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Text File | 1994-09-06 | 31KB | 672 lines

********************************************************************* * * Speedbumps and Roadkill on the Information Superhighway * * Presented at SHARE-83, Boston, 11 August 1994 * * by Rich Olcott, Schering-Plough Corp [74150,1620@compuserve.com] * ********************************************************************* [Introductory material, relating to the organization and why the talk was prepared, deleted to save of space. Also, the transparency texts have been translated to straight ASCII bracketed by asterisks. This project benefitted from discussions in several CompuServe fora. The following people contributed ideas, and I thank them: CONSULT Forum: Lance Rose MENSA Forum: Michael Auborn, Mike Steiner, Johnny Ulin, Russel Cawthorne, Barbara Ploegstra OS2USER Forum: Juanita Moshier PRSIG Forum: Tim Hurson, Gordon Housworth, Bill Lutholz, George Berman, Peter Lloyd, Greg Fraley, John Baker] When I was assigned to do this talk on the Information Superhighway, my first thought was of Dick Cavett's remark that the Infoway "sounds like something that's long, boring, and kills 50,000 people a year." But I've been doing Net things for a few years now, and I've found it can be fun as well as profitable. Furthermore, I write comedy in addition to all that technical material, and doing this pitch would give me a chance to use some pieces that just wouldn't work before most audiences. On the other hand, comedy club performers usually have the benefit of the audience's two-drink minimum. I'll start with a quotation: ********************************************************************* * * History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. - Mark Twain * ********************************************************************* A lot of people, for instance, have been claiming that there's a "rhyme" between mainframe computers and the now-departed dinosaurs. They suggest that mainframes will soon be extinct, because the dinosaurs are. However, these people miss a lesson to be learned from dinosaur anatomy. If you or a related small child are into dinosaurs, you're already aware that saurian nervous systems were significantly different from ours. We work with a single bulge in the spinal cord, in the head, holding just over a quart of nervous tissue. Dinosaurs had not one but three bulges in the spinal column, each about the size of a walnut. One bulge was in the head, another between the shoulders, and a third over the hips. Presumably, the "extra" two were responsible for controlling the movement of legs and tail. My point, of course, is that it was the *dinosaurs* that used distributed processing. Back to the Infoway. Years ago, Al Gore (then Senator from my state of Tennessee) recognized that transportation of information had some parallels with transportation of people and goods. ********************************************************************* * * Highway Rhymery * * People and Goods Information * * Footpower Voice * Horse Writing * Wagon Printing press * Train Personal computer * Truck The Net * ********************************************************************* In prehistoric times, people were limited to going only where they could go on foot, moving only what they could carry, and learning only what they could experience by direct communication. When the horse was domesticated a few thousand years ago, it changed humanity's world. Pre-horse, most people never traveled more than 15 miles from where they were born. Post-horse, hordes from the steppes of central Asia could make war all the way to the plains of Poland and beyond. The invention of writing also changed humanity's world. A physical representation of a message makes it possible to communicate directly with someone hundreds of miles or years away: we still read the thoughts of Plato and Confucius 2.5 millennia after they lived.. Hitching a wagon behind a beast of burden multiplied what one person could carry, and that innovation made it possible for a skilled craftsman to work where the raw materials were while another person carried her finished goods to a market far away. You can trace the factory system back to the invention of the wagon. We've all heard about the impact of the printing press, which gave rise to the advertising industry. Trains are enhanced wagons, except that they are limited to transport by fixed routes. If you want your goods to ship by rail, you must build your factory next to a rail line. A PC is an enhanced printing press for data, except you're limited to data transport by way of a physical medium. If you want to pass a file or report to someone else, you have to put it on something like a piece of paper or a diskette. The Interstate highway system was built in the late '50's and '60's to replace a network of two-lane highways with 4-, 6- and 8-lane limited access superhighways. It's no accident that a single time period saw both the decline of the railroad and the rise of the trucking industry. What the new road system did was remove the old fixed routing constraint. You can plunk your factory down anywhere, because a truck can get to you by using the entire paved hierarchy of streets, roads, and