September 29th, 2008
First, a little bit of review. Many of you are probably familiar with the Google “20% policy,” whereby employees are allowed to use 20% of their working time to develop side projects. This policy has led to the development of many earth shatteringly innovative products, like Google Moderator.
While I was working at Google, my side project was something I like to call “Google Slow.” It’s like normal Google, but slower. Incredibly, heartrendingly slower. Basically, instead of typing your search query into a text box and clicking a button, you type it into a piece of paper and click on a mailbox. I receive the letter, and compile a list of results for you. As a bonus, I include handy tips and editorial content. Then, in 4-6 weeks you receive your list of relevant websites. My ideas was that this service would be useful to those who don’t have access to a computer, as well as those who prefer a more relaxed pace to life. This would also alleviate the problem of aimless web surfing. If your search engine takes a month to get back to you, there’s no risk of accidentally spending an entire evening drunkenly trying to find a video of fish doing it.
When I presented this idea to my manager, we shared a somewhat awkward moment. He stared at me from behind his desk, his expression one of startled embarrassment, like I had stumbled across some sort of terrible secret. But he didn’t say anything. We remained silent for perhaps a minute; I started to realize I was holding my breath. I think he was holding his breath too, because his face began to turn blue. Luckily, my phone started buzzing, so I exhaled deeply, and mumbled, I, uh, I need to take that, I guess. Slowly, I backed out of the room. One week later I received a gift basket filled with gourmet cheeses from Larry Page, and a note that said, “Keep up the gouda work!” However, the Google Slow project didn’t get picked up.
On the plus side, this has left me to develop the concept as a business of my own. I’ve stuck with the Google Slow moniker, since it describes the idea pretty well, and I haven’t received a C & D yet. Still, I’m on the lookout for a new name. In the meantime, the service has been turning in a healthy bit of profit. I figure it’s important to keep the meme going strong, so I thought I’d publicly display a bit of the traffic I’ve been receiving.
Sometimes letters take a long time to reach me in West Australia, so this one comes to us courtesy of early August, from New Hampshire, USA:
”mortgage advice”
The response:
“Thank you for your search request. Good news! Since you had the foresight to send this in August, you’re about to get incredibly useful advice about an economic crisis before it actually happens. You can use this apparent temporal paradox to commit some rather lucrative financial shenanigans. Consult some sort of broker.
Dr and Rose Mortgage This seems relevant.
Mortgage, Photographer I heard that Mort Gages with more views are generally the best to use.
This one’s a blog post Above all else, keep your nails in top condition.
Hope that helps! For more results, send another letter containing only the word “NEXT.”
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September 22nd, 2008
In the 90s, people like Robert Putnam decried the dematerialization of meaningful relationships as a consequence of the move to online socialization. Today, we know that this is not true. If I were to meet Robert Putnam today, I would take him mini-golfing, so as to the have the opportunity to declare, “Nice putt, Putnam.” Then I would tell him, “You were wrong, Puttnam. Online interaction doesn’t degrade the social fabric. That’s because the social fabric never really existed. Everyone was already a lying bastard trying to sell your kidney on the black market; the internet just helps us see it.”
As Exhibit A, I present to you a recent interaction I partook in regarding the popular Internet “microblogging” service, Twitter. Twitter lets you add / remove “followers,” and be “followed” by others accordingly. As far as I can tell, this is it’s primary feature. Occasionally there is also a cartoon whale on the frontpage, and from what I can tell, this is the second most important feature. Truly, the internet is a place where you can make money by giving people lists to add each other to, and showing them a whale. Perhaps we’re all cetaceaphiliacs at heart.
Needless to say, Twitter is very popular. I myself have quite a large list of followers and followees, and have spent many delightful hours observing the whale (sometimes making up stories about him — together we roam the great sea of my dreams.) Occasionally Twitter does something else, though, and this is its tertiary feature: exposing treachery, as it did in this case.
At a recent pub outing, I had a nice chat with a fellow named Jeremy (no real names.) Jeremy was another Twitter user, quite an avid one in fact, so as a matter of course we exchanged Twitter IDs. This is a pretty common exchange amongst geeks these days, and implies a certain level of established trust; to give someone your Twitter ID is to say, “I am comfortable with my ID being on a list you’ve created.”
That night, I went home, and happily tipsy on a few pints, I logged into Twitter and made myself a “follower” of Jeremy. All good, I thought. Society is ticking along grandly. We’re all friends, and by the next year there probably won’t even be anymore wars anymore. Didn’t someone just make a website where you can click a link to donate a dollar to not having anymore wars anymore? There you go, problem solved.
The following morning I woke up, and booted up my Macbook. I have an application installed, Twitterizer, that starts up on launch and alerts me about changes to my Twitter status. As a rule, I check Twitterizer religiously. It displays two numbers: the number of people I’m following, and the number of people following me. I have dual monitor setup, so each number is displayed on a separate screen, in 1000 pt Verdana.
