4/11/2003
I was over at Slashdot and noticed this thread which talks about Future Inventions. Actually, it’s about a Futurist project (Immortalizer Technologies) created by the DaVinci Institute in which a group of creative/innovative futurists think up new inventions to be invented by inventors (sounds like the Flying Cars by 2000 predictions in the ’50s). Anyways, you can submit your own idea for an invention and have it named after you in their encyclopedia.
Before I discuss one of my ideas, you might enjoy (for both laughs and food for thought) reading up on Extropians, TransHumanists and Singularitarians. About a year ago I bumped into a fellow by the name of BJ Klein who is the founder of the Immortality Institute. Yea, some pretty esoteric stuff, but it was pretty original and a world apart from what I was studying (Renaissance and Reformation history). I originally bumped into him after reading an essay by a self-proclaimed Extropian, Max Moore.
Anyways, extropianism is a type of transhumanistic philosophy which promotes long lasting (immortality) life, economic growth, etc. Singularitarians believe that with the exponential growth in advances of technology, there will be a culmination point in which several things happen, namely you and I cease to exist in our current humanity. It’s not that we will go crazy and rip limbs off one another; we can do that already (and do). It’s that we become more integrated with our artificial creations, namely computers and automated, self-replicating devices (nanobots).
My thoughts on the whole matter are a bit more pessimistic then Mr. Klein or Anissimov or Kurzweil.
Yes, computing technologies are advancing arithmetically (some exponentially) every few months and years. Yes, certain electronic components are becoming cheaper and follow us around in our daily lives (cell phones, PDAs, laptops, etc.). Yes you and I will live longer than our Hobbesian ancestors of yesteryear. But one cannot conclude that within 60 years man and his machines will be one entity.
Ceteris Paribus you say? If politicians and regulators had their druthers, they would continue to gain (at the expense of everyone else). And as such, all firms under their purview would find themselves with stringent barriers to overcome in order to innovate and grow.
Taxation (coerced philanthropy) reallocates wealth in the same manner that wars reallocate and redistribute wealth. The more regulations and “laws” there are, the more capital is diverted inefficiently to other industries (like subsidies) and the less capital that can be reinvested in research & development.
So, in addition to promoting what could happen if the State is nice, they should also promote how everyone benefits with freer trade and freer markets.
And that leads me to my invention. It’s actually a mixture of several ideas. First, you take an Arcology (from SimCity 2000). An arcology is basically a gigantic building which is self-sufficient, like an advanced bio-dome, only you can comfortably fit tens of thousands of people inside them (one huge apartment complex) who can then eat, sleep, play and work all in the confines of the colossal structure.
Next, you levitate this arcology off the ground. The reason this is important is so that earth quakes, floods and bears won’t damage your building. A side bonus is that because it is levitating off the ground, it could move from one location to the next. So, you can live by the beach during the winter and move on up to the mountains in the summer (though it won’t matter once you see my next perk). Yes, I understand that what I’m proposing would require astronomical amounts of energy, but remember, this is The Future ™ similar to a cartoon where anything can happen.
And that’s not all. Instead of having normal rooms with carpet and walls, each room is Hologramized thanks to Trekkies (Holodiction anyone?). Want to live in a forest tonight? No sweat. Want to live in a 12th century castle? No sweat. Want to live in the Playboy mansion? Lots of sweat.
Not only would men like this setup (as they wouldn’t have to worry about spills or lawnwork) but women would too, because they could create their own Hawaiian beach house or prim & proper Victorian mansion or their own rendition of a projects apartment from Compton.
Best of all, nothing short of an asteroid hitting the planet would destroy these things. And, in case that happens, you could strap a few futuristic propulsion systems onto it and launch it into space.
What’s there not to like about them? You get to live close to thousands of friends and family, you can create your own Role-Playing Game (imagine playing EverQuest or Star Wars with your buddies each and every day — and you are the characters) and you get to freely and guiltlessly partake in recreational activities that would otherwise create offspring.
If nothing else, it’s the ideal fantasy of a 20-something year-old male in the 21st century.
And we’ll call it a Swanny for short.
A possible exchange between friends (using webdings, the language of the future):
JoeFuture (no more spaces in names, too inefficient):
Translation: Dude, I live in the coolest Swanny around.
JoePiscapo:
Translation: Really? Which Swanny is that?
JoeFuture:
Translation: JoeMamma’s Swanny!
Comments & suggestions welcomed, be gentle. (And yes, I’m fully aware of the fact that it’s really not an invention like a widget, it’s a multi-faceted concept).
My cultural story of the day begins in a small room in your average suburban house in North America. Danish Blogs - I don’t speak a lick of Juttelandese, but that didn’t stop me from perusing their pad. I then went to Blogbot which I didn’t understand really well (I think it’s just a compilation of Danish Blogs, not Dutch) and I bumped into Paltanoke.net who’s motto is: ‘About as funny as income tax’ (which I’ll blog about later). And from there I end up at the cornerstone of this story: Svenskt webbloggindex (sic — check out the explanation by David Kimmins).
As another one of my goals is to be syndicated everywhere and anywhere, I searched for the “Submit blog” button. The layout is similar to other sites, so I clicked the ‘Anm�l en webblogg!’ I then took out my handy googled English/Swedish dictionary and went to work on the lingo I couldn’t decipher.
