| Indistinguishable from Magic |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|12:13 am] |
 Arthur C. Clarke, scientist, futurist, author, has died at his home in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.
Writing about his influence on my life is difficult, as difficult, perhaps, as writing about the influence of the English language itself, so ingrained is his writing into my past reading. It is impossible to say where or when I first picked up a Clarke novel or story, or indeed what that work might have been. There is even a sense of doubt that the stories I recall are really his, that they are not some ancient tales remembered more in the blood than the mind, so essential they feel, almost archetypal. Sometimes one might even judge half of all modern science fiction works to be elaborations and deviations of ideas Clarke had penned decades earlier. But this is hardly a wonder considering the startling fact that this man had been writing for longer than most of us have been alive.
While his death was not unexpected, it still weighs heavy. There may come a time when he, his works, and their influence will be forgotten, but that is one future that is truly unimaginable.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke CBE (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) |
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| Delany Radio Play: The Start Pit |
[Apr. 13th, 2006|03:42 am] |
Samuel R. Delany's The Start Pit is one of my favourite short stories by my all-time favourite author. So it's a real treat to come across this recording of The Star Pit radio play aired in November 1967 over New York's WBAI-FM station. Much gratitude to pseudopodium.org for proving the MP3 conversions and to Boing Boing for providing this link.
The play itself is by turns endearing and excruciating, with 'bad' 60s music, transparent sound effects and adults playing kids in the fashion of the worst pan-lingual European commercials. I love every blurry, fizzy, dropped-out second of it!
Be sure to ready Delany's Notes on The Start Pit first. |
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| Just read "prevent" as "cause" |
[Sep. 27th, 2005|10:29 pm] |
Could DRM (trusted computing, et al), eventually prove a threat to a nation's security?
What if a country suffers a cataclysm leading to the destruction of a large part of it's infrastructure – no manufacturing at any scale, all major industry completely and irretrievably halted. In such a scenario the only option for those wishing to retain and communicate the culture's accumulated knowledge is to rely upon extant technology – what they have at the time of the event is all they will have for the foreseeable future.
Now imagine that a large portion of that technology is, in the infinite wisdom of the content providers, designed to malfunction. How much essential information will be trapped inside DRMed documents? How much valuable data will be lost because the components of the storage system refuse to connect to perfectly compatible I/O devices? How many decades of science and culture will be forever consigned to an early digital grave because the purchaser ID of the file can no longer be verified?
Certainly, somewhere, there are efforts to securely archive knowledge against just such an event, but can a handful of isolated locations really compare to the vast holographic capacity provided by tens of millions of interconnected storage devices?
Yes, it's a science fiction scenario, some sort of post-apocalyptic cyberpunk story. After all, what could possibly lead to such a cataclysm? What sort of weapon could really threaten a modern Western nation? |
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