Today I have a terrible back pain. I don't attribute it to my 40th birthday but to Paul Davis and his book "The mind of god". Yes, I couldn’t put down this book until I finished it and conducted some research in Technocraty about what people though about the paintings of William Blake. All those long ours took a toll on my back and now I am writing with a monkey on my back and the monkey is whispering on my ear - it's not your fault it's just that evolution has jet to catch up with your race.
Our body has evolved in response to environmental pressures including hunting, defending from predators and reaching food sources. Our skeleton is flexible and quick but definitely not prepared for this long intellectual journeys that we force ourselves to uncover a little bit of the mysteries of nature. This disconnect is generated by the fact that evolution has not catch up with our pursue of intellect and we are condemned to live our life developing our intellectual powers using a poor interface with our new environment. What our hunting skill have to do with Galileo assessment that “The book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics?” nevertheless, uncovering those mysteries has created new type of humans (not all off course). In the times of Plato, mathematics and philosophy where the same science. Lately we got more sophisticated and created all those divisions of science but ultimately it’s all conducive to exploring way beyond our surroundings and abstracting ourselves in the world of thoughts. We will adapt. We have even adapted mathematics to our human condition. Why there are only 10 digits? Look at your fingers. All the mathematic notions could be constructed with less digits, actually computers works with only 2 “0” and “1”. Yes, we filter the reality through our senses and our physical form.
All we need to do is to wait some more million of years so our backs can synchronize to our new lifestyle, meanwhile we will continue adapting ourselves and adapting our reality to best conform us.

When I find myself wandering why the abstraction of the numbers are so perfect and precise, I feel a fraction of what Pythagoras meant when he proclaimed that “in it’s deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature”. For Pythagoras mathematics was a religion. 600 years BC he funded a school in Samos (now Greece) named the “semicircle“ that still exist today. The teaching was a mix of philosophy and mathematic abstraction. Imagine yourself spending weeks thinking about why the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is 180 degrees or why the number Pi multiplied by the radius of a circumference give us the diameter of the circle? Where the number Pi come from? Who deducted this wonderful number?
All this teachings developed a religion and coined the term “mathematics“. Yes, Pythagoras, in addition to discovering the theorem that we all know, was much, much more. He was a religious leader and as Jesuscrist, he had disciples with different responsibilities among which one where to write what they had seen. Pythagoras never wrote a book (or a theorem), all his teachings came from his disciples.
The Pythagoreans where people that relied on friendship and purification of the soul by mathematics, philosophy. And particularly music. Yes music. Pythagoras discovered the perfect mathematical harmony of music. For instance he realized that perfect notes come when the strings of an instrument are whole number fractions of the other strings. How did he discover such a profound and quantifiable relation between geometry and music?
I have to confess I am a aficionado of Mathematics in it purest form and I can’t help myself imagining being part of a group of people entirely dedicated to the discovery of perfection and the mathematical harmony of nature. Sometimes I wander if heaven is also full or harmonic numbers that create really peaceful and perfect geometry. If this is the case I would probably have been unintentionally a member of the secret Pythagorean family. In any case my number is the3 which according to Phytagoras is: The number three: the first true male number, the number of harmony.
Anyway for those of you that follow this blog, this is a new way to look at mathematics and why not to ourselves.

