Monday, February 16, 2009

The internet is a wide and wonderful place!

But my friends are luddites and won't get online.

Apparently things like gaming with my partner in separate rooms of the same house and communicating by headset gives virtual reality a bad name. I do think we're on to a winner with the real treadmill powering World of Warcraft corpse runs though!

Memo to self: Must hack treadmill! Now if we could put it together with the Roomba and the Wiimote Whiteboard... think we're on to something insanely amazing here! Warcraft controlled by wiimote causing new cleaning (and beer fetching) algorithm for Roomba all powered by treadmill human/rodent. I think we can get the government to fund this as modern performance installation art!

But I digress. I think there is as much real social interaction from internet communication as any other non face to face communication! I also love the surprise sites where I 'stumbleupon' something I wasn't looking for but am interested in. It's a continual trash and treasure market place!

Here's a tidbit unearthed from a rather old site regarding internet regulation and censorship which has cleverly reworked an even older poem. Both included below from www.razorsedge.org .

First they came...

First they came for the hackers.
But I never did anything illegal with my computer,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the pornographers.
But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the anonymous remailers.
But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the encryption users.
But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me.
And by that time there was no one left to speak up. -- Alara Rogers

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me -
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

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