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 #100 New Moon of March 2, 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. ********************* This is the hundredth issue of Silicon Soapware, or maybe the hundred and first if you count an "Issue Zero" that I wrote up as a background thing to give to new subscribers and then sort of forgot about. Silicon Soapware #1 was dated February 1, 1995, with no mention of any moon phases. That came in a few issues later. I'm not sure when I decided to publish it moonthly at New Moon rather than monthly around the first of the month, but the first issue dated "New Moon of [date]" was Silicon Soapware #4. The previous issue didn't mention the moon, but was dated March 30, which seems more consistent with the moon phase than with the mundane calendar. But be those details as they may, I've been doing SS for eight years now, which is a long time in the computer world. According to other comments I made in the first few issues, I was just setting my personal Web site up around that time. So that too has been around a while. One thing that seems to have fallen by the wayside is HTML copies of back issues. I have the complete plain-text archive online, but I stopped converting them to HTML after the first thirty or so issues. Should I resume doing it? It's a fair amount of work, for little real gain. It does look niftier that way, but I feel the part that really matters is what the words say rather than how they look. The other reason for doing HTML was to be able to index individual items within an issue. That, however, may be less necessary nowadays because of improved search technology, thanks to the likes of Google. So there's probably less need for the HTML version than there once was. And as we start to get things like artificial intelligence to aid in searching and browsing, there's likely to be even less need for things like manually- generated indexes. It's sort of traditional at any milestone-type occasion to wonder what the future may bring. Hopefully it will be something grand and glorious, rather than doomsday nightmares of apocalypse. I think the odds are pretty good that when the time for Silicon Soapware #200 rolls around the technology for producing it will be, by current standards, incredible. Let's just hope that the world that technology is part of will still allow us the freedom to publish and read these zines. ********************* A few weeks ago I was out walking in a neighborhood I hadn't explored before, and there in one corner of a park was a little museum devoted to the history of Sunnyvale. Much of it was photographs and writings from when a family of early settlers, many of whom had the same names that local streets now bear, came to California in covered wagons around gold- rush times. They didn't go up into the mountains looking for gold. Instead, they took up farming, and prospered by feeding the miners and those who came after. Eventually a town grew up around them. As I wandered around looking at the various photos and maps and newspaper clippings and baptismal certificates and old farming implements, it occurred to me to wonder what the first settlers would have thought had they been given a vision of that museum as it is today, including the items relating to more recent history such as industry during WWII. Would they feel bad about some of the changes, such as their farm land being sold off to build a city on? Or would they see it as a sort of natural life cycle of such things? ********************* Speaking of modern technology, I recently used a restroom that had those electronic faucet thingies where you just hold your hands under the faucet and the water turns on automatically. That's nothing to write home about nowadays, except that one of the electronic faucets was broken. I put my hands under it and nothing happened. As I was standing there holding my hands under the faucet, waiting for water that never came, I got to thinking of how silly I would look to a time traveler from the past who knew nothing of that technology and would thus expect people to turn the water on manually before trying to wash their hands. How long would it take such a person to notice the absence of handles with which to turn the water on? Would they have noticed it before I moved to the next basin, where the electronic faucet did work? And would my vindication as the water flowed at that second basin make the technology seem even more wondrous? ********************* One of the cliche examples of something boring, indeed a sort of standard of the pinnacle of boringness, is watching paint dry. But is that reputation deserved? There's actually lots of stuff going on in that paint film, ranging from diffusion and evaporation of solvent molecules to fairly complex chemical reactions between paint components and air molecules, depending on the exact type of paint. The problem is that it's pretty much all invisible to the unaided eye. I suspect the right scientific entertainer, someone who is to chemistry what Carl Sagan was to astronomy, could actually make drying paint look interesting. Do we have any candidates for the position? ********************* A convention I recently attended had its Hospitality Suite in the hotel's "Presidential Suite". The hotel presumably named it that to imply that it would be worthy of the President of the United States, were he to ever want to spend a night in that city. That got me to wondering if a US