The first of two tests
I think anyone that has submitted a blog to some sort of directory or index could fill out the first part of the form easily. What stumped me however was this phrase:
Du fer gurna beskriva bloggen med negra ord
Now if they said Du fer gurna noggen bloggen med negra ord, I would’ve easily understood it. So I typed into the dictionary, beskriva:
Swedish entry word:
beskriver [beskr'i:ver] beskrev beskrivit beskriv! beskriva verb
beretta om, redogara fur, framstella; skildra
English translation:
describe; depict, portray
Examples:
metoden beskrivs i en rapport—the method is described in a report
han kan bust beskrivas som en velgadd turist—he could perhaps be best described as an overfed tourist
Well I’m hardly an overfed tourist and I wouldn’t want to be framstella-ized as one, so I wrote what any Real Warm-Blooded Blogger would:
The Official, Unadulterated 100% All Natural Weblog of Tim Swanson. Except No Imitation. Clean, Pure & Fresh.
The next hurdle was the dredded: “Och si ett meddelande, kanske?” Again I was stumped and was forced to look up meddelande:
Swedish entry word:
meddelande [m'e:de:lande] meddelandet meddelanden meddelandena noun
upplysning, rapport
English translation:
message
Examples:
vi fick meddelande om vad som hade hant—we were informed about what had happened
So what was my reason for this intrusion? Simply put: A blog by an enthusiastic Texan trying to broaden out and be cosmopolitan. (I tricked them, don’t tell on me, I’m not really cosmopolitan).
I then pressed the Anm�l button, which as any Ivory Tower linguist can tell you, is the universally accepted and used term for “Submit” (sorta like esperanto is for terra firma).
I was then prompted with:
Tack! Jag kollar upp och lagger till den her bloggen si snart som mejligt! - which translates roughly to “Thank you very much, come again.”
And who said you can’t have fun blogging?
I finally plowed through the last directory on my list. It is housed over at Northern Lights Internet Solutions (they do a lot of the same things Dave and I do… except they aren’t in their early 20s nor do they reside in Texas [Canuks]). I tried to find out the actual creator of the compendium and discovered it is authored (and maintained) by Peter Scott, who is the editor for other web directories. In addition, he created Libdex which is a “worldwide directory of library homepages, web-based OPACs, Friends of the Library pages, and library e-commerce affiliate links.” Note: I really don’t know what an OPAC is, here is the only English-based reference where OPAC is the centerpiece of the site. Also, he updates a blog discussing the latest news of the happenings in the wild & crazy online world for libraries.
Before I get to those links, here are a few I found interesting.
Blogtimes - This is a plug-in for MovableType (sorry to all the users of unprofessional publishing systems) and “What this plug-in does is to create a chart which plots the time of your posts(in a specified period) on a bar of the 24 hours of the day.”
So it looks something like this:
Well I’ve somehow managed to create 37 (this is number 38) posts since April 1, so my barcode would be gappy. Note: I win. You lose.
Oh, and check out the semi-official MT Plugins Directory. If you aren’t using MT yet, now would be a good time to switch (although Nucleus is about to hit 2.0, Pivot is just about done with their new version and Michel is back on Cafelog).
Weblog History - If you haven’t read a history on blogging or weblogs, be sure to read Rebecca Blood’s overview of it (it’s old too, alot has evolved since).
Indian Bloggers Ring - Anyone of Indian origin. As in the country of INDIA located in the continent of Asia. And who maintains a journal/diary/weblog that is frequently updated. This is the third one I’ve found, visit the other two (non-rings).
Sarcastic Geek Ring - This isn’t strictly for bloggers, but I thought there are plenty of geeks that use sarcasm bumping around on my site (in my dreams) to point it out.
Blogging Ecosystem - This is similar to Organica and Metaweblog and even Popdex as it keeps track of who is linking to who. I’m actually doing better on it than any of the aforementioned sites (even better than Technorati). Oh, and I’m pretty sure I’ve linked to more than the 38 sites it says I have ; )
Bloggando was listed in the Light’s Blog Directory for Italian-based blogs, but as you can see, it’s just one guy updating once a month or so. I found some good Italian blogs the other day, like Blog-It and BlogNews. Visit those for more [insert stereotype about pasta, pizza and the Mob here] fun.
Diary of a Madman - (warning: nudity) this isn’t just some guy’s blog, it’s some guys blog that linked to me a couple days ago and I don’t know where (something distracts me each time I try to find it). It reminds me of Dr. Grabbe’s site.
Blogging Network - another Diaryland/LiveJournal, somehow though not only do you get to host your journal there (I don’t consider proprietary solutions where they close you into their system to be blogging), but they also pay you a few ducats for posting your ramblings (I don’t see any ads, strange).
BlogKomm - another commenting system for your blog (for those less fortunate, for as little as $10/year you can digitize all the needs of a poor blogger). Similar to Haloscan and Enetation.
The Lefty Directory - A central directory of politically-oriented blogs who identify with liberals and/or the left. I doubt they get along too well with the Beltway Bloggers.
Librarian Blogs - I mentioned these guys earlier, but now I know the guy that compiles them (Peter Scott)… and I just wanted to poke fun of them again.
Popblog - a tiny directory for all blogs on pop culture, from music to movies to the plain weird stuff. I could register but was unable to log in and sent an email to the man in charge requesting assistance. I’ll let you know if he gets back with me.
Last 50 Pita’s - I don’t know why anyone would, but if you wanted to see a list of Pitas (50 of them), you can (I wouldn’t recommend it for health reasons).
Just to say I did, here is Jill Walker’s list of research blogs (I mentioned her earlier here).
If you want to see a large collection of weblogging software, here is Yahoo’s compendium. Check out Al Macintyre’s list too if you have a chance.
Blogathon - There really isn’t much information on this neat domain, other than a bunch of highschool-like kids staying up all night in a marathon of IMing (or some such Tomfoolery).
PHPWeblog - Yup, a PHP-based weblog. Stick with MT, Pivot, B2 or Nucleus. If you’re not using those then check it out.
Stay tuned for a quick-fun story (I can get away with using-hyphens-wherever I please-I’m an Aggie).
