SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                         = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us 

                    http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/

                                Issue #49
                      New Moon of January 17, 1999


Contents copyright 1999 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.  

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                          *********************

Some reporter is meeting with some highly placed Anonymous Source.  The 
first thing the reporter does is ask about some potentially explosive 
issue the Source would be expected to have inside knowledge of.  The 
source says nothing, but gestures for pencil and paper.  The reporter 
obliges, and gets back a note:  "My lips are sealed."  

The reporter tries to reassure the Source that all answers will be 
confidential and off the record.  No luck.  Still "My lips are sealed."  

Finally the reporter asks the Source "What can you talk about."  

Again a note:  "Nothing.  I picked up a glue stick by mistake instead of 
lip balm.  So my lips are sealed."  
  

                          *********************

I went to a movie the evening of Christmas Day.  Dinner afterward was a 
problem.  Carrow's had been open, but was closing.  The nearby Denny's 
turned out to be open.  

I ordered a patty melt, but it came on whole wheat because they were out 
of rye.  Why didn't they ask before going ahead with the substitution?  
Maybe they were out of every other kind of bread, so there was no point 
in asking:  Whole wheat, like it or lump it.  While I was there they ran 
out of hamburger buns and started substituting whole wheat toast, which 
seems to bolster that theory.  That got me to wondering:  If they run out 
of everything, do they get to go home?  

And I got to thinking, on the way home, what if they ran out of 
everything except stuff nobody wanted?  What if the only meatlike thing 
left was octopus eyes, and the only breadlike thing left was waffles, so 
the only sandwich-like possibility was octopus eyes on waffles (one per 
square on the waffle, all looking up at you as you ate them).  If you 
wanted condiments, they might have horseradish or Coca-Cola syrup or 
creamed spinach to put on your octopus eyes on waffles, but none of the 
more traditional things like ketchup.  

Why would they even have octopus eyes in stock?  Maybe they know that 
almost nobody's going to want them, so they keep them around as something 
they're not likely to run out of, even when that's the only thing left.  
It might be kind of a point of honor not to run out of everything, and 
since the stuff is sort of edible they still technically would have food 
left, sort of.  And as a bonus, it could be useful in an emergency such 
as a major natural disaster when normal food deliveries can't get through 
and people would otherwise starve.  So that's why they have a few cartons 
of octopus eyes stashed away in a half-forgotten corner of their freezer.  


                          *********************

There was a news item in the San Jose Mercury News (12/31/98) with the 
headline "Law curbing investor suits is taking hold".  When I first saw 
it my reaction was "Make them wear sarongs.  Or loincloths.  Or go 
naked."  But alas, it wasn't that kind of suit.  It was actually about 
litigation relating to corporate finances.  Boring, unless perhaps you 
have lots of money invested in stocks and stuff like that.  

And on further thought, the kind of law I was thinking of would probably 
be thrown out on constitutional grounds, First Amendment or whatever.  
But it's still fun to think about. 


                          *********************

I was writing something about a place on a street named "Prospect".  But 
I initially typoed "Prospect" to "Propsect".  Maybe that would be a cult 
that didn't believe in jet aircraft?  Keep the propeller out where it can 
be seen, so you don't have to fly on faith?  And they also would be leery 
of antigravity and such, assuming that ever get invented.  They might 
accept rockets for outer space because you can see the exhaust, but no 
reactionless drives.  

But would such a group be likely to get a street named after them?  Maybe 
if it's a country road and their settlement is the only thing on it, and 
the locals aren't strongly into some other religion, maybe.  

Then as they build a little props-only airstrip and more and more Cessnas 
and DC-3's and the like start using it, others might be attracted to the 
neighborhood.  First would be small aviation-related businesses, but that 
in turn would attract others.  And eventually, perhaps long after the 
original sect had sold the airport and flown to greener pastures, 
Propsect Drive would be a major commercial street.  And most of the 
people using that street, being relative newcomers, would wonder at the 
strange name. 


                          *********************

I came up with another argument on the "When the Century Begins" 
question.  Let's throw historical accuracy to the winds and assume that 
Sunday School Jesus was born on Christmas of the year 0, ignoring 
calendar changes and just extrapolating our modern Gregorian calendar 
back, and making believe there was a year 0.  

