About.Silverton.Palo-Alto.CA.us

try memolane (beta) | to dream the impossible stream | an open mind project flight of fancy

"This is the real news of our century. It is highly feasible to take care of all of humanity at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever experienced or dreamt of. To do so without having anybody profit at the expense of another so that everybody can enjoy the whole earth. And it can all be done by 1985."
- R. Buckminster Fuller, The World Game, 1971

"Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?"
- Ernest Hemingway

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
- Gandhi

"To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge."
- Socrates

"Your assignment is to spend your life discovering what your assignment is."�

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both."
- L.P. Jacks

"As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it."
- Albert Einstein

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
- Gandhi

Tron: "If you are a user, then everything you've done has been according to a plan."
Kevin Flynn: "Ha! You wish!"

"The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life."
- William James

"It's intention. Our intention is everything. Nothing happens on this planet without it."
- Jim Carey

"I had a vision of a way we could have no enemies ever again, if you're interested in this. Anybody interested in hearing this?It's kind of an interesting theory, and all we have to do is make one decisive act and we can rid the world of all our enemies at once.Here's what we do. You know all that money we spend on nuclear weapons and defense every year? Trillions of dollars.Instead, if we spent that money feeding and clothing the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over,not one human being excluded ... not one ... we could as one race explore inner and outer space together in peace, forever."
- Bill Hicks

"I want to learn something new each day. I want to learn something new because I'm very, very old, and will be dead soon. So I want to be as well informed as I can possibly be when I die."
- John Cleese

"Wherever I may roam, where I lay my head is home."
- James Hetfield

"Gee, he was here a minute ago."
- George Carlin

"There is too much to say and it goes in all directions."
- Ted Nelson

A random fifty years on the planet in less than fifty random bullets:

• 1960-1981: Cultural learnings for make benefit glorious cities of Joliet, IL; Concord, CA; Glendale, AZ.


• 1983: The first blog is born. Yes, that long ago, boys and girls; long b4 ur interswebsnets, no j/k.


• 1981-1985: Citizen soldier stage. Lieutenant, U.S. Army National Guard. Graduated number 3 of 600 in advanced medical training company. Operating room technician, University of Texas Health Science Center; first-string surgical team for neuro, ortho, optho, cardio, general, transplants, trauma shift. Thoughts of becoming surgeon.


• 1986-1991: Instead, bootstrapped and co-founded a successful contracting company, $2M annual revenue.


• 1991: Reserve canopy malfunction at 3500' on standard freefall skydive. Nine months body cast. T11/12-L1/2 compression fractures. Left knee trashed.


• 1991: Self-taught DOS computing from hospital bed. Age at first time ever set fingers on a keyboard: 31. Modem. FTP. UUCP. Gopher. Mavis Beacon. Usenet and email exchanges with academics at Harvard, MIT, etc. OS/2 Warps Forever! If you are under 30 (make that 40 [rather, 50 {actually 60 (why not 70? [or 80!])}]) when reading this, and if you've missed college and think it's too late -- don't buy society's lies. Fill out the applications. Get started right now. It is NEVER too late to continue your education. NEVER.


• 1991: Realized inevitability of residential high speed networks. Drafted business plan to create residential broadband Ethernet networks.


• 1992: Set series of goals to become strategically positioned for the inevitable network revolution. Intent is to HELP MAKE a revolution happen.


• 1992: Small Business Development Center (SBDC), Phoenix, AZ. The conversation, in brief: "You mean you want to raise money to set up a BBS?" "Um, no, that would be pointless; we need to finish building the internet, using native Ethernet, all the way to individual homes." "Sir, we just can't help you if you won't speak sensibly. That might happen in 20 or 30 years, but it's just not practical in this decade. Besides, you don't even have any education; what makes you think that YOU could ever do such a thing?" The finance officer actually suggested to my wife (referring to me in the third person, in my presence, as the inanimate "he"), that I seek psychological counseling for treatment of the delusional certainty of an inevitable and explosive demand for Massive Symmetric Bandwidth.


• 1993: Become volunteer Assistant Net Coordinator, Net202, Fidonet, one of several protocol and standards based fragmented precursors to "the" internet. Dig those nifty uucp and netmail addresses; feel free to write to me on
  UUCP: uunet!m2xenix!puddle!202!1802!Michael.Silverton or
  via internetwork transport: Michael.Silverton@f1802.n202.z1.fidonet.org.


• 1993: A totally unexpected thing (at least to the experts at SBDC) called a "web browser" is introduced.


• 1993: Begin classes, San Diego Mesa College. Pursue AA Business Administration with intent to follow-up with technical BS and MBA/JD degrees.


• 1995: Valedictorian, San Diego Mesa College, 4.0 GPA. Acceptance letters from Harvard, Cal, and Stanford.


• 1995: Woohoo. Super advanced video conferencing. Not even close to a first, but someday, everyone will do this, IF they have the bandwidth!


• 1995: In fact, IF we have the upstream bandwidth, anyone with a net connection can be an active content Producer, not just a passive Consumer, rolling out infinite custom channels via Ethernet TV.