President had ever slept there, and that in turn led to the question of how many American hotels have something they call a "Presidential Suite" and how many of those have ever had a US President sleep in them. I suspect the percentage of Presidential Suites that have been slept in by a sitting President is pretty small. It would go up if you also counted equivalent foreign dignitaries, former Presidents, major party candidates, and the like, but I suspect it would still be a minority, except possibly in those cities that have hosted major party nominating conventions. Does anybody have statistics on this? And when a hotel is being planned, do the designers work with the Secret Service or some other governmental agency on design details for whatever Presidential Suite they decide to include? Are there little tricks of design for security and such? Does the gov't keep a list of approved Presidential Suites in various cities? Questions abound. Answers do not. ********************* I've sometimes thought, in the fantasy context of being able to swap your mind into somebody else's body, that someone who has a higher tolerance for the discomforts of going to the dentist than most might be able to make a living at being a dental patient. If someone else dreads the dentist, the professional patient could swap bodies with them and take their body to the dentist while they watch a movie or something, swapping back once any residual pain has worn off. Of course modern dental technology is a lot less painful than in the past, so there might be less need for this now than in olden times, but there would still be at least a few potential customers. And it's not limited to dental patients. It could also be done for various other medical procedures. Regardless of the type of medicine or dentistry, it would also have the advantage that the professional patient would be more likely to know the technical terms for various kinds of aches and pains, and thus would be in a better position to give feedback to the doctor or dentist about what hurts and what effect the doctor's actions are having. ********************* Random thought: Remember that song from years ago about hijacking a starship? Think of the damage a hijacked starship could do to a planet. Do we really want that song being played where fanatics and such can get ideas from it? ********************* While browsing in the library I came upon a railroading magazine talking about some of the great models of diesel locomotives that helped end the age of steam. Later on I got to thinking about how the railroad workers at the time may not have really thought much about how the days of steam were numbered. Some planners would have thought about it, but it may not have sunk in emotionally in the rank and file until much later, when steam locomotives were already in the minority. The first diesels, according to the article, went into service around 1938. And now I'm thinking of some engineer or fireman or some such of that time being given a time viewer and shown an excursion in about the year 2000, where people are riding a steam train as an end in itself because steam trains are for all practical purposes extinct, brought out only for special occasions. They are no longer considered practical, but are just something to use for parties and such. Our engineer, who would have worked with steam locomotives for years, would know about the drudgery of shoveling coal, the soot and dust in the cab, and all that other stuff that blurs away in our romantic visions of the past. And he might marvel at how people of our time seek out and enjoy things he either took for granted or actively disliked. And perhaps he might then think of a friend or relative who has a similar passion for sailing ships rendered obsolete by steam. So what parts of our everyday life that we consider nuisances might our children and grandchildren be nostalgic for? ********************* Although some of the early issues of Silicon Soapware didn't end with a poem, there was a poem at the end of the very first Issue Zero (the one I was going to give to new subscribers but then gave up on). Since this is a milestone issue it seems appropriate now. ********************* Moon??? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Moon And saying that you've seen it brings howls of cruel laughter? Where the silvery light shining in the night Is a thing that defies explanation And the tides are caused by the breathing of the oysters? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Sun And everyone is acting just like it wasn't shining? Where to walk down the road in the midday heat You are careful to carry a lantern, Or you have to move as if stumbling in the darkness? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Moon And people that've seen it are locked up in the nut house? Where the young lovers go out beside the sea And they watch the reflections of nothing, And they never talk about what they think they see there? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the rain But keep on getting wet without any earthly reason? Where you go with your friends for a picnic lunch While you fear what you'd better not mention, And it's just delusions you have to come in out of? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe In love??? Thomas G. Digby written ???? 1968? typed/revised 0130 hr 11/23/75 entered 2340 hr 3/16/92 ********************* 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 --