I ‘wake’ every morning to BBC Radio 4. Mrs. Woo leaps from bed, showers, breakfasts, brings me coffee then leaves. I lie to myself that I’m about to get up, until 9:00. This morning as the caffeine starts to seep into my brain cells, I realise that two ladies are talking about the Interwebs, good cop, bad cop style. One is a digital native, the other seems scared. The presenter asks if anyone can have 200 real friends. I would ask how she knows anything is ‘real’ but that’s why I’m not allowed on the wireless.
[ Actually, Craig recently asked me if I wanted to be on a radio show but i didn’t think he was serious or find out why. Then there he was on the Interweb radio with my friend Maz. Maybe now he’ll see what a lucky escape he had.]
Was I wrong to exclude backward links from the Collider WIndow? <Beats away thoughts of what a relatavistic time-line looks like with a mental stick.> There’s no time for that now. Or was there? SHUT UP! I’m definitely going to get a mental-stick, once I have enough coupons. (*)
Melvyn Bragg had already been on to advertise his show about ‘States of Matter’. I’d decided to listen mash Melv into my mass-energy-information equivalence theory but as the show starts, the late start and the caffeine hit hard and I ‘need to go pee’. Last night I installed the new BBC iPlayer Radio so I grab my robotic fondle-slab, now playing life 7 seconds ago and put it on the bath. Radio on wire-less. What will they think of next? I amuse myself with thoughts of Archimedes and ‘good ideas in the bath’ then remember last night’s ‘Pointless’; the question about mathematician’s screws and my disgust when they answered “Pythagorus”. Don’t they know what a square he was? (Sorry.) I see that The Sub-atomic Idea Collider is going to need to understand international time differences. I can barely claim that about myself, particularly if it’s a Facebook event.
The broadcast stops. I can just hear the muffled sound of FM from the bedroom, playing the soundtrack of what seconds ago was my potential future, in relativistic terms. I panic then relax. It’s not a problem. I can time-shift the BBC again, ‘later’.
I check. I haven’t lost WiFi, it’s the bloody Internet! This IS serious. I do what any 21st century human would do under stress, I tweet sarcastically over virtual wet string – something about data packets and sending cache as an alternative. Oh well, maybe I’ll do something useful instead today. I hope last night’s move of my ‘book’ sources to Dropbox won’t ‘bite my bottom’, as the Americans say. It’s taken longer to write this than it took to happen. Might this be an issue for the SIC idea?
Maybe the SIC is just a shaggy doge story?
- So channels
- Really, all those best friends?
- Very ‘me’s and ‘you’s
- Twisty paths of same but different
- Deep yet meme-ingful
- Such offline sharings
* = I suggested mental vouchers as what I (laughingly!) call a ‘joke’ but I think it’s a viable idea. Who wouldn’t pay for a sturdy mental concept to be erected in their own mind for the benefit of society? No? Then explain tuition fees to me again… sufficient vouchers allocated at birth, to everyone, to fund free education up to degree level. Post-graduates purchase vouchers from people too stupid to benefit from knowledge, thus buying their electoral support for the idea, in the conventional manner.
** = You’re right, there was no “**” but I thought you might like to know that I HAD lost The Internet. I don’t really think a week is enough notice that my static IP address is going to be changed, do you? Particularly if I haven’t opened the letter yet. Luckily all I needed to do was go on-line and register. On-line?…
On The Outside 