SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.com http://www.well.com/~bubbles/ Issue #103 New Moon of May 30, 2003 Contents copyright 2003 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* Someone at a party showed an imitation Star Trek episode that some fans had made. It was quite good for a fan-made amateur project. It also reminded me of an idea I'd once had that might be good as an episode of some wacky comedy or something: Someone loses a rental copy of a movie, and rather than pay for replacing it decides to re-create it themselves in hopes the rental company won't notice the difference. So they get their friends together in front of a camcorder, and act out what they remember of the movie as best they can, improvising sets and costumes and such as they go. When they finally turn in the finished product the rental company doesn't really look at it, but just puts it on the shelf along with other copies of that same movie. The real fun comes when someone else rents it. Will they be familiar enough with the original to realize that something isn't right? If the original is something really bad, like "Plan Nine from Outer Space" it may not really matter. Or maybe this is one of those comedy worlds where that kind of thing happens all the time. The climax could come when the original movie is shown at the local art theater, and they go to see it. That's when they realize that the movie they'd rented and lost and re-created was itself somebody else's re-creation of a lost rental. ********************* Someone was talking about Programmable Gate Arrays, which are a type of electronics chip. But I mis-heard it as "Programmable Gatorade" That got me to wondering: If there were such a thing as programmable Gatorade, what might it be? Might it be a sports drink spiked with nanobots? Could you set it, perhaps by turning a dial on the bottle before you drink it, to favor some muscles or body systems at the expense of others? This might be useful for tailoring it to a particular sport, such as track and field vs weight-lifting. Of course more nefarious uses come to mind, but hopefully there will be some kind of security to keep the chances of such misuse low. ********************* Am I still me? As far as I know I am, although if I had just now become me after having previously been someone else I would never know it if the memory swap upon becoming me had been good enough. We tend to assume that we stay who we are, although that could be just an illusion. Perhaps in reality we are constantly swapping identities, becoming somebody else every few days or hours or even minutes. Since there's no real way to know, all one can do is assume that one has always been whoever one seems to be at the moment. ********************* As you may know, a Bardic Circle is when a bunch of people sit around and take turns singing or reading poems or otherwise performing. Sometimes the emphasis is on original work by the performer, but in some circles it can be anything a performer feels like doing, even if somebody else wrote it originally. So now I'm thinking of a Bardic Circle of the Gods. A bunch of gods get together and take turns showing off worlds they've created. They do this by temporarily putting aside knowledge of their godhood while living lives in each others' worlds. Is that what this world is? Is that what we are? ********************* Will digital technology, especially copy protection, cause the creative works of our age to be lost to posterity? For the most part we're no longer putting our words onto things like clay tablets that are likely to survive for centuries or even millennia after their creators are gone, and which can be read without special equipment by anybody who knows or can learn the language. Instead we're trusting our thoughts and inspirations to digital media like CD's and DVD's. Not only are digital media less likely to withstand the ravages of time, but they require highly advanced technology to read. And even if you have the technology, you won't get very far without knowledge of the digital coding system that was used. Some error-correcting schemes, for example, make the bits look like random noise that make sense only if you know the code. Copy protection may be making the situation even worse. While anybody with enough computer power may be able to take a brute-force approach to things like error-correction coding, trying various likely things almost at random until one produces something that looks like plausible data, some copy protection relies on encrypting the data. The cryptographic keys are known to the makers of current generations of players, but they're kept more or less secret from the public. So there's a good chance they'll be lost to posterity. This may raise the difficulty of future archaeologists deciphering our digital media from "unlikely but possible" to "impossible". So umpty zillion years from now most of the 21st Century may be a blank chapter in the history books, alongside the likes of certain pre- Christian religious mysteries whose practitioners did too good a job of keeping their cult secrets secret. ********************* What can be done to keep the art of our time from being lost to posterity because our descendants may not be able to read our digital media, especially the stuff that's copy-protected? Perhaps we need to start putting up pyramids full of some modern equivalent of clay tablets. I envision structures as massive and enduring as the Pyramids in Egypt, but containing art and literature instead of dead kings. The material would be embodied in enduring analog media, or if there must be digital media, there would be instructions on how to read it. These instructions would be in several languages, along with diagrams