November 2015 – Wetmachine

A Reflection on the First Thanksgiving.

Harold November 26, 2015 - 10:18 pm November 23, 2016How Democracy Works, Or Doesn't, Tales of the Sausage Factory

It is fashionable now to conflate the 250 year American experience between the European settlers and the Native Americans as simply one of oppression and displacement. Or, as one friend put it: “I’m Thankful that a bunch of European religious fanatics came over and displaced the native population.”

But it wasn’t like that at the First Thanksgiving, or for about 35 years thereafter. In failing to appreciate the efforts of English settlers and Wampanoag tribes in the region to live together in peace in the first three decades of English migration to Plymouth, we ignore both that a better world was possible — and that we have the capacity to build a better world today . . .

In Memoriam: Wally Bowen — Internet Pioneer, Community Activist, and A Hell of God Guy.

Harold November 25, 2015 - 6:06 am November 25, 2015"A Republic, if you can keep it", How Democracy Works, Or Doesn't, Life In The Sausage Factory, Tales of the Sausage Factory, Tales of the Sausage Factory

Last week, we lost a true leader for rural communities, a true champion of social justice in communications policy, and a personal friend and inspiration. Wally Bowen, founder of Mountain Area Information Network, died of ALS (aka “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”) on November 17 at the age of 63.

You can read his official obituary here. As always, such things give you the what and the where, but no real sense of what made Wally such an amazing person. I don’t have a lot of personal heroes, but Wally was one. Simply put, he gave the work I do meaning.

It’s almost Thanksgiving, and I am truly thankful for the time we had with Wally on Earth, even if I am sorry that it ended too soon. I elaborate below . . .

Big milestone in our VR today: bow and arrow are cool, and the reasons why are cooler

Stearns November 24, 2015 - 9:34 pm November 24, 2015history: external milestones and context, Inventing the Future

We had our weekly company meeting in HighFidelity today, just like we always do. For a while now, we’ve all been using Oculus VR headsets and trackers for our hands, and we now have avatars that look like like us. We have good multi-user physics and whole-body tracking-animation for our avatars.

Today one of the guys showed off his recurve bow. As long as you hold it, it re-arms with arrows. Pull the string back with your physical hands, aim and let go, and the arrow flies. It’s basic fun with weaponry. People took turns playing with it.

But quickly people started saying, “Oh, shoot me between the eyes!” (including our CEO). It’s pretty cool to see the arrow coming right for you. Can’t do that IRL! (In Real Life.)

But I never said this. Instead, I stood among the circle of avatars in front of the shooter, and kind of stared him down. Without thinking, I conveyed, “Come at me, bro”, but with nothing so obvious as arms wide or a Neo-like “come on” finger-wave. My avatar could do that with just a stretch of my physical arm or squeeze of my hand, but I didn’t gesture or say a word. Our team is pretty competitive, but we’re not the kind of folks who would shoot the person in front of us without being invited. We need to be invited. But multiple shooters did shoot me. Non-verbal communication works!

The End of Email Alerts

Gary November 5, 2015 - 6:59 pm November 7, 2015General Exception, Wetmachine site news

So, those of you who have signed up for email updates from the site may have seen a large vomit of spam from our site yesterday. Sorry about that. I loaded some posts in from a backup, and the WordPress plugin decided that meant it should send out alerts for those old posts again. Because, obviously.

In combating this latest accidental spam, I also noticed that the plugin in question has an unpatched security hole in it and has been withdrawn. So, I need to delete it ASAP. Instead of trying to find an alternative, I’m going to retire the email updates again, and this time permanently. When I mess up the site usually, the worst that happens is that it appears messed up in your browser. If I mess up something that involves email alerts, I can end up sending out thousands of junk emails. I’m tired of that.

Synthetic biology legend George Church & I talk about science and civilization

John November 3, 2015 - 4:54 pm November 3, 2015I Fear These Things, Memology, podcast-my-thoughts-exactly, Wetware

In March of 2015, George Church (whose accomplishments in biology (and visions of the future) are too numerous and significant to for me to recap here, so just go read about ’em here or here or here) & I sat down to talk for about an hour an a half on topics ranging from the Stuxnet cyberwarfare weapon to civilization (and its foes) to surgery on Mars. I edited the discussion into four segments of 17 or 18 minutes each, conveniently gathered here for your edification, amusement, and enlightenment. As a special bonus, at the end of this blog I’ve included the new Foreword to my novels that George was generous enough to write, just in time for the SynbioBeta Conference taking place in San Francisco this week, where I’l be hawking my wares, as is my wont.