Microstory 991: Wikipedia

< > Table of Contents

In 2005, shortly after reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I decided to go online and find out whether someone had tried to make an actual version of the all-encompassing tome. I discovered that a website inspired by it did indeed exist, and I even read a few articles on it, but it has ultimately failed to gain traction. By then, Wikipedia had already been created, and I had heard of it, but it wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as it is today. One thing that seems universally true in all of science fiction is that we’re the only ones who invented an internet. Sure, aliens communicate with each other long-distance all the time, but the breadth of the web has apparently never been replicated. Our internet is potentially accessible to all. Anyone can use it for practically anything they want, as long as it doesn’t break any regional laws, and sometimes even then. It’s full of lies, jokes, and totally conflicting information. It’s been used to bring people together, and tear them apart. For the aliens, they only need a network to share relevant information, and there’s no need to have any fun with it. There are very few things that the internet truly needs to remain sustainable, and good or not, a network like this is probably in our distant future. I wrote about this once as a joke in a tweet, but I’m about fifty percent certain that almost every webpage in the future will be completely wiped out within the next thousand years.

Wikipedia, or some similar service, will serve as the keystone for this new internet. It will be a repository of all human knowledge; our history, our identities, our discoveries, and our mistakes. And there will only be one of these, because in a post-capitalism society, there will be no need for competition. There will also be only one YouTube-like site, and one news source. The latter will be composed by artificial intelligence, and contain exclusively factual content. You may be asking, who would want to live in a world without The Onion, or Twitter, or blogs like this one? We won’t even need Google, because Google operates, not as a search engine—though that is its surface function—but as a web page indexer. The purpose of Google is to find you the best results, but in the future, we’ll only need one result: the answer. This future may sound depressing and unfulfilling, but it will not be without its joy and entertainment. There’s a lot of garbage on the internet, and in fact, I would go so far as to say it’s predominantly garbage. Currently, we live in a three-dimensional world, but unless we interact with each other in real life, we spend most of our time in a two-dimensional setting. The best parts of today’s internet will take one or both of two forms. It will either remain two-dimensional, or become three-dimensional, as virtual reality that’s indistinguishable for base reality is made possible. All the fun things you do on the internet right now; the broadcasting, and chatting, and image sharing, will all be pushed to these virtual realities. You’ll talk with another individual in person, just like you would in the real world. The difference is you’ll be able to teleport to them, and it won’t matter where they are physically. Again, I’m not sure that this is something we should do, but the deeper I go down the rabbit hole of future studies, often while researching on Wikipedia, the more obvious it seems that this is all inevitable. I just hope humanity lasts long enough to see what I am tentatively calling Web 5.0.

Microstory 971: Robotics/Artificial Intelligence

< > Table of Contents

There’s something very odd and inconsistent in futuristic fiction. No matter what humanity does; how advanced we become, we always have jobs. Even Star Trek, which is based on a completely moneyless economy is about a group of people working on a ship. One thing I have to do when I’m writing my stories is figure out what the world around my characters looks like. If they’re traveling on a ship, like in Star Trek, I need to know the different jobs the crew would have. That makes sense, right? Except it doesn’t really. As I was trying to come up with the minimum number of crew members, I discovered that that number did not need to be any higher than zero. There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where everyone on the ship starts disappearing, until only two are left. The central character in that episode poses to the other one that it’s weird that in a giant ship like that, there would be only two crewmen. He doesn’t seem to think it is, which does make sense, because a real Enterprise would have been designed to operate in full with no human or alien intervention. It can power up its own warp core, and it can shoot it’s lasers on its own. The possibility that it would require any living organism to control these systems is absurd. In a few years, I’m going to have a phone that answers itself for me. An artificial intelligence is going to pick up the call, disclose to the speaker what she is, and ask me whether I want to speak with them myself. A few years from then, she’ll be virtually indistinguishable from a human receptionist, and will be able to hang up on people on my behalf. I’ll have taught her that I don’t ever want to talk to anyone about sports, but I always want to answer my mother, so when she calls, I can just answer it myself.

