Science Fiction Novel Waiting to be Written

A subscription to Wired for less than a buck an issue is still too expensive when you figure all the good articles are available on-line for free, and are more readable that way. But our bathroom still is off the net, so I bought, and read an interesting nugget this morning on how, with blogs and feeds like twitter and facebook, individuals are becoming increasingly corporate-like. And books like Joel Bakan's The Corporation show how commercial companies exhibit human behavioral traits, not all of them beneficial to society.

So it's only a matter of time before somebody writes about the day when the distinction between the two disappears. Don't look at me - I don't even have a line from that book yet. And like I said earlier, I'm not exactly the most voracious reader of the genre. But it seems like the best way to explore the idea.

Facebook: at least get this basic grammar lesson right

From this indispensable piece of news in my FB feed:

Updated: Bill the Kidney, Bobby Kaplotnick and Doctor Woo has received a new FunWall post.
Click here to view Bill's video

"has". Right. From a multi-billion-dollar company.

Side point: Bill's video isn't bad, for a kidney, but you probably knew that already.

The Future of Facebook is Hominids

I haven't read the book by Robert J Sawyer (in fact, the s.f. books I have read in the last 30 years would make a good post), but I heard him talk about it on DNTO last week. The gist is that in this parallel world all humans have a black box implanted in their wrist. The data it emits is stored on a server run by what seems to be a benevolent dictatorship -- other individuals can't access this data, but the government can use it to hold people fully accountable for their actions.

It would seem that Facebook Beacon, which publishes your actions on participating partners outside Facebook into your Facebook feed, is a step in this direction. I can only say, about time. I'm looking forward to the day when everyone with a wireless-net-enabled device can participate as a Beacon publisher.

I'll be able to follow the feeds of my friends to see not only what they ate for breakfast, but also if they remembered to put the recyclables in the blue box, how much did they give the street person busking outside the skytrain station, who's cheating on their diet, and who's cheating on their spouse.

Some people say Facebook is the new AOL, but AOL never came up with this great idea.

Why the Kindle Will Flop

You're reading a blog, I assume you know what a Kindle is.
It's a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist.

It's too bad Jeff Bezos and his team didn't pay attention
to the speeches Voyageur founder Bob Stein gave back in
the 90s on Text, the New Frontier.

Text, unlike the other media, is self-contained (and can
be self-referential, but that doesn't apply here).

You don't need a device to play a book or magazine, just
a decent source of light.

The reasons iPods worked was because they were the first
elegant successor to the Discman and Walkman for digitally
encoded tunes. Music hasn't been self-contained since Edison
put an end to the sheet music industry (and even then
many people preferred their local orchestra or marching
band as a convenient device for converting instructions
to sounds, compared to their own playing). Film and
video will always need a device.

Printed books are so cheap there is little incentive in
finding a downloadable version of a book to bypass
purchasing it. And since the Kindle doesn't even load
HTML files, it won't even pick up that audience.

Parkinson's Fundraiser this Sunday

I met Marg Meikle at a school meeting last night -- her son is the
same age as our younger daughter. She didn't mention their annual
fundraiser is coming up this Sunday, so I will.

http://www.porridgeforparkinsons.com/

Sunday November 25th, 8:30- 11:30 a.m.

Go to the site for the Kits address.

It's been a decade or two since Marg was the Answer Lady on CBC,
but you can see the disease has not suppressed her sheer intelligence
and striking wit. This was an advocacy meeting, and I'm very happy to
have her on board with us.

An excerpt from the future

From a story yet to be written...

She could tell from the weathered Pearl Jam shirt and the flecks of
grey in his beard that they were both among the youngest Americans
who would remember a time when Starbucks was considered cool.

An excerpt from the past

[When we don't have anything new to put here, we sometimes dip into work from the distant past. This one came up today during an otherwise unrelated conversation.]

The setting: a Motel 6 in a non-descript town somewhere between Seattle and San Francisco:

Suddenly, Wanda got up, turned off the TV, and jumped into your bed.

And whispered in your ear, "Duane, talk to me about Emacs."

You gulped, and blurted out a sheepish "Well, actually I just use vi". Wanda
slipped back into her bed, and you punched another ticket on the night-alone express.

High-tech/media quote of the day

From http://www.ddj.com/architect/202802995?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_All,
Michael Swaine's Architecture & Design column in Dr. Dobb's Journal:

That there exists such a thing as the Larry King podcast proves to me that I know nothing about media demographics.

How to slaughter a pig

From Kendall Clark's XML newsletter, an interesting aside showing what happened when a Moldavian living in Switzerland went back home for a visit, a trip through time as much as space. I'm one of those people who eats meat, but not that often, so acquaintances often assume I'm a vegetarian. If you aren't, and you're put off by these pictures, it might be time to reconsider your diet.

This article reminds us westerners how we aren't so removed, by time or distance, from how people used to live before inventions like Pez dispensers.

http://fxcuisine.com/default.asp?Display=119&?

What would George have done?

Three in a row from Mike Daisey. Maybe there's an underlying message there.

Sociological Geometry

Another gem via http://mikedaisey.com/.

No wonder this problem was unexpected

From http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/todmaffin/~3/177876967/errormessage:

No wonder it had trouble parsing the URL. Sounds like someone dropped a zero somewhere.