I was taught that science is all about managing complexity by creating abstractions over different domains. A common layman's mistake is to anecdotally observe or hear that something is true at some level, somewhere, and assume that this fact or definition applies throughout every discussion. For example:
One hears that computers are “programmed in binary,” or that they “understand binary,” but in fact, programmers don't write in binary. Programmers work at a higher level of abstraction than binary encoding.
One hears that computers use “digital circuits,” that are simply “on” or “off”, but in fact, the physics of each electronic component is continuously variable. Device physics is at a lower level of abstraction than digital electronics.

So, what's a server and what is peer-to-peer? It depends on what 's being discussed?

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I'm old enough to vaguely remember Walter Cronkite forty years ago showing us hand painted “NASA Simulation” video of the Apollo spacecraft maneuvering in space. There simply was no way to position a news camera outside the Lunar and Command Modules to get the shot.

Now we have computer generated movies and commercials. I've seen computer simulations of plane crashes and of presidential candidates. But yesterday morning was the first time I'd seen computer-generated pictures of human participants in breaking news. I'm not sure I approve of the concept altogether, but given it's existence I do like the editorial decision to render the named humans in untextured solid red.

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We had had our usual weekly Engineering Meeting yesterday. Some slides, a couple of charts, some spreadsheet pages, and a bunch of folks arguing. Nothing exciting, although it was pretty cool for random attendees to change the slides and spreadsheet in real time, and to put post-its on them.

As usual, our weekly meeting was in-world. No one commented about the technology. No one commented about the fact that the meeting was lead by a manager away at MIT, some engineers were in Maryland and Oregon, and some folks were at home saving gas rather than in the office. Boring.

Pretty cool, no?

My wife's XP computer died in a power surge and we bought an iMac. The thing I'm most intrigued by turned out to be completely different than what I expected. [Read More!]

In January, 2005, David Smith was on stage at Kyoto University, speaking in a panel on the future of Croquet. Slouched in his chair, he pulled an iPod from his pocket and threw it on the table, along with his old-fashioned styled spectacles. “In twenty years, that will be the computer. Maybe earlier. Wearable computers and micro-projection display already exist. Virtual Croquet worlds will be layered onto the physical world around us.”

At the same time, in San Diego, CA, author Vernor Vinge was wrapping up “Rainbows End,” a novel set in 2025 in which the common person's view of the world is augmented by wearable computers overlaying virtual worlds onto contact lenses. The central denizen of the worlds in the story is a troublesome white rabbit, which also happens to be a common avatar in the Alice In Wonderland themed Croquet worlds.

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I've been observing some automated testing of our virtual worlds, and my machine keeps dinging. My teenager said, “Someone's getting IMs.” Sort of. [Read More!]

I've been working with some test harnesses for our Croquet worlds. It's been a real pain working outside of Croquet: getting things to happen across multiple platforms. Moving data around. It's all so much easier in a virtual space that automatically replicates everything.

Anyway, we finally got it working enough that there are several machines in Qwaq's Palo Alto office that are all running around as robots in a virtual world, doing various user activities to see what breaks. Being (still!) in Wisconsin, I have to peek on these machines via remote. I'm currently using Virtual Network Computing (VNC), but there's also Windows Remote Desktop (RDP). These programs basically scrape the screen at some level, and send the pictures to me. So when these robots are buzzing around in-world, I get a screen repaint, and then another, and then another. And that's just one machine. If I want to monitor what they're all doing, I have to use have a VNC window open for each, scraping and repainting away. Yuck. If only there were a better way….

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I think we normally speak of work being done “in Powerpoint,” “in Word,” and so forth. This morning I looked at a transcript of people discussing virtual worlds while in one. The words “Qwaq” and “Forums” appear once each. The word “here” appears 49 times. We are finally getting to the point of having discussion about the results, not the technology. The program itself disappears, in just the same same way as we usually discuss being “at a Web-site” rather than “in Firefox” or “in Safari.” (Internet Explorer users may indeed reflect their tool's relative intrusion by thinking of their activity as being “in IE” more often.) [Read More!]

My last post referenced a movie of a “talk show” in Second Life, prompting John to ask about the relationship of avatar richness to the experience. I think there's a simple trick that's worth making explicit. [Read More!]

There's a photo of me in the current Information Week. Only it isn't a “photo,” and it isn't “me.” [Read More!]