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/~bubbles/ Issue #79 New Moon of June 21, 2001 Contents copyright 2001 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. ********************* The phone rang just before I sat down to write this. Whoever it was hung up without saying anything. I screen calls with a machine, and the great majority of callers just hang up. They're probably telemarketers. That got me to thinking: Have you noticed how other terms like "phone solicitor" have faded from use in favor of "telemarketer"? Sometimes words change because the underlying concepts change. "The press" has given way to "the media", probably because radio and TV stations have become more important relative to newspapers and other print media. On the other hand, a modern diesel or gasoline-powered "steamroller" has nothing to do with steam even if they once were steam- driven. And many people speak of knives and forks and spoons as "silverware" regardless of what they're actually made of. So a different reality doesn't always guarantee different words. Has anyone studied why some term or other will fade from use and be replaced by a synonym or near-synonym while other words persist even after the reality has changed out from under them? ********************* In a recent online discussion somebody suggested that "X-Files" might stay on forever. That got me to thinking. Suppose by the time Scully's kid is grown we've made peace with the aliens (or at least some of them) and it turns out that random weird stuff happens to them as much as it happens to us. So the kid ends up working on the equivalent of X-Files in the galactic equivalent of the FBI, investigating haunted space stations and chasing down ever-weirder mutants and the like. And if people still want a Big Conspiracy, maybe the aliens are being threatened from another dimension or something that's as much a mystery to them as the aliens currently are to us. This could indeed go on forever. ********************* During the recent heat wave I got to thinking about how much good it does or doesn't do to close the blinds when the sun is shining in through a window. While nominally white blinds reflect a large part of the sunlight back outside, they aren't perfect. An off-white or cream color may reflect as little as fifty percent, and many shades of "white" don't reflect much more than that. And when the blinds absorb heat from sunlight, they transfer it to the air in the room. Outside shutters would be a lot better. Even if they weren't white, any heat they picked up from sunlight would be transferred to the outside air and thus wouldn't heat up the inside of the house. Having to go outside to open and close them would be inconvenient, but there are ways to avoid that problem, either electrically or by a mechanical linkage to some sort of inside handle. Outside shutters would have other advantages as well. For example, they could also protect windows from breakage in hurricanes or other severe weather. So why don't more houses have outside shutters? It's not uncommon to see fake shutters on houses as a decorative feature. So why don't we have more real ones? ********************* There was an article in Popular Mechanics back in 1950 about what the year 2000 would be like. They got some things right, like microwave ovens, and guessed wrong on others like supersonic airliners being common. That's probably to be expected. They gave passing mention to TV, but didn't foresee how much time people would spend watching it or how it would change society. On the other hand, they were too optimistic about video telephones. They predicted automated manufacturing, but spoke of men rushing around the factory floor replacing burned-out vacuum tubes. They evidently failed to see the transistor, let alone the IC. They also failed to guess that computers far mightier than ENIAC (or whatever the latest -IAC machine was back then) would fit on a kitchen table and sell for a fraction of the cost of a new car. And there wasn't a peep about the Internet or the Web. All that somehow slipped in under their radar. Since the article was in Popular Mechanics I wouldn't expect it to say much of anything about social trends, so I wasn't surprised that they didn't mention school desegregation or the sexual revolution or the Psychedelic Sixties or any of that. They didn't even mention the Pill as a technological thing, even though that might have been sort of in their area. They did, however, make one bit of social commentary. They predicted that the old lady down the street who insisted on sleeping under a traditional quilt instead of some newfangled synthetic thing would thereby arouse comment from the neighbors. And they said that the "standardization" of life might not be all that bad a thing. Perhaps that was to be expected in the Cold War era of McCarthy finding Communists in everybody's closet, but from the perspective of 2001 in places like the Bay Area or Los Angeles it seems to stand out as especially wrong. ********************* At a recent Pensfa get-together there was a long discussion about how the area's housing and traffic woes could be solved by building more high- density housing and getting people to live closer to their jobs. If you're not a farmer you don't need land, so you should be content with a condo or an apartment. If you want to grow stuff, do it in a communal garden. One of the people kept saying that the "dream" of everybody having their own house and yard was "recent", perhaps since WWII, and the same kind of advertising propaganda that got people into it could get them out. That didn't feel right to me, but the reason didn't occur to me right then, and even if it had I might not have gotten a chance to get a word in edgewise about it. One thing I recall about the discussion was that the only people who mentioned ancestors said their parents were first-generation immigrants from Europe. That was in contrast to some of mine, who were (according to my mother) running around Tennessee in coonskin caps back when Tennessee was Wild Frontier. Now it may be that people whose forebears were living in cities and villages in Europe up until WWI or maybe even WWII would be more likely to be content with things like high-density housing and community gardens than people whose ancestors settled Tennessee two hundred years ago. I don't know if there's an inherited component to this sort of thing, but I don't think it's been ruled out. Even if there's nothing genetic about it, family traditions may still be a strong influence. If I'm right about this, then the West in general may have more people with more of a need for open space than places like New York City. Yes, California is full of immigrants, both from abroad and from other parts of the US. But many of them were farmers (think 1930's Dust Bowl). Again, more wide open spaces. So the so-called "American Dream" of a house with a large yard may be more