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 #161 New Moon of February 6, 2008 Contents copyright 2008 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. ********************* In years gone by I tended to associate February with groundhogs and valentines and holidays honoring long-dead Presidents. But this year is different: We also have elections to deal with. Major elections. There have been elections in February in past years, but they were mainly in other parts of the country and thus didn't involve me directly. There have been a few February elections in California, but I don't recall any that have generated the hoopla that this election has. I'm reminded of the 1952 Presidential elections, which were the first major elections after our family acquired a TV. In those days the rules for nominating Presidential candidates were different. Many delegates went into the convention more or less uncommitted. Thus even during the convention there was real suspense as to who the nominee would be. We sat practically glued to the TV during the conventions' climactic Roll Call of the States, and then again a few months later on election night itself. With all that suspense it was inevitable that there would be lots of speculation. And where there was speculation about the future there was also mention of Nostradamus. That too may have been inevitable. My first experience with Nostradamus was rather inauspicious. Again, television was involved. A few weeks before the political conventions someone on some TV show was talking about Nostradamus and all the stuff he had predicted. Then the interviewer asked "Who will be our next President?" "Senator Estes Kefauver" was the confident-sounding reply. This sounded credible, since Kefauver's name had been prominent in the news. He had been chair of a Senate committee investigating organized crime, and more recently he was campaigning for President. In addition, I was just a child, with a big interest in science fiction and fantasy. So I believed the "prophecy", hook, line, and sinker. You can imagine my disappointment when Kefauver lost the Democratic nomination to Adlai Stevenson, and again when the party whose candidate Kefauver should have been lost the election to General Eisenhower. I felt more disappointment when I looked up Nostradamus in the library and saw how vague and ambiguous the supposed "prophecies" really were. But that's for another time. Suffice it to say that I have little or no faith in Nostradamus nowadays. ********************* Speaking of speculation, it used to be that when someone considered an outcome virtually certain, they might say it's "dollars to donuts". When I first heard the expression fifty or sixty years ago, donuts were selling for a nickel or so apiece, possibly even less. At the time that felt like a suitably lopsided ratio. Then as the years went by inflation began to take its toll. Now one mom-and-pop donut place near here sells "regular" glazed donuts for seventy cents each, while at a convenience store a mile or so away they're eighty-nine cents, with a discount if you buy two or more. Prices at other places may be a few cents higher or lower, but be that as it may, "dollars to donuts" is no longer a lopsided ratio. In keeping with that, I don't recall hearing the expression recently. So now what of the future? In another fifty or sixty years, when donuts are selling for twenty or fifty or a hundred dollars each, will the expression "dollars to donuts" come back into use to describe lopsided odds? ********************* A month or two ago this apartment had plumbing problems, including leaks dripping into the apartment below. Finding and fixing the problem took several tries, but it all seems to be OK now. But it had me worried for a while. What if all attempts had failed until they finally gave up? The thought occurred to me that they might ask us to move out, then brick up the doors and windows on both of the units at this end of the building and forget about them. Just treat it like a four-unit building instead of a six-unit building. If that reduced the assessed value of the property it could mean reduced tax liability. That probably wouldn't make up for the rent they wouldn't be collecting on the bricked-up units, and may not even pay the cost of bricking them up, but it might be worth it in terms of reduced worry and hassle. Of course if inspectors were to ever come around checking for fire hazards and such, they might wonder about areas of brickwork in what was otherwise a wood-frame building. There might also be structural concerns having to do with the weight of all those bricks. It might be possible to bribe the inspectors to ignore all that, but would it be wise to do so? Even if there was no fire hazard because the leaky plumbing would eventually fill the bricked-up apartments with water, what if there's an earthquake? Would they need extra bracing or something to prevent damage to the rest of the building? All is all, it's probably good that they were able to fix the problem without having to abandon or brick up anything. ********************* Something got me to thinking of computer-based virtual worlds, mainly the kind we might have in the future where all your senses are wired in so the virtual world seems real. I was reminded of an old thought I'd had to the effect that in such a world, different people's views of the same scene need not be totally consistent. For example, suppose I'm in a meeting in a room with a number of other people. And suppose our tastes in wallpaper and furniture and such don't agree. One person might want flower-pattern wallpaper while another wants plain white plaster with a few pictures here and there, and a third person wants a large window showing some kind of scenic view. Likewise, one person may want our conference table to be traditional polished mahogany while another prefers Formica and yet another wants some kind of plate-glass table top. I see no good reason why we couldn't set up the system so that each of us sees our preferred decoration scheme. Of course there would be limits. I personally would prefer that solid surfaces and other obstacles be consistent for everybody, so we don't see people walking through walls and furniture, or setting things down on invisible tables. But even with that restriction, there are still myriads of possibilities for personalization of one's environment, even when that environment is shared. Just because everybody sees the conference table as being the same size and shape doesn't mean they have to all see it as being the same color. One exception to this might be where a shared environment is part of what we might think of as a work of art. In that case the artist might well want all members of the audience to have the same experience. But that's a special case, and need not be mandatory for all shared spaces. Note that I'm not talking about what in our current "real" world would be called "delusions" or "hallucinations". I'm assuming that the inhabitants of the kind of virtual world I'm talking about would be aware of its nature, including the fact that things appear different to different people. I can see others disagreeing with me on this matter. Some may insist that all aspects of a shared virtual world should always be consistent for everybody "there". If they're sitting at a mahogany table, they would want everybody else around that table to see it as mahogany, not glass or Formica or whatever. That would be more in keeping with life in the "real" world. I don't agree with that view, but I can see others feeling that way. Let them have such spaces if they so desire. I might even be willing to visit them now and then, as long as they don't try to force me to live there. That leads to thoughts of there eventually being a number of different worlds, each with its own set of what we would think of as physical laws. Some would be more or less like the world we live in now, while others would differ in various ways but would still be recognizable as being derived from the "real" world, and still others would be beyond anything we can presently imagine. ********************* Valentine's Day is coming, and I'm reminded of this: Do I Love You? Do I love you? Do I love you? Do I love you? I can't really say. Part of the problem is in the meaning, Or multitude of meanings, And therefore lack of meaning, Of that word "Love" As well as the difficulty of objectively viewing my feelings. For one thing, "love" is said to involve A concern for the other's welfare and happiness Above one's own. But when I saw you with another Part of me was selfish enough To hope it wouldn't work out Even though the rest of me Did all it could Toward what you seemed to want. On a less lofty level I find That my emotional outlook improves Whenever we meet And that any place with you Is usually better Than the same place without you And the things I could find fault with Seem less significant in you Than they would in another. The lowest level of so-called "love" Is desire for physical interaction: That I feel strongly. But there should be more than that And I think there is. How much more I can't say Except that I hope it can grow with time Into someting we can be reasonably right In calling "love". -- Tom Digby Original 15:40 07/12/1970 Revised 19:30 07/12/1970 Entered 16:41 11/13/2002 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. 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