The evening before this story posts, I was eating a dish made by said mother. She told me there was polenta in it, but I didn’t know what that was, so I asked my Google Home speaker. She gave me the definition, which involved grains. I jokingly said, “brains!?” She didn’t understand the question, and had no way of connecting it to what she had already said, but it won’t be long before that’s not true. What she should have said was, “no, grains, as in g-r-”. Robots and artificial intelligence are going to collectively take over the world, and that’s a good thing. I don’t want to work anymore. I read a study on automated labor. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but a great deal of people believed robots would be capable of doing most jobs sometime in the future, but even more people believed their jobs to be safe. It’s hard for neurotypicals to admit how utterly replaceable they are, but you will one day be faced with that. Robots are delivering pizzas, and building cars. They’re driving cargo, and shooting terrorists. But they’re also doing more complex things, like playing tabletop games, and delivering news broadcasts. The future will be a difficult pill to swallow. It’ll come with side effects, like massive unemployment, crashed economies, and civil unrest. But we’ll eat some soup, take a bath, and go to bed early. When we wake up in the morning, it’ll all be over. We won’t need the jobs we were fighting over, climate change solutions will be underway, interstellar ships will be built, and we’ll all be immortal. So do not fear the AI uprising. We’ve been working for a long time. Let’s take a break, and let the robots do the rest for us. The stage that comes after the singularity phase is even better.

Microstory 959: Smartphones

< > Table of Contents

As a writer, I need to be able to research anything and everything at a moment’s notice. The other day, I needed to better understand how it is that atoms hold together. This morning, a coworker described random bits of a film she saw part of, and I was able to find its name. Tomorrow, I might need to know how much a machinist gets paid, and if that’s an impossible question to answer, I need to know that instead. Several years ago, this kind of thing wasn’t possible unless I was near a computer. There was a brief time when you could Google things by sending them text messages, but that was pretty clunky. I was born too late to have spent a significant amount of time before internet research, but I did learn the concept in school, because that was all the teachers at the time understood. Most people—and I can’t imagine this to not be true—use their phones for social media and games, and maybe email. The younger generation uses it for the former two, and the older for the latter. The older still generally only use theirs for making calls. But smartphones do so much more. I recently downloaded an app that will keep and organize all my receipts, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but never wanted to start at some random time of the year. I promise to actually start one day, unless I find something better. I’ll also remember to input all the necessary information for this app that tracks my car’s maintenance, and maybe try recording my heart rate. I have a bunch of casting apps, like Netflix, YouTube, YouTube TV, and Comedy Central (because YouTube TV can’t cut a deal with Viacom). I have Google Fit, Google Play, Google Translate, and all the other Googles. I have a few restaurant apps, a pool game, a couple news sources, my insurance, and my bank. About a quarter of my icons are just shortcuts to my writing resources; specialty dictionaries, FutureTimeline.net, and calculations and conversions. I use Google Drive extensively for my work, and probably should have written this entry on it, just because it would be apropos. I never go anywhere without my phone. I keep it docked in my car, not so I can text and drive, but so I can get right back to work as soon as I pull into my garage. I take it with me to the bathroom, and I keep it under my pillow at night so it can track my sleep cycles, and wake me up at the healthiest moment. I’ve always considered my phone to be a portal to the world, which is why I’ve only ever concerned myself with speed and performance. I don’t need it to come with a pretty stylus, or be made of gold, or release a sweet-smelling pheromone to cover up my farts (they invent this in seven years). It’s not a status symbol, and I don’t want to risk literally dropping a thousand dollars into the toilet. Wearables are the future, leaving the smartphone form factor in the dust, but until then, it’s one of the few material possessions I have that I actually care about.

