Monthy Archive: January 2007
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January 01, 2007

Life : Another Year

Yes, I am alive. No, I have no idea if or when I will begin to post here regularly again.

As a quick update, no fundamental changes have occurred in my life. Still at the same job. Still at the same church. Anne and I are doing well (although, as befits our ages, we both have begun to have nuisance health issues from time to time). I'm just finishing a week and a half of vacation where the main focus was cleaning my home office (resulting in nine large bags of garbage being tossed and four boxes of books being donated to the library). Tomorrow work resumes.

As for the blog, I'm still not sure what I am going to do. Trying to post 3-ish times a week clearly does not generate enough inertia to keep me going (it becomes too easy to "wait another day" to post, and thus delay indefinitely). On the other hand, I am not sure I am ready to go back to trying to post every day, which seems to be what is needed to provide me with sufficient focus to post regularly here. Actually, I'd like to get back to posting every day; but there are too many other things demanding my time right now to do that without it becoming a burden.

So things continue as they are, with sporadic postings. So it goes.

Posted by Steven at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

January 24, 2007

Introspection , Observations : Bits vs. atoms

The subtext of a lot discussion for the last decade has been the distinction between atoms vs. bits. As an example, it used to be that you could only purchase music as atoms (records, tapes, CDs); but now music can be conveniently dealt with as just bits (MP3 files, etc.) which has forced various industries to rethink how they do things (or try and force bits to behave like atoms). Photography used to be about atoms (film, prints, etc.) and now is about bits. While (so far) attempts to get rid of the atoms in most books have failed, reference books have almost completely been replaced by their equivalent bits. Even the process of shopping is now dominated by the bit-equivalent of stores.

I mention this because I recently found myself asking a personal variation of atoms vs. bits question. For reasons not worth elaborating on here, I began to ponder if some disaster were to strike (earthquake, fire, whatever), and I only had time to grab one thing before I ran from the house, what would I grab? What I found striking (and worth blogging) was that the choice was absolutely clear – my backup hard disk. It contains things like the scans of every photograph I have ever taken, my Email logs for the last 15 years, all of my personal writing projects, etc. In short, it contains all of the (nearly) irreplaceable bits I value most.

Now I do own some atoms I value: photographs of our wedding that Anne and I haven't scanned in (yet?); a handful of Apollo (moon landing) related memorabilia I got from my dad (who worked on the project); my autographed copy of Midnight Nation by JMS; my copy of the rare board game "Campaign for North Africa"; a half-dozen out-of-print books that would be difficult to replace. But the problem with atoms is that they are big and clumsy to carry in large numbers. For as much as I value these various objects in my life individually, I'd need to pile quite a number of them together to have the same value as all of the things recorded as bits in my backup drive (which I can comfortably slip into a coat pocket). It is an interesting measure of how much my life has become digital.

What's more, even though I am a computer professional, I don't think it was that long ago that the idea that I would end up valuing bits that much would have been quite strange to me. It used to be that bits were big and bulky to carry around and never were quite as good as "the real thing" (atoms). Even knowing Moore's Law, I'd never considered the possibility that I'd be able to carry enough bits around with me that I would choose them over an equivalent encumbrance in atoms.

Now for the moment I may be on the leading edge of this trend; but looking around, this seems to be the way the industrialized world is going. Which leads me to Microsoft's "immortal computing" research project and related efforts. After all, if what people value most are their bits, then how long will tombstones made of atoms be valued as memorials? There are already companies in the business of running "virtual cemeteries", where each deceased loved one has their own web page to be preserved indefinitely. Add to that all of the bits someone accumulates over their life (photos, etc.) which increasingly give a detailed picture of who they were and what they were like. Perhaps instead of building pyramids or other grand tombs out of atoms, future generations will seek immortality through their bits.

Posted by Steven at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)