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Jack,
Thank you for posting the link to the article on "spimes"; it was a
fascinating piece of writing and imagination, and it was the sort of thing I
generally don't tend to stumble across in my day-to-day excursions into the
internet. Some of it was wickedly funny, like the list of the dark side of this
new technology, below:
We'll have to wrangle with:
* spime spam, pushiness, abuse of customers, intrusion * spying and eavesdropping capabilities * brooms that bellow ads, mops that demand money * subtle software faults that make even a simple shovel unusable * unstable software * security flaws, hacking, theft, fraud, malware, vandalism and pranking * identity theft * Industrial hazards: spime kitchens that fry the unwary, spime cars that follow outdated software maps and drive right off broken bridges * technological lock-in, wicked monopolists, corrupt regimes in on the take *Intellectual property hassles * Organized spime crime * unpredictable and emergent forms of networked behavior from clouds of objects *bad interface design
* underclasses of illegals not allowed to use spimes * legal, ethical and social responsibilities for semi-autonomous objects * objects that used to be inert, and are now expensive, fussy, fragile unpredictable, too fluid, hopelessly complex, and subversive of established values * And just plain ugliness: tacky, goofy, tasteless, cheesy, lethal, vulgar, dirty, worthless, obscene, impractical, and dangerous spimes. The "organized Spime crime" was the one that got me-- that is,
until I saw the last one. He uses the word "complexity" as a synonym for
"complicatedness" though, in all but two instances. When he said we use
technology to eat complexity... that much could refer to complexity in my
father's sense.
I was surprised to find that Bruce was a serious environmentalist
and that two-thirds of the way down the article, he brought sustainability and
other environmental concerns into the mix, stating that Steve Jobs has "neural
endocrinal pancreatic cancer" because he has industrial chemicals inside his
body that ought not to be there. Bruce went on to say that sustainability isn't
enough. We can do better:
Wanting to know, wanting to do it, that's half the struggle right there.
Our capacities are tremendous. Eventually, it is within our technical ability to
create factories that clean the air as they work, cars that give off drinkable
water, industry that creates parks instead of dumps, or even monitoring systems
that allow nature to thrive in our cities, neighborhoods, lawns and homes. An
industry that is not just "sustainable," but enhances the world. The natural
world should be better for our efforts and our ingenuity. It's not too much to
ask.
We need to leap into another way of life. The technical impetus is here. We
are changing, but to what end? The question we must face is: what do we want? We
should want to abandon that which has no future. We should blow right through
mere sustainability. We should desire a world of enhancement. That is what
should come next. We should want to expand the options of those who will follow
us. We don't need more dead clutter to entomb in landfills. We need more
options.
I like the way he thinks.
I have one question about Spimes, though, that bears on computer
technology in general.... what happens if the power goes down? (I predict that
the weather, via global warming, will make all other environmental concerns, as
well as all other social concerns, a moot point. Remember those old
margarine commercials... "It's not NICE to fool Mother Nature!". If
the climate begins to oscillate wildly, as my father theorized it will once we
provoke it beyond its stability, we are going to see what happens when all the
"internal predictive models" are no longer congruent with the behavior of real
environments.)
Judith
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