SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us http://www.well.com/~bubbles/ Issue #89 New Moon of April 12, 2002 Contents copyright 2002 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* As the train I was on was pulling away from the station, I noticed something spray-painted on a wall: "Jack Daniels does not make you profound." Now while I don't disagree with that statement, I kind of wonder why whoever put it there thought it needed to be said. To most of the people I know it probably pretty much goes without saying. So why did someone think it needed to be said, and why did it need to be said in spray paint on that particular wall by the train tracks? There's probably an untold story there. ********************* It's nearing the end of Rainy Season in California, and somehow a mental cog slipped and the phrase came out as "Brainy Season". So now I'm thinking of a world where whatever species eventually evolved intelligence had more of a need for it at certain times of year than at others. Maybe there were migratory predators around only at certain times, and maybe food was short then as well, while for much of the rest of the year there was plenty of stuff to eat and life was easy. So Mating Season would come as the predators were migrating away, and after they had finished showing off and selecting mates for Mating Season intelligence would fade (to save wasting energy on brains) during the Easy Season, at least until the young were born. Then they would need to get smarter again to prepare their young for the next cycle. Once they evolved sentience they couldn't shut it down completely during Easy Season because those who maintained at least a little brainpower had an advantage over those who didn't. But their intelligence still waxed and waned to some degree. Hence Brainy Season was when intelligence was at its maximum. What would their culture be like? Would certain kinds of complex business deals be legal only during Brainy Season, when people would be best able to evaluate them? Would there still be enough brainpower active during the off season to allow the schools to teach at least certain rote fundamentals then? Would different kinds of art and music arise for the different seasons? Would their medicine men eventually discover herbs and potions to turn their intellects up or down at will, overriding the seasons? During Brainy Season would be it OK to tell jokes about how stupid they were during the off season? Would people whose intelligence faded most during the off season be protected by law from those who kept their intellects fairly sharp? And if different parts of their world had Brainy Season at different times of year, how would the political systems cope with the differences of who was smart or stupid when, especially as technology began to make long journeys possible? Finally, and perhaps of most interest to science fiction fans, what when they finally make contact with Earth? ********************* "There's no wind, and the flags in front of most of the buildings on this street are hanging limp. But the flag by that one building is almost straight out, like it was in a hurricane or something. How come?" "That building is the company that makes Viagra." ********************* Something led me to classify jobs into two categories: Input-oriented and output-oriented. An input-oriented job is one in which the employee is expected to make X amount of effort (often measured by a time clock) and the employer takes whatever results that effort produces. Output- oriented is where the employee is expected to make whatever effort is required to produce specific results. Although many (most?) jobs have elements of both, hourly minimum-wage jobs are mostly input-oriented while straight-salary high-tech jobs in places like Silicon Valley are more output-oriented. Is this a useful distinction? ********************* An article in the April 2002 issue of Software Development (a computer trade magazine) described a natural-language programming project that some university in Italy was working on. You would describe your requirements in natural language (English in the examples shown) and the system would ask you some questions to resolve ambiguities. Then once it was satisfied that it knew what was wanted, it would create a program to do it. According to the article the writer tried creating a few test examples and they worked. Transcripts of some of the discussions between the writer and the machine were shown. At the end of the article was a URL "for more information". The page at that location consisted only of a wish for a happy April Fool's Day. But it still got me to thinking. First, even if natural-language programming as described in that article is an April Fool topic this year, it could approach reality a few years from now. Second, in the examples shown the writer's input was quite clear and logical, even though it was in more or less natural English. Even if the system detects ambiguities and resolves them by asking questions, if the person trying to create an application can't think through what is needed and put it into clear words the system will take a long time to converge to an acceptable solution, if it ever does. This point was not discussed in the article, even though I think it is important. I suspect the type of "programmer" who does little more than compile detailed specifications into C (or Visual Basic or whatever) will eventually go the way of the typing pool. But people who can think through complex concepts and communicate them clearly will still be in demand, even if they are no longer called "programmers" and don't need to know any actual computer languages. Eventually intelligent systems may be good enough to make all human workers obsolete. But some will become obsolete sooner than others. ********************* Are there as many April Fool items in the media as there used to be? The comic pages are probably fair game, and I've seen April Fool items in tech magazines and such, but is there getting to be a feeling that there's so much real news that looks unbelievable that we can't really afford to do April Fool items in mainstream news pages any more? ********************* I went to an All Fool's ritual. Besides being fun, it was also thought- provoking. Much of it was a parody of traditional Pagan rituals, with store-bought processed food products in place of grain and such. In a way it was a reminder of how far we've come from our agrarian roots. It also reminded me of how attitudes about Nature have changed in the last few hundred years, at least in the industrialized world. Back in ancient times Nature (as the Earth Mother or various gods or whatever) was something to be feared, and perhaps appeased with sacrifices and prayers for mercy. But nowadays Nature is something to be nurtured and protected. While we still get the occasional natural disaster, we aren't constantly worrying about survival in terms of Nature being merciful. If crops in one region fail, we import from somewhere else instead, often with most of the public not noticing the difference. We have medicines for most plagues and pestilences. If there is a natural disaster, the affected region gets help from other areas. Childbirth is not as dangerous as it once was. And so on. Furthermore, Nature is increasingly seen as being at our mercy, what with pollution, endangered species, and a long list of similar woes. Many neo-Pagans in industrialized areas think of themselves as being stewards of the earth, protecting