Inventing the Future:
and speaking of being scared of the future

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Ever wish you could go back in time, your knowledge of the present intact, and show ’em how it’s done?

There’s a new biography of Alexander Hamilton. Author Ron Chernow describes Hamilton as being a ”messenger from a future we now inhabit.” Even as he laid out a visionary model for the American economic system that we easily recognize today, Hamilton also set the fledgling political infrastructure firmly on a path towards today’s DC-centered

two parties + professional bureaucracy. And this disadvantaged immigrant did so while embroiled in great scandals. No wonder the American system succeeds so well in our time — it was created by someone who would feel right at home.

But this time-travel simile has hardened a feeling that’s been chilling me. I think we’ve pretty much gotten things working the way they were set up to. There are serious problems to be sure, but they are not problems that the American system was meant to overcome. So now what? Who from the past has acted as a messenger from our near future? What

prophet had tuned in on the needs and circumstances of the twenty first century? With Hamilton recognizably put in his place, I feel somewhat visionaryless for the future.

Inventing the Future:
The start of Wetmachine?

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”Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even straightforward social problems. How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology? Technology presents clear-cut material advantages, whereas freedom is an abstraction that means different things to different people, and its loss is easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk.”

Ted Kaczynsky, aka The UnAbomber, who was arrested on this date in 1996.

Happy birthday, Nick.

As fate would have it, another inpsiration had a child exactly two years later: Paris Michael Katherine Jackson

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Tales of the Sausage Factory: Of Open Access, Kicking Butt, and Why Arbs Don't Know Jack

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The Ninth Circuit has given us another win in the fight to make cable plants open their facilities to independent ISPs (aka “open access” ). Winning feels good, especially when you predicted it over the odds given by the “experts”. The experts here are the industry analysts and arbitrageurs (or “arbs” ). What does it mean, and why are the experts so often wrong? See my opinions below.

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My Thoughts Exactly:
Wetmachine Wants Music

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Hi, it’s Gary, the guy who maintains the drunken machinery[1] here at Wetmachine.

John has asked me to install a Soundblox MP3 player on Wetmachine for your listening pleasure (don’t panic, it won’t start playing automatically, and it’s a lot better than those cheesy MIDI tunes of yesteryear).

But we need music to play!

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Neutrino:
ice-9, meet carbon-5

It isn’t as scary as Kurt Vonnegut’s imaginary ice-9, a form of solid water stable at ambient temperatures, but it’s just as wierd. According the the recent edition of Nature Science Updates, a fifth form of carbon has been created. Unlike the known forms – graphite, diamond, buckminsterfullerenes, and nanotubes – the new form is described as a nanofoam. The really interesting thing is that it’s magnetic.