Blog

Last year I’ve neglected my personal blog quite a bit in favour of the Fractal Future Forum. Still, I want to use this blog for presenting my most important thoughts, articles, as well as my personal journey and progress. The last year has been significantly different for me. But to give you a better view of my progress, I also add the last three months of 2014 to my personal progress report. So, let’s review what happened:

2014

October

• During this month I recovered from an uncomplicated fracture of my left collarbone that happened at the end of September while I was riding my bike through the forest. Getting into a sharp downhill curve covered with wet leaves turned out to be a really bad idea. Anyway, the fracture was more annoying than painful.
• Unfortunately, this injury has had a negative effect on my general motivation, so I didn’t manage to do anything really noteworthy that month.

November

• I made the blog post titled Quantified Prestige – Making Intellectual Property Obsolete, which included the second YouTube video that I have ever made.
• I also cut out the antidepressant that I have been taking for years to deal with the negative psychological symptoms coming from ME/CFS, because I felt like I didn’t really need it.

December

• During the last month of 2014 I created the Social Future Metanet, which would later be rebranded into the Fractal Future Network. The Social Future Metanet started out with a simple PHP-based Simple Machines Forum: the Social Future Forum. It was intended to become a place for the technoprogressive / social futurist community, since I was convinced that Facebook and blogs weren’t enough to support serious discussions and projects.
• During the same month, I also did an internship in a small company.

2015

January

• I migrated the Social Future Forum to Digital Ocean and then restarted it as Discourse forum.
• During this process I learned a few things about managing VPSs (Virtual Private Servers).
• And I continued my work in the small company mentioned above with a minor part-time job.

February

• For the new think-tank Transpolitica I’ve written a book chapter titled “The Case for Universal Prosperity“, which was released in the first Transpolitica publication Anticipating Tomorrow’s Politics in March.

March

• My general energy level has dropped significantly. This made me feel like my general recovery from ME/CFS was in peril.

April

• I decided that I needed to do more to fix my health issues and started my “antioxidant carpet bombing” experiment: To get oxidative stress under control I started maximizing my intake of antioxidants. Besides my general supplementation regime, I’ve taken vitamin C (several g per day), OPC, Q10, astaxanthin, and several “superfoods”. That hasn’t really restored my energy level, but at least it seemed to have provided a good basis for further health stabilization methods, most importantly trying to stay relaxed under all conditions.

May

• I joined the newly founded UK Transhumanist Party as official member.
• In a trial-and-error process I managed to migrate this blog to Digital Ocean.
• Then I rebranded the Social Future Metanet as Fractal Future Network. I did this in the hope of getting people into the network which previously seemed to have been unhappy with its previous name. In the end, this hope turned out to be unfounded.
• For Transpolitica I’ve written a chapter titled “Voluntary Basic Incomes in a Reputation Economy”. It was published in the second Transpolitica publication Envisioning Politics 2.0.
• Finally, I’ve also gotten in touch with the Transhumanist Party Germany precursor group and supported their work by providing it a discussion space within the Fractal Future Forum.

June

• Apparently, my energy level has recovered and was surprisingly stable.
• I’ve finished my post series “Presenting the REPDEV Network“, which explains how a new kind of economy based on reputation incomes could be bootstrapped with a new form of organization structure.

July

• Found out that doing long biking tours improve my digestion and make me sleep much better!
• Got into contact with a movement supporting the global basic income idea.

August

• Motivated by complex philosophical conundrums, I shifted my primary personal goals to obtaining wisdom and strength!

September

• Started with a new morning routine, consisting of:
  1. Quick bodyweight exercises and stretching
  2. Taking a cold shower
  3. Drinking a glass of water with 1 g vitamin C
  4. Meditating for 20 minutes
  5. Drinking a cup of decaf coffee (with added cocoa powder)
• Increased the working time of my part time job in order to get some more money.
• Released the 3rd version of the documentation of my Quantified Prestige system.
• Became a founding member of the Transhuman Party Germany (TPD).

October

• Became the official Leader for International Cooperation of the TPD.
• Published my first article on the IEET blog: Solving Problems With Collective Intelligence – Towards an Internet of Thinkers?. It got more than 3000 hits within the first 2 days and more than 10000 hits in total.
• Verified that antioxidants help to improve my mood.
• Started creating a sci-fi world/scenario called Netec (2045).

November

• Coded a Fractal Generator web application that can make nice IFS fractal images with (vanilla) JavaScript.
• Generalized my conceptual virtual currency called Fluido (part of my Quantified Prestige framework) to the versatile concept of flux currencies.
• Verified that I can effectively suppress most symptoms of trivial infections with vitamin C megadoses and other supplements!

December

• Many minor improvements of the Fractal Future Forum, for example enabling SSL / HTTPS via Let’s Encrypt.
• Translated the party- and work-programme of the Transhuman Party Germany into English.

Overall Progress of my Health

What is exceptional about my last year is that I had the energy to do a lot of constructive things. That is unusual, since previously I would crash even after doing something only moderately difficult. In hindsight, it’s my “antioxidant carpet bombing” strategy that most likely stabilized me nearly completely, so that I wouldn’t suffer from those debilitating energy crashes. So, this is the first year that I got my health issues basically under control, even though I don’t feel really very good. There are still many symptoms that indicate that I have a chronic health problem, but the big difference is that I am reliably basically functioning now, which is something I can’t really claim for my previous years.

Keep on Trying!

I did many different things last year, but none of them transformed into any kind of big resounding success. I’ve become acutely aware about how difficult it is to get people really interested and engaged in anything really worthwhile. Even the best ideas, projects, and products are worthless, if they fail to set people ablaze with passion. Connecting with people on an emotional level about something that is intellectually sophisticated is harder than I had expected. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. Real progress is possible, but we need to give everything we have for that purpose, if we even want to have a chance.