So I am to believe Franklin and Gandhi were protohackers,
sporting geekgear indispensable to bridging their 'plicate
convolutions' to the rough, standards-based wavespace laid down
by the Artist in absentia? I'd be more inclined to give the
Mahatma his cred for weaving (think the Jaquard loom, or the
Mayans if you're into knots) or social powerhacking. But since
you brought it up smart guy,
An academic group recently demonstrated optical interference
can recreate the effects of quantum interference - without all
that dangerous mucking about with high-energy subatomic physics.
Look into a (low-power for God's sake) laser beam and you get
a feel for the kind of discrete wiggliness interference is
good for. So take it right to the eyes and across the transom:
isn't light itself a more direct 'interface' from brain to box
than all the 2D/3D/pixel power you can muster? Sure we'll get
headaches, but in terms of elegance, the hoary desktop metaphor
seems more a tool of the Direct Competitor.
I'd like to stare straight into my batch job ticking away,
right into the heart of a complex computation. How different
is that from a rose by any other name? no smell, I suppose.
A propos your original proposition, I will eat my hairpiece
if our grandchildren are still looking at pixel arrays.
thanks for the trip,
-chris
Michael Turner wrote:
>
> Ren points out an interview with a major cell-phone inventor:
>
> > http://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/jun01/qa.asp
>
> I like this guy. His main points are that mobile information processing
> innovations should, ideally, be:
>
> - unobtrusively portable
> - continuously available
> - limited in purpose
> - an improvement on something you can get already
> - open to connections (standards-compliant)
> - open to competition in the market, so that innovations flow
>
> HOWEVER (as he points out) even with these advantages, you still
> have to wait for change. Real change starts with young people, not
> with glacial, status-quo-shackled international standards committees.
>
> Young people have to go through diapers, pre-school, and
> grade school, and only then can they start (re-)defining "cool"
> or even just "normal."
[ excessive quoting removed ]
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu May 31 00:13:06 2001