Vietnam is one of the most amazing place in earth. I say this not referring to the unique natural attractions. I have had the fortune of interacting with some people in Hanoi and Hochiminh city (former Saigon) and I got hooked with the people. They are naïve, curious and beautiful inside out.
In his book, Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond made the case about the reason of the development of societies and centers about the environmental factors as the main drivers of economical development. I can not refute his conclusions because I agree with the separation of race as a factor of development. Nevertheless, looking at the societies in the first world, I always question their degree of happiness. Can happiness be measured quantitatively the same way we measure wealth?
So what is the relation of Diamond’s book with Vietnam? Well I have my own theory about the degree of development of happiness of societies (as opposed to economical development). I believe those societies that have gone through several cycles of conflicts, occupation and turmoil are more prompt to develop a sense of citizenship and fraternity that lead ultimately to better quality of living.
If you are reading this article is because you have access to a computer and Internet. This makes information readily available for most of the developed societies but can you access information about your neighbors so you can improve the relationship and proactively find ways to get to know and interact with them? Probably not. There are no many computers in Vietnam but I can ensure you that most people know perfectly well their neighbors and treat them as family. This develops the sense of belonging and brings happiness.
Vietnam has been occupied most of it’s historic time. First by the Chinese, France, Japan and ultimately by Russia/US. There are few countries that have been in such state of disarray for so long, for some estrange reason this land attracts controversy. For some reason this series of occupations have had an interesting effect of the people. The consequence of this is a unique kind of society that irradiates joy regardless of their social condition. Yes granted, I am an outsider observant with very few quantitative resources to establish a firm conclusion but I challenge my readers that have been in Vietnam to express their views of the country.
If you ever go to Hanoi or Hochiminh the first attraction you will be faced with is a bar named “Apocalypses Now” in reference to he famous movie. But believe me the reality of the Vietnam of today is very different (this is starting to look like a lonely planet article).
Any way dear readers if happiness exist it most be a mix of technological development and Vietnamese naives. I made my decision.

This is not a dissertation about the theory of quantum mechanics which I understand very little. This is snap shot about my theory, Colorado’s theory of live and how it relates to physics and (why not), god.
A drop oil in my driveway this morning told me some secrets about chance and destiny that I would like to share. I have always felt uncomfortable about the notion of a deterministic existence. A life where all the movements are programmed does not leave any space for free will and offload us of the responsibility of taking decisions because it is all “written“. Nothing is left to chance. The precision of the general theory of relativity or Maxwell electricity is irrefutable but to certain extent they convey the message to the rest of nature that if we come up with the “equation of everything” (Einstein spent his last years looking for this theory) we will be able to predict most of he phenomena of nature. So we are all straight I am not a scientific, just an aficionado looking for answers and so far to me, it looks like quantum theory has the best chance. Why? Because part of it’s fundamental elements is the fact that there are things whose behavior can not be explained and the best we can do is to try to interpret its outcome without having to worry to much about the why it happens. It just happens and we use probability to determine the best chance that one event has to occur. Yes, just like life itself. We just don’t know. But we can guess, we can guess that a very smart and dedicated children has very good chances to get into a good school. Dear reader, if you are an expert in quantum theory and you are considering clicking on the x button on the corner of your browser, this is your last chance because I will get into some details that you may find over simplistic.
So what the drop of this morning told me? It was interesting to see on the drop of oil a number of colors shining to me. But the oil has not colors right? All I could see was the reflection of the sun into the surface of the oil and given the way that each photon or particles of light (let’s assume that light is made out of particles) reflects among little dark lines over the surface of the oil (this is called diffraction grating if you are interested) creates this wonderful spectrum of colors . What is interesting is that it’s practically impossible to determine which photon that hits the oil will become certain color when it reflects back. A number of experiments that capture the reflection of single photons have concluded that there is no pattern, no formula, just pure chance measure in probability of its behavior .
The notion of chance in nature is a wonderful concept that makes me feel closer to some force that I can sense but not explain. Even thought quantum theory is applied mostly at microscopic level (and relativity theory to bigger bodies such as planets), for me the fact that each brick that composes the nature that we can see has a component of chance tells me that my life in indeterminist as well.
So what implications has a world where chance is not only possible but necessary? Well first of all it tells me that the course of the events can change, that people and objects are not made for one single purpose. They can be adjusted and become something that no one knows. Isn’t it interesting? My uncle (a typical Latino macho men) after coming back to serve in the UN army told me that he was “always” going to be an army man and he will behave as such; proud strict and rigorous with himself and people around. Now he works as a baby sitter and he likes it. The second learning is that there are certain things that we can’t explain. They don’t need explanation, all what we need to know is the outcome and deal with it. This one does not need an example (sorry no army uncles this time). Just close your eyes and think about who you are, where are you coming from and where are you going, this is your example. And the third learning is the fact that we are in control. We can increase or decrease the chances. We will never be able to ensure that an event will happen with 100% of certainty but we can increase the chances. If we work hard we can.
This is the connection I make with such a complex subjects as Quantum theory and my life. It’s all about reading the reflections in a drop of oil in a rainy day.

