Thursday, October 18, 2007
Around the Blogiverse and Elsewhere
by Tom Bozzo
I'm not here today, but I do have a post up at Total Drek, "Economies of Fun."
Labels: blogging, Realities Virtual and Otherwise, sf
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A Good Time Was Had By All
by Tom Bozzo
Anyway, that anomaly has been eliminated as Suzanne and I used the conjunction of the sociology meetings with our annual summer visit to the East Coast to meet the whole lot of them, plus Tina [***], Drek's Sainted Fiancée, and Ken's wife Shira. So what were they like? Pretty much as I'd have expected, as it turns out. As for what those expecations were, well, that would be telling. But three cheers to Teh Intertubes for putting us in touch with them all. I could not ask for a better bunch of blog pals.
[*] The third blogiversary is Saturday. There will be pie bites to mark the occasion.
[**] The single-player game challenge, reverse engineering the AI players' behavior, should be understood as a form of recreation distinct from the multiplayer experiences.
[***] Also a co-blogger via Total Drek, she is now also blogging here.
Even though I've been doing this blogging thing for almost three years [*], in some respects I feel like (or at least like to feel like I feel like) a Twentieth Century Boy. I regret, for instance, the demise of postal letters as a communications medium — not that I'm actually writing them these days. And I've preferred to take my computer strategy games single-player, rather than wage global thermonuclear war with friends or wander around Second Life with an Ivy League professor avatar. [**] For reasons like these or possibly others, it does seem to surprise a lot of people that I gave Ken, Kim, and Drek keys to the blog despite knowing them only from blog-related interactions and a smidgen of also-blog-related side chatter via e-mail.
Anyway, that anomaly has been eliminated as Suzanne and I used the conjunction of the sociology meetings with our annual summer visit to the East Coast to meet the whole lot of them, plus Tina [***], Drek's Sainted Fiancée, and Ken's wife Shira. So what were they like? Pretty much as I'd have expected, as it turns out. As for what those expecations were, well, that would be telling. But three cheers to Teh Intertubes for putting us in touch with them all. I could not ask for a better bunch of blog pals.
[*] The third blogiversary is Saturday. There will be pie bites to mark the occasion.
[**] The single-player game challenge, reverse engineering the AI players' behavior, should be understood as a form of recreation distinct from the multiplayer experiences.
[***] Also a co-blogger via Total Drek, she is now also blogging here.
Labels: just life, Meta, Realities Virtual and Otherwise
Friday, July 06, 2007
Quote of the Day ('Markets in Everything' Edition)
by Tom Bozzo
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Now that you're back, here are Charlie's bonus questions:
My candidate answers (YMMV), from Charlie's comments:
[T]he "shitting me" would be no later than the portable communicator and information can opener stage -- not necessarily the concept... so much as the "they will be cheap enough that university students and not-necessarily-rich people from LDCs will own them in large numbers" part (yet there will not be a single supersonic airplane in civilian service).
The moaning stage would likely vary a lot with the audience. There are economists who would take the "eastern gold-farming sweatshops" news and say, "Cool! Markets in everything!!" In fact, it would say something about the level of development in countries where labor is cheap enough to make gold farming profitable.
You'd probably need to explain that the "electronic mail" will have killed off the postal letter, that indeed the mail will consist largely of solicitations for credit cards and credit-card bills (and that many people will have several, not carry cash or use checks, and often owe the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of dollars at usurious interest rates), which will probably be disappointing.
Quantifying the volume of spam e-mail would probably do it for the moaning, if nothing else, though there would be reassurance that there were also computer programs that will automatically get rid of most of it while rarely also throwing away letters from your mom.
Charlie Stross:
There are thirty years' worth of future shock condensed into this one news item.Now, go to Charlie's Diary and read the whole thing...
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...
Now that you're back, here are Charlie's bonus questions:
[A]t which step in this narrative would my 1977-era audience first say "you've got to be shitting me!" ... and when would they start moaning and holding their head in their hands?
My candidate answers (YMMV), from Charlie's comments:
[T]he "shitting me" would be no later than the portable communicator and information can opener stage -- not necessarily the concept... so much as the "they will be cheap enough that university students and not-necessarily-rich people from LDCs will own them in large numbers" part (yet there will not be a single supersonic airplane in civilian service).
The moaning stage would likely vary a lot with the audience. There are economists who would take the "eastern gold-farming sweatshops" news and say, "Cool! Markets in everything!!" In fact, it would say something about the level of development in countries where labor is cheap enough to make gold farming profitable.
You'd probably need to explain that the "electronic mail" will have killed off the postal letter, that indeed the mail will consist largely of solicitations for credit cards and credit-card bills (and that many people will have several, not carry cash or use checks, and often owe the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of dollars at usurious interest rates), which will probably be disappointing.
Quantifying the volume of spam e-mail would probably do it for the moaning, if nothing else, though there would be reassurance that there were also computer programs that will automatically get rid of most of it while rarely also throwing away letters from your mom.
Labels: computers, Geek-out, Realities Virtual and Otherwise, sf
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Program Note: Elsewhere in teh Intertubes
by Tom Bozzo
Warren Ellis's dispatches from SL for Reuters (yes, a First Life news agency covers virtual goings-on) really make me wonder whether corporations know what they're getting into in the Metaverse.
Total Drek co-blogger Slag and I talk about aspects of Second Life chez Drek.
Warren Ellis's dispatches from SL for Reuters (yes, a First Life news agency covers virtual goings-on) really make me wonder whether corporations know what they're getting into in the Metaverse.
Labels: Economics, Realities Virtual and Otherwise, Sociology, technology
