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 #113 New Moon of March 20, 2004 Contents copyright 2004 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. ********************* I've mentioned this in Silicon Soapware before in 1996 and again in 2000, but it's relevant today and probably bears repeating (with some editing and updating). The Presidential primary hooraw is pretty much over, and I have no convention delegates. That's as it should be, since I wasn't planning on running for President anyway. But since the major party conventions are still months away and surprising things can still happen, perhaps I'd better explain again why I'm not running. One question is whether my hippie-like appearance and my piercings would become a campaign issue. Would I have to shave and get a corporate haircut and get rid of my nose ring in order to have a chance of winning? Would the opposition spend millions of dollars explaining to the most easily shocked voters what a Prince Albert piercing is, and hinting that were I to become President they would be the Latest Style and everybody would sort of have to get all sorts of strange piercings whether they wanted to or not, because of forces like workplace peer pressure? "His doctor says he doesn't have any nipple or genital piercings. What is he, a spy or something?" And I would have to wear a suit and tie much of the time. Even when I could take the tie off, they'd probably expect me to wear long pants even when it's warm. And they'd want me to wear clothes all day, even when I'm just sort of relaxing around the White House. And I probably wouldn't get to play around in the military's big computers even if I was Commander in Chief. More importantly, the politics of being President of a superpower would often require me to make decisions to hurt people. We're talking big- time hurt here. Maybe even taking people who would rather be doing something else and making them shoot other people they don't even know with real bullets. So all in all, I don't think I'll run for President. ********************* Here's a "heads up" if you're working on things like programming for a science fiction convention in the coming year: 2005 is the centennial of Special Relativity. There's no one exact date. Others, such as Michelson and Morley (who did the experiment that failed to find the "ether" that light was previously believed to propagate through) and Lorentz and Fitzgerald (for whom the length contraction effect is named) were working on bits and pieces of it during the preceding decades. And when Einstein finally put the pieces together in 1905 he didn't do it all at once in one paper. The part about the speed of light being invariant came first, with the famous "E equals M C squared" coming out in another paper later that year. But even though there's no one date for celebrating the anniversary, it does seem proper to say that the year 2005 in general is the centennial of Special Relativity. If you want to know more, there's a wealth of information about all this on the Web. ********************* The bit about Einstein reminds me that most humans (including me) seem to be unable to visualize things in more than three dimensions. Maybe it's a limit hardwired into the visual centers of the human brain, or maybe it's from not having had any actual experience with more dimensions. It's kind of hard to say. Related to that, we may be on the verge of being able to construct computer-based systems that will be able to mimic, and perhaps even surpass, human intelligence. They may lack whatever spiritual component humans possess, but that's not relevant to this discussion. What's important is that we'll be able to ask them questions and they will be able to do some equivalent of thinking to arrive at an answer. Since we'll be designing these artificial intelligences, or at least telling early generations of them what we want in future generations that we may be unable to understand the details of well enough to design directly, can we come up with one that will be able to visualize things in four or more spatial dimensions? And once we do create something that can "think" in more than three dimensions, what new understandings of the universe might it give us? ********************* One line I now and again hear from politicians is "You're either with us or against us." That leads to thoughts of the US and Al Qaida setting up a joint draft board. If you're called you get your choice of which one to sign up with, but you have to join one or the other. You're either with us or against us. ********************* A couple of weeks ago I was listening to people singing at a party when an inspiration occurred to me. For years I'd made jokes about inventing a "negative capo" for guitars: You would clamp it onto the neck of your guitar and it would make the strings longer. Now I think I know, at least in theory, how such a thing might be built. It would use electronics and motion transducers. There would be a sensor touching each string near the first or second fret, feeding information about the string's motion to some kind of analog and/or digital computing circuitry. This circuitry would, microsecond by microsecond, cause a signal to be fed back to an actuator, also in contact with the string, that would apply the correct force to the string to make the string vibrate as if it were longer. The setup would include an extra bit of fake guitar neck with sensors for the player's fingers. This would tell the computer how much simulated length to add to each string at any given moment. I'm fairly sure it would be at least theoretically possible to do this, especially with the kinds of talent we have in Silicon Valley. Whether it would be feasible to do it in a cost-effective manner is much less certain. I think the biggest problem would be arranging things mechanically so that the player could finger the added frets without too much of a discontinuity between the original guitar neck and the added length. Even if there are no venture capitalists out there nowadays who would be interested in such a thing, it's still kind of fun to think about. ********************* If identity theft continues to be a growing problem, and one's birthdate is part of the security information that helps verify that you are indeed you, will fewer people be willing to do public or semi-public birthday celebrations? ********************* Someone at a party mentioned that he used to attend a certain science fiction convention regularly but hadn't been for several years. Others there then said that he should start going again, because every year it seemed to be better than the previous year. I got to thinking that such a streak was unlikely to continue forever, and that by Murphry's Law the first bad one would be the one where he finally decided to start attending again. That led to thoughts of a curse: The convention would keep getting better and better as long as he stayed away, but would be terrible if he ever went back. Or maybe it would be OK for him, but bad for everybody else. Others I mentioned this to suggested that if the convention committee knew about the curse they might try to ban that person from attending. But even if they didn't, the person's own conscience and sense of obligation to his friends might be enough. At least I hope it would be. ********************* All the talk about Einstein and higher dimensions reminded me of this: TIME GUM If you've always wanted to roam the corridors of time, To meet Shakespeare, Attend the original Olympics, Or bumble around with dinosaurs, And you're the kind of person who prefers hiking to driving, Then I recommend Time Gum. Some flavors let you chew your way straight into the past That you've always read about in history books While others take you crookedly into other pasts Of dragons And wizards And fairy-tale princesses And still other flavors give you the future. I could say more about futures, But some people feel it's like telling the ending To a movie you haven't seen yet, Or opening your Christmas presents early And having nothing to do on Christmas morning But sit around wishing you'd waited, So I won't. In some ways Time Gum is very mysterious. Like, nobody knows when or if It was, or will be, or would have been invented. But most futures are full of warehouses full of it So nobody really worries about it. Some people wonder if it's safe. The main danger is cheap imitations That aren't really Time Gum at all But just regular gum with drugs in it To make you think you're on a time trip When you really aren't. It seems, however, That dealers in such bogus wares Often suddenly find That their grandparents had no children, And their parents didn't either, And neither will they, probably, So it's never really been a problem. Still, it's safer to buy from someone you trust. Just ask your friends to recommend someone. Chances are they can, Since Time Gum is not as rare As you might think. F'rinstance, If you've ever endured banquet speeches That seemed to drone on and on forever, Or been enjoying a concert When it ended all too soon, Chances are that some of the lumps Stuck to the underside of your seat Are, or were, or will be, or might have been, Time Gum. Thomas G. Digby written 2340 hr Oct 26 83 entered 0415 hr Nov 22 83 ********************* 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. 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