I had a very encouraging dream about nanotechnology. It was basically
about being in a space colony which looked like Smith College on the outside
and like Trader Joe's on the inside. There were various buildings, each
run by a benevolent Emperor who had a certain color associated with him (like
ancient China?) --
the building I was in was the domain of the Purple Emperor, who gave people
all kinds of food and technology and explained various technical things to
me. Because nanotechnology had been so far developed, everyone's physical
needs were met, but there were still very interesting challenges remaining
(which I don't remember).
The people who lived in the building run by the Purple Emperor slept in the
aisles of what looked like a supermarket (Trader Joe's, as I said), and then
the Purple Emperor periodically used nanotechnology to provide them with
things they needed.
The Emperor told me that most people there didn't understand the technology
involved, which was a disappointment to me.
My high school teacher's son has died while a college freshman. A healthy
19-year-old, he suffered heart failure as he slept. He died
as I was leaving the Dawkins lecture on Monday. I can't
make it to the memorial service because it's Easter weekend and almost
all airline flights are already booked.
I wrote a Latin free verse poem called "In obitum filii magistri mei,
apice iuventutis". It is very depressing; maybe it's good that it's in
Latin so that few people will ever be depressed by it.
I tested the BBC extensively on my home machine and was pretty impressed,
although I found three serious bugs. I think we've made a lot of
progress. I'm still playing with it.
I think that free software in general is losing momentum and reaching a
momentary peak in market share or mind share. I associate this with the
lack of business success of most large and prominent Linux and free
software. It's upsetting to me; I remember that a few years ago, we may
have had a touch of the "historical inevitability" disease which is one of
my least favorite characteristics in an ideological movement. Like "Linux
will definitely take over the computing world because it's better in every
way, and people just have to see this...".
But a large portion of the people who are also a part of the computing world
don't share our values. I'm really torn between the point of view that says
"So let them suffer" (or perhaps "Shall I at least set my lands in order?"
or "As for me and my house, we will worship the Lord") and the point of view
that says "I will not enter nirvana before all sentient beings do so" (or
perhaps "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations"). Interestingly, the
more conventional views "Find out what those people want and figure out how to
give it to them" and "Different strokes for different folks" don't even seem
to enter the picture for me.
I'm reminded of the relativist view that different peoples (a euphemism for
"countries") should have different political systems. And that kind
of diversity, I always thought, we don't need.
It's interesting to talk with people who have a less moralistic outlook on
things.
Anyway, I noted about a year ago that finally lots of people are trying Linux
and not deciding to keep using it, whereas back when I got started
in the Linux world in 1995, almost everyone who tried Linux
immediately switched over or at least kept on using it regularly. So the
people who tried it back then, I've realized, were people who were really
disposed to like it, people who were on the lookout for something more or
less just like Linux, in search of a better way and a movement to which
they could hitch themselves. ("That far within our faith we were all
waiting"! Dar Williams.)
So when we saw Linux, it was "Yes I said Yes I will Yes".
And we thought that if other people would just try Linux, they
would also immediately recognize what they had been missing. (That was
actually what I personally thought about a lot of issues until I was in
college; I thought that truth and beauty were much more obvious and more
accessible than they are.) But the problem is that there's been so much
hype about Linux, for various reasons, that people got spurious
expectations that had no connection with the technical reality. So a lot
more people with different ideas and backgrounds were moved to try Linux,
and many of them actually said they didn't like it! Quite the shock for
Linux advocates, that someone might have tried Linux and disapproved.
But these people had (for the most part) different values and expectations
in the experience of computing. Many of them were content or at least
numb in the proprietary Windows world, and weren't hoping for any of the
particular technical virtues which pertain to the free software world.
But it's tragic, because there was a big miscommunication about Linux,
where Linux geeks said that Linux was the be-all and end-all of the
operating system world at the moment (I recognize that Linux can benefit
from new technology, but we could say, as they say in Hemingway, that it
was "less bad"; remember what Michael Elkins says about mutt). And we
said this because that was actually our experience.
But if people have totally different ideas about what they're up to or
about what's virtuous and vicious, it's not completely shocking that they
would not see why we said that Linux was so great; certainly Linux is
very different, which wasn't emphasized enough in its full generality.
Sometimes I've thought that I didn't want to convince people to like
Linux: I wanted to make them be people who would like Linux.
From that point of view, when Linux and the general public's values in
computing don't get along, then typically or more often the public's values
-- not Linux -- need to be amended. (And here I'm speaking only of things
that were deliberate decisions, not of things that happen not to have been
implemented...) I guess that qualifies as an elitist point of view, but
it's not so far from what people say on dvd-discuss: "We have to get
the public to see the importance of the public domain", "We have
to get the public to see the problems with copyright extensions
and anticircumvention legislation". Not "the public doesn't care"; not
"the public won't care"; not "the public will believe that the public
domain is not important". But "the public domain is important, and we
will explain that to the public, and they will see it". Or "Linux is
good, and the public will see that".
A rather wise comment in opposition to several of the ideas above:
I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science
keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun.
Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and
after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to
feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free
perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're
responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and
keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never
loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become
missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salemen. The world has
too many of those already. What you know about computing other people
will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only
in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence:
the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to
it, that you can make it more.
(Alan J. Perlis, quoted in Abelson and Sussman, Structure and
Interpretation of Computer Programs)
Someone I mentioned in my Advogato diary last year found my diary and
wrote me a paper letter to thank me for endorsing his product.
A very exciting thing happened which I can't discuss here. But I think I
got two more points on the Hacker Test.
I bought a copy of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", which I
mentioned here recently, on CD.
I wish I were a better poet. I'm a decent prose essayist and a decent
programmer, but it seems to me that poetry is what really changes people's
lives; I wish I could write a poem that had a real effect.
