Fully Decentralized Social Media Network, and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I worked on primarily two projects this year through Shift…
My first project was a functional prototype for a fully decentralized social media network. I believe decentralized social media networks are the future of online. In a fully decentralized system, there are no central servers to maintain, thus running costs are negligible. In fact, the network only gets faster the more users there are, due to the nature of how decentralized algorithms function. In addition, decentralized networks are censorship-free, have a thoroughly increased level of data privacy, and are much less controllable by nefarious power structures.
I will try to avoid too many details for the time being since I am writing this on a time crunch (maybe ill add more later).
So far, I have the functional outline of the system and compiled research on how the network can function. I use the Kademlia routing algorithm in order to store and load data (including user credential data). In terms of uploading and downloading data packets, I am using the BitTorrent protocol without a centralized index but instead stored through the Kademlia protocol again. Currently, a lot of my work is compiling the various java libraries into android java, and designing the final UX/UI of the application.
Here’s what it kinda looks like so far:
Okay moving on.
I was reading some Wallace Stevens and I got inspired to compose a piece based on each stanza of the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. The pieces were very much based on the imagistic Haiku-like character of the poems and should convey similar effects to the words.
This article might be the closest I get to a full realization of this work.
I present to you Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird for Solo Clarinet performed by my colleague Nick Beine.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
