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May 2, 2005
Great ideas of the moment
There are a few great ideas out there at the moment. Here are three.
1. Time travellers' convention.
The biggest problem faced in science fiction about time travel is the embarrassment/disbelief/paradox of meeting yourself, your friends or your relations in the past, as a result of time travel. Particularly if you haven't thought about time travel when you happen to bump into yourself in the fruit and vegetable aisle at Woolworths. You're most likely to (a) not believe it's really you, (b) think you are on some kind of candid camera TV show, and/or (c) think you've gone mad and try to attack your future self (possibly wiping yourself out of existence, if you do real damage). So what better way to get around this, than to organise a Time Travellers' Convention, so that if you do bump in to yourself, you'll be mentally prepared and may even give yourself the solution to time travel, which would pretty much be the equivalent of the babelfish, in proving the non-existence of God. In any case, the Time Travellers' Convention is on next week, for all those time travellers out there who want to make their presence known without disturbing too many people in the process.
2. Peer-to-peer airlines
Ever wanted an airline service that effectually acts like a chartered jet, is a company run by geeks, allows you to bypass security queues, and can give you flexibility of travel arrangements, but doesn't cost an arm and a leg? Have a look at the concept described by Cringely behind DayJet. Pretty soon I can foresee the 13 329538 (DAYJET) number being registered for air pickups.
3. Blog commercialisation
It was always going to happen. Turning blog advertising and news generation into a business is both logical and timely. Particularly after dear old Rupert has just told everyone he thinks mainstream media should be blogging. So it's hardly surprising that Roger Simon, Charles Johnson and Marc Danziger have teamed up with some other A-List bloggers to produce Pajamas Media. Check out the concept here, and Danziger's explanation here.
Posted by jj at May 2, 2005 12:01 PM
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Re: Time Traveller Convention
The saddest things are how it's going to be mocked by everybody under the sun; and how there'll be a bunch of [sad-arsed loonies | genuinely disturbed people] who'll be there pretending to be time travellers.
Not that we have enough (any!?) empirical data to know how travelling into the past would actually change things... it could be that the appearance of time travellers would split universes a la Many Worlds theory... and therefore we'd never know if if there WERE time travellers... therefore really rendering the whole concept kind of moot, unfortunately.
This really is a brave thing to do. On the one hand, assuming there ARE time travellers somewhen in existence, their arrival would be of even greater importance than, say, the appearance of aliens on Earth. On the other hand... how many dreams might be crushed, if not simply left to atrophy under lack of proof, if nothing happens?
Re: Blogging, commercialised:
on a similar topic, check Slashdot's article on Microsoft "tapping" blogging; as a very, very short summary - there's a new fear that Microsoft are trying a new astroturfing campaign for Longhorn.
Posted by P at May 3, 2045 08:03 PM
Posted by: P at May 3, 2005 8:03 PM
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