Doug Wilson's Index Page

This page exists mostly as a cross-reference page and a place where human beings can find my e-mail address, which is hidden from web spiders, but it does contain a fair amount of real content further down the page.  I write something about myself, too.

This is far from being my first attempt at creating a good web page, but it is still not a good one. I am sorry about that. Creating HTML is unreasonably difficult, even using a WYSIWYG editor. This is true of all programming languages, sad to say. I once had a domain and web page about what sofware should be like. To say easy is the least of it.

About the Related Web Pages, Groups and Blogs

I am hesitant to include some of the entries given below, because there are people I know who will think of some of them as frivolous or evidence of insanity.  I hope people will at least glance at the web pages before being too critical of them.

These pages and blogs exist for a reason.  I have a genuine need to communicate.  This is not just a personal desire for communication, a psychological need, rather it is a need based on purely pragmatic considerations.

The world must change.  It must change soon, and I believe it can.  Eventually it will change and I think I know how it will change, but we cannot afford to wait for the inevitable.  Change must be precipitated, brought about, made to happen.

I believe that I can help.  I am sure I know how I can help, but it depends on successful communication.  Providing the tiny spark needed to start these changes is not something I can do alone.  I am just not good enough at communicating my ideas and beliefs.  The spark I can provide on my own is too small.

The material on these web pages is more or less original work.  It must be, because I regularly search for something from other people which might make me feel the load a bit less.  But some of what I say must have come from extensive reading.

 For most of my life I read about a book a day on average.  Since about 2001 I have been writing, instead.  I have been writing a lot.  That has left much less time for reading, but after all, someone must write so others can read.  

Most of what I have written is only suitable for publication on the web.   I have spent the most time on a a 5,000 page 5 volume novel, which I have read and corrected many times.  

I think it is a pretty good book, actualIy.  If someone else had written it I would have read it with great pleasure during my days of soaking up text.  

I will put this obscenely large novel up on the up on the web for the amusement of insatiable readers such as I used to be.

A shorter novel is the 1,500 page Technological Fantasies, having the same name as one of my web pages, one of my discussion groups and one of my blogs.  I have already posted this entire book on the web.  For access to it, go to Technological Fantasies , a page about future technology.

Some years ago I created a discussion group about tecnological fantasies on Yahoo.  It still exists.  To join it, you should be able to click here.

Click to join TechFantasies

or here

 Please try it.  Like all such groups it is free and you can quite anytime.

I hope these buttons work.  Let me know by e-mail if they don't, please.  See address below in non-spiderable form.

Another group I have on the same site is about social technology.  To join it you should just need to click here.

Click to join SocialTechnology

or here

 Please try this one too.  It is also free and of cours eyou can quite anytime.

These buttons are created by adding a bit of html to Yahoo supplied code.  I hope they work, but can't be sure of it.  If there are any problems, please let me know.  My e-mail address is below.

I wish I knew of other ways of advertising groups, blogs and web pages.  As I have pointed out on my FindCompatibles blog, it is not enough to match people with friends, lovers, jobs, places to live and so on, it must be possible to match people to ideas, people to web pages and places to discuss things.   This topic is taken up in my Technological Fantasies book, available in PDF format from my  Technological Fantasies  web page, a page about future technology -- but it should be present day technology.  Even with search engines like Google, it is just not good enough.

Type in this address to e-mail me.  The image is interesting.  See Social Technology

I have used a series of e-mail address over the years, each of which eventually became out of date because of a change of Internet services or became almost useless because of spam.  Eventually I stuck with a Yahoo address, but my inbox still fills up with spam and their spam filter still removes messages I wanted to see.  So I have switched to a new e-mail service.  Web spiders should not be able to find it, since it is hidden in a jpeg picture.   I have also made it difficult to reach me.  The picture is not a clickable link.  To send me e-mail you must want to do so badly enough to type this address in.  That is a nuisance, for which I do apologize, but I just don't want a lot of mail from people who do not care about what I have to say.

 The Important Stuff

I believe that human society is reaching a critical mass, a take off point, a true watershead.

I think of this as something that can be ignited by a tiny spark.

I desperately wish that someone else would provide that spark, so I could just take advantage of the massive positive changes which will result.  But I am afraid it just might not happen soon enough for me or for anyone of us.  I most especially worry about the poor, the oppressed and the criminal element amongst us, which ruin things for everyone.  

I also worry about war, something that just should not happen ever, and of course I worry about environmental problems.

As I said, I think the society is at a turning point, due for a major change.  I think I know what that change will be and what other changes will follow from it.

Attempting to Communicate in the 21st Century

Once upon a time, in the good old days, before the World Wide Web, their were more people using the Internet than interesting ways to contact people.  Now the number of web pages and related things is so large that it is difficult for others to find a page a person puts up.  Still, it has to be done.

