Packers vs. Giants on The Frozen Tundra tomorrow. Look for D and me in the stands!
The Man-Machine Interface. That is what Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg called the course of college study he fashioned for himself in the early 1970s. I came along in 1975 and grew up to muck around with Professor DOS, a Mac IIe and dreams of devices embedded into skull and relatively flat body surfaces like palm, stomach, thigh. Who needs an input device when you have yourself? What then is the meaning of interaction?
Along with my Hindu mother’s teachings on pantheism, these questions followed me into the cyberpunk-heavy 1990s when I read and re-read Neal Stephenson and William Gibson with reruns of Babylon 5 playing in the background, designed jewelry from computer components (and pretended that said creations interfaced with my brain activity and muscle motions) and danced to way too much techno at Chester Street and The Cardinal. Oh yeah, Hart and I had a term of endearment for my costume which I will not mention here other than to say it rhymes with the words “piper” and “rut.”
The earth and its outcrops offered similar seductive problems: Where do we end to let the earth begin? To answer this, I eventually went back to the interface and sat inside the data in cool, dark visualization rooms. Earth, meet computer, meet human. Virtual machine. Real machine. Sometimes I don’t see the difference.
Now, I am practically one with a desktop, laptop or smartphone and cannot imagine working without these tools to the extent that my shoulders and hands have morphed to accept them. Not good in the long run, I hear, but such is the payment for becoming what you pretend to be. Truly interactive.
We are The Borg.
Where does data end and meat begin? How much of the virtual is becoming real as we grow up with it and it becomes part of our everyday? What are we defining as interface and interaction these days? What happens to us when we eventually become non-corporeal (hey, if we’re not headed in that direction as a species, I want my money back)?
It appears we’re all thinking this at the same time. No. We have been thinking this all along. Same chewtoy, different day.
Charlie Stross: The Internet Is Made Out Of Meat (and here I thought the internet was invented so we could “fax” pizzas to one another – extra pepperoni on mine, please)
Boing Boing: They’re Made Out Of Data (warning: Tron 2 references and possible spoilers; also, use of the word “cloud”)
And the grand poobah of meat Terry Bisson: They’re Made Out Of Meat
* meatdata. Get it, get it? Never mind.
JANUARY - Krewe du Vieux was All Fired Up!
FEBRUARY - The New Orleans Saints won SuperBowl XLIV which made QB Drew Brees our Bacchus XLII. All hail!
MARCH - Attended my second Where2.0 conference in San Jose, CA, where I did not play pool with OpenStreetMap founder, Steve Coast.
APRIL - In Madison, WI for the Department of Geoscience Alumni Board meeting. Of great interest then was the meteorite that had just landed in southwest Wisconsin and a sample that the UW Geology Museum obtained. The BP oil spill had also just begun.
MAY - Memorial Day weekend brings the Class A Arabian Horse Show to the Ohio Expo Center. These beauties were our neighbors' contestants this year.
JUNE - Hay baling in Northeast Ohio
JULY - Downtown Columbus, OH
AUGUST - Back in New Orleans for the launch of A Howling In The Wires and the fifth annual Rising Tide blogger conference. I moderated the Treme panel of Eric Overmyer, Becky Northcut, Dave Walker, Lolis Elie and Davis Rogan. The smell of Sardines In Louisiana Hot Sauce that Davis placed in my hand has still not washed off.
SEPTEMBER - Fort Collins, Colorado
SEPTEMBER - Chicago for a weekend with Athenae (and her adorable ferret trifecta), Anne and Lisa. And a record number of photographs from the Art Institute.
OCTOBER - The Dude at the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear in Washington, D.C. What point the rally made I do not know, but we had a blast wandering amongst our own on a beautiful day in the nation's capital.
NOVEMBER - A wonderful week in and around Dublin, Ireland (as opposed to Dublin, Ohio) with Domingo and Mark. The 20+ pubs we hit were great, but what call me back are the hills and hiking trails of the beautiful glacier-carved Glendalough and its monastery. I have to return soon. Like tonight.
DECEMBER - Orlando, FL for the annual I/ITSEC conference. It was very nice to catch up with old friends and take pictures of domesticated hotel ducks without a) scaring them or b) falling in their pool.
Note: Thanks to geobloggers Silver Fox and GeoTripper for inspiring me to do this post. Check out their beautiful travel photographs, too.
People die of illness and accident all the time. But to have five people you know pass away in the span of a month.
This is all too much.
Betty Ann Davis, friend and partner of Morwen Madrigal, passed away last night after a long illness. Sweet, quiet Betts, until she got behind a pool cue or shot glass, and then you’d best watch out. Morwen herself has been very ill lately and I worry about the effects Betts’s passing will have on her.
This right after putting last night to rest. Last night, when D and Mark returned from burying our friend Pete, who died very unexpectedly last week after foot surgery. I hear the waiting line at his wake stretched around a freezing Door County, Wisconsin block and that his church service was standing room only. Pete, you popular, fun-loving goofball, we were counting on you to be our fourth at Lambeau on the 26th.
Before that, we lost our dear friend Leo on Thanksgiving evening, family friend Mrs. Patel on November 30th and great old next-door neighbor on December 6th.
It’s not fair.
How much more can we bear?
Why does this all surround us at the end of an already-sketchy 2010?
It is very easy at this point to step onto those treacherous roads of thought. So I stop there.
You. Just take care of yourselves and come back to me.