• 1997: April 30, 1997 -- Dialup's doom is obvious (especially AOL). "Isn't it about time to move beyond the interim ISP model altogether? Time to deploy residential community LANs and do away with all this silly local switched-circuit congestion altogether."


• 1997: Stanford honors thesis, Information Superdriveway: Social Informatics of Deploying Residential Community Fiber Optic Computer Networks. Graduation, 3.65 GPA.


• 1997: October 1, 1997 -- Building community alliances and crunching the numbers.


• 1998: Competitive test scores and GPA, yet no business school acceptance. Guess I'll have to start building NOW.


• 1998-1999: Project managed technical writing team, 40 Sun Microsystems engineers, and sponsoring VP to create and publish business and operational plan for an internal startup, Sun Telco; became most profitable business unit, $200M.


• 1999: January 25, 1999 -- The first Ethernet To The Home (ETTH) Company.


• 1999: Oct. 27, 1999 PDT, by Chris Oakes
  SAN JOSE, California -- Now, coalitions of Internet service providers and consumer advocates are trying to warn the nation's ISP industry that a similar monopolistic monster threatens their ability to compete. "Open Access is historically an enabling policy that's fostered competition and allowed Internet service choice so far," said Michael Silverton, director of the new Open Access Alliance of the Bay Area.


• 1999-2000: Define Security Chain Management brand position and strategy for Securify, Inc.


• 2000: July 6, 2000 -- Marketing Residential Information Infrastructure Systems (RIIS).


• 2001: October 4, 2001 -- Redefining ETTH to the more generalizable Ethernet Subscriber Access Network (ESAN).


• 2001: 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... ignition ... MELTDOWN ... we have meltdown of the infamous Dot-bomb, Dot-com bubble, or whatever you want to call the era where PowerPoint promises could net you billions while building real networks with tangible assets and tiered-pricing models for various levels of service triggered mostly snickers or sneers. Oh, and there's a "bandwidth glut" of "too much fiber" that people will never figure out how to use, too.


• 2002: Co-founded Teckheads, LLC (archive). Outsourced IT solutions for small and medium business. $300K annual revenue.


• 2002: Oh, remember what I told you in 1995? Yeah, that's called Skype. Odds that maybe you'll pay attention now: still zero, but like any doomed futurist, I'm getting used to it; even finding it entertaining.


• 2003: February 5, 2003 -- Still working to protect the net from ILEC Unbundling, an early precurser and requisite for Incumbent Carriers to eventually undermine Net Neutrality. What is Net Neutrality? Watch this video, using the bandwidth that "nobody will ever need."


• 2004: June, 2004 -- IEEE Std 802.3ah-2004 (Ethernet in the First Mile) is available from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.


• 2005: Volunteer field logistics co-coordinator and janitor for first ever Space Elevator Games, co-sponsored by NASA and Spaceward Foundation. Commenced private pilot training.


• 2005: Particpated in NASA Interpersonal Human Relations and Management Training program Enhancing Team Performance for Exploration Missions. Research subject and beta tester for next-generation interactive multi-player gaming-like platform for Distributed Team Decision Making (PDF) study. Example application: Mars cooperative tele-robotic operations. Data directly applicable to several inter-related aspects of space work.
  Principal investigator: Judith Orasanu.


• 2005: Oh, remember 1995 again? Yeah, this time it's called You Tube. Deet-duh-DEE ... oh, now we sorta' get it. But it's too late baby, now, it's too late.


• 2006: In our next episode, it's all about blogging, SMS texting, crackberries, Web 2.0-ing, the future of humanity, and requisite social changes through social entrepreneurship; and of course LINKED IN.


• 2006: Coincidentally, Fry's Electronics introduces advertising tagline: "Welcome home, tech heads." :)


• 2006: December. Joined Auriga Corporation. Worked with CEO to create strategy for company growth with focus on Human Architecture, Social Intelligence, and Leadership Lessons learned at NASA. Researched and wrote proposals, presentations, partner briefs, etc. Contributed in a modest but pivotal role to achieve game-saving last minute effort to help team win a key $15M services contract. Contributed to expansion of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS); specifically, expanding use of smart-cards in public transit (APTA); customized innovative PBwiki instance as a new tool for distributed, colloborative work teams and project managment; created compelling business cases, positioning strategies, and accomanying powerpoint presentations; brand image updates included new cards, letterhead, web updates.


• 2007: What's next? IPv6? MuniWireless? EthernetTV reaching everywhere? Leapfrog ancient Web 2.0 to Web 13.0?


• 2007: The Big Tweet: obviously, the twitterverse is expanding rapidly. Tormented between SomaFM, Pandora, Last.FM, and many other EthernetRadio stations.


• 2007: The tremendously accomplished and concientious crew of the Lifeboat Foundation were kind enough to toss out a life preserver. I look forward to exploring the feasibility of a global terrestrial Ethernet Solar System (in contrast to Vint Cerf's inevitably essential interplanetary internet, this could be a terrestrial global ethernet via solar-powered AP's (hence, a "solar system" thanks, Pat!) such as those innovated by the great minds at Green Wi-Fi). As Eric rightly suggests, perhaps such a system could provide another layer of protection under the CommPreserver program.