superhighways. Same thing with the Net: it removes the requirement that you transfer information by way of a physical medium. You can assemble a document from pieces originating in Prague, Pittsburgh, and Pomona without ever leaving your office in Peoria. Gore's vision started with the rise of digital processing and the positive impact of the interstate system on the US economy. The potential synergy prompted him to advocate a Federally-supported research effort find out how to do for information what the interstates did for people and goods. But of course, the metaphor needn't stop with the structures.... The physical highway system also serves hitchhikers. Remember the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac and his "Dharma Bum" romantic view of the open road? It's no coincidence that he wrote in the '60's when construction of the interstate system was opening up our view of just how liberating travel could be. What do we have on the Infoway? William Gibson's "cyberpunk" mythos. Submitted for your inspection a character somewhere between James Dean, Billy Idol, and Erkel. While you're at it, imagine that I'm tall and craggy-faced with great hair (what the hell). Running down my left ear is a series of rings and studs that spell, in binary, the mystic number 42. Around my forehead is a hachimaki, a white cloth band with black markings surrounding a red circle. Look closer: those markings aren't kanji -- they're barcodes. That red circle isn't on the cloth -- it's a data socket embedded in my skull... Say your disk's gone flat? Well, how 'bout that. Now, babies, don't you panic. By the light of the screen You'll be in a different scene When I've made me your data mechanic! You think you got secrets? You ain't met me yet. I'm on a roll. You've lost control And there ain't no RESET. Ethics ain't my style; nasty makes me smile: You're in a jam 'cause I've got a plan For your personal keyset. Might as well resign, dear, Your system's mine, that's clear, My attack does not hold back It'll feel like a cardiac hack, Jack, 'Cause I'm a Cracker! Ain't no mush-mouthed, lily-livered hacker. I can mess your metal mind an' that's a fact, son! Check this action: When I feel a rejection I go into dejection, So I take a selection From my collection, Make a connection And zap! You've got a digital infection That defies detection Or correction. Virus inspection Ain't no protection And your objection Will give direction To my --- satisfection 'Cause I'm a Cracker! I got lots of tricks in my pack here. Ain't no food in the freezer? No problem, man - I can download pizza. Can't touch this, eithah - cause it's a virtual pizza! You run System-7? You're dead and you ain't near Heaven! You run DOS? You're lost, hoss! You run Windows? You'll hear the wind blow! You run NT? Your future's empty! You run OS/2? There'll be no rescue! OS/400? Your days are numbered! You run Mac? Jump back, Jack! You run Pick? You gonna be sick, quick. You run VAXen? You'll pay my taxen. You run Unix? You and a bunch of lunatics! You run Mumps? You're a chump, lump. You run VM? You ain't even gonna see 'im. You run MVS? --- Hey, I'm a Cracker! *********************************************************************** * * Vehicle Rhymery * * People and Goods Information * * Ignition switch, key Logon, password * Steering wheel Mouse * Brakes <break> * Autopilot trn, WinCIM, GCP * Rich Corinthian leather Multi-media * Turn signals Standards??? * *********************************************************************** Let's look at some "rhymes" between the vehicles that carry you on asphalt and the ones that get you on the Net. You get in your car and start it with the ignition switch, which you can't turn unless you have the right key. You connect to the Net with a logon procedure, which you can't complete properly unless you have the right password. Your car has a steering wheel so you can tell it what to do next; your PC has a mouse (or trackball, which my wife calls a "trackrat" because it's mouselike but has a fatter tail than the mouse does.) I wonder if there's a special meaning behind the fact that "brake" and "<break>" show up together on this list. Some vehicles have an auto-pilot which robotizes the navigation process. ("Tell me what to accomplish, not how to do it.") On the net, we have robotized communications software like Unix newsreaders (trn) and Compuserve navigator packages (WinCIM for Windoze, GCP for OS/2). Some people like luxury items in their cars; some people add luxury items to their PCs (although what constitutes a luxury changes with the economics of the industry. The people at my shop who drove BMWs are the ones with multimedia now, but there's rumor of MM-equipped PC systems at less than $1000 this fall. Stay tuned...) The phrase "turn signals" represents all the techniques we have for cooperating with other drivers to keep things moving along. We're supposed to tell them what we're about to do so they can avoid colliding with us, and of course there are all those traffic control devices like stoplights and lane markers. The Infoway has sort of a parallel. It's called "Standards." The Net must love standards: it has so many of them. However, all the Net's standards are like stoplights - they're about how the driver relates to the street, not to other drivers. Is that a problem? Look ahead, maybe a year or so, to people using hypertext-driven software to pull down multiple full-motion video/sound items while the rest of us are try to get a byte in edgewise. I could be blocking a thousand users and neither know nor care, nor could any of them find out who I am or do anything to avoid me. Will we want passing lanes and a way to flick our lights at oncoming users? You bet, when it becomes possible to download an audio file like this: Welcome to CyberTheatre, a project of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. We use AI techniques to explore what happens when you really mix media. Last week, we did "Barney Meets Willie Loman on The Planet of the Apes." Awesome chaos, truly. This week, our experiment places Shakespear's Hamlet in front of a suburban bathroom mirror. The time is early morning. Hamlet speaks: "To shave or not to shave, that is the question. Whether 'tis easier to suffer the itch and prickle of ten thousand thistles, or take arms against a sea of troubles and, by severance, end them. To cut, to stroke no more, but by that cut we put an end to the thousand shocks that hair gives to flesh. 'Tis a condemnation devoutly to be wished. "To shave, to scrape. To scrape, perchance to scream. Ay, there's the rub, for from that scrape what screams may come e're we have scissored off these mortal curls. But hold. If "shave" it is, then may it be, "be shaved"? No, who could barbers bear: to grunt and sweat 'neath that barb'rous hand. And agonize o'er what may go - a slice, perhaps, off one's fav'rite ear. Nay, rather would I wear the honest beard than fly to barbers I know not of. "Thus doth ... discretion ... make gorillas of us all. And thus will the native softness of my cheek stay cover'd o'er with this rough thatch I leak. Ah, fair Ophelia, on thy velvet skin be all my chins remember'd. Cyberspace is a different universe, and I didn't understand how different until I started thinking about the next topic. I can give you examples of universes that are just a little bit different. Suppose you were at a crime scene and one of the detectives said, We're not sure, Lieutenant. It's either a poor lemon pudding or a very bad Hollandaise. I've sent a sample to forensics for a determination. Suppose your radio alarm came on in the morning and you heard: Now here's the gravity report for Boston and the Bay area. Gravity will be intense this morning, easing off later in the day. There'll be scattered patches of heaviness mid-afternoon, so watch your step. You might blink a couple of times on hearing that. Now think about Infoway traffic control: *********************************************************************** * * Traffic Control Rhymery * * People and Goods Information * * Rush hour Peak hour * Traffic reports ---- * Traffic cops ---- * Speed limits ---- * Speed ---- * Distance ---- * *********************************************************************** OK, rush hour is early in the morning whereas peak hour is mid-morning, but there the parallel stops. (And why do they call it "rush hour" when you spend much of it going very slowly?) Nobody gives you traffic reports on the Net - you just get timed out. Nobody but Cliff Stoll chases down law breakers - which is OK because the Net's an anarchy so there aren't any laws to break. But there's a much deeper reason there are no speed limits in cyberspace. There's no such thing as speed, because "speed" is "distance per time" and "distance" is not a defined concept in cyberspace. *********************************************************************** * * Distance in CyberSpace * * How many miles between you and a particular node? * How many hops between you and a particular node? * How many miles did the message travel? * How far away is a message that was assembled from distributed * sources? * How hard is it to find the node you want? * *********************************************************************** In asphalt space, we often use "distance" to get a feel for how long it takes to get somewhere. Cairo, Egypt is further away than Cairo, Illinois, and it's more time and more hassle to get to Egypt than to Illinois. That's not how it works in cyberspace. It'd probably take longer to pass a message over a short hop on a 2400 baud line than on an intercontinental hop on a T3 or satellite link. Would you be willing to use a distance metric that depended on how many people were sharing the bandwidth with you? If you're using a packet-switched network, part of a single message might take a different route from the rest of it. If you're using one of the advanced hypertext services, part of the message you're looking at might have come from Athens, Greece and the rest from Athens, Ohio and Athens, Georgia. In cyberspace, "distance" is a stochastic variable, not a geodetic constant. *********************************************************************** * * Scenery Rhymery * * People and Goods Information * * Potholes Lightning * Trees and hills ---- * Ragweed ---- * Rest stops ---- * Speed ---- * Billboards Prodigy? * *********************************************************************** Gertrude Stein