 In a rather shameless attempt to attract people to my pages I have included a number of questionable topics.  This seems the only way to grab the people who might otherwise never see any of these pages.

If any of these links do not work, please go to the alternative index page and work from there.

My strongest belief is that the world will be changed by what might at first glance appear to be purely selfish activities.  Many people use job-finding services like Monster.com or dating services like eHarmony.com to find a job or a special friend.  I believe the key notion which could change your perspective on such services is the notion of Pool Size, the size of the pool of candidates.  If the number of available jobs is only 10, most people using the service job-finding service will be disappointed.  If the number of available men in the dating-service pool is only 10 then most women using the service will be disappointed.  

Carried to its logical conclusion this leads immediately to the notion that the size of each kind of pool should be the whole world.  To do this, the basic service must be free, though various public or private organisations could provide value-added services, as long as they share the basic information so that they do not in any way reduce the size of the ultimate pool of candidates, which must be global.

There are several other needs which many people neglect in their hunger for love or sex or good jobs.  People need friends, especially one best friend of the sex they are not attracted to, or whom they are not interested in that way.  People need someone to advise them, a mentor.  Most often overlooked is the need to be a mentor to someone else.  There are also needs for places to life and places to find education.

When a person is tied into humanity with all these social connections they live in what I call a good social environment.

I believe it is the quality of a person's social environment which ultimately affects the quality of their life.  To have a truely suitable and good job is very important.  To have a truely compatible spouse or love is very important.  To have friends, at least one best friend, is very important.  Those things alone make for a good social envionment, good enough to almost completely eliminate the need to commit crimes, abuse addictive substances, or engage in hostile behaviour.

Having a person to advise you, a truely compatible mentor is more important than you might imagine and can change your life enormously.  Having a very compatible person to teach about life is important too.  It makes us try to be better exemplars, to be better people so the younger person will truly respect us.  Also, knowledge and wisdom will get passed down this way, helping the younger people grow into fine people.

With all these social connections, with such a good social environment for each of us, how can the world fail to be a better place?

There remains the question of possibility and the question of implementation.  Is what I say possible.  Yes.  I can prove that.  Can what I say be effectively implemented?  I can tell you how it can be done and why I believe the methods I suggest will be effective.  I can make a good argument for them, and have even done some preliminary work myself.

Compatability Levels:

As noted above, if the pool of candidates is only about a dozen people the chances of a good job, spouse, or intimate friend is low.

We can relate compatibility to the size of the pool.  For measuring compatibily it suffices to count the zeros in the (base 10) representation of the pool size.  Incompatibility can be measured the same way.  For ease of understanding these are given as negative numbers.

I am Douglas Pardoe Wilson.  I think that is a unique identifier, though who knows? There is a man in Australia with the same name as my father, Edward Pardoe Wilson.   He might haved decided to name a child Douglas.  If so, I hope someone will let me know.

I am an old guy, but not a really old guy.  The first computer I really got to know well was a PDP-11, not a PDP-10, certainly nothing the size of a room.  The first computer I owned was a flat PC board with a hex keypad, not something the size of a breadbox with front panel switches. When the first IBM PC came out I was already in grad school.  The first programming language I learned was Fortran, not machine code.   The first popular music I liked was Elvis, not Sinatra.  That dates me pretty well.

I still like popular music, even much of the most recent popular music, but I listen to classical music mostly.  I love to read books and for most of my life averaged a book a day, but since about 2001 I have been reading little and writing a lot.  

Someone told me that I should put my ideas into fictional form.  I have been doing that.  Mostly I write away at large unfinished novels that could never be published.  I intend to post the first two on the web, in excerpts, in abridgements, and perhaps even as raw text.  A third book is short enough and finished enough to be publishable, though I have made little attempt to do so.  I am making some attempt to turn parts of these novels into screenplays, to reach a wide audience, but brevity is not something that comes naturally to me.

For me the most significant year was 1978, not only the year my daughter was born but the year I realized that the organization of human society is a matching problem.  See the web page FindCompatibles or the blog FindCompatibles  for more information about that.  I persist in seeing this as a panacea, a solution to all human problems.  Finding friends, lovers, jobs, places to live and work, all are important, but the real reason this is a panacea is that we can solve all human problems if we find others to work on those problems with, compatible people who will work well together with great effectiveness and no conflicts.  

My political views are roughly those of Kropotkin, but that great man was naive about one thing.  Mutual Aid requires extreme compatibility to work.  Given an ability to find compatible people to work with, as above, mutual aid and other related ideas like those of Owen are not just possible but almost inevitable. 

My Family History

With some hesitation I have decided to post information about my family history.  It is not guaranteed to be accurate, but should accurate enough to help other researchers.  Why I research and care about this is another question, to be answered on another page.   For now, go to my Ancestral History page and see what is there.  I have also have other information available, about sidelines, people who are not my direct ancestors.  I can make that available on request.