From: "Chris Lowery" <chris@onegoodwindow.com>
Chris Lowery wrote, in part:
> 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 worry for your soul, Chris. Remember that one old term
for The Direct Competitor ("Shaitan") translates roughly from
Arabic as "excessive bandwidth." Another ("Lucifer"), from
Latin, as "spatio-optical transport layer." And there's the
plain old Hebrew ("Satan" - "Direct Competitor") with its
modern Internet meaning of "Way Gnarly Port Scanner."
Just because this guy had an early, very positive role in system
architecture before he was kicked off the UETF doesn't mean
he can't come up with some pretty pernicious hacks - quite the
contrary, if anything. And this laser-input idea sounds like just
his kind of security hole. So don't go looking no gift laser in the
business end, OK? Especially if it comes to your house in a
plain brown wrapper.
Before we veer too far off into theological debate: did anyone
catch that story about targeted projection of sound finally
becoming practical? I didn't clip the story, but it sounded
pretty real. If this became ubiquitous, you wouldn't even
have to carry a phone, just a locator!
More likely, it's headed for niche markets - like so many
apparent miracles of modern science. Still, it struck me as
kind of cool.....
-m
leap@gol.com
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu May 31 12:14:12 2001