BitWorking

Wow, suddenly gedit went from the notepad of Gnome to something much more. It's no Acme, but I wonder if you could get some of the same effects by writing a plugin like Tool Launcher that also exported a FUSE filesystem.

I missed this book when it was first published, but picked it up recently and was really impressed. While the title would have you believe it was focused on the internet, in actuality only the last chapter discusses the parallels between the telegraph and the internet, while the remainder of the book is actually a well written history of the telegraph, which bodes well for the endurance of this book; instead of coloring the whole book with the perspective of the internet as it exists today, it is left as a straight-forward history that will probably take on fresh meanings and perspectives as the internet grows and our relationship to it evolves.

Things I learned:

The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1866, a 2,300 mile long cable just a few inches wide, which is a stunning achievement for the time.

The Associated Press was formed as a response to the disruptive innovation of the telegraph, which is ironic given it's ham-fisted attempts at dealing with another disruptive innovation.

The telegraph had the equivalent of domain names; telegraphic addresses (short names) were sold to companies that senders could use to address their telegrams to, thus making the telegram shorter and cost less to send, and yes, you had to pay an annual fee to keep your telegraphic address.

I love all the stories about the search for water and possibly life on Mars and the new discoveries of more earth-like extrasolar planets, but I just think there's a bit of a perspective problem when it comes to presuming that being closer to earth-like is better when it comes to the search for life. Yes, the only known sample point we have of life is that existing on our own planet (for now), but that doesn't mean that our planet is optimal for the formation or survival of life.

Let's just put this in persepective, as far as we know today it took close to three billion years for life to reach the multi-cellular stage (regardless of whether you're in the panspermia or abiogenesis camp), and today, after four billion years, only 0.00000000126% of the planet has been converted to biomass.

That's a real long time and not much progress to show for it. We may not be living on a fertile world, an optimal environment for life; maybe we live on the galactic equivalent of a barren weed strewn city lot.