Yay! Columbia Day

Monday was startlingly bright, sunny and cold. I went to Granville Island to get some beads for my apron and decided to walk home the long way round on the seawall in spite of my reservations about ice. It turned out to be a brilliant decision! I was in a mild state of euphoria the whole way home—partly due to my arctic down coat, partly due to my love of walking and hugely to do with the sunshine.

I burn as brightly as the sun when I can see it. It’s just wonderful and with my incredibly warm coat, winter walking is joyous; it’s actually better than in summer (except for the ice). It’s something I plan to do every sunny day. And when I got home fully exercised, I was ready for more work on the apron.

•

Today’s BIG EVENT is going to Columbia this afternoon for assessment #1. I have zero expectations, a ton of curiosity and mild optimism. I don’t want to get high hopes and be disappointed. It’s an assessment that is in two parts and ends with a written report. Only when I receive the report will I learn whether or not they feel they can treat me and what treatment will cost.

My speech has been compromised for almost twenty-five years. For almost all of that time the problem was episodic loss of speech due to laryngitis-type symptoms. Over twenty-three years the episodes of compromised speech got longer and more numerous. Then, very suddenly this past April, I awoke to the situation I remain in now. 

Since April I have been going to a psychiatrist. She diagnosed me with C-PTSD and I see her every week. She treats my C-PTSD; how that will affect my voice is a mystery to me.

Also since April, I’ve had three appointments with Dr. Ramage, my psychiatrist’s colleague in the Pacific Voice Clinic (PVC). She has diagnosed my speech problem as Psychogenic Dysfluency and that basically means my speech problem is due to emotional/psychological issues and not somatic in origin. It also means that the PVC won’t treat me. It was Dr. Ramage who recommended I go to Columbia.

I’ve had trouble understanding how speech experts are going to help someone with emotional/psychological problems but it must be part of their concern or Dr. Ramage wouldn’t have recommended I see them.

So today I’m actually excited about seeing Wendy Duke, my assessor.

•

 I can hardly wait to see Dr. Shoja tomorrow. I’ve learned a lot about why going “out there” to socialize is so risky from two incidents this past week.  I'm anxious to hear how she thinks I should deal with it. My issue is this: People tend to counter your opinions with anger or heavy-handedness. They, who also opine to disfavour, respond in a way that is hard for me to take. My C-PTSD makes me vulnerable to their tone, not their content. People can be quite harsh; perhaps they have thicker skin.

Here’s my theory: People who grew up with several siblings or a combative sibling can be hard to be around because they respond with force/anger. They’ve had to battle their way through their upbringing with their former combative siblings and so that is how they handle others as adults. They are everywhere and I find it really hard to take right now.

They are fighters. I am a flyer. I take flight. I retreat. I go silent and when I need to contradict, a question is my favourite way to investigate an alternative opinion to that which has been expressed. Not because I am better; because I am afraid of conflict. Fighters are not.

Is Fiction More Personal that Autobiography?

Yay! The holidays are almost over. Just today to go and then the world gets back to normal. Tomorrow, the first full working day of 2017, I get my first of two speech assessments — @ $450/hour, thank you very much.

I hope I learn as much about the mechanics and psychology of speech from them as I have about the mind from Dr. Shoja. Right now it is 6:00 am Monday morning and I cannot force a single word out of my mouth but if I were to go into the hallway and see a neighbour, I would speak without any problem — at least the few words I’d need; I might not be able to comfortably have a conversation. Why?

•

I have only two appointments this week so I’ll be able to get a good start on the apron and add some finishing touches to the wheat dress. Once I finish the apron I’ll have six dresses finished—half of my objective done.

The apron is not visually striking like my dresses. People react if I tell them the text is sewn; most people don’t realize what it is. Once they know, they are impressed that I, a guy without experience, did it. But visitors who don’t know me won’t get that “punch.” They will see something visually modest compared to the rest of the show.

But I love its story. I think it is the best story in the show so far so I am delighted with the apron as a component of the show.

And I’ve been thinking more about the show. A local company offers 25 books, each with 20 6” X 10” pages—and those are good dimensions for a book about dresses—for $100. That’s four bucks a book—not bad for a catalogue in which I can print all the letters about the dresses and the (fake) curatorial text.

It occurs to me to print a catalogue in curatorial language and then to separately print a “Dissenting Opinion” that is manually inserted into the printed catalogue so as to appear as an afterthought and on it I would write my screed about curatorial language. Such a plan is a lot easier than a script but less fun and I’m not sure I feel good about a show that mocks shows. I like a script that mocks shows better but it is much more work.

Perhaps as I work on the balance of the dresses, I can talk about my options with friends like Dwight and Nicola to help me decide on what to do. What I would dearly like to do, is monetize what I have done in some way so as to recover as much of the costs as possible so that I can then do something else—another project.

Creative projects, I realize, have always been a vital part of my life. All my life I did them for my employers. Once I retired, my projects became voyaging to India and Africa, the longest-held and most desired unfulfilled items on my bucket list.

Then I began doing all the things I’d wanted to do but never had time for when I was working: two books, two plays and one surprise: A screenplay that emerged from one of the stage play scripts. Then I was done; I retired for a second time.

My second retirement came about because I was “finished;” I had accomplished everything I had ever wanted to do and I wanted a rest. There are those around me who believe that decision opened the door to my breakdown—a medical crisis that has rendered me more of a recluse than I have ever been before and, stuck at home, a new kind of project emerged.

A(r)mour: The Defiant Dress is my most unique and personal project. It’s the least practical, most organic, riskiest, most personal project I have ever done—at least it seems that way to me. If you know me, you might think my show Knock Knock was riskier and more personal because it was entirely autobiographical but it wasn’t to me because it was a story I had told everyone I knew already.

Autobiography can be artistic, therapeutic, a public relations exercise or some combination of these objectives. Autobiography does not seem to me to involve the imagination much and that is all A(r)mour: The Defiant Dress is. It’s entirely fictional and that is why it winds up feeling so different, organic, risky and, ultimately, more personal that my autobiographical projects.

Happy New Year

My friend Dianne sent me this. It's rather frightening to ponder.

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years and, most people won't see it coming.

Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on film again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore 's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen again with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age.

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years. Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM's Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future; only specialists will remain.

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, its 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone; it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. People of the future will never get a driver's license and will never own a car.

It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 MI (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million MI (10 million km). That will save a million lives each year.

Most car companies will probably become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.

Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.

Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can't last. Technology will take care of that strategy.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents). We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water: Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it.

It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease.. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free. Goodbye, medical establishment.

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3D printing shoes.

Some spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.

At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home.

In China, they already 3D printed and built a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed.

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, first ask yourself: "In the future, do I think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

Work : 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a short time. This will require a rethink on wealth distribution.

Agriculture : There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day on their fields.

Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal, is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore.

There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you're in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions, if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they're telling the truth and when they're not.