Then He would be 1 year old on Christmas of the year 1 (after living a 
year), ten years old on Christmas of the year 10, and so on.  So He would 
have completed a hundred years on Christmas of the year 100, and a 
thousand years on Christmas of the year 1000.  Thus the First Millennium 
would have been completed on Christmas of the year 1000.  By that 
argument, our present millennium should end on Christmas of the year 
2000.  That's pretty close to the beginning of 2001.  Even if Jesus was 
born some other time of year, the Millennium would end sometime during 
the year 2000, not at its beginning.  

I'm also reminded of counting stuff in piles of ten or a hundred.  
There's a tendency to say the number with more emphasis for the last item 
in each pile:  "... ninety-eight, Ninety-Nine, ONE HUNDRED."  Then you 
quietly start the next pile.  

Related to this, I recall last day of every school year having a sort of 
party feel to it, even though it's still part of the old school year.  

So 2000 will be a whole party year for winding up the 20th Century.  Then 
when it's over the 21st Century will begin quietly.  


                          *********************

One night recently I dreamed about a dual flat Earth, like a big piece of 
plywood with people living on both sides.  No matter which side you were 
on, "down" was toward the other side.  

Thing was, gravity didn't really reverse in the middle.  Matter on each 
side had its own direction of "up", so if you went through a hole to the 
other side you'd see people living upside down on the ceiling while 
they'd see you floating up into the sky unless you held on or tied 
yourself down or something.  So extended visits might not be too 
practical.  

And when you got back home, anything you'd brought from the other side 
would tend to fall up from your viewpoint.  I suppose there could be a 
market for what would amount to negative weights you could attach to 
things to make them easier to lift (but not to accelerate), but the dream 
didn't last long enough to get into that.  

And then I got to thinking more about how stuff might behave.  If you 
went to the other side and ate their food, would you lose weight (as 
distinct from mass) and gradually switch over to their gravity?  

And think of the other problems, like using a bathroom that's upside down 
from your viewpoint, with water that wants to flow uphill.  Would you be 
better off just using a chamber pot and dumping it down into their sky, 
where it would either fall forever or eventually hit a bird or another 
world or something?  

And what of mixing water from the two sides?  If you mixed equal amounts 
would you have a liquid that didn't have any weight?  

If those worlds had molecules and atoms like ours does then brownian 
motion might keep a mixture of the two kinds of water mixed.  But once 
you took it out of the mixing container it might start to separate again.  
How quickly?  I don't know.  I suspect it would be a complicated thing of 
molecules diffusing around until a concentration gradient began to 
develop.  Would there eventually be enough of an unbalanced concentration 
of the two kinds of molecules to overcome surface tension and start drops 
dripping off?  Or would other forces prevent that?  Maybe it would stay 
mixed?  Or maybe it's more Toon-like, and the water would just 
immediately split with half pouring each way, maybe even refusing to 
really mix in the first place?  

Would a water balloon tend to stretch into a vertical dumbbell shape, 
with each kind of water sitting in its "down" end?  

It's hard to predict that kind of thing without doing lots and lots of 
math, and the eventual conclusion would most likely be some internal 
inconsistency that makes the whole setup impossible.  

Maybe we're lucky to be in a world that works at all.  


                          *********************

There's been discussion in a number of places lately about a so-called 
"Terminator" gene that can be inserted into plants to prevent farmers 
from saving seed from one crop to plant the following year.  A somewhat 
technical description of how it might work in cotton is at

            http://www.bio.indiana.edu/people/terminator.html 

In effect it's a way to copy-protect plants.  It also reminds me of the 
fuss over various formats for sending audio over the Internet, and of the 
DVD-like format somebody's coming out with for movies where you "rent" 
the disk for a limited number of showings but don't have to bring it back 
because it's encrypted and the player has to get a sort of pay-per-view 
authorization over its modem before it will play.  They're even referring 
to that format as "disposable" because it's cheap enough to manufacture 
that stores might not want to bother taking returns.  Just tell the 
customer to throw it away once it expires.  

This all is part of what I think of as the conflict between the Economy 
of Plenty and the Economy of Scarcity.  

Some tribes in places like the South Pacific reportedly had something 
approaching an Economy of Plenty, in that it supposedly only took a 
couple of hours a day of picking coconuts or whatever to keep everybody 
fed.  Sounds idyllic, if true.  