once described a particular patch of suburbia by saying, "There's no *there* there." Cyberspace is just the reverse: there's a *here* (where you are) and a *there* (where you're connecting to), but there's no *in-between*. You might notice if a power hit takes out an intermediate link, but you can't voluntarily stop on the way to take a picture from a scenic lookout. No rest stops, no place or need to buy souvenirs or tacky postcards, no Golden Arches. Also no billboards, unless you count the way Prodigy uses a third of your screen for advertisements. That's also a parallel with the physical superhighway, because roadside ads used to be more common before we started driving too fast to read them. Anyone remember Burma Shave signs? They were America's answer to haiku: a series of five red signs with white lettering, forming a little rhyme boosting the sponsor's shaving creme. My favorite was this one: *********************************************************************** * * Burma Shave in Asphalt Space * * Free, free * A trip to Mars * For five million * Empty jars of * Burma Shave * *********************************************************************** I asked folks in the Jokes section of Compuserve's Mensa Forum to come up with some Burma Shave signs for the infoway. Here's the pick of the lot. The first is for when you're unhappy about your system: *********************************************************************** * * Burma Shave in CyberSpace - 1 * * System locked? * Please don't fret * Just reach out * And hit "RESET" * Burma Shave * **************************************** Michael Auborn ************* The next is if you're unhappy about someone else's system: *********************************************************************** * * Burma Shave in CyberSpace - 2 * * Computer widow? * Life incomplete? * Reach out and press * <Ctrl><Alt><Delete> * Burma Shave * **************************************** Mike Steiner *************** And finally, if you don't like Bill Gates' system: *********************************************************************** * * Burma Shave in CyberSpace - 2 * * Windows dragging? * DOS too slow? * Get OS/2 * And go-Go-GO! * Burma Shave * **************************************** Barbara Ploegstra ********** The story you are about to hear is true. Only the narrative style has been changed for comic effect. *********************************************************************** * * Detours in CyberSpace * * 454-6861 * 1-800-554-4079 454-8251 * 1-800-848-8199 1-703-391-0800 * No joy 1-703-787-0800 * 1-800-848-8980 * 2 * 1-800-848-8990 * Joy? * *********************************************************************** Sunday, 8:15 PM. I was working the wires but couldn't get through to Compuserve. I had dialed the local 9600-baud service number, 454-6851. The modem made a sound I hadn't heard since I stepped on a pair of mating alley cats, but that's another narrative style. I checked the local phone book. Compuserve had an 800 number and a local voice line. I figured I'd need the 800 number on a Sunday night. I dialed 1-800-554-4079, expecting to speak to a human. What I heard was: The number you have dialed, 1-800-554-4079, has been changed. The new number is 1-800-848-8199. I tried the new 800 number. No answer. I fell back to the local number, 454-8251. The number you have dialed, 1-703-391-0800, has been changed. The new number is 1-703-787-0800. I tried it. Oh, God, another one. You're the seventh this evening. Yes, ma'am. Just trying to get Tech Support, ma'am. I'm not in that department. I'm not even in the same city they're in. What a crazy company. Yes, ma'am. What's Tech Support's number? Try 1-800-848-8980. That worked the last time I tried it. You know what really gets me? No, ma'am. We do communications for a living. I hung up and dialed 1-800-848-8980. Welcome to Compuserve Customer Support. To obtain a local access number, press '1'. To speak to Technical Support, press '2'. Fortunately, I was using the touch-tone line. I pushed the '2' button and heard The number for Technical Support has been changed. The new number is 1-800-848-8990. That line was busy, which probably meant it was connected to a human. The scary thing is that the problem cleared up soon afterwards, even though I'd never got a chance to tell anyone what it was. *********************************************************************** * * Navigation Rhymery * * People and Goods Information * * N, E, W, and S ---- * Street signs ---- * Marquee, billboard FAQ files * Helpful natives Helpful natives * AAA Veronica, Mosaic * Road map The Yellow Pages * *********************************************************************** Navigating in cyberspace is really different from navigating on asphalt. Leave that compass in your backpack (its magnetic field would play hob with your diskettes, anyway) because there is no North or South on the Net. As one of the folks in my office put it, "Imagine you're set down in the middle of metropolitan Boston, where the streets wobble around every which way and cross at odd angles. You're hungry and have a date at a particular restaurant, but they've taken down all the street signs and you're not even sure you're in the right township. The