• 2008: The future is always ours to define, create, and preserve, right? As a student of finance across the past several ventures, I've landed a new vocation as an Indpendent Investor and Financial Analyst. One of the great aspects of deviant life is that our experiences and opportunities are cumulative in ways that The Normals simply cannot comprehend; as we move on, very little of what we've already done is lost; hence, greater and greater distance from The Norm yet greater and greater joy in accomplishment. It's always interesting to see where the road might lead from here, so feel free to hit me up on email, facebook, linkedin, twitter, in ted-space, right here on the Bighead TokBox, or any other web frequency you prefer -- except Second Life, attempt no landing there, experiments in progress -- and let's explore the opportunities to mitigate the Bad Stuff and accelerate the Good Stuff, moving forward.


• 2008: It's time for that 1998 flashback: "Why would anyone EVER need all that bandwidth?" Then 2002: "There's a GLUT!" "We'll NEVER utilize even half the built capacity!" Meanwhile, this is the year that our 1998 business plan told you that you'd intercept the growth curve and OWN the new telecommunications landscape. Dear Mr. Greatest VC's of all Time (you know who you are): you still have the old school diskettes we gave you, unless you threw them away. Brilliant move, that one was, eh? Households now demand more UPSTREAM than ever and You Tube ALONE consumes all the bandwidth of the 1998 Internet and we still come up short. Dear former Sun Telco colleagues and brainiacs: Remember when you sidelined our business case that P2P GAMING would become one of -- if not THE -- primary drivers of demand growth for Processing AND Bandwidth? Yeah, so how's that workin' out for ya? OH, looks pretty good. Let's call this one ultimate vindication and just move forward, shall we? Sounds like a good deal to me.


• 2008: So yeah, that Linked In "fad" as you dubbed it over the lunch conference table in 2006? Yeah, that's ONE BILLION DOLLARS today. Nice work.


• 2009 (preview, as of 06/20/08): Energy, energy, energy. That's the rousing chorus, right? And rightly so, as we damned well better solve it over the next ten years; five would be better. There's absolutely no excuse to not cover Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico with solar panels and run the sun's power pipes to everywhere from there. (Interesting: just weeks after posting this, Al Gore called publicly for the same time frame. Encouraging to find independent validation of our own data-driven convictions.)


• 2009 (provocation, as of 06/20/08): The thing is, it's clear that you and I are not nearly as bright as we think we are when it comes to solving the most complex issues involved in creating a sustainable post-information society. If we want to keep our ego-bloating gatekeeper roles, we best be creating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the technologies to End Aging and Poverty, and innovating Post-Scarcity Socioeconomic Models (Capitalism 3.0) unless we want to just get into the permanent habit of dropping money from helicopters along with each quarterly reporting cycle. We DO realize that's where we're headed, right? And we might have 20 years to figure this out, if we're lucky. Otherwise, the Chindia BRIC will be innovating and implementing it all for us and without us. Not a threat, not a promise, just the next forecast. Ball's in our court.


• 2009: Stumbled upon Connie, a somewhat unexpected permutation of Extended and Augmented Social Cognition We've discovered tandem twitter trends; #egosphere and #cognosphere. Guess which one I'm more interested in co-constructing as a very rudimentary training ground for trans-cortical communication? Twitter has already become "too useful to fail" in its role as social cognition utility. Oh, this will be known as the year of Social Media. After a few months of protestation that, "you *can't* call it *that* ... it's not businessy enough ... come up with something else" ... then it's like, "oh yeah, we knew it all time." Same old innovation leadership process, different day.


• 2010 (trajectory, as of 06/20/08): Nearly two years into what used to be called full time retirement, I'm working more profitably, productively, and effectively than ever, spending more time in the clouds -- both physically and inter-cognitively, where my aspirations have always lived -- than on the ground.


• 2011 (forecast dev, as of 5/14/09): It's time to begin connecting the border-pieces of the puzzle for this entry. Come'on folks, it can't be that hard to glimpse just a little bit beyond the immediate step before us, can it? We're not talking 2030 singularity stuff, this is the timeframe within which we DECIDE which future we are building. We're not victims of some disembodied technoprogressive conspiracy, we're co-architects; and we're either helping to build sustainable stability or we're just slapping together whatever we can find to pretend that everything's Just Fine. It's not all Just Fine, so let's get crackin' on the proactive, collective Socratic dialogue, shall we?


• 2011: We're living in the post-future present tense. The global cognition grid is sufficiently wired such as to begin seriously challenging the effectiveness of forecasting, thanks to increasingly high resolution realitme situational awareness. Activity, sensor, and data streams of a world where change has accelerated beyond the speed at which humans can pragmatically anticipate. Perhaps now, we may begin.


• UPDATE (5/2/2011): I owe this space an update from 5/14/09 through today, when the intention was to experiment writing down desired trajectories as a way of further tweaking the classic About Page. In addition to past and present tenses, I added aspirations as an oversimplified personal forecast. We are not the same people that we were 2, 3, 5 years ago, much less 20, or 50. We are dynamic evolving creatures, even across the short span of a human life.

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