Sean Ganser

“The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.” ~ Arthur Miller

Feels good to be playing again. Trying to buckle down the intonation, but otherwise I still have the gist of it.

I’m not sure how to express a scenario or hypothetical antiquity where McLuhan’s ideas weren’t relevant.

Is that the inherent beauty in his ideas?  To this day, I question the properties of empty space as a medium and think to myself: “Maybe just particle.”. Normally an apologetic statement regarding how “You look stupid if you question the academics, right?” would follow, but I’m going to let it go for the sake of this argument.

I find myself, sometimes during smoke breaks, posing the question of the ultimate extension of what we call media.  Sure, the light bulb provides light – but it creates a 24-hour market. It brings with it an infrastructure.  Providing safety, illumination, color, and productivity – the electric torch-bearers of modern society hit the ground running.  If the medium is the message, in the case of the light bulb we’re creating a non-stop twenty-four hour modern marketplace.  So our message, via delivery, brings with it all the necessary means to reverse engineer the crucial facts about the entity that created or sent it, regardless of whether or not it is living or artificial.  When you refer to matter, or collections thereof as “media”, you bring with it a entitled sense of propagation. This is “The Medium is the Message” in a nutshell.

This analogy can give you a new perspective of what constitutes ‘media’ from the macro to the quantum.  Storytelling remains the king of the castle still, or at least in the human realm.  The Internet brings with it the tendency for political systems to collapse, disband, or decentralize.  At this point in time, most governments and people haven’t realized that the extension of our human network we call the Internet has made the ruling oligarchy quite obsolete. I wonder how long until the US Government is ‘Unfollowed’ by it’s citizenry.

The end result of such an extension is that all humans are now connected and information is the currency and lifeblood of our age.  I used to think future wars would be fought with robots.  Military drones can do a lot of damage in an area, but how much damage can a well timed and executed financial instrument do to those on the wrong side of a trade? I can’t speculate on the future of monetary systems in such an overwhelming and quickly progressing digital age, a better tangent would lead to a discussion about the pending Singularity popular among Trans-humanists such as myself.  Media theory would say that our rapidly decentralizing but increasingly connecting human network brings us a world where humans create their personal government that works for them. You can’t have pyramids and the world wide web in the same period.  Eventually, the Philosopher-Kings are going to start being ignored, and the pyramid will slowly degrade to dust.  This is what we are witnessing.

So what is the next logical step?  How do humans adjust to their new digital connectedness after the newness wears off and the new paradigm is established?  It’s possible with advances in bio-genetics that we eventually create the organic version of the Internet.  When the Internet becomes biological, it becomes a part of us.  We could possibly return to being on par with the fungal mycelium.

Besides that, you probably don’t sell many lawnmowers in the city.

So as I was doing some work, Johnossi came on my Youtube playlist and I immediately reverted to being back in Ekero last year.  I turned 30 shortly after.

By the way, I apologize to anyone I was friends with from around 2005 to 2009.  I was reading through some old emails the other day and realized how much of a prick I was.  I’m much happier now and don’t need to be so snarky, mean-spirited and angry.

Also, to anyone in my past that did me wrong, I forgive you.

It’s been five months since I moved to Los Angeles from New York. I got a new gig at a startup where I am a PHP developer. I’m currently working on a new indie-folk project called “Gerry and the Mermaid”, with a small collection of songs in the acoustic-pop realm.

Los Angeles is hot in July. It’s even hotter in Las Vegas. We stayed at the Mirage for the 4th of July, drank champagne on the strip with some Redditors, and stayed up till sunrise.  My back was killing me because I’ve been spending so much time hunched in front of the computer. My back should get better once I start riding the unicycle my brother shipped from NY.

We have a friend couchsurfing wih us for a bit, so we’re unable to host for a while until we sort  out some spacing issues.  Finally, I’m going to be blogging a bit more now that  things are somewhat stable.

Trying to get to Sweden in September. Wish me luck.

-Sean

It’s been over 3 months since Amanda and I made the move to Los Angeles. We’ve made some new friends, reconnected with old ones that have also moved west, and gotten settled in our apartment in North-east LA.

I recommend moving. I mean, getting up and relocating to a new city/state/country. You never know who or what is waiting for you out there until you find out for yourself.

The car (the Volvo V40) we picked up in January is still running great, aside from the occasional ‘check engine’ light. We scrapped our iPhones for the HTC Incredible (Android). I picked up another squeezebox (key of C, strange eastern-european ebay find for $50 bucks). I’ve been learning about one new jig or reel every 2 weeks on fiddle (finally learned Cooley’s and Drowsy Maggie).

Cool places we like, so far:
Red Lion Tavern (Silver lake)
Eagle Rock Brewery (Atwater Village)
Hama Sushi (Venice Beach)
Malo (Silver Lake)
King World (for groceries)
Celtic Arts Center (near Sherman Oaks)

I miss a lot of my friends on the east coast. I miss NYC like crazy sometimes. You too, Long Island… with your ‘special’ charm.

I still feel like I’m on vacation. A never ending vacation. Work doesn’t feel like work… it feels like I get up every day and go to school, work with some great people AND get paid. So strange.

Working at a startup is very cool. Super exciting. Long days, but worth it. The ground that you have to cover really propels you to the next level within your skill set.

We’re shooting to get back to Stockholm/Ekero in July. So we’re really looking forward to hanging out with our Swedish friends and getting to speak Swedish again.

Best regards,

Sean

We are pleased to have 2 couch surfers staying with us this week from Bordeaux, France! They are about to wrap up a 3 month journey across Canada and the USA!

I’ve been using twitter a lot lately, I think because of my recent smart phone upgrade to a HTC Incredible, which rocks!

Anyways, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/ogmediallc

I landed a cool new job at a great start-up out here in LA. Cool office, cool company, very cool people. I’m looking forward to cranking out some new tech with these guys.

The Pillage stuff is coming along great. We’re doing a long list of Celtic covers, some modern Irish songs, and of course – the pirate stuff.

Going to post a video soon of jamming out a couple of the songs, so be sure to check back soon!