Tasks / SF0 International
Complete a task in a country that you are not in right now. Keep in mind - you need to complete it, not your (e.g.) Italian accomplice. You figure it out...
OR
Form an SFZero International. This can include producing appropriate revolutionary manuals and insignia, having meetings, destroying bourgeois nationalism, etc.
1 to 20 players
45 points
Level 3
Created by Blue
3 completed :: 2 in progress
Interested in collaborating on this: (no one yet!)
this task is retired
Comments
I support task completions through time travel induced by the use of hallucinogenic drugs!
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"Unless you're not when you are" --
I am not when I was.
Alrighty I knew this question would come up.
Semantics For Zerøs
My intention when I wrote the task was that now means the first time you read the word now in the sentence
"Complete a task in a country that you are not in right now. "
Meaning if you read it when you were in international waters or air space you could do the task in any damn country you well please.
However,(and I quote)
Ideally, a well conceived task offers players room to bring their own creativity to the obstruction/inspiration provided
I believe that includes the readers interpretation of the task…
So seeing as the spirit of SFØ seems to be interpretation… I am with Yellow Bear on this one!
When is now? Now is a fleeting and yet everpresent concept is it not? The time at which I first read the task is not "right now". Right now is the every stroke of my fingertips, fleeting, and quickly becoming part of that equally amorphous "before now", the same "before now" at which I read your sentence. I realized when I first read it, that this wasn't your intention, but it was a linguistically playful opportunity, and not one I was going to pass up.
I'm not daft. I was having fun.
I think the best completions of this will involve either time-delay devices, such that a task would complete itself while its creator had hied it across the border, or hallucinogenic drugs, such that the task's completor would have some sort of ridiculous time-travel experience. I would not suggest a combination of these completion tactics, as the authorities most likely are suspicious of that sort of behavior.
I propose the possibility that "now" in fact does not exist at all. If you think of all things that have not yet happened as the future, and all things that have happened as the past. "Now" would be the discreet moment when these two categories bump up against each other. But I don't think it's a category of its own. Since it takes time for the neurons in our brain to jump around and such, by the time we see or contemplate "now" it has already become "then". In a paradoxical way "now" is a time in which we can never be.
I approve of your possibility, however, knowing where the recent "then" has been and being able to reasonably predict where the coming "future" will be on a continuum of increasingly more recent "thens" with that flashpoint "now" into the continuum of increasingly less pressing (and less predictable) "futures":
distant past---not so distant past---recent past---NOW!---immediate future---not so distant and fairly predictable future(s)---distant future(s)
one could know with some certainty, the place in which NOW! and the not so distant and fairly predictable future(s) would take place, given one does not perform tasks on a precarious mudslide on the canadian border.
That's all probably incoherent, as it's the middle of the night here, and I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. It's raining out. Kind of nice to hear.
Speaking of tangents...
I think our memories actually run opposite to our perception of time and that what we percieve as forward is actually backwards. We could predict the future but we think it is the past. And anyone who says they have had a past life experience is full of shit. The only people who have actually had past life experiences write science fiction novels.
By the Way I love your idea of realizing the task so that it actually begins to complete itself when you are not in the country. That would be the task most realized
You are of course correct Ms. Tea. My point essentially rests on the fact that Past and Fututre have a similar/symetrical relationship, "Now" is very much distinct as a concept from those two longer categories of time because now is always instantaneous. I get into trouble personally with the ability to "reasonably predict" as a concept, but it certainly seems to become inclreasingly possible to predict future events as they grow nearer and nearer in the future. For example events in the distant future are nearly unpredictable, and events that are a milli-milli-milli second in the future can be "predicted" with great acuraccy (***EDIT/CAUTION I MEAN THIS ONLY TO APPLY TO THINGS LIKE GETTING KICKED IN THE BALLS OR A CAR ACCIDENT, I WILL, BUT DO NOT WANT TO, GET INTO A QUANTUM THEORY DISCUSSION WITH ANYONE WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE QUALIFIED TO DO SO. BUT I REALIZE THAT PREDICTABILITY IS IN FACT IMPOSSIBLE ON A SUB ATOMIC PARTICLE SCALE (if this statement makes no sense to you, please happily ignore it)). Does this mean that there are all points in between? (How much time is required to predict future with 50% accuracy for example, somewhere between milli-seconds and distant future) This "envelope" of predictability emerges and becomes realized, at the moment of Now, but the reality of its existence is sort of smearred across the time that it can be reliably predicted by us to the moment it actually happens.