Well, I know how tedious are the long blogs so I will stop here. For the few clicks that this article gets I would like to share a couple of books in case you want to learn a little more about this fascinating world of quantum theory:
- QED, The Estrange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman
- A short cut through time by George Johnson
Thanks for rading
Colorado

Future
No, I don't think that the world of the future will be dominated by creatures with big heads using telepathy and un-spoken languages. I believe the next generations will have some advantage over ours but the change will not be so radical.
Philips Dick was born in 1928 and in the 50 and 60s created most of his masterpieces (including Minority Report for those film addicts) and Isaac Assimov was born in 1920 and his Great Foundation Series was written in the 50s, his most prolific decade. Why I have chosen those two authors? in addition to the fact that are my favorite science fiction writers, the two share have some estrange similarities not only about their most prolific witting time but also they complement each other to form the picture of the future that we are living today. They position the "future" somewhere in the first half of the 21 century and while Assimov was most concerned about the Machines (read robots) Dick was a user-interface and computer kind of a guy. If we combine both we can have a pretty good understanding of their vision of the future so that we can compare our present and forecast how the next generation will be.
So the method I am proposing to project into the future is to learn from the way the visionaries of the past felt the reality of today.
The future for those two was a place where people felt very comfortable with intergalactic traveling and where the human species was basically reduced to the interaction with machines, not only computers but very exotic methods of transportation. Regarding communications the world was completelly wireless, in most of the cases there was a aspect of interface with machines or person to person but always through a machine. Voice activation and recognition and a lot of button punching or touch sensitive glass were the norm. The aspect that I am most interested on is the user interface. In any science fiction publication the user interface with the machines determine the level of technology available. From the levers in the 30 to button or switch movements in the 60 or keypads in the 80 to touch-screens in the 90. This vision of the future is not different to the keypad and touch sensitive screens of today. But there is in all publications an element of communications that is not absent: wireless communications. Wireless in different modes in particular wireless connected to big machines or wireless with little cables connected to small devices in the body. There is no pure wireless connectivity directly from one user to the other as we have today where the device can communicate with different communication devices not only via voice but text or graphics. There was no mention of the ability to access internet via a warless device or send videos over the air. Where they not creative enough?
In terms of intergalactic trips we are disappointing Assimov and Dick but in terms of communications, sorry but I feel they could do better.
So, how the wireless future looks like form here? In 50 years I believe the world will be divided in two buckets (as it’s today) and in each one there will be different levels of communication realities. The developed and the developing world (read rich and poor). In developed nations, internet will move form the desktop to portable devices and there will be no difference between voice and data. Both methods of communication will be delivered via small devices that will react to our environment and morph according to the situation. There will not be a business or a recreation device. There will be a single warless device that will work as a communication hub and will provide the information necessary in each moment of our week or vacations time. This morphing will not be only in the content side. The device will morph itself in the exterior as well so it can fit better the business, personal or recreational activity and develop features according to the environment from stylized finished to rugged zed materials for the weekends. One single device with a user interface that adapts itself to the personal mood. From big buttons (touch screen) to very accurate voice response systems that will react to our emotions and will be able to help us to express ourselves. The smiley face of today will be replaced by a message that combines voice, video, smell, music and in some cases taste (yes the 5 senses) in a way that can almost simulate the human contact. This with not extra effort of profiling the device to fit our stamina. I am talking about a communication device that serves as our document of identification, so personal that grows with us, designed in modular way that can be updated without exchange.
I will continue tomorrow as I am falling asleep…