__ Rants & Raves __
__ Like Clockwork __
At first I thought Danny Hillis's ego was out of control ("The Long Now," Wired 6.05, page 116). Then I began to empathize with him. The futurists be damned. They have no clue what technology will be like in 10,000 years, any more than those building the Univac I just 40 years ago could have envisioned me sending this over a phone line. The Bronze Age technologies used in the construction of the clock make it more contemporary and give it an organic feel. How do I sign up to crank it?
Chris Schott
__ Keeping It Simple __
Thanks for one of the few informative, nonhype pieces on the Net's role in our culture ("The Hot New Medium Is ... Email," Wired 6.04, page 104). The futuristic schlock written about the promise of all these bandwidth-hogging features tacked onto Web sites is both sickening and way off base. Efficient and simple solutions are the ones that thrive - email lists fit that bill.
Jake DeSantis
__ Building Better Lawyers __
"The Hot New Medium Is ... Email" was an excellent article! I try to get the approximately 1,500 divorce lawyers on my list to communicate with each other, but, unfortunately, most lawyers, besides being technophobic, are too busy or just not inclined to interact.
However, this article has given me some great ideas, so hope springs eternal. Imagine: a future with kinder and gentler divorce lawyers!
Steven L. Fuchs
__ Biological Tick __
Danny Hillis is not going far enough in his search for a clock design. My father is struggling with multi-infarct dementia. He can tell if it's day or night, but it's not so obvious whether it's a.m. or p.m. Why is numeric or mechanical time relevant? There are many biological cues people can learn to recognize and appreciate. Why not use these as our construct for time? Light-sensitive organisms could establish time of day. Consider plants that open and close daily. Or roosters. Meetings would be much more interesting if we set rendezvous times this way: "Let's meet when the first robin egg hatches."
Rich Newman
__ Open: GoodClosed: Bad? __
The juxtaposition of two starkly different approaches to software development in Wired 6.05 - the barbarian-hordes approach of Eric Raymond ("Hacker-Philosopher," page 45) and the chosen-élite model utilized by Opera Software ("Norse Coders," page 49) - is nicely done. Despite the fact that both are receiving their 15 minutes of fame, it's unclear which - or whether either - will survive. What is clear is they can't both be right, and that has profound implications for Netscape, Opera Software, and Microsoft.
The open source model rests its hopes on the collective skill of thousands of developers working toward a shared goal. Opera Software, instead, has arrayed a few select, bright developers with the specific aim of building a better browser.
Software, in essence, is the embodiment of coordinated intelligence, the linking of minds to solve large problems. The process has two parts: harvesting from intelligent minds and linking disparate thoughts into a coherent whole. Netscape's model is predicated upon the belief that intelligence is the scarce resource; Opera's approach suggests that coordination is the problem. The battle should be interesting.
Brendan Dixon
__ Big Time __
The 10,000-year clock is a compelling idea, but I would like to raise the ante and propose a 1,000,000-year clock! In accordance with Hillis's specifications, the concept is simple and visual - not only an 8-year-old, but also a PhD can understand it. Recipe: Take a big hammer and pound a stake into the ground. Draw hour lines where the shadow falls according to the position of the sun. Maintenance: Dust it every 1,000 years. Et voilà!
George Kopeczky
__ CE: Curious Enigma __
In "The Televisionspace Race" (Wired 6.04, page 148), Frank Rose comments on the ambiguous name Windows CE. He refers to it as "consumer electronics," and Craig Mundie denies any meaning whatsoever. I'm sure that when the product was first announced, it was dubbed Windows Compact Edition. Why this hasn't stuck is a mystery; maybe Windows CE didn't want to offend its big brother.
Jonathan Thaw
__ Re-Engineering Oldies __
Forty years of wordmongering - I'm squeezing the last essence from my aging gray matter to comprehend the digital age - and I discover Wired. Bury my body but clone my brain - I want to catch up. It's too soon for me to praise the rantings and ravings of the brainiacs within your pages; their jargon is too often beyond my reach. But I'll salute what I instinctively recognize as meaningful communication. Given time in cyberspace and Wired's archives, I may yet join the debate. Watch out for "re-engineering oldies"!
Rod Pounsett
__ Business as Usual __
In "The Promise of One to One" (Wired 6.05, page 130), Donna Hoffman claims that consumers want a relationship with businesses over the Web. But I've never heard a consumer say, "I wish I had a relationship with my insurance company." Or supermarket, or bank, or whatever. It's businesses that want the relationship with consumers. Business is killing itself to build these "relationships," regardless of cost. It's invasive. It's pushy. And only in rare instances does it reveal lasting substance for the consumer.
Jack Dickerson
__ All Things Being Unequal __
In "New Economy? What New Economy?" (Wired 6.05, page 146), Paul Krugman predicts greater income equality, with "abstract symbolic work" becoming devalued and work that can't be automated - such as plumbing and gardening - increasing in value.
He is wrong on two counts. First, inequality of income within abstract symbolic work will increase. Even at the higher levels of knowledge work, little of what we do has not been done before by someone else. But creating original material is still easier than looking for that perfect contract clause, ad copy, et cetera made by someone else. The Web will change this. As pattern-recognition software improves, it will become cheaper to find and appropriate what we need. So a few people will be superstars who earn a bundle, but they will leave little available work for others.
Second, jobs that involve "contact with the physical world" are not likely to increase in numbers or pay. Even with a generous estimation of the number of semiskilled jobs not subject to automation yet still requiring some skills, he is talking about less than 20 percent of the labor force. Furthermore, there are unexpected ways of increasing productivity in such endeavors. Automating the ironing of clothes may well be difficult, yet wrinkle-resistant fabrics have reduced employment in this area; plastic pipe has reduced the skill level necessary for plumbing repairs.
Krugman's attempts to deflate the new economy should be put into context. As the mainstream economists add more epicycles to a dying paradigm, the fruitful thinking on major structural changes is coming from outsiders like yourselves.
Kit Sims Taylor
__ Undo __
Name-Calling: The name of the company acquired by WorldCom in 1996 ("Building the Future-Proof Telco," Wired 6.05, page 124) is MFS Communications. ... Crossed Lines: Argentina's national telco was privatized in November 1990 ("The Deregulation Paradox," Wired 6.05, page 79); its two private monopolies now face deregulation. ... One for the Book: Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames ("Videogame History 101," Wired 6.05, page 151) is published by Rolenta Press; more info can be found at www.atarihq.com/features/phoenix.html. ... What He Said: Paul Saffo's comment on the Millennium Clock was erroneously attributed to Anonymous, and vice versa ("The Long Now," Wired 6.05, page 116).
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