Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel.  Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.

Avantouinti

I've never particularly enjoyed the company of naked men.

It's true, and has nothing at all to do with sex -- sex is the last thing that crosses your mind at the temperature extremes I experienced today -- though I suspect that the Freudian Chicago psychologist that is my sister (Dr. Ellen Griffin) would say, tsk, tsk, don't you know everything is about sex -- but in this case my recollections of rooms full of naked men have more to do with school locker rooms and towel snapping and the Alpha Male behavior of "jocks" than with lust.

Thank you, readers of this blog, for your very existence. If it weren't for you, I might not have done it: Jump into the Avanto, the hole in the ice, after exposure to the hottest sauna (say SOW-na) in which I've ever been, with memories of searing pain when the loyly (steam from water hitting the hot, glowing rocks, and I don't mean my balls) rises throughout the room.

I might not have done it if I hadn't written to you and promised I'd do it, because there were so many opportunities to back out, with one Finnish friend opting out, and on the long walk down the pier there were many admonitions about the shock to the system and questions like "Do you have heart trouble? Any history at all of heart trouble in your family?" and so on and then it was down and into the hole and then I remember nothing except wanting to get out so very quickly but instead swimming in a circle and grasping, without my glasses, for anything to hold to bring myself out, and realizing that anything I might grasp would prove to be more ice, more cold, and then hearing Marko tell me that every step down the pier would feel better, and indeed it did, and when he said the sauna would thereafter feel much less searing hot he proved to be so very correct. For about five minutes, and then it was again cooking time, with hot, hot, hot, searing hot until it was time for beer and sausages and then more sauna.

Words fail me here. There isn't really much to say about all this, other than that you should try it sometime if you are even slightly inclined to do so and healthy enough to handle it, but like most loquacious Americans I will write on, sharing with you, though here I must write that it is becoming easier and easier to understand why Finns say less and do more, preferring less small talk and more action or talk about matters of importance.

By comparison, the Irish will talk forever about something so mundane and insipid as kissing the Blarney Stone, though I guess that is the point: When you've kissed the Blarney Stone, it's hard to shut up, and I've kissed it more than once. An Irish-American in Finland is more shock in a cultural manner than the physical shock of jumping into the hole in the ice.

Still, it is in the Finnish nature to go to the woods and be alone when feeling great joy and happiness, or "onni," and under the same circumstances we Americans can often be found beating our chest and yelling at the top of our lungs. Hell, if Americans were into Avantouinti there'd be a photo booth and souveneirs at the end of every pier.

It is now hours later, and I have less desire to discuss it, and more desire to reflect upon it, so there is something working here, the magic is spreading, and I am beginning to understand this country in ways so many trips before failed to communicate, how the cell phone can be extension of the hand and not the mouth.

Discuss

posted by Jim Griffin at 8:20:29 AM | permalink

Into the Hole

One word focuses my day.

Avanto

It is Finnish and means "hole in the ice."

Sure, I've been to the sauna and back many times, especially Finnish saunas, here in Finland and around the world. Wonderful stuff, and I am always eager to go and sometimes the last to leave.

Today has a twist. I've been invited to Sauna Society, a Helsinki club, ahem, society I've heard discussed but never visited. This afternoon I am the guest of Marko Ahtisaari and am excited about going. But I must say that the word Avanto and the concept of the hole in the ice are familiar to me only through the miracle of vicarious thrill via television, and I am ready to find out and report back here to the Directory of Wonderful Things.

I've been transfixed by holes before, and not just in the way of most teen-age boys. I had the honor of working for Geffen Records, where we worked with Courtney Love and the band Hole, so I know just how beautiful and difficult Hole can be, but none have fixated my attention quite so much as Avanto. Neither could her Hole be described as frigid, and having had nice conversations with Courtney I can guess she would feel fine with me making that clear, and she'd insist I be clear that I do not know this from personal experience.

Stay tuned. Keep the cardiac crash cart at the ready. I am going in, and it certainly won't be pretty!

