| Imaginary spaces |
[May. 31st, 2009|01:49 am] |
I've just watched No Maps for These Territories which is an odd documentary film about the science fiction author William Gibson. I've read most of his books, and was strangely disappointed recently to find that he's on twitter. It's nothing to do with ethos so much as it works better if he's this gnome like creature from a bygone era writing stories about places he's never been and things he doesn't understand. It means he's not faking it, and he really is just making it up.
I mention this because in the film he mentions the day that his dad brought home an early television, only there was no TV at the time, then there was a test card at odd hours, then there were live broadcasts. The eagle had landed.
I remember when there was no internet, hell I remember when there were no computers or computer magazines. I remember going to ad-hoc computer fairs. These were not places to buy stuff, no, these were a motley selection of people who had brought their computers in and had them running odd programs on pasteboard tables. So the public could crowd round and have a look. Only there were never any crowds, just people who thought it was a jumble sale, and the odd proto geek like me, who at least knew what a computer was, and wanted to look at a few in the flesh so to speak. I still have the original copies of Personal Computer World where they did the first reviews of the Sinclair Spectrum and the Apple Lisa, the progenitor of the first Macintosh.
I remember compiling Mosaic from source on a UNIX box and surfing the entirety of the internet, (as it existed back then) in one evening. There used to an email that listed new sites as they became available. There was no google. I remember hearing about Netscape for the first time and switching to it as it allowed you to have background wallpaper. I preferred the terminal lab for internet work before the web existed as it was quieter, and I knew how to access everything from Archie & FTP, to WAIS and gopher, etc. via email.
I recently told somebody that I built my first computer with a soldering iron, and they replied, "and you think that's something to be proud of?"
The world has changed, if you want to know where it goes next look at this, now try to imagine life without gmail.
Like the man is reputed to have said, "the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" |
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| The shape of things |
[May. 31st, 2009|12:26 pm] |
Watching Gibson yesterday he said at some point that humans were motivated to find the shape of things, and likened it to a character in one of novels trying to find the shape of cyberspace. I understand what he meant by that, because I was motivated, at least in part, to research finance/economics because I was interested in the shape of the system itself.
However, it wasn't until I read Tim O'Reilly's write-up of Google's Wave demo that it really chimed with me. The first thing that came to mind was a documentary I saw about modern Jazz and the affect that Ornette Coleman's album The Shape of Jazz to Come had on the Jazz world. Or indeed, the Amen Break which spawned an entire subculture. It's about the affect something can have on living and growing system, like a phase change.
I expect in the months coming up to launch, you will see a lot of FUD and delaying tactics by people with vested interests to protect. So you better see what all the fuss is about, and then read Tim's Post if you want to have an idea of what comes next.
You can read Tim's post right here. Get to it! |
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