I guess it's possible to use a MIDI synthesizer instead of the physical piano to achieve the same result ?

All that's needed is the conversion from the voice spectrum to notes/chords...

The added advantage is that it would be possible to use the pitch wheel to achieve intermediate notes for higher fidelity..

The output can then be processed again and it's pitch changed and so we can create music from synthesized speech. Does this make any sense :) ?

I think you're always overgeneralizing everything...

Later on in life, when they 'grow out' of snapchat, they will replace the addiction with something else - some other app, but also food, drugs or sex.

Whatever thing they will find interesting, they will pursue it with the same pattern that they learn with these apps / games.

This future generation will have to find a way to live with all this addictive technology and survive in the real world.

Might well be that Snapchat (and others) will be looked at as we're now looking at cigarettes.

I have been lucky to have experienced it once and now, 8 years later we still have it in us.

Of course it doesn't manifest in endless nights of looking into each other's eyes, but we still cherish that period as a gift from God himself.

Yes it does resemble an addiction, although maybe it's worth reversing the terms - addiction is actually like "true" love.

Everything in our lives just clicked - we'd just moved to the beautiful city of Barcelona, it was spring time and flowers were in bloom, we had money, more than we could spend and we traveled around and experienced each other through Europe - Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Brussels, Stockholm, Athens, Vienna, ...

Every week in a different city, weather was always great, the food and wine were fantastic - but all that beauty around us was pale in comparison to the look in her eyes.

That look - when this beautiful girl looks at you like you are everything for her and you feel like she's everything for you - like you are the perfect drugs for each other - that is a powerful and fulfilling experience.

That's what it feels like to be blessed.

Our daughter is the result of that love and we often joke that our love was actually the effect of her coming into this world.

Drugs don't really come close to the powerful emotions that we can generate naturally when we are in love - I can only compare it to an MDMA trip that lasts for months...

That love has carried us through the difficult moments of having a child and careers in our modern, artificial society and we would have been separated many times had it not been for those memories.

- No idea, the president's database server is down...

- And where are the autonomous tanks flying to ?

- Access denied...

- Oh crap, not again..

Purge everyone who doesn't agree with the purge. 150 milliseconds later, law-enforcement drones and robots start executing.

6.8 billion phones today means 6.8 billion pieces of high tech garbage a couple of years later, leaking all kinds of toxic shit into the water, plus 6.8 billion new devices manufactured while digging up all kinds of precious materials out of the ground and using oil to transport them all over the world, then burning coal, heating oil and natural gas to melt and glue shit together, and then burn more oil to transport the finished devices to customers all over the world.

That helps climate change, which leads to droughts in places like Brazil, determining people to use bathtubs to catch every drop of rain, were mosquitos breed and then fly around spreading Zika.

More phones and more porn, that's what's needed for a happy future.

/sarcasm

And it's easy to understand why - because most of humanity's issues are consequences of the spiritual health of every individual living on the planet. If the group, as a whole, is spiritually and morally lost or deceived, things like wars, dictatorships or disregard for nature can and do take place.

If psychedelics can heal individuals, then we can eventually heal the whole of society, which is the proverbial moving on to the next level of global consciousness.

Without any kind of real data, instinctively I feel like the world is going through an explosion of psychedelic use, partly due to music festivals, partly due to dark markets and partly due to the good press and incredible amounts of information available online.

Another interesting aspect is that the users who experienced a powerful personal transformation often feel the need to spread the word and rightfully come to treat them as sacraments.

So I think more and more people will use them, which will hopefully lead us to a peaceful, healthy future.

AI, VR, Robots, Space exploration and Psychedelics .. Interesting times indeed.

But you can think deeper than "earn" and "afford". You don't have to, but it won't hurt if you started looking beyond the linguistic abstractions so conveniently given to us by the media and corporations.

Look up the documentary "Darwin's nightmare", watch it and then look up the Apple iWatch launch event with Christy Turlington and a video of her wearing the iWatch in Tanzania.

I just think it's unwise to throw $600+ on a piece of experimental tech which is cumbersome to use and makes you look like a "me too" teenager.

