The song that goes like this
My wife and her parents went to see Spamalot,
which has just opened in Toronto. (Heh, according to the Wikipedia
page, this musical has "somewhat contributed to the diversity of
American musical theatre by bringing back the straight white male to
audiences".) I came to the city with them to meet them after the show
so that we could out go for a dinner afterwards, to enjoy some fancy
big city food that they don't serve in the "905" sticks and boonies. We
can afford to do this, since we don't need to pay as much for housing
as they do here in the city, and they haven't added any kind of special
"out of towners tax" to prices, the way they currently plan to do at
the Toronto Zoo. Don't laugh, this is not a joke, but seriously real.
"Toronto don't care very much for outsiders!"
I intended to go to the library since I had a whole bunch of books taken out from there. During a pleasant stroll on the streets that were melting in the heat, to my delight I accidentally came upon a big branch of Toronto library that I didn't know even existed, nor had been in before. Well, naturally I went in and zoomed into the graphic novel section, from which I took a bagful of excellent books, including "Locas" and a Buddy Bradley collection. (I read the other Hernanzed brothers collection earlier, "Palomar", as I recounted in this post. Watch out, Hernito, or a bruja will get you!)
But the greatest thing of this post yet remains, and I want to tell this properly. When I went to the checkout, it was self-serve. Well, no problemo there, since I certainly am a great fan of making machines do all the physical work that humans do. After I had scanned my library card for its barcode, the computer screen instructed me to pile the books on a black plate next to the screen. I did this, assuming that it's the demagnetizor and that I would next have to scan the barcodes in the books one by one. But my jaw practically dropped to the floor when the screen just rattled the names of all the books that I had piled on the plate. All I had to was touch the button on the screen and take the receipt. Jesus, how the heck did it do that?
I just stood there totally stunned for a moment, trying to think of an explanation. But any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, as they say. This must be how some primitive tribes felt when they first encounter a Western explorer who could make fire in his hand and kill things from a distance with his banging stick. I just have no idea how that machine did that. Later I realized that perhaps the books have RFID tags in them, but I don't remember reading about the Toronto library system putting the tags in place. You'd think that would be a lot of work.
What an age of miracles we truly live in. Anybody who lives in the richest countries on Earth and doesn't start every single morning with a praise to destiny of being so lucky as to live here and now, instead of in the vast, dirty and smelly past that is the wretched history of mankind, in which your role would have been to toil the fields during the day and sleep the night in a misery filled with rats and fleas, should start doing so right now. Tomorrow morning when you open your eyes, remember that there is no feudal lord who controls everything that you do, and the only reason why he doesn't impose totalitarian control over you is that you wouldn't be able to do anything yourself anyway, so controlling you is useless.
Just like that Skype thing. For decades, real-time video phones have been a standard staple of science fiction, just like spaceships with tailfins. And then one day not so long ago they just happened, with nary a peep or a bigger reaction than a yawn from the people. But so it necessarily must be. All bits are the same, and the exact same cheap and ubiquitous computers can do anything that somehow involves handling bits and moving them around. This is what we mean when we talk about universal computer. There is no need to have separate devices to handle bits for different purposes, since one and the same machine can do it all. And when we increase the processor speed, memory and disk space and communication bandwidth, many quantitative differences suddenly become qualitative, allowing us to do things that were only a dream in the past.
While I am at it, here is an amusing story. When we were doing the housecleaning a few weeks ago, my wife decided to use the Swiffer WetJet to properly clean the kitchen floor. We hadn't used this device for at least a year, so when she tried to start it, nothing happened and we hypothesized the batteries must have been dead. Then we had a problem of trying to find how the thing opens so that we could put in new batteries. Try as we might, we just couldn't find any kind of opening, as the whole thing was one solid piece. I laughed and said "Any sufficiently adv..." and didn't need to say anything else, since she started laughing, and then we, almost as if following some invisible cue together, started acting like chimpanzees and clumsily paw and grope the swiffer while making frustrated squeaking chimpanzee sounds. Okay, I guess you had to be there. But when you have been married this long, you have to find your amusement wherever you can. (Later, it turned out that there was another piece that attaches to the main thing, and the batteries were inside it.)
I intended to go to the library since I had a whole bunch of books taken out from there. During a pleasant stroll on the streets that were melting in the heat, to my delight I accidentally came upon a big branch of Toronto library that I didn't know even existed, nor had been in before. Well, naturally I went in and zoomed into the graphic novel section, from which I took a bagful of excellent books, including "Locas" and a Buddy Bradley collection. (I read the other Hernanzed brothers collection earlier, "Palomar", as I recounted in this post. Watch out, Hernito, or a bruja will get you!)