I am confusing myself, but I feel like I know what I am trying to say.
Besides, given the way that this task is written, if you dont like the way it seems now, simply go to another country, read the task and then travel back home to complete it. If you documented yourself reading this task in a foreign land, it would seem to reset the "now" locator, at least as far as I am concerned.
Um Can we do this twice? Im intrigued by both parts of the task and want to do both seperatly, anyone know if this is allowed?
oh And Im assuming that scotland wouldnt really be considered a different country to England would it. Im pushing it a bit there arent I. lol.
1: These are two completely different tasks bundled together.
2: As far as I know a quantum computer is yet to be created, as this will be the definitive proof that the now exists, until that day 'NOW' is subjective and can be used in the conceptual way seen above.
3: semantics rock - but are tiring.
4: Even if Scotland is another country, you're better than that...
The future changes radically from one year to the next.
Every generations future is different.
What people thought the year 2000 would look like in 1950
is gravely different from what people thought it would look like in 1980.
Document how your life would look different if you lived in the future of the past.
that would be an awesome task. I hope it gets accepted.
I just wanted to express to you, how much I like our little conversations, even if I dont' seem to get tasks completed all that often.
Love,
Inky
I too enjoy these chats, and the small slices of your insight that are served therewith.
Thought of you when I saw this not-window last night:
I am not daft, I am having fun!
The whole reason I phrase things the way I do is to bait such conversations.
Was that task (future of the past) ever submitted? I think it's a valid Bay Area (at least) thing to think about. For example, I frequently silently remark to myself that BART reminds me of the year 2000 (or 2010) as imagined in 1975. Which is to say, it's a little silly. Then again, it's 2007 and the computer voices, carpeting, and Star-Trek'y styling are alive and well, so I suppose they were right...
http://sf0.org/taskDetail/The-Future-of-Days-That-Have-Passed
Does this mean that there are all points in between? (How much time is required to predict future with 50% accuracy for example, somewhere between milli-seconds and distant future) This "envelope" of predictability emerges and becomes realized, at the moment of Now, but the reality of its existence is sort of smearred across the time that it can be reliably predicted by us to the moment it actually happens.
Well put, ramblin' bear.
The New York Times had a frighteningly timely article on this very subject - that is, predicting the future with 50% accuracy - at just about the time of door henge.
Findings
A Survival Imperative for Space Colonization
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: July 17, 2007
Some philosophers and experts in probability theory have argued that Dr. Gott is making unwarranted deductions from past life spans, and that it is wrong to assume there is nothing special about the moment we’ve chosen to make a forecast. (See www.tierneylab.com for details of the debate.) But last year two philosophers, Bradley Monton and Brian Kierland, analyzed the criticisms and concluded in an article in the Philosophical Quarterly that Dr. Gott had indeed come up with a useful tool for difficult situations...
Praxis
view all images for: SF0 International
I set out to complete this task during Glasnost and made a list of potential candidate tasks prior to departure for Thailand. My trip overlapped the end of Glasnost and the beginning of the Interregnum. To varying degrees I completed three now-reti...
For this task, I have established PP0! And I have completed Religious Tourist, attending multiple Vodou ceremonies.
I completed SFØ International while traveling to London. The task I completed was Stand By for Love.
Let's talk about the concept of "now". Now meaning, at the time you're reading the task, or at the time you're completing the task? It's difficult to complete a task without assistance and without being where you are. Hell, it's hard to not be where you are. Unless you're not when you are. When is now?
I think the second option is more clear cut, the first option implies time travel (and perhaps hallucinogenic drug use). Probably, I'm making this harder than it needs to be. But isn't that where the fun is?