Microstory 940: Virtual/Augmented Reality

< > Table of Contents

At the moment, my job entails traveling to different sites around the city, and sometimes farther. I perform a multitude of tasks, but all of them are what I call auxiliary. Mail, shipping, and printing services are all important components of a company, but they’re not directly part of the company’s primary business needs. The company I work for provides these other companies with these other services, so they don’t have to do it themselves. This has exposed me to a lot of different corporate environments, and has taught me a lot about how people interact with each other. I was recently working at a site that was in the early stages of forming a relationship with a virtual reality company to enrich their employee education program. Because my job at this particular site involved troubleshooting audio/visual equipment, my supervisor there was invited to a hands-on meeting to try out this technology. Which meant I got to attend as well. After the meeting, he and I started discussing how our company could use similar technology to improve our business, and it ultimately got me thinking about how the tools can be good for practically any business. Training at the virtual reality level can be immensely beneficial. If you’ve never tried VR, it really does make you feel like you’re there, because when you turn around, you see the whole room. This gets the brain used to seeing practices and procedures as they would be seen in the real world. When a technician, for instance, looks at a machine, and a part is out of place, graphics can be superimposed in their field of view, which shows them exactly how to repair it, or perform maintenance. This can be used to train new employees, or heck, even be used in the field during real service calls. Theoretically, any layperson could make the repair, because everything they needed to do would be shown right there. Take it a step further and you could program specific daily procedures into a department’s system. An associate could simply look at a piece of mail, and an arrow will tell tell which mail slot it goes in. When they go out to deliver, more arrows will point them down the hallway, and to the right mail stop. This might sound like science fiction, but this level of technology actually does exist. Along with refinement, most of what we need now is data, which I understand is no small feat. Google Glass first came out as a niche technology for nerds who just wanted to try out a new form factor. What they should have done—and are apparently starting to do now—is market the device to various industries. Medical professionals can use artificial intelligence to diagnose a patient, or simply keep data available without physically picking up their chart. A security team can have a list of banned visitors, and spot offenders before they get anywhere near the door. We’re doing a lot of experiments in these earlier days, and focusing on the gaming possibilities, but there are so many other things virtual and mixed reality can do for us. It can make our lives so much easier, and even safer. I’m so excited for the future.

Microstory 928: The Materianet

< > Table of Contents

I have to start this off by explaining what the word “materianet” means. It’s just the internet of things, but with a more succinct name. I’ve always hated the conventional term for the concept, because it sounds so childish, and on the nose. I don’t need it to be sexy, or trademarked, but come on...“internet of things”? Why did we all just allow that to happen? I propose this new term. It still describes what it is, and differentiates it from the more traditional form of internet, which is presently in its Web 2.0 state. The original world wide web was designed for basic communication only. Someone put information on a website, and people could go look at that information. There was some room for response, or collaboration, but for the most part, it was static. Now collaboration is the whole purpose. Even more static websites, like Wikipedia, require the input of millions of people. You’re always logged in, connecting accounts to other accounts, and leverage your social circles to crowdsource data. That is/was Web 2.0, but now it’s time for the next step. The materianet marks the beginning of Web 3.0. Those early elements are still there, but we’re starting to access them in new ways. It used to be a family had a single computer that everyone had to share. Then, individuals began owning their own machines independently. But now we each have multiple devices. A single person in the developed world will sometimes use several ways of connecting. They’ll have a desktop for long-term tasks at home, or at work, a laptop for portable long-term tasks, a phone for spontaneous needs, a tablet to play games while they’re on the toilet, and a smartwatch for convenience and behavior tracking. Google came out with niche glasses that were a bit ahead of their time, but are recently making a comeback, and a few companies are working on other types of glasses and goggles, so a few people have things like that too. And again, this is just all one person who owns all this, and few question those choices. Go back to 1960 and list all the computers you have to someone, and they’ll think you’re lying. Now things are expanding even more. Coincidentally, I just received my Google Home Mini speaker last night; free from a new wind energy program I signed up for. This uses extremely limited artificial intelligence to answer questions, keep track of my schedule and favorites, and even make jokes. There are tons of useful auxiliaries that the people who were working on the early internet could only dream of, if that. It can control personal security cameras, lights, thermostat, this machine that heats baby bottles to the optimum temperature, and more. We will one day be able to control everything we have in the home from a phone, or a smaller form factor, like electronic clothing. I haven’t even mentioned how much smarter cars are becoming, or how virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, as well as true artificial intelligence, are already giving us glimpses of what may someday be called Web 4.0. So thank you materianet, or whatever your name is, for making my life easier, and keeping me connected to all my things. I can’t wait to watch you grow.