only way you can find the place you're looking for is to go into every store you find. If you're lucky it's a restaurant, but you still have to check the menu to see if they've got the right kind of food." Fortunately, one parallel I've found holds true is that, in both universes, if you look friendly and ask politely, the locals are generally willing to help you find your way. Sometimes they're so enthusiastic you wind up learning more than you wanted to know. There are institutional navigation aids in both universes. AAA and the other automobile clubs do a good job of telling you how to get to where you want to go on asphalt, and they'll even offer you a choice of Quickest versus Scenic routes. The Infoway equivalent is still under construction. Veronica is supposed to be an index into every database in the galaxy, but you have to realize that she only knows about what people have explicitly given her to index. For instance, one day we wanted some information about bonobos, an animal we first met at the Milwaukee zoo. You may have read about them in Discover magazine or Jared Diamond's book, "The Third Chimpanzee." They used to be called the "pygmy chimpanzee" but now they're considered a separate species. They're also the world's most sex-oriented primate... Anyhow, a few months ago we asked Veronica to do a keyword search on "bonobo". Nothing. Then we asked about "Pan" (the Latin name for the chimpanzee is "Pan troglodytes"). Veronica knew about 454 items relating to "Pan": *********************************************************************** * * Desparately Seeking Bonobos * * PAN symptoms in tomato foliage * Coordinated Pan and Zoom * Selling Pan Am's Pacific Division * Frying Pan/Fire Tactician * Italian Pan Bread * High Modulus Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) Fiber * Directory: Barrie: Peter Pan * etc., etc., etc., .... * *********************************************************************** The difference between asphalt space and cyberspace is best summarized by one comparison: asphalt space uses road maps, but the Net uses the Yellow Pages. There are some subtle differences between the software and hardware superhighways. (Had you heard the line about software is what you boot and hardware is what you kick?) They boil down to the fact that the infoway can only carry intangibles. *********************************************************************** * * Cargo Rhymery * * People and Goods Information * * Physical objects Logical objects * Raw materials Raw material * School texts HyperText * Golf clubs Club meetings * Newsprint newsgroups * Student drivers newbies * *********************************************************************** You can't really download pizza (yet), but you can download menus, and then fax an order to pizza-on-wheels. You can't download lead, but you can download leads. The last item on the list, student drivers/newbies, leads me to my final embarrassments of the evening. One is another AI-generated sound-and-sight byte, downloaded from alt.fan.dimples, to the tune of "Good Ship Lollipop": "On my new chip, Pentium Writing COBOL is tedium. Wish I could play with fancy languages every day. From where I sit, Pascal's new. Lookin' forward to Modula-2. BASIC's OK, but it never runs in less than a day. I think Visual REXX would be better than sex. What an OOI, GUI screen I'd make. With a pull-down here and a pop-up there - My users would awake with a carpal ache! I could work such neat-o tricks, I could get such virtual kicks, On my new chip, Pentium, Pentium, 586." Finally, here's a sing-along that captures much of the classic Net spirit (even though those days may be changing): Tune of "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" (original words and music by John Martin Sommers) Well, it's late at night. The kids are in bed. Time to get those cobwebs out of my head, Live my virtual life instead: Thank God for my Techie Toys! I'd play Seventh Guest all day if I could, But my boss and my wife wouldn't take it very good. So I play when I can and work when I should Lord love my Techie Toys! Well, I got me a fine wife, I got me my modem, I got my software for up- and downloadin'. Time to ride that Info Road an' - Surf the Net with my Techie Toy. Dad taught me how to code and write a flowchart. FORTRAN-TWO was my personal go-kart. Built my own machine from pinball discards. Proud of my Techie Toy. I've known how to hack since I was a kid. I can't believe the things I did, But I did no harm or I kept it well hid Or blamed it on my Techie Toy. But I love my wife and I love my keyboard. Ride those wires like Neddie on a kneeboard. If I can logon, I'll never be bored - Thank God for my Techie Toy. With the fax and the phone and the VCR All tied together with Ethernet wire I can talk to my coffee pot and steer my car. Incredible Techie Toys! Gettin' ready for SHARE, gotta write my pitch, Now what in the world rhymes with "glitsch"? Checked with the CD-ROM, it said, "Go fish!" Stupid Techie Toy. But I got me a fine wife, she thinks I'm crazy. She may be right, but I sure ain't lazy. I'll load this logic 'til the dawn gets hazy - I love my Techie Toy. Thanks, folks! Have a good trip home, and see y'all in Los Angeles in February!