17 April 2000

I finished Goerner's After the Clockwork Universe while on vacation in Las Vegas with my wife. When I got home, I ordered 4 copies from amazon.com in the UK as gifts for those whom I would attempt to influence. More than any book I've read in the past few years, Goerner's words clearly articulate the social changes inherent in the technical revolution in which we're mired.   She's helped me to see that we're in the midst of a great social change that is as profound as the change that took place between the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment. We're birthing a new society based on a new set of beliefs. And since we're in the middle of what she's called the "Awakening," we cannot see the magnitude or direction of these changes; all we see is the chaos. But birth is always a painful process.
After returning home from Las Vegas, where my wife and I looked for property -- we're considering a move to the Las Vegas area later this year -- we were shocked to discover that an ad I'd placed in Back Stage magazine for the film we're going to produce this summer yielded over 2600 resumes from local actors. We'd were expecting maybe 300 and hoping for 600.   The joy of finding 2600 resumes was quickly replaced by the realization that we had our work cut out for us. We've been deep into the audition process ever since. After spending 35 hours since the first of April seeing over 200 actors, which we selected from the 2600 resumes, and reviewing the 20 hours of videotape generated by the 200+ auditions, we're nearly ready for the call-back process, which will likely involve another 20 or more hours of work. I'm realizing that even though we're planning a simple, ultra low budget production, it is a production nonetheless, and it's going to be a lot of work. But it is definitely some of the most satisfying work I've ever enjoined, with the possible exception of technology evangelism.   I need to start a web site for this movie -- I'll do it soon.
Something I must also chronicle is a bit of a depression I've been suffering that's come at the same time as the thrill I've enjoyed these past few weeks. This depression stems from a very unexpected and ironically named source: Bill Joy. I have long respected Bill, since I first became aware of him around 1984. As the chief architect of BSD Unix, Bill was legendary in hacker circles when "hacker" was still a complementary term. Arguably, there would be no "open systems" today were it not for Bill and his insightful online publishing of code he'd written. Bill was a cover story on Fortune magazine last year, when he was christened the "Edison of the Internet."   So when this man, whose intellect I've long admired, starts to sound like a neo-Luddite, my own world gets rocked in the process. I've had to think about it -- mull it over a bit.
It seems to me there is a choice between hope and fear. If we live in our fear, then we should restrict information and most certainly contain development of better computer systems. If we live in our hope, we may yet risk extinction -- but the ride will be a lot more fun.