s Open Shift for cloud, and distributed, computing.
• What all of EveryLab can look forward to is the implementation of a democratic project management system such as Better Means, which will facilitate collaboration for everyone everywhere.  While Better Means is currently in beta, we’re still gonna try it out.
  

  We’ve been busy.

Annals of EveryLab, Part I: Origins

There once was a satirical non-organization known as HackerLab, founded in the month known as May, in the year some call 2014, of the Common Era.

Anyway, HackerLab was intended to be an organization to ‘hack’ anything under the sun. However, it soon came to light that what could be hacked was more than what was first conceived of, as the world is as much ideas as it is matter, and materials.  The ‘hacking’ of the world become of concern to the Grand Ambassador of HackerLab. There was much inept squabbling, and the Astute Spin Doctor mentioned something about toothbrushes (…wait, what?) In the wake of ensuing debate, the Modernism Consultant made a grand speech which shook the HackerLab to its very core. The vibrations sent to the core of HackerLab rang so lightly they might as well have been hollow, but they left a small crack. Over the coming minutes, the crack festered until the Grand Ambassador had a Mindbreak, a point at which he became so ridiculous, not even he could tell himself if he was serious, or not. He wrote a thunderous satire, altered the ideographic themes of HackerLab, and began the Civil War. It was in light of the Civil War that a new personality was formed within his mind, that of the Dark Arbiter, who rallied his, like, three Legionnaires in the name of the Prophet of the Serious Revolution against what he saw as the tyrannical chaos of the Grand Ambassador. It was the view of the Dark Arbiter that the Grand Ambassador had been hoarding power secretly while parading as a benign facilitator of projects, and had built around him a cabal of idle idol worshipers. Represented as a mental schism in one mind, the Grand Ambassador, and the Dark Arbiter, waged war across the Facebook, alienating maybe three, four from HackerLab, which, by that point, had sort of been a cult of personality around this one guy for the weekend. It was pretty bananapants. It was at this point that the ineffable Spin Doctor, the Grand Ambassador’s mentor, was all like “dude, cool your stuff”. It was to no avail. Also, everyone else just sort of ignored it.

The Dark Arbiter hid his soul within the Mysterious Labcoat of Arbitration, transferring its power beyond the hilariously tortured mind of the Grand Ambassador, becoming immortal. Then, the Grand Ambassador shed the Labcoat, and went to buy some donair wraps for his friends. Commodore Cuddles of the Goof Troop became the new vessel, as she adorned the Labcoat, the wickedness of it unknown to her. In a touching show of unwitting sacrifice, but mostly non-chalant whimsy, the Supreme Overlord of what was HackerLab, Admiral Awesome, donned the Labcoat. He was able to overpower the Dark Arbiter, apparently, and consumed its soul. According to him, it tasted like onions…? I forget, whatever. Moving on, he merged with the Dark Arbiter, subverted his presence, and became one with the Natural Way, in a sort of Zen-like mindset. It might be because he was taking Adderall. So, by the time the Grand Ambassador returned, the 16-Hour Civil War was over, the Serious Revolution quashed, and HackerLab no more.

The Grand Ambassador returned with a micro-epiphany: the identity of EveryLab, even more generic, but less egregious, than the last one. In the wake of the Civil War, not many showed up to the remains of xD85, the original Labspace, for the Planning. However, in its wake, the Grand Ambassador took up the Great, Silly Rebranding, and everything became EveryLab for everyone everywhere. Finally, realizing the power of poor labels, he resigned his position of Grand Ambassador, choosing to maintain only about four other imaginary titles he had given to himself instead. He left the cultural future of EveryLab in the hands of the Ethics Committee, and the Wonder Consultancy. The Working Groups of Practicality carried on their timeless works, and it was foretold the Server of Ineffable System Management would be created on the forthcoming Monday.

However, among all this, one remnant of HackerLab remained, for it never was HackerLab. It was only within it, and only around it. It remains, for it was never there to begin with. What is: The Manifold?