There’s a great scene in Grosse Pointe Blank involving a confrontation between ex-lovers who have recently been reacquainted. The scene takes the form of a radio phone-in show, where members of the public have their say on what they perceive to be going on. What would you have said?
Text Message Theatre (Inbox):
Text Message Theatre (Outbox):
[All messages copied verbatim from Nokia mobile phone]
Teen Angst Moment: I think the hot bloke in advertising thinks I’m stalking him.
Whatever will Tom say next?
53 ) “A gottle of geer ” said Tom badly
32 ) “My hair’s all gone ” said Tom baldly
196 ) “I’ve chucked most of the water overboard ” said Tom balefully
236 ) “You need to hammer it completely flat, like this ” said Tom bashfully
231 ) “10 PRINT ‘HELLO WORLD’ : GOTO 10 ” said Tom basically
Seti@Home was a wonderful idea – a chance for thousands – maybe millions – of people to participate in the search for alien intelligence. What a cause to fire the imagination! THe principle was simple too. Thousands of thousands of computers can work their way through computer files much much faster than one really large one – hence members of the public take on the job of processing odds and ends of data in their computer down-times.
Fight AIDS @ Home would initially look like a similarly wonderful idea. Using the same basic concept as Seti@Home, almost infinite amounts of different drug designs can be tested over hundreds or thousands of computers. Except there is one crucial difference. This one isn’t done for the good of humanity – it’s done for the good of Entropia. They even go so far as to state:
Entropia is a for-profit corporation. In our view, profit is as necessary as oxygen for longevity; while oxygen is essential for life, it is not the purpose of living. Likewise, Entropia’s Internet computing service represents “profit with a purpose.” Some of the time, Entropia’s software will be running commercial tasks on your computer.
A few comments:
This is a tremendously powerful model for enhancing research, and I suspect one we will see a great deal more of over the next few years. You could contribute to the curing of huge social ills simply by allowing people to invisibly use your computer when you are not. But let us wait until the model is taken up by the not-for-profit institutions – because we should all contribute to a better world, but there’s no reason to make some multi-national even more absurdly rich in the process.
Text message sent:
“If you don’t reply to my e-mail I will mulch your pets.”
Text message received:
“Oi — keep your hands off my doggie!”
However, no e-mail as yet received. Perhaps he didn’t think I was serious. (eyebrow slowly arches)
Person I should talk about more often: Katy Darby.
Person that I wasn’t expecting to think is attractive: Breckin Meyer. Films that Breckin Meyer has been in include: Roadtrip, Clueless and Go.
I was in a bar called Escape last night (after Mel’s birthday party) and a video for some wonderful old disco classic came up. The video was made up of excerpts from 54, which of course stars the inimitable Ryan Philippe of “I wish I looked like Ryan Phillippe” infamy. The film’s full of half-naked men, and one of them was Breckin Meyer. Eyebrows over forehead in surprise. Time to go rent it, I think.
I picked up my tickets for New York this morning. Everyone from Time Out who started at the company before January has been invited to the fifth birthday party of Time Out New York, to be held next Friday.
We come in as normal on Thursday morning, do a bit of work, have a bit of lunch, go to the airport, hop on a plane, and then mooch around drinking, buying and sleeping with stuff until first thing on Sunday morning, when we grudgingly reboard our huge plane and fly homewards – to return to work on Monday morning “fresh”, “invigorated” and not at all exhausted and hungover. I’m trying to work out how many movies I can fit in if I don’t sleep at all.