Microstory 908: Educational YouTube Videos

< > Table of Contents

The internet is a wonderful place, and video sharing sites are some of the best examples of this. And by sites, I really just mean the one site, because if it’s not on YouTube, then does it even exist? I suppose Twitch is the one exception to this rule. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook don’t count, because they’re designed to be watched as they’re posted, then quickly forgotten about, and not searched for later. While the internet in general has done more for public education than a thousand Horace Manns stacked on top of each other, there are three major sources of knowledge. Two of them are owned by Google, and people often access the third through a generic Google search. YouTube has allowed people to share memories and art with each other. It has supported short films, memorable clips, and an entirely new form of performance art. While they would obviously not exist without their precursors, nothing in the history of entertainment resembles the kind of videos YouTubers make. Not everything on the site is good (e.g. racist propaganda, kissing pranks, and Logan Paul), but I wanted to talk about something amazing. You can learn nearly anything from a good YouTube video. For every prank show clone, there’s a channel dedicated to education and enrichment. You can prop your tablet on the sink, and follow a tutorial for how to unclog the drain. You can study evolutionary biology on a whim. You can try your feet at dancing without embarrassing yourself in front of others. I follow a few good channels myself, like It’s Okay to Be Smart, and Crash Course. There are others that I find myself watching, like Vox, and Seeker. No longer is education limited to the elite, or geographically fortunate. You don’t have to have hardly any money to become an expert in your chosen field, relegating formal degrees to nothing more than tangible proof for employers. There are still some things that don’t work well with this format; specifically anything that requires a lot of hands-on work, like medicine, or aircraft operation. But you can still get an introduction to these concept with a few ten-minute videos, and I consider that a phenomenal achievement in human innovation. If you’ve ever wanted to learn something, but never thought you had the resources or time to, try YouTube. I’m working off a whole list.

Microstory 907: Stargate Franchise

< > Table of Contents

Circa 2006, I went to one of my illegal television streaming websites, which I was just getting into, and tried to start watching Stargate SG-1. Well, the premiere bored be too much, and I gave up halfway through. Four years later, as I was ending my tenure at the University of Kansas, I noticed that Hulu had every episode up for free. Now for you kiddos out there, this was before Hulu was a subscription service. The point of it was to provide a single source for recent primetime television series, from three of the four major networks. For free. It was only later that content providers started expecting people to pay hundreds of dollars for cable, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Anyway, in 2010, I had but 42 days before all 214 episodes Stargate SG-1 were to expire from the old Hulu. I tried the first episode again, and liked it so much that I watched the next episode right away. Then I opened up my Google Calendar, and made up a schedule for how quickly I would need to watch them in order to catch each one before I lost them all. I surpassed my quota, and finished every episode with more than a enough time. Hulu later decided to extend their deal with MGM, which would have been nice to know ahead of time. After that was done, I moved on to Stargate: Atlantis, and—armed with a three-month Netflix subscription as a graduation present from my sister—I was able to watch the first half of the first season of the third series, SGU Stargate Universe, on DVD. I was then able to watch a season and a half of SGU in realtime before it too was cancelled, and we were all left Stargateless. As I recently explained, I don’t read as much as you would expect from a writer. What I do is watch a lot of TV and movies, and that is where I get my inspiration. I don’t need a books to tell me how form sentence or congratulate a verb. I just need to know how to tell a good story, and any good story gets me that. Hell, bad stories give me that too; they teach me what not to do, which is just as important. I remember thinking Battlestar Galactica was the best space opera in existence, until I discovered the Stargate franchise. Whenever I feel down, I can throw on an episode of Stargate. It has opened me up to so many ideas about physics, astrophysics, engineering, anthropology, sociology, psychology, technology, and more. I’m a better writer for having watched the series, and this website wouldn’t exist without it, because my view of the world was so limited before. Now they’re talking about a fourth show to reboot the canon (Infinity and Origins don’t count) and I am all for it. Here’s hoping it becomes more than just talk. Get to the gate.