it from forces such as corporate greed. Is this a new theological development? Many religions have long thought of themselves as servants, doing work that their gods want done, but how many religions have thought of their gods as being in peril and needing protection from other humans? ********************* One night I dreamed that the US Mint had some kind of deal where you could pay to have your picture put on a few hundred quarters. They would give some of them back to you and put the rest into circulation. Although the dream didn't go into detail beyond that, I imagine you could hand your share of your vanity coins out to friends and relatives, while knowing that people you'll never meet, in all sorts of far-flung places, would be seeing your picture and wondering who you were. ********************* At a party a few weeks ago someone was having medical problems, which brought the conversation around to various other problems people were having, most of which were (in my opinion) much worse than my problems. That inspired this takeoff on an old line: "I complained because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet. And the footless man had quit complaining when he met a man with no limbs at all. And he in his turn ..." Of course somebody eventually has to be last, but maybe God gives them some other consolation or something. ********************* You've heard the old line to the effect that a tool is neither good nor evil in itself, but can be put to good or evil uses. One person I was talking with felt that guns were a sort of exception, being evil in themselves. So I told him about the former coworker who used a gun as a quick and easy way to put holes in the floor of his house to install TV cable (out in the country, away from anybody else who might have been hurt). The person I was talking with said the story gave him a feeling of cognitive weirdness. Here was something whose only use is to hurt people, and someone was using it for something constructive. That Does Not Compute. I suspect he was too young to remember Project Plowshare. That was a proposal, I believe during the Eisenhower administration, to use nuclear bombs for peaceful purposes such as excavation work to build Interstate highways. What would he have said about that? ********************* I've noticed that more and more places where customers are likely to be standing in line, such as fast-food places, are putting in electronic displays that show ads. The older ones were LED displays that were mostly text with minor graphics thrown in, while the newer ones are more TV-like. But regardless of the technology, I'm worried about a potential conflict of interest. It seems obvious that the longer people have to wait in line at one of those places, the more ads they'll see. Might that give the place an incentive to cut back on cashiers to make the lines longer so people will see more ads? This would also mean fewer cashiers on the payroll, which might be even more of an incentive to cut back. Will the competitive forces that currently give an incentive to keep lines short be enough to counteract this temptation? ********************* A few nights ago I dreamed that Bethlehem Steel had its own freight trains to take its products to market, and they had them decorated for Christmas year-round. Engines (mostly steam?) and other cars were designed to look toylike, and there may have been other Christmas stuff. They also had big banners with the word "Bethlehem" on the sides of some cars and US flags on others. In addition, they had decorated all the grade crossings their trains went through by spreading fake snow with fake gift-wrapped Christmas boxes scattered around all over the roadway. I was wondering whether the boxes would get scrunched up from all the cars driving through them, but it didn't seem to be a major problem. Maybe the cars went around the larger packages while the bottoms of the cars were high enough to clear the smaller ones, or maybe it didn't matter because it was a dream. In any case I could see tire tracks through the fake snow, but no mashed-up boxes. And since it was a dream, I didn't think that the concept was strange or foolish. I just sort of accepted it. Such is the nature of stuff in Dreamland. ********************* They say that it takes a million years for light to make its way through the jam-packed atoms of the Sun's core to the surface. After that, the eight-minute journey to Earth seems almost anti-climax, despite the much greater distance traveled. Even the years to other nearby stars don't seem that long. And what's time to a photon? Since it travels at the speed of light, time is compressed to zero, so everything happens at once. And space is likewise compressed, so that even as the photon is starting its trip it is already at its destination, whether that be an atom away or a galaxy away. In a sense I can't really imagine being a photon. And photons don't have time to imagine anything. ********************* I've now and then wondered about poetry and such in the afterlife. If you can't take physical stuff with you, and I don't have all my poetry memorized, will I still be able to somehow look it up or something? Does Heaven have libraries? Or does it not matter, perhaps because existence in the Hereafter is based on non-verbal thought forms or something, and we will have better things to do than worry about past accomplishments? ********************* The Blind Wizard The blind wizard walks the streets of The Ancient City, With guide birds singing directions In a language only he and they know. He doesn't look wizard-like: His robes are plain, devoid of magical symbols he will never see, And his magic wand doubles as a cane To feel his way along. Strangers gasp in horror at his face, Its empty sockets like twin caves Within which nameless beasts may be hiding, Waiting to pounce upon the unwary. He will not say who or what took his eyes. But eyes or no eyes, his world is not one of darkness When one of the sockets contains an eye-stone. One is a gray pearl, A gift from the gods of the ocean. As an eye it shows him the wonders of the sea, Shipwrecks and lost treasure and the bones of lost sailors, And the strange creatures that live In the eternal darkness of the deepest depths. A sphere wrought from meteorite iron reveals the depths of space: Worlds around stars whose light will not reach us For thousands and thousands of years. Strange are the ways of those who inhabit those worlds, Beyond even the ability of wizards to describe. Still other eye-stones look into the distant past, Or the tree of possible futures, Or the mazes of might-have-been, While others open into the realms of the spirits, Or give form to the musings of mathematicians, Or warn of evil in the hearts of others. None see the physical here-and-now. That the gods have forbidden. In a way that may be fortunate. Those who have met the wizard's wife Say that her face is even more horrible to look upon than his. He has been spared that affront to his senses, While his favorite eye-stone, The one that lets him see past the physical shell, Delights him with the inner beauty of her soul. -- Thomas G. Digby Written 22:32 04/04/2002 Revised 07:37 04/05/2002 Revised 17:08 04/10/2002 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time. If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both. To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list posting you receive.) To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually. -- END --