Rants & Raves
Giganotes
When I read Steve Silberman's "The Hot New Medium: Paper" (Wired 9.04, page 184), I couldn't get three things out of my head. First, that routing all the scribbled thoughts of doctors, students, lovers, and employees through the ANS sounds like a privacy time bomb. Second, once a piece of the map is used, is it gone forever? And, if so, who decides when it can be reclaimed? Third - and most important of all - will it erase?
Stu Minnis
sminnis@cnr.edu
Remote Possibilities
With regard to "Personal Fabrication on Demand" (Wired 9.04, page 172), imagine you are a maintenance engineer at a satellite office and one of your machines has had a mechanical failure. In need of a replacement part, you call HQ and have its computer hooked up to yours, while someone there instructs your Rapid Prototype machine (now called a Repair Part machine) to produce the component. Of course, the piece of equipment was designed expressly for this contingency: Parts must be producible in the field. (I recently saw one made of sintered brass, so metals are a possibility.)
What have you accomplished? Well, you didn't have to store a bunch of spare parts you may never use, you didn't have to ship all those spare parts you may never use, and you didn't even have to make all those spare parts to begin with. This is especially meaningful if you are in a really remote area ... like Mars.
Robert Fabris
porthole@worldnet.att.net
Alarming News
Interesting and thoughtful Gigatrends, but I take major exception to the false alarm in "The Disposable Corporation" (Wired 9.04, page 183) that there already has been a return to value investing. My fear is that you are obliquely advocating the gold-rush/land-grab mentality from which we are finally emerging.
Company life cycles may indeed have gotten shorter, but a return to requiring earnings and profitable business plans is not a false alarm. For the past three years, companies have enjoyed unlimited capital backing, with little or no capital return, buying investor patience and enthusiasm with unrealistic share values. Larger firms used these inflated share values as currency to purchase smaller ones, regardless of their profitability. This system has collapsed under the weight of its own expectations, and these outfits have come to experience declining or negative capital returns as they digest acquisitions of dubious value.
Presently, impaired acquisitions and a slowing economy are driving down share prices. Binge acquiring is no longer feasible unless the target company directly and immediately enhances capital returns. This is simply what makes sense, as capital should flow only to profitable enterprises. Value investing has earned a reputation as stodgy and unimaginative, but in reality it stems from a desire to find a company with sound economic practices. In the end, the companies that survive will be the ones that continue to prove their economic worth.
Jason S. Morad
jason.morad@haldorinvest.com
Load-Bearing Stud
We don't often see stories about structural engineers ("The Informalist," Wired 9.04, page 104). For almost 15 years, I have served as public relations chair for the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois. In that capacity, I have had the difficult - if not impossible - task of bringing to public awareness the essential role that structural engineers played in erecting Chicago's skyline.
Thanks for letting your readers know about Cecil Balmond and his place in creating architecture.
Bob Johnson
rbengrguy@aol.com
Cold Comfort
I was very pleased with your article "Beyond Cool" (Wired 9.04, page 116). I have been interested in astronomy and science for most of my life, and I was looking forward to the Pluto-Kuiper Express mission that NASA announced last year. I had heard that there were some problems with the mission, but I didn't expect NASA to scrap it entirely. The space agency needs to get its priorities straight and decide whether to explore Pluto or Europa.
Pluto has affected our culture due to the mysteries that surround it. The tiny planet was the first to really capture my interest. I spent my free time reading and memorizing any fact I could find. Thanks to your article, I plan to do as much as I can to make sure that the Pluto-Kuiper Express launches.
Patrick Mulligan
San Francisco
Cracking the Proteome
As a medical researcher, I thought "The Protein Hunters" (Wired 9.04, page 164) was overtly focused on profit - "a successful drug can bring in billions" - without regard for the complex ethics and human experimentation central to this kind of work. It created a false sense of speed and ease: "Get ready for the robo-fast, custom-drug future."
Just one example from the real world would be enough to put the brakes on such positivism. Think of AIDS, and the millions of sufferers still without access to effective care.
Andrew Stone
astero@aol.com
"The Protein Hunters" seems to be implying that James Watson and Francis Crick should be credited with the development of the X-ray crystallography technique and its use in identifying the double-helix shape of DNA. Although these two scientists were indeed awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery, it was actually Rosalind Franklin who used this technique in the same quest - and she almost succeeded.
Franklin was the one who did most of the work, which Watson and Crick then borrowed, adapting it for their own purposes. The Nobel Prize isn't awarded posthumously, and because Franklin had died by the time this research was completed, it went to contributors Watson and Crick.
Tim Higgins
phat@u.washington.edu
Mojo Rising
April's "Passion Play" (Wired 9.04, page 71) was hilarious! But any Jesus who could move me to forsake all others and follow him would have to be deep enough to be photographed walking on water, not sitting in a tub full of suds.
Abramae Padmore
ap@knokko.com
Undo
Fine Print: Xerox's Phaser 2135 prints 21 color or 26 black-and-white pages per minute (Fetish, Wired 9.04, page 58). ... Finishing Touch: The TravelMate 739TLV's fingerprint-recognition system can be turned off (Street Cred, Wired 9.05, page 169).
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