Perelandran commentary on a Thulcandran existence
I know this has already existed on Skype, Macbooks, etc etc. But somehow when Google incorporates video chat inside their general email interface- I dunno. It just seems like a perfect storm of technology has arrived.
It feels almost like this– almost.
It also probably helps that my laptop has a webcam and microphone incorporated into it already. Zero effort to get things working is always very nice.
Speaking as an aspiring engineer, this is a really lame list. I mean, some of these areas are admirable goals, but after reading the title of the Wired article, And the 14 Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century Are…, I was disappointed. It seems like nothing more than an exercise in a bunch of guys trying to sound smart and not much else.
Would a 20th century list made circa 1900 have even been worth making? Would it have included the computer? internet? television? radio? interstate highway system? antibiotics? space shuttle? radar? A36 steel? plastic? polymers? artificial textiles? secondary water treatment? quantum mechanics? A foresighted one might have included the airplane.
I realize the intent isn’t to try to predict and instead to try to focus efforts, but that’s just my point. From a technological and engineering perspective, we are so clueless about what the coming decades hold that a bunch of ‘the smartest guys in the room’ trying to draw up an admittedly informal but still quasi-centralized focus on research efforts is silly at best, perhaps even arrogant, and at worst misguided.
Look, I’m not against planning, but we rarely are able to plan the future or even for future problems anyway; the only things we can plan are solutions for current problems. And that’s all this list is trying to do. If I was a gambling man, I’d say that at most 4 of these 14 things will be at all close to the top of the most important feats of the century we so recently embarked on.
Anyway, here’s the (lame) list:
Not that this is such a big deal, but it’s been a sore point for me for a long while now that I can’t visit the hundreds of Starbucks locations around the country and use the wireless internet connection (which up until now has only been available to those who pay T Mobile for the privilege). I mean, hasn’t ‘free internet’ been the universally accepted definition of the word ‘coffeeshop’ for, what, at least 100 years now?
According to Wired.com, Starbucks is switching to MY cell service provider, AT&T- who I dutifully send $15 extra a month for internet service as it is. Yay. Now in a perfect world, Starbucks would do what every other coffeeshop on the planet does, and just let anyone use their connection. However, if they are going to limit the use to only one group of people, I’m glad that I happen to be one of those people.
I’ll be spending quite a bit more time at Starbucks now.
Ply the Silent Planet 