than just a cultural fad of the last couple of generations, at least as far as California is concerned. And don't be surprised if the idea of high-density housing arouses considerable resistance. ********************* I had this comedic thought yesterday while walking around the building at work: There's a dumpster marked CARDBOARD ONLY. So what if somebody dumps a dead body in it? I could see a skit where a security guard sees it and demands that the body be moved because that dumpster is Cardboard Only and the recycling company hates finding dead bodies. So the killer moves the body to a different dumpster and everybody's happy, except maybe cops and friends of the victim who don't really count because the skit ends before we see them. ********************* Some mention of bureaucracy at work reminded me of some thoughts on how different Silicon Valley is from the military. I think the main reason is that the military is built to be able to drop new people into vacant slots without worrying about individuality. You don't hear that Alpha Company is interviewing for infantrymen. Instead, somebody is just plopped into the vacancy from somewhere else and expected to do the job, no interviews, no salary negotiations, no stuff about whether he's a good fit with the corporate culture, etc. Here he is, period. And he'd better get up to speed almost immediately. This attitude has its advantages for the military, especially in wartime when casualties must be quickly replaced by new people. But it comes at a price. If you don't know who's going to be in a particular job next week or even tomorrow, you can't allow too much flexibility. You have to do things the standard way so a new person can pick up the pieces quickly. That's why you hear bureaucratic horror stories. It's part of the price of the machine being able to replace its cogs on a moment's notice. ********************* In other thoughts, I got to thinking about how a mind reader who thought a computer might get bored with repetitive tasks might try to read its mind and find only clockwork. Then I got to thinking about quantum computers. Would ghosts be able to hide in a quantum machine? If, as some believe, quantum phenomena are the portal between the physical world and the spirit realm, then quantum computers might indeed be subject to spiritual influences. If this were to happen, would it influence the results of computations? And would it be detectable? We may want to think about this before we commit too deeply to quantum- computer technology. ********************* I've been thinking off and on about doing a poem that would be a prayer by Pagan space colonists asking the gods of a world they are about to land on to accept them into that world's circle of life. But I haven't gotten very far with it. I think the problem is that whatever gods may inhabit other worlds may be better off without us, especially if the world already has native life. If Earth is any indication, we're pretty rough on whatever other life shares our surroundings. We would take a lot from such a world. And what do we have to give? Maybe if a world hasn't evolved sentience its gods aren't really awake yet and we would thus give them awareness of their existence, but is even that something they would really want? What if they were to look at themselves through our eyes and decide that they were happier in their previous state of non-being? The optimist in me sees eventual acceptance. The pessimist sees eternal conflict, maybe even eventual annihilation of one side or the other. All this brings up the question of whether Pagans would make good interplanetary colonists in the first place. Maybe the early stages of a colony need religions with something more like God's commandment to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion over the planet. Of course you need some cautionary influences from the start lest the colonists ruin their planet before they really know what they're doing. But modern Paganism's "harmony with Nature" attitude may not allow the kind of growth a colony needs in its early stages. That would be for later, after the planet was well conquered and it came time to cut back on some of the excesses of earlier generations. This leads to thoughts of some agency in charge of organized space colonization sorting prospective colonists by religion, sending adherents of different religions to planets in different stages of settlement. If the overall society is cynical enough about such things, it might even create religions for its colonists, tailored to the planet in question. If you assume multi-generation starships then there's plenty of time to bring up the first generation of actual colonists in whatever religion you've managed to concoct. Another thought along those lines is that if the organizers of a colony were optimistic about the general system not being overthrown by future generations, they might give the colonists a series of sealed books to guide them through the voyage, landing, and growth stages of the colony. Perhaps Book I would be the Bible for the voyage, with Book II to be opened at the time of landing. Then Book III would be opened after the first children born on the planet have children of their own, with Book IV opened when the population reached some number such as a million. And so on. These would be treated like religious revelations, quite apart from what the scientists in the group may have known all along about the growth cycle of colonies. I wonder if this would be a good panel topic for a con? "Religion for space colonists", quite distinct from the Baycon panel on whether religion would survive in space. ********************* Opening Other Eyes Children, we must leave you, No more to be with you As you dance the Moon And the harvest and the Sun. Children, we must leave you, No more to remind you As you dance through life That the world and you are one. It is time we left you To other gods For a while. Yes, Children, we must leave you To gaze into darkness Till you truly see How the waking world is run. Children, we must leave you Adrift in the darkness Till you've touched the Moon And have sailed beyond the Sun With the gods of numbers And here-and-now For a while. But Children, we'll be with you To help you remember And to wisely use The power you'll have won. Children, we'll be with you, Rejoining, rejoicing, When those other gods And you and we are one, And it's then you'll see Why we had to leave For a while. Thomas G. Digby written 0000 hr 4/27/82 typed 0220 hr 5/11/82 entered 2035 hr 3/29/92 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the headers show the originating site as "lists.best.com" you're getting the list version, and anything you send to DigbyZine@lists.best.com will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, dying down to almost nothing in between. But any post can spark a new flurry. 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