homePredicting The Future
Posted on 09.02.07
In the Futility Closet archives I came across Auguries:
In 1900 the Ladies Home Journal made 29 predictions about the year 2000. Sample:
There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.
These prophecies reveal as much about the nature of science fiction as about the nature of science. They’re often utopian, or naive extrapolations of existing knowledge. And change is accelerating. I’m sure the world of 2100 is literally unimaginable to us today. It’s not even worth trying.
I clicked the link and had a look at the predictions. I found them surprisingly prescient, certainly considering that the year in which they were made (1900), preceded the airplane, motorized vehicles, widespread use of electricity and telecommunications.
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From the kick-in-the-balls department ….
Posted on 16.01.07
I just read that last Sunday was Jordy’s birthday (of Dur dur d’être bébé fame). This song featured a toddler burbling “Dur dur d’être bébé” to the accompaniment of upbeat house music. It was an enormous hit in the summer of ‘92.
Jordy’s now 19 years old. 19! Daaaaamn!!!! Where’d the time go?
Couple of months back, I saw one of the Kriss Kross kids on MTV. Dude is almost 30!!! Last time I saw him he was a pre-teen hopping around energetically with his clothes on bass-ackwards, shouting “Jump! Jump!".
When the f*ck did I get this old and how the f*ck did that happen?
No commentsWhy Johnny can’t code
Posted on 08.11.06
There’s a post up at lambda the ultimate, one of my favourite sites, called Why Johnny can’t code. Cites like:
‘BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched – but today there’s no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming.’
and
“What’s important is having an easy to use graphics API. I don’t mean easy like GLUT or SDL, say. I mean easy. On my BBC Micro years ago I could type a command to go into a ‘high-res’ graphics mode and then start interactively typing in graphics commands. Within 5 seconds of switching it on I could have graphics of my own creation on the screen. In a modern OS I have to write a few hundred lines of code just to grab a window reliably, and when I’ve done that, I can’t experiment interactively. Kids need instant feedback. Even the kids of my generation, before ADD had been invented, needed instant feedback.”
and
Graphics on the BBC were very easy. Here is one of my first programs. Note that the exclamation marks are not optional:
“PRINT “[shift+f1][shift+f8]EDWARD RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!![shift+f0]”
This printed a message about me in flashing red text. An addition of another [ctrl+f?] allows the text to be mixed with coarse graphics. This is particularly appealing, since it requires next to no knowledge, which is why it was one of my first programs. The next program propably proceeded that line with the SOUND command.
My point is that the barrier to entry was so low that it was hard to get discouraged and give up.”
make me scratch my head in puzzlement, because I would say the exact opposite is the case.
Comments OffThe Chronicles of Riddick
Posted on 12.02.05
Rented and watched the DVD today.
The eye-candy is nice, but it’s been a long time since I sat through a film with so little plot. And I thought I, Robot was full of holes. Vin Diesel sure does grunt sexy, though.
Watched Garfield too. It … sucked big time. I cannot find the appropriate words to describe Garfield’s suckiness. Garfield sucks eggs. Garfield was a complete waste of two hours of my life. (Considering my life doesn’t have such a high premium, that’s really saying something). Garfield sucked so hard it blew. It was as funny as a flat tire at 5 in the morning on the A28 somewhere past Meppel.
Made me glad I’m a dog man.
Comments OffCashew nuts
Posted on 07.06.04
It was a cloudy gray evening in springtime, but the trees were stripped bare of foliage, and the fields churned into mud by the treads of armoured vehicles. It looked and felt like winter.
Over the muddy asphalt rolled a steady procession of heavy vehicles. Their contours suggested a military nature, but they were painted a bright, if soiled, yellow, as if they had been previously used in the construction industry. They were carrying refugees.
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