Microstory 354: Equality

Click here for a list of every step.
Social Love

Lots of people think that the rainbow flag is a symbol for homosexuality, and it’s actually rather sad that this narrow viewpoint has continued. While it did push the issue to the forefront of people’s minds, which is the purpose of symbols, I believe that it has hurt our cause as well. The original intention of the rainbow was not only to represent a particular group, but all of them. All of us. It is a symbol of diversity. Now that you know this, it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? Google is currently running a campaign of “be together, not the same”. I find this to be an incredibly powerful and beautiful sentiment. People who argue against bigotry often try to find commonalities between the bigots and the oppressed. And that’s great, at least it certainly has its place, but Google and I are proposing a different approach. The question we’re ultimately asking is “okay, you don’t identify with these people; why is that a problem?” We have all been told that we should be celebrating our differences, but most of us seem to be having trouble acting on this maxim. I’ve discussed the problem of bigotry with people on the right side of history, and for the most part, we all agree that bigotry has remained a constant throughout history. The police didn’t suddenly start beating black people, it’s just that everyone has a camera in their pocket now. That’s the only real difference, as dumb as that sounds. So what is equality? We all know what it literally means, but what does a world like that look like? Truthfully, no one knows. But anyone not voting for Donald Trump knows that it will be better. Yes, I said will, because we’ll get there. Love will indeed win, and there’s nothing Trump can do to stop that. Thousands of years from now, assuming you’re young enough to be immortal, you’ll look back on these days and wonder what people were thinking. This will all look even more ridiculous than it already does. The bigots, on the other hand, will all be dead.

Free Thought

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 27, 2020

« < » > Table of Contents

Yesterday, Mateo called his parents and asked that they be in Las Vegas in one year’s time. He spent the rest of the day with his aunt, exploring the city with what little money they had. They got to know each other a little better. She didn’t know where his birth father was, but she suspected that he too was some kind of traveler, and that he was completely out of control of it. It made him feel better to know that the reason Mario wasn’t in his life might be a pretty damn good one. Mateo and Daria gave each other a hug just before midnight. “Oh, dry mouth,” she said. They were departing at the same time. Once he jumped back into the timestream, he walked to the agreed upon motel and knocked on the door. His father, Randall sighed. “Well, we got a vacation out of this.”

He could see his mother, Carol packing behind him. “But it’s time that we leave. If we don’t get back to Topeka in 24 hours, you could be stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

“I wouldn’t want you to have to go through this again. I’m so sorry, mom and dad.”

“Don’t be,” Randall said. “It’s given me an idea. We’ll test it out later.”

Despite the fact that the route was an hour longer, they drove through Arizona and New Mexico to get back to Kansas. They had always had a rule about Utah; in that it was off limits on principle. Ever since Colorado legalized marijuana, it was kept in the same category. They called these locations “loci non grata”. In only a few years, these policies would become impractical, as more and more states were following Colorado’s lead.

Almost exactly halfway into their trip, they were passing through Las Vegas, New Mexico when the car began to smoke. “No, no, no!” Randall cried. There was a loud tapping sound as the old vehicle slowly decelerated to a complete stop. He tried the key, but it wouldn’t turn over.

“Honey, it’s smoking. You can’t drive a smoking car, even if you get it started.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about cars!”

“I think it’s the radiator,” Mateo jumped in. “In movies, they pee on it.”

Randall turned around and gave him the stink eye. “That’s only when they don’t have water.”

