The Life and Opinions of David Weichert

Incompetent executives, scheming secretaries, anal accountants and creative teams consisting entirely of people who never grew up — all part of one mad advertising agency trying to win Coca-Cola whilst blundering from one fiasco into the next. Spiced with sex and condensed into two weeks of company email. That is “e” by Matt Beaumont. And is it any good?

Well, it isn’t entirely bad. In much the same way that a boring car isn’t bad if you just want to get from A to B. The book is quick and entertaining to read, likely to apeal to a wide yet undemanding audience, and inoffensive even where its creator sauced things up. So the whole thing is an epistulary novel in email, but it wasn’t avantgarde — even when it was new.

Still like to grab the book? Do so by all means, I’m sure it’ll entertain, but I also think it’s likely to be forgotten in much the same way as a ride to the supermarket.

Matt Beaumont: e. Plume Books. October 2000. ISBN 0452281881.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Check out this article on the history of Pixar (the company that brought you ‘Toy Story’ and all those lovely names for your Debian releases). What struck me most was the following sentence: “… he was given a position at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he got a reputation for being peculiar.” What? Peculiar in Xerox PARC in the 1970s? I was instantaneously impressed.

The person called peculiar is Dick Shoup who grabed and manipulated video footage when the people around him were trying to invent an office suite. Xerox PARC must have been one of the most creative places in space and time ever. Every time I sit on a bean bag I try to imagine what it must have been like there back then.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

When “True Names” was first published in 1981 home computing was just in its infancy. Whilst the BBC tried to educate the public how to load BASIC programmes from cassettes Vernor Vinge presented us with a fully developed vision of cyberspace. Preceding Gibson‘s “Neuromancer” (1984) and Stephenson‘s “Snow Crash” (1991) it was one of the earliest cyberpunk novels.

The Other Plane — Vinge’s equivalent to The Matrix and the Metaverse — is a world-wide information network incorporating and grown on top of the older ARPANET — much like the internet actually did. All kinds of government services are accessible through this network, especially wellfare. Vandals / warlocks exploit these services by manipulating the software that has widely replaced written records, laws and conventional governmental administration. However, they must hide their true names — hence the title — and keep a low profile in real life or else the government (“feds”) will track them down. Remarkable is also the advanced interface used to access the net — EEG like equipment permitting a very direct form of input/output. Procedural programming is also replaced by much easier and interactive EEG programming.

“True Names” contains some of the most concise and spot on metaphores for experiences often hard to relay to those who have not felt them: the machine / network truely being an extension of ones body / person, the difference between processing time and real time, or the relative ease of using a language with a higher level of abstraction compared to low-level programming. Astonishing is also how well the effects of limited bandwidth, caching, interpolation, and the time needed for the signal to travel are woven into the story. The way data storage and processing facilities are available in the story reminds me of and goes beyond some of the most advanced concepts of grid computing or the Plan 9 operating system.

On top of that the story is good as well. An avatar in the form of a teletype (!) called the Mailman because of the long delays of his responses… But best read yourself. “True Names” is a pioneering work of the cyberpunk genre and still very clever and thought-provoking. In 1981 it must have looked more radical than the stealth bomber that incidentaly flew the first time that year.

Vernor Vinge: True Names. In: Marvin Minsky (Ed.): True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier. Tor Books. January 2002. ISBN 0312862075.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

“Mastery of UNIX, like mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear, but there’s no substitute.” – Thomas Scoville: The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature.

For over three decades Unix is known as a powerful and flexible operating system, technically superior to most of its more popular rivals. The larger the network, the more important the task, the more it shines. So why is Unix still not everybody’s favourite? OS X, KDE and Gnome have made Unix systems more accessible for the masses, but Unix is still quite remote, hidden under a layer of GUI. It’s like a novel competing with omnipresent glossy magazines, adverts and TV. It will always be apreciated by the savvy, but the majority will simply fail to even notice let alone understand. It is not only that Unix lacks marketing. It is that Unix is demanding. To use Unix you have to read and be capable of abstract thought. This will take some effort on behalf of the user. On the other hand people who lack numeracy and reading skills will always find plenty of opportunity to fail where others succeed.This may seem like the arrogant Unix geek drivel that puts people off, but at the core of the matter lies the fact, that being smart is quite a good thing — or why does everybody insist on telling children to go to school? If you made it this far, you might want to read some more.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Recently a friend recommended the documentary Commanding Heigths — The Battle for the World Economy to me. The good news is that it is available for viewing online. Based on a book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw it tells the story of two of the most influential economists and how thier ideas shaped the economic policies of the twentieth century: Friedrich August von Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. The former being an advocate of free market capitalism and the latter the founder of modern macroeconomics and a devout believer in anti-cyclical government intervention to counter the most devestating effects of unreined capitalist market forces.The tone of the series is mostly pro free markets and pro globalization and critiques have pointed out the political bias reflected by the corporate sponsorship of the programme. However, Yergin and Stanislaw do not fail to address the problems of the new global economy (Russia, Asian Crisis, Argentina,…). They remain cautiously optimistic about the link between free market capitalism and freedom. Certainly it is more a trip to the market than a work indicative of a third way. This is probably not so much a shortcoming of the authors, but founded in what seems to be the unanimous success of free markets at the beginning of the twenty-first century and the failiure of viable alternatives to emerge.The question remains, how the cause of liberty can be served best under the current economic conditions and with terrorism and counter-terrorism raising the stakes for those interested in defending the idea of a free society. Some of the answers given seem too simple. Is freedom in Chile really a result of the forces of free markets? How does China’s model of capitalism with free markets without freedom for its people hold up? Is it just a transitional phase of capitalism or indicative of a failure of free markets to fulfill Hayek’s promise? Have free markets failed to emerge in Russia — as Yergin and Stanislaw suggest — because a (post-)soviet culture of theft triumphed over entrepreneurial spirit?

(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

The working class of the industrial age had its heroes or at least we all know the iconic images of coal miners flexing their bulging muscles. Mr Phillips — the main character of the book — is an accountant or rather was an accountant, because he has been made redundant. The blue-collar vs. white-collar issue reflected in the fact that Mr Phillips’ father was an electrician and invites the reader to reflect on social progress in the context of the transformation of English society, of how what was once called “The workshop of the world” turned into a post-industrial society.

Having had the same job with the same company for years, Mr Phillips, now in his fifties, wanders through London on a monday — his first day out of work. He failed to break the news to his wife or family. Trying to grasp what happened to him, thoughts about his own situation, about things he sees in the streets, people he meets, memories and obsessions come to his mind and to the readers attention. It is a drama which happens every day to some extend in our own minds — even if we are not downsized.

Issues like social class, the labour market, consumer culture and the media are present on almost every page, but through the medium of the most inner and kept-to-himself thoughts of Mr Phillips rather then the usual pretentiously impersonal style of the news or text-book. Mr Phillips’ conscious theorising adds depth and complexity to the story including the peculiarity of using his accounting skills to make sense of his world. The annual number of naked women in newspapers and magazines, the demographics of people lying on the floor of a bank being robbed and the odds of winning the lottery are treated to number crunching. The effect is often comical and at the same time insightful.

In Mr Phillips’ own way I give the book a eight out of ten.

John Lanchester: Mr Phillips. Faber and Faber. 2000. ISBN 0571201717.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...