and pictures to aid in translation in case all of our current languages are lost. One thing I don't know what to do about is the grave-robber problem. Can we get around it by creating enough duplicate sites that at least a few are likely to escape being looted? Or do we just have to trust future ages to handle it? Our present art and literature is, after all, their heritage. Can we trust them to be good stewards of it? ********************* All this talk of preserving our art and literature for posterity leads to a question: What kind of information density can you get with clay tablets? I was thinking about how computer floppies are much more ephemeral than clay tablets, which have been proven to remain readable after thousands of years. But a typical ancient clay tablet holds at most a few kilobytes of data, compared to a megabyte or two on floppies and hundreds of megabytes on a CD. The tablets were generally made by someone manually pressing a stylus into the clay, so the resolution was limited to what could be seen with the unaided eye and manipulated by hand. That leads to a very low information density by modern standards. Can we improve the resolution? Mass-produced CD's are, I believe, pressed from glass masters. I suspect the glaze on porcelain might be capable of holding similar amounts of data. The main problem would be chemical reactions that erode and roughen the surface, obscuring such fine detail. Could this be gotten around by a transparent protective cover layer? Even if that gets messed up, polishing the surface should allow the fine detail at the interface of the next layer down to be seen. But what if the finder doesn't know there's a message there? There are ways to point it out. Maybe start with a line of human-readable text, then gradually make the marks smaller and smaller until you're down to the size of the bulk of the information. People are curious, so somebody will sooner or later put the tablet under a microscope to see how small the marks get. The human-readable first line could also function like the human-readable label on a CD. Perhaps someone will want to set up a foundation to pursue this? ********************* As I was watching someone playing a didgeridoo I noticed a leaf hanging on spider webs or some such in the bell end. When I mentioned it he said that there were spiders living in several of his instruments. That inspired a couple of parodies of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider". They were fun at the time, although probably not destined for poetic immortality. And now I'm wondering if the spiders would do better by moving to some other instrument. A sousaphone, for example, could give an excellent opportunity to see the world from atop a marching band. Or if the spider family wants a more sedate life, how about a church piano? It would get played a lot on Sundays, and possibly for other classes and practice and such during the week, but it should be nice and quiet most nights after bedtime. There's some danger of the children getting smushed between the hammers and the strings, but that's probably avoidable with proper parental supervision and boundaries on permissible play areas. I'd stay away from things like piccolos and kazoos: In something that small a spider is too likely to be noticed, and few human musicians look kindly on the idea of spiders living in instruments they put their mouth on. I don't know if the didgeridoo player was an exception, or if he had just sort of given up on getting rid of them short of using pesticides that may be worse in the long run than the spiders. ********************* An update on the thing I wrote up in SS 102 about squirrels and other small animals using telephone wires as walkways: A few days ago I saw a couple of squirrels jump from one wire to another in mid-span. So there may not be as big a need for animal traffic control as I thought there was, at least in places with multiple wires. But what of places that only have one wire? ********************* Lost? Child What did you say, son? Why did I cut what? Those flowers? Because they were there. We do need to clear this field before fire season. But you say they weren't a fire hazard like the dry grass So we didn't really have to cut them? Maybe not, but it was easier to go cutting straight through than to stop and think about it. If you really want flowers, you can buy flowers somewhere later. Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it. Gateways for the Little People? You say if you relax in a field of wildflowers And let your eyes unfocus and your mind go blank You may suddenly hear music and song and laughter, And if you follow your ears and your heart They'll lead you through the flowery gate Into the land of the Little People, Whose cares are different and perhaps more to your taste Than the cares of this world? I'd better not catch you telling that to the neighbors. They'll think there's something strange about you. Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it. We're almost half done. Let's take a break. Here's a tree we can sit under. Son, do you hear somebody singing off behind me somewhere? Are you going to meet them? What are you laughing about? Where did you disappear to? Son? Son? Answer me! Wherever you are, come back here! I am your father! Please come back and tell me If I really did just hear a faint voice Telling me "Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it." Thomas G. Digby entered 1215 hr 4/29/92 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time. If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both. To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list posting you receive.) To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually. -- END --