That, when more than half the people on Earth earn less than that in a year ...

When I see people wearing an iWatch - here in Spain it's usually the tourists and some local "uber-geeks" - I can't help but feel sorry for them, because they've paid so much money to unnecessarily complicate their lives and now everyone has to see that.

Lost souls, seeking to be different by thinking different, except of course everybody does that and now different means not thinking differently... Or something like that.

Maybe in the future the smart watch will be a practical and useful thing. Right now the iWatch seems like a terrible watch and nothing more.

/rant.

We still don't know what long-term exposure to highly condensed, highly customized information does to our brains and social systems as a whole.

For example, there are signs that social network users are actually unhappy - in other words - are experiencing all kinds of mental health issues.

It is well known that programmers experience "burn outs", which, from personal experience, is a terrible and debilitating state sometimes even leading to suicide.

There is addiction to gaming, chat, porn, social networks.

Mobile phones have exposed everyone to the infinite stream of information/communication and I think this will lead to many more mental health issues.

I think we are not yet prepared for the kind of impact that current and future tech will have on our minds, so this would be a worthy field to invest in now.

But that which you control, controls you back with equal force.

While it is assumed that the state of the stock market reflects outside reality, it is in fact both ways - the state of the stock market affects and changes outside reality. And now it's a feedback loop, which involves software on one side and humans and "natural resources" on the other.

So now the married couple's daughter future is dependent on the outcome of this "game of trades" that HFT algorithms play day and night. And the people who write those algorithms do so to satisfy themselves, they don't know or care about the married couple.

Just like Google Maps - when there are few drivers using it, it's a handy little helper, if everyone uses Google Maps, it now defines the traffic pattern.

What is that ? How can that be the reflection of what's going on in the 'real' economy ?

I interviewed at an HFT firm once and they were doing kernel-bypass networking, latency measured in nanoseconds and all kinds of really low level systems programming tasks.

Interesting technical challenges. Except... what does that have to do with the economy ? Why is it that I can make money if my algo runs a microsecond faster than yours ?

Why is that time delta measured in money ? I know there's the very rational technical explanation of how the first to react executes the trade, but just step back and look at the bigger picture here - what the fuck are you guys really doing ?

Are the people writing these algorithms even remotely thinking that the trades can ruin or starve millions ?

Are you even considering that these high frequency "trading" systems have an actual impact on the planet, the air, the water, etc ?

Of course no. They don't give a fuck. In fact, you can only survive in this industry by not giving a single fuck. Otherwise you have to look at yourself and realize what a parasite you really are.

The stock market made sense when securities actually reflected the "real world" performance of companies.

Now it's all reversed - price determines company performance - it's like all companies work for the stock market itself.

I don't like these guys. A bunch of crooks and gamblers who have no idea what they are doing, while everyone thinks they do.

That's why the prognosis for the world economy is pretty bleak - because the insanity is institutionalized already and we have no idea how to stop it.

"This", meaning "current".

Add the belief that there is another (form of) life after this one and suddenly the equation changes:

This life is short. But then there's another one coming.

The scientists in us agree - of course there is no evidence of life after this one, despite the messages transmitted to us from our ancestors - in the form of stories, traditions, superstitions, beliefs, religions. Depending on who you ask - we either go to a place were we stay forever (heaven/hell/spirit world) or we come back to life as another being or life form.

But the body dies and rots away !

Technically the body has died many times during it's lifetime - cells die and others are created - or rather - create themselves according to the instructions in the DNA.

The DNA is the one that moves forward through time, all the other pieces of our bodies rot away. But not the whole of it, just 50%. Half the DNA vanishes into void.

But "I" will no longer "exist" !

That's a belief. And also quite vague, because - who/what is this "I" ? Is it my body, is it my brain, is it something which lives inside the body/brain, is it all imaginary ?

Well, think about anyone - someone who's not near you right now - who is he/she ?

Right now, he/she is a thought.

Isn't everyone, dead or alive, just that - a thought ? Isn't "I" a thought then ?

If so, what is life then ? A story ?

Your story.

"Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells." - Marcus Aurelius

It might be the solution, I haven't checked it out yet.