About

I sonify.  I illustrate.  I imagine and describe.
I leap from cloud tops into waiting planes.  I triangulate and reify.

I travel within sound waves, one vibratory locus to the next.
I am made of wish and sinew, blood and work.  I am built for adaptation, evolution, flex.

My mind is filled with dragonflies. Sidewinder hands make push and pull.
My vision traps possiblity. My consciousness, simultaneously, citizen and rule.

My feet have trod historic paths, in multiple directions.
I am far older than I seem.
I spin through ana/kata, inner/outer, tau/theta.
I swing from mindfulness to dream.

I embrace Occam, Ada, Darwin.  I burn with the discipline of rational search.
My heart beats with pure, godless science: the fusion glow of the universe.

I’m Vlad Spears, a traveler from the future living in San Francisco circa 02011.  This is where I tie many aspects of my life together.  I connect disparate points, inject ideas into the world and watch as they come back to me.  It’s an exercise in making sense of myself. I examine and discover internal contradictions, unwarranted assumptions, biases and evasions.  In so doing, I strengthen what is true and good while jettisoning those ideas which hold me down.  Everything is an experiment.

The majority of my writing is solely for this purpose of thinking on the page, and is not published to any eyes other than my own.  What ends up here are small dips into the well, conceptual bits and moments carefully measured and poured into the glass for sharing.

My interests cover every angle and facet of existence as a modern human: art, culture, science, all areas of our instantiation as networks, nodes and systems.  Where are my boundaries?  What defines a good life?  Is anything truly impossible?  Currently, my answer to this last question is no.  It seems obvious we are in the midst of an evolutionary shift of immense proportion, driven by escalating capabilities part and parcel of greater scale and exponential acceleration.

I am not one to self-identify with labeled movements, but I share many positions, goals and desires with Extropists and Transhumanists, Secular Humanists and Utilitarians.

I am affiliated or aligned with these concepts, spirits and organizations:

The Long Now
The Mars Society
Humanity+
The Buckminster Fuller Institute
SPCA International
American Humanist Association
Freedom From Religion Foundation
The Brights
American Civil Liberties Union
California League Of Conservation Voters
Wikileaks
EFF
Monome
The Heinlein Society