Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Been offline for a while -- there was no broadband on the Airbus.

For me, the most consciousness-altering experience I've had lately was
yesterday, when I got a guided tour of the MIT Media Lab! All I can
say right now is wow. Just trying to wrap my head around what's going
on there is making it spin -- I think I need a brain upgrade. In fact, 
that seems to be the idea -- the Media Lab is about new ways of
thinking by using technology.

Which seems to me to be circling around to the idea of meditation
dissolving the distinction between conscious awareness and body via a
different route; is blurring the bounday between self and non-self 
going to turn into a necessary prerequisite for using advanced
information tools? Are we going to find out that we can only  use
intelligence-augmenting technologies by _praying_ ?
  

    
I think there's really something to that. I manage a metric fuckload of
information -- all the blogs and RSS I read for Boing Boing, all the mailing
lists, all the books, magaizines, newspapers, TV, conversations. I just came
from a three-hour briefing from a radio physicist on the physics of WiFi,
from cognitive radio to long-haul/low-power CDMA to defeating Shannon's
information theory limits with highly directional radio... I find that wehn
I'm really in the groove, soaking up and processing all this stuff, I'm not
full conscious -- I'm living inside my computer and on my phone. I can
easily imagine a really high-speed, multifarious UI for monitoring a LOT of
info that turns out to work best from/induce a light trance.
  

    

Cory, I have a comment about the book.  It may be a bit of a spoiler,
though it is not a plot point per se.

I'll post and hide in the next response.
  

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I'll be doing a reading and signing at Borderlands Books (866 Valencia St.,
San Francisco), an excellent science fiction bookstore in the Mission, on
Saturday February 15th, at 6PM. This'll be my first reading/signing for Down
and Out in the Magic Kingdom -- I hope you can make it!

http://www.borderlands-books.com/
  

    
Well, we've got one more day on this interview before we wrap it up. Any
more questions?
  

    
Yeah - how was your run?
  

    
Run?
  

    

I have a question.  Down & Out is pretty optimistic about the future, by and
large.  Does that reflect how you realistically think about the world, or
just your upside viewpoint maybe?
  

    
I think that technologically speaking, there's a lot to be optimistic
*about*. I look around at the advances in tech that I've seen in my
lifetime, and it feels like a good, old fashioned Age of Wonders. The
seemingly magical increases in storage and processing power, the increasing
innovations in spectrum use, and the bizarre and exciting social phenomena
they're spawing make me feel like there's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,
Shining at the End of Every Day.

OTOH, professional civil liberatarians are, by nature, somewhat pessimistic
about the future. It's hard to look at the domestic coups, the cynical
manipulations of the political process, the anti-competitive actions, the
disingenous abdridgement of the rights of privacy, travel, and dignity and
not feel glum.

But it's an odd kind of glum. It's not fatalistic. It's a glumness born of a
sturdy belief that the future holds *lots* of promise, and the tragedy that
awaits should the Valentis and Ashcrofts of the world get their way is made
all the worse because it would foreclose such a magnificent future.
  

    

Sure beats "A Boy and His Dog," that's for sure.
  

    
Thanks, Cory and Charlie, for waxing futuristic over the last couple of 
weeks! We expected a lot and we weren't disappointed.

A new discussion will be unveiled sometime today, but this one doesn't 
have to go away. Feel free to zip along ad infinitum: if we run out of 
space, we'll just make you another topic.
  

    
I'm going to take it slow henceforth, if you don't mind. It's been a lot of
fun, but I'm really running short on time, unfortunately. Thanks, everyone!
Thanks, Charlie! Thanks, Jon!
  

    

Thank you!
  

    
My pleasure, Jack!
  

    
Thanks, Cory!
  

    
A reminder: my reading is tonight at Borderlands Books at 6PM. Borderlands
is at 866 Valencia St. at 20th St.

http://www.borderlands-books.com/
  

    
Looking forward to it!
  

    
ditto.
  

    
It's been great. (Sorry I haven't been around much this past week; I
plead guilty to the charge of gratuitous foreign travel.)
  

    
This week The Onion reviews Cory's book.
  

    
Huh?
  

    

Oh, in *tomorrow*'s ish! Wow! Hope they like it! Do they?
  

    
Tasha Robinson reviewed it, and without giving much away-- well, we
publish in 3 hours-- I'll tell you that she quite liked it. The last line
is one that writers yearn for.