On a great day, the difference between my number of followers vs. followees exceeds 5. On a good day, it’s around 3. On an average day, it’s one or two. On a somewhat lame day, the numbers are equal. On a truly miserable day, the difference is negative. On this day, it was negative one. The reason was clear: I had “followed” Jeremy, but he had not “followed” me back.
“You bastard,” I growled under my breath. Suddenly, I was sick to my stomach. I left my bowl of Frosties unfinished.
That day at worked, I checked Twitter compulsively. Surely, I thought, he simply had not yet had the chance to follow me. He would do it any moment now, like the reasonably civil human being that he surely is. Surely he won’t risk a breakdown in social mores. It would be anarchy. Babies having babies, et cetera. At 2PM, I started to hyperventilate. At 3PM, I was a cool brick of composure, an icy ocean frozen to the seabed. Jeremy, I realized, was filth.
But the most agonizing part — the truly unabashed slap in the face of all that is good and decent — would not come until that evening.
For that evening was the evening of the monthly meeting of the Perth Twitter Zeppelin Army, a group of Twitter enthusiasts and the occasional marine biologist. Walking onto the patio, I saw all the usuals — and then I saw Jeremy. He was the opposite end of the row of assembled tables, speaking to someone. For a moment, as I entered, he looked up at me, and our eyes locked: but instead of the frozen eternity of firey turmoil I expected, I saw only pleasantness in his gaze. Flummoxed, I sat down. What could it mean?
Surely — surely he added me before coming here, I thought. I pulled out my iPhone, and opened Twitterizer for iPhone. But instead of the two numbers that I expected to see, I saw only the whale. But where once the whale’s mien was mirthful, he now wore a malicious grin. By a deft trick of artistry, he seemed to flipping me the bird with his fin. Atop him a speech bubble read, “YOU DISGUST ME.”
My friend Adam, who had been peering over at the screen, looked up at me. “It’s a new feature,” he informed me helpfully.
Incredibly, I raised my eyes to see Jeremy sitting down before me. He was carrying a jug of beer and a few glasses. As he started to pour, he spoke in that jocular manner to which Australians are so well accustomed, “How’s it going? Dave, right?”
He put down a filled glass before me. Incredulous, I simply stared at him. My blood seemed to drain away. But then it refilled, brimming with vitriol and some kind of extremely hot pepper sauce that’s quite nice if you use just a bit of it.
I stood. I picked up the glass, and in a motion so flawless and graceful I seemed to have been created by God specifically for this moment, I threw the beer into his face, and I shouted,
“YOU SON OF A BITCH, YOU’VE RUINED MY ENTIRE GODDAMNED LIFE.”
There are those would say I went too far. But those people do not understand Twitter.
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September 21st, 2008
On a hypothetical top-secret blog that I can’t even tell myself about, Kate mused about a restaurant that specializes in competitive eating: the sort of eating where, if you eat the whole thing, the thing that you are eating is free. Such a restaurant does not actually exist, except for the one I just created. In my mind. However, the menu is real.
The Overbearing Mother - $29
While you consume 1 kilogram of succulent triple-A American beef, a middle-aged Protestant woman wearing fur laments your inability to land a husband due to your excess “baggage.” Optional sides: Baked potato, garden salad, baseball bat.
A Tasty Surprise - $45
Fugu is a Japanese delicacy prepared from the meat of the pufferfish. It is lethally poisonous if prepared incorrectly, and many chefs undergo years of rigorous training before they are considered able to perform this delicate task. We do not have one of these chefs. Patrons who successfully finish this dish will, in addition to the free meal, be treated to complimentary emergency medical care.
Innocence - $39
Enjoy our award-winning honey-glazed rack of lamb atop a bed of fresh herbs and scalloped potatoes. Meanwhile, a video dramatization of the lamb’s life plays out on a nearby plasma screen. Witness the key moments of the lamb’s life, from its miracle birth aboard the boat to America, to its heartwrenching battle with poverty on the streets of New York, and finally to its uplifting journey to self-betterment through its love of creative writing. Will the little lamb find the calm life of warmth and love it seeks? Answer: No, as revealed in the shocking final abattoir scene.
Taste Oddity - $79
In 1947, the US military recovered the wreckage of alien spacecraft in New Mexico, along with the remains of its pilot. We serve up five thin slivers of the alien’s brain, which have chemical properties that defy the known laws of physics. A delicious balsamic reduction and imported chevre complete the experience. The effects of consuming this material have been found to be somewhat diverse. Will you gain psychic powers, be transported to farthest reaches of the universe, or merely have sexual complications? Conditions apply: For the meal to be free, the patron must reasonably resemble a human in the vicinity of the restaurant upon completion.
The Most Dangerous Meal - $125
You: an adventurous restaurant goer. Your meal: The very same. Armed only with a fork and steak knife, you will eat or be eaten. This is competitive eating at its finest!