“You are not going to spray water all over the engine, not having any clue what you’re doing. We’ll call a tow truck. I don’t even know why you don’t drive an electric car like everyone else.”

Randall ignored her. “Okay, Google...”

“Yes?” came a comforting voice from the aether.

“Would you please send us a tow truck?”

“It’s already on its way. I could also retask a nearby drone to assess the vehicle’s condition before the truck gets here,” the computer suggested.

“That would be great, thanks,” Randall answered.

“No problem, Randall the Man.”

“Randall the Man?” Mateo asked.

“She and I are really close,” his father explained.

Moments later, they could hear a soft buzzing sound, coming from the distance and growing closer. A small drone appeared from the trees and greeted them. Randall stepped out of the truck and lifted the hood. Mateo watched as the drone zipped back and forth, scanning the system and analyzing the data. It even checked the undercarriage. Once it was done, it hovered in front of Randall’s face. “I have begun orders for two parts that you will need to return your vehicle to working condition. I need your authorization for payment.”

Randall began to lift his hand to the drone but Carol stopped him. “Wait, how long is this going to take?”

“The parts will arrive by long-distance drone late tonight. Your car should be ready tomorrow afternoon,” the drone answered.

“Randall...” Carol started.

He placed his thumb on the drone which responded with, “payment accepted.”

“We need these parts, either way,” Randall told his wife. “We’ll rent a car and come back for the truck next week.”

“Would you like me to send the rental car to this location?” the drone asked.

“Make it the cheapest one you have.”

“The cheapest driverless car, please,” Carol corrected.

“Authorization required.”

Randall placed his thumb on the drone again.

“If you would like,” the drone began, “I could play music while you wait.”

“Classical. Please and thank you.”

While they were waiting for the rental car to arrive, Mateo called Leona to ask how things were going. She was liking her classes, but she was swamped. She was taking more than a full schedule of courses, and just could not skip today to see him. She said that she would be waiting for him at the house when he got back, though. He smiled. He had only known her for a few days, but he liked her quite a bit. She had matured so much since he had met her. His parents were about the same as they always had been, and he hadn’t kept in touch with most of his friends. Seeing the changes a young adult goes through over the years in such a short period of time was phenomenal and bizarre. It was like a four dimensional television series. But even that took longer to experience.

It was exciting to be riding in his first driverless car. The seats were faced towards each other, as there was no need to be at the wheel. Mateo was given the whole back seat where he was able to sleep. When he woke up later, he found his parents to be napping. That was just awesome. Why his father refused to move with the times and own one of these himself was something he didn’t understand. They would later tell him that the concept of owning one’s own car was going out of style anyway. Many people preferred to inform an app on their phone that they were in need of getting to a location, and a car would just come get them. If the prospect wasn’t rendered meaningless by his condition, Mateo wasn’t sure he would like that. The freedom of having his own possessions made too much sense to him.

Even with their delays, they got back to the safety of their home by midnight. Leona was cooking them a midnight snack of buttered noodles. His favorite. Mateo was brushing his teeth when he remembered what his father had said earlier. He went back downstairs. “You said you wanted to try something.”

He looked at his watch. “Oh, yeah. It’s almost time.”

“What is it?”

“Say goodbye to your mother and your...Leona.”

After that was done, it was nearly time. Randall timed it out, then held his son in a tight embrace. “I’m going to try to hold you down. If that doesn’t work, maybe I’ll get to go with you.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Mateo said.

“It worked with you and your aunt,” Leona said.

“It just doesn’t...” he tried to find the words. “It doesn’t feel the same. When I jumped to Vegas with her, it felt much different than my jumps. It was...more forceful, more jarring.”

“Well I’m going to try it,” Randall said. “If it doesn’t work, then fine. What’s the worse that could happen?”

A year later, Mateo learned the answer to that question. His father had succeeded in neither keeping him from jumping, nor jumping with him. He had, however, suffered a heart attack, and died.

« < » > Table of Contents