But modern capitalism and its work ethic may be stable only in an Economy 
of Scarcity, where there is always demand for whatever goods can be 
produced and everybody's full-time effort is needed to produce those 
goods, and people who don't help produce aren't entitled to consume.  

That worked through the Industrial Revolution, when we needed all 
available hands to build the base for the modern technological world.  
But now that technology is on the threshold of bringing us to a state of 
plenty, scarcity has to be maintained artificially:  Pump up consumer 
demand by various marketing techniques, encourage waste and duplication 
of effort with such things as disposable copy-protected CD music and 
video formats, promote hard work as a virtue in and of itself, and so on.  

A control-system engineer might say that our form of work-ethic 
capitalism is stable only in one quadrant:  If we produce more goods than 
people want to consume, we move over into another quadrant where the 
system becomes unstable and collapses.  Unsold goods lead to layoffs, 
which means people can't afford to buy, which leads to more unsold goods 
and more layoffs, until everybody is sitting around starving.  That could 
be another quadrant of stability, although not a very pleasant one.  

So what can be done?  

We could put more load on the system to keep it in the Prosperity 
quadrant, much as WWII pulled us out of the Great Depression.  Maybe we 
need the likes of Saddam Hussein, at least until some other Evil Empire 
emerges so we can have another arms race. 

We could also dump this bit about "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".  Go to a 
lifestyle of "Use it once, then throw it in the garbage" and if we really 
do need to recycle stuff, hire people to sort it at the dump.  That's the 
kind of unskilled job that has been getting scarce lately.  

Or maybe instead of figuring out ways to use up more stuff and make it as 
hard to copy a recording of a song as it is now to build a copy of a 
chair or table, we might start thinking about how we could revamp the 
system to function as an Economy of Plenty in which it's as easy to get a 
chair or table as it is now to copy a recording of a song.  Creators of 
songs (and of prototype chairs and tables) would presumably be rewarded 
in some fashion, but the process would not need to act as a gatekeeper or 
throttle on distribution and replication.  

People would have all they want, but wouldn't be pressured to want more 
and thus might actually consume less than they do today.  The environment 
would benefit from a slower pace of obsolescence of material goods.  And 
such things as software, music, and movies would be free for the 
downloading.  That's the path I think I favor, but I don't know how to 
get there from here.  I suspect we may be in for a bumpy ride.  

 
                          *********************

Some have said that humans aren't suited for an Economy of Plenty.  And 
there may be a point there.  But maybe there's a way around that ...


                                Problems


My friend had been sort of wilting lately, 
Turning pale and faded and a little blurry around the edges. 
Regular doctors saw nothing in particular wrong,
So I took him to the local guru.  

"Needs problems," said the guru with only a quick glance. 

"Of course he has problems," I replied,
"That's why I brought him to you."  

"I didn't say he HAS problems.  I said he NEEDS problems. 
His problem is that he doesn't have problems, 
And not having problems can be a very serious problem." 

"Huh?" say I, and he explains again. 

After a few more rounds it sinks in:  
Man is a problem-solving creature,  
Evolved, or created, or whatever, to solve problems,
And a problem-solver without problems is nothing.  
Some instinctively know this, 
As sales of puzzles show.  
But others need to have problems thrust upon them.  

"You mean I should let the air out of his tires, 
Hide his morning paper in the bushes, 
Or invent foolish errands for him to run? 
Or should I get more serious, 
Hinting of rumors of downsizing at work, 
And asking his landlord to make noises about eviction?" 

"Professional opinions among gurus differ, 
But even if threatening problems are better than none at all,  
I'd try happy problems first."  

Happy problems? 
Those are the ones we face gladly,
Like a painter needing to choose colors for a sunset 
Because she chose to try to capture it on canvas.  
Or being out on the lake in a boat with your fishing pole, 
Wondering exactly where they'll be biting
And how to sneak up on them without scaring them off.  

Some, like scientists, get paid to solve happy problems. 
Others must seek problems elsewhere. 
But they're easy to find.  

Was there something my friend could do to help his other friends?
Some way he could contribute to making a better world? 
Or even something as trivial 
As suggesting a closing line for this poem? 

The prognosis looks quite good. 


                                   -- Thomas G. Digby
                                   written  19:00  03/15/1995


                                -- END --