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May 5th, 2008
Did you know that LiveJournal was cool way before blogging was cool? As an academic in the social media space, it was really interesting to me how the interllectuals vehemently denied the legitimacy of LJ in the post-coital blogging glow of 2003-2006. “LJ is irrelevant,” they told us, “All anyone does there is write Harry/Ron slash fic.” Well, half a decade later, LJ is still around and still cool… but does anyone blog anymore? Hardly.
In any case, the point of this post is to alert my 4 readers that Kate is running for a spot on the LJ Advisory Board. You can support her nomination by commenting on this thread. Of course, you have to be an LJ user. And if you aren’t, what the hell is wrong with you? Seriously.
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May 2nd, 2008
It sounds like the plot of a B-grade American movie: dad goes away on holiday and his teenage child throws a party for 500 people in the backyard. But it’s a crushing reality for Tim Berners-Lee, who’s proginy, the World Wide Web, drew a rowdy and drunken crowd over the weekend for its 15th birthday.
Berners-Lee returned from a business trip on Monday to find his house in ruins, and the neighbours in an uproar. When reached for comment, a distraught Berners-Lee declared that “this time [the Web] has gone too far… this is going to stop.” The Web’s estranged mother, the Internet, could not be reached for comment.
This is far from the first time that the Web has caused turmoil and outrage. In recent years, its juvenile antics have made the news several times, and been a hot topic around water coolers and on daytime talk shows. The controversy reached an apparent boiling point several months ago, when a Youtube mashup featuring a puppy-riding kitten and Japanese tentacle hentai provoked a worldwide outcry. This weekend’s events indicate that the Web has no plans for reform any time in the near future.
“This sort of behaviour is common amongst teenagers with the kind of history that the Web has,” said Dr. Anne Andrews, a child psychologist. “The Web is one of the most well-known individuals in the world. That’s a tremendous responsibility for a 15-year old to bear. It’s the subject of legislation, the cause of both ruined lives and multimillion dollar fortunes. Not to mention the fact that 90% of it is shemale fetish pornography. When you consider how other child celebrities who have dealt with far worse have sunk far lower, it’s remarkable that the Web hasn’t simply overdosed on heroin yet.”
The Web’s storied history begins in 1980, but was officially born in 1993. For a few years it had a relatively uneventful life, content mainly to service a small cadre of computer geeks and their Gillian Anderson fansites. However, the Web exploded onto the world stage in the late 90s, spurred on largely by major commercial successes such as eBay, and niche cultural innovators such as SomethingAwful. Since then, breakaway triumphs such as Flickr, blogging, and the Tron Guy have ensured that the Web is not a name likely to be forgotten for decades to come.
A tearful Berners-Lee told press that for as long as the Web has been famous, it has been causing him trouble. “It just doesn’t even realize… it’s so meta and self referential that it doesn’t realize the hurt its causing for the people who love it. It won’t listen to me, it never goes to school… it just obsesses over the latest fads. Yesterday it was del.icio.us, today it’s Twitter, tomorrow it’ll be Squookee or fiz.zypo.op. It never settles down. Why can’t it be more like it’s cousins, Usenet or IRC? They have nice, stable lives.”
The Web, meanwhile, is unapologetic. “God, my dad is such a hater,” it stated in a recent press conference. “I mean, I’m totally great and everyone knows it. Where else can you get shit like this? Check this out — a Flash animation of Super Mario cruising for hookers to the tune of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” How about 645,000 images featuring dolphins, vaginas and lines from Back to the Future in various combinations? Whoops, hold on, someone just posted another picture of my nipples on Digg.”
Many believe that the Web’s problematic attitude started with the famous dot com bust at the start of the decade. “Before that, the Web was cocky, sure, but still relatively restrained,” said Andrews. “When the bubble burst, though, it was a tremendous blow to the Web’s psyche. Suddenly it was all ’social media’ this and ‘user generated content’ that. Since then, the Web has simply lost sight of any and all boundaries.”
Is there any hope left for the Web? Berners-Lee isn’t optimistic. “I used to think things might turn around as it grew up,” he said, “but things just keep going faster and faster. I just know that one of these days I’m going to find the Web coked out in a ditch somewhere, checking its Facebook wall on its iPhone with one hand, and pirating the complete set of Beavis and Butthead DVDs on its Vaio in the other. And on that day, I’ll simply walk away. It pains me, but I have a limit.”
The Web, on the other hand, has a brighter vision for the future. “Man, you can’t stop progress,” it stated. “Today, I’m all 2.0, right? But you know like, that Moore… uh, Metcalfe… Shir… uh, Shirky Boyd’s law? Yeah, like, everything is doubling, like… every second. So in like two years, man, it’s gonna be like — Web 2.0? Try Web Two Point Million. It’s gonna be all convergence, with dynamically generated sentient memes commenting on themselves, while the Hypersphere injects data fluid into all the media nodes hooked up to your noggin. Dude it’s gonna be great.”
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