But the greatest thing of this post yet remains, and I want to tell this properly. When I went to the checkout, it was self-serve. Well, no problemo there, since I certainly am a great fan of making machines do all the physical work that humans do. After I had scanned my library card for its barcode, the computer screen instructed me to pile the books on a black plate next to the screen. I did this, assuming that it's the demagnetizor and that I would next have to scan the barcodes in the books one by one. But my jaw practically dropped to the floor when the screen just rattled the names of all the books that I had piled on the plate. All I had to was touch the button on the screen and take the receipt. Jesus, how the heck did it do that?
I just stood there totally stunned for a moment, trying to think of an explanation. But any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, as they say. This must be how some primitive tribes felt when they first encounter a Western explorer who could make fire in his hand and kill things from a distance with his banging stick. I just have no idea how that machine did that. Later I realized that perhaps the books have RFID tags in them, but I don't remember reading about the Toronto library system putting the tags in place. You'd think that would be a lot of work.
What an age of miracles we truly live in. Anybody who lives in the richest countries on Earth and doesn't start every single morning with a praise to destiny of being so lucky as to live here and now, instead of in the vast, dirty and smelly past that is the wretched history of mankind, in which your role would have been to toil the fields during the day and sleep the night in a misery filled with rats and fleas, should start doing so right now. Tomorrow morning when you open your eyes, remember that there is no feudal lord who controls everything that you do, and the only reason why he doesn't impose totalitarian control over you is that you wouldn't be able to do anything yourself anyway, so controlling you is useless.
Just like that Skype thing. For decades, real-time video phones have been a standard staple of science fiction, just like spaceships with tailfins. And then one day not so long ago they just happened, with nary a peep or a bigger reaction than a yawn from the people. But so it necessarily must be. All bits are the same, and the exact same cheap and ubiquitous computers can do anything that somehow involves handling bits and moving them around. This is what we mean when we talk about universal computer. There is no need to have separate devices to handle bits for different purposes, since one and the same machine can do it all. And when we increase the processor speed, memory and disk space and communication bandwidth, many quantitative differences suddenly become qualitative, allowing us to do things that were only a dream in the past.
While I am at it, here is an amusing story. When we were doing the housecleaning a few weeks ago, my wife decided to use the Swiffer WetJet to properly clean the kitchen floor. We hadn't used this device for at least a year, so when she tried to start it, nothing happened and we hypothesized the batteries must have been dead. Then we had a problem of trying to find how the thing opens so that we could put in new batteries. Try as we might, we just couldn't find any kind of opening, as the whole thing was one solid piece. I laughed and said "Any sufficiently adv..." and didn't need to say anything else, since she started laughing, and then we, almost as if following some invisible cue together, started acting like chimpanzees and clumsily paw and grope the swiffer while making frustrated squeaking chimpanzee sounds. Okay, I guess you had to be there. But when you have been married this long, you have to find your amusement wherever you can. (Later, it turned out that there was another piece that attaches to the main thing, and the batteries were inside it.)
Olen erittäin kiitollinen, että saamme elää Skype-aikana. Skypen ansiosta voimme soittaa joko video-tai äänipuheluita ilmaiseksi mihin päin maapalloa tahansa, ja täten ikään kuin vierailla lähisukulaistemme ja ystäviemme kodeissa.
Kameran johto voisi tosin olla 20 metriä pitkä, jotta voisi näyttää live-kuvia eri puolilta kotireviiriä tai pilvenpiirtäjissä asuvat koko ympäröivää kaupunkiaan siirtämättä konettaan ikkunan lähelle, tai samaan yhteyteen soisi voitavan kytkeä vaikkapa viisi kameraa yhtä aikaa.
Miten käy tulevaisuudessa puhelinyhtiöiden osakeiden arvon: ne romahtavat täydellisesti, joten nyt on korkea aika myydä ne osakkeet pois. Tieteysti yhtiöt sitten alkavat rahastaa meitä nousevilla laajakaistayhteyksien hinnoilla menettämiensä puhelinasiakkaiden tuomia potteja korvatakseen.
Sydämellinen kiitos niille (yllätys! yllätys!) virolaisille nuorille Skypen keksijöille.
Posted by Anonymous | 4:31 AM
The library checkout system sounds nice; wish we had that too. But I think that the real magic of our times is that some people actually believe that they need useless crap like Swiffer WetJet. The power of marketing, or something.
Posted by Kalle | 6:18 AM
A little step further with the RFID tags in libraries would be even nicer: make the library cards contain a RFID tag as well and install RFID readers at the library doors. That way checking books in and out could be handled just by walking in and out with the books and the library card. Add surveillance and the need for labour is reduced to the minimum.
(And when robots can be used to fill the library shelves and keep them organized, a library probably doesn't have to employ any personnel any more, as cleaning and security can be outsourced.)
Posted by Pasi | 6:42 AM
The Finnish Economy Special:
http://www.talouselama.fi/doc.te?f_id=798192
Posted by Anonymous | 10:45 AM