Quantum Forest logs are written by Luis A. Apiolaza in Christchurch, New Zealand.
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During my bus rides I have finished reading (using ereader) two novels by Cory Doctorow1: Eastern Standard Tribe and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. In both novels Cory describes compelling worlds where technology—meaning pervasive SMS messaging, permanent net connections, cloning, deadheading and brain backups—‘just works’.
My previous post on the limits of netbanking left me thinking of the contrast between Cory’s novels and real life. Where do these differences come from? I mean, apart of time for perfecting and delivering any of the described technologies, the two main issues seem to be interfaces and reliability.
Interfaces in real life are not transparent but many times are barriers that interrupt the user accessing the underlying technology. Rarely something works without any modification when just out of the box. We need to configure accounts, setup servers or providers, learn a new interface, etc; all this so we can start enjoying the promise of technology. Concerning reliability, Would you go deadheading or restore your mind from a backup? Would you trust your life to a computer running windows or PalmOS for that matter?
I finally managed to use my old Psion travel modem with my Tungsten T3. I followed the instructions in this page but completely ignored the use of EasySwitch, that kept crashing my Palm. Now I can update the quotes and weather forecast in AgendusPro and write emails in my palm and then send them using the travel modem.
The Fitaly virtual keyboard has made my life easier, although I am still getting used to the strange new position of the letters.
1 Thanks to Cory for making his novels freely available under a Creative Commons licence. I would have not been able to buy the novels in Hobart, and ordering them through Amazon or Barnes and Noble would have been terribly expensive: more money on postage than on the books. The novels can be downloaded in many different electronic formats from Cory’s web site.
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