(No discussion link until after it happens ...)

posted by Jim Griffin at 12:51:21 AM | permalink

Back from the Brink

I've returned from the long trip North and am now back in Helsinki, enjoying renewed access to tangible newspapers, magazines and huge mugs of Wayne's Coffee that make me forget Starbucks ever existed. Make mine a kupio, not a vente. The Wayne's on Kaisaniemenkatu is an oasis for hungry, caffeine-addicted Finns, and the free, fast net access is great when you've been stuck with a tiny Sony Picturebook with a non-functional USB port.

Sure, I could send it to Sony for warranty service, but many who've experienced what Sony calls service (including me) know better. It isn't service, it's abuse. I sent them a laptop under warranty a few years ago, and they offered two options: Pay over $1,500 to replace the motherboard (they claimed I'd somehow damaged it myself, entirely untrue) or pay about $100 to have it shipped back. I chose the latter when they failed to prove I'd somehow violated the warranty. I complained vociferously, even called the Consumer Electronics Association, and they asked me to ship it back for service, leading to a rinse-wash-repeat scenario where I had to pay to get it back again. Sony are scum when it comes to service, and so for now I am stuck with this beautiful but flawed total product experience. If Sony could match service with product, they'd be close to unstoppable in some markets, but that doesn't appear likely anytime soon.

Enough whining. Here's news: While in Levi, American tech marketing guru Michael Moon tumbled on the tundra and shattered both elbows trodding the same path I walked every morning to breakfast and every night after drinking the only passive recreation the area offers. I feel lucky to get out in one piece, but would happily return, because what it lacks in civilization Levi makes up for in beauty and joyful isolation. Make your limo a snowmobile, try reindeer in your soup or salad.

Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of renewing a decades-old friendship with Finnish editor and Talentum exec Hannu Ollikainen (anteeksi, Tatu, I am abandoning those weird characters attached to Finnish letters that bedevil my font choices, but kiitos for trying to help me generate them). Hannu came from Finland as an exchange student to my Park Forest, Illinois, high school (Rich East), and I gave him an old bicycle I'd replaced weeks before his visit, and he remembers it to this day.

I envy Hannu, and I don't envy much. He has a wonderful family, lives in one of the world's most interesting, vibrant cities in one of its most dynamic countries and is documenting the Federalization of Europe and Nokiazation of the world. He also travels the world working with journalists, learning about media and making education a lifelong process. He is a terrific conversationalist (some say most Finns know six languages but speak none of them) and picked a wonderful seafood restaurant where I learned still more about just how great it can be to eat well and healthy as do so many Finns.

I always lose weight in Finland, even though I eat more and better than usual. One more reason to spend more time here, one more reason the rest of you reading this should be checking out the flights here (less expensive than ever before, with Europe's new airlines attacking bloated carriers previously fat on government protection) and finding one of the fine hotels available at a discount. You're thinking, sure, you can do that when it's winter in a place like Finland, but fortunately it's year-round now. Consider the Savonlinna Opera in the summer (the hall is acknowledged one the world's greatest buildings), or the countryside during the third week of June and what they call Johannus and the rest of us call the holiday of St. John the Baptist.

Blogging is about observing, life is about participating. Keep them in balance: Don't let logging-in for blogging satiate your desire for adventure; instead, let it stimulate your desire to find a corner of the world that's always had you curious. Follow the road less traveled -- it makes all the difference.

Discuss

posted by Jim Griffin at 2:06:03 PM | permalink

Brass in the Digital Pocket

BoingBoing covered Vertu recently, and I have had an opportunity over the past few days to visit with Frank Nuovo (Vertu founder, chief designer), who handles much of the design work at Nokia. He has much to say about Vertu, enamored of its direction, which takes the instrument from the commodity floor of the cell phone shop to the vaunted halls of fashion and style.

His most interesting comments, though, were directed towards what he calls the Digital Pocket, a concept reminiscent of business school work that expresses market work as a function of fulfilling need or niche in our lives. For example, fast food now refers to share of stomach -- if Taco Bell drops a burrito grande in your mouth and down your throat, they are owning the stomach for a while, with little else headed there.

In much the same way, Nuovo sees the Digital Pocket, with share of digital pocket likely to be held by one device, with a maximum of two or three at most in different pockets, though primarily we are giving the electronics world one pocket with which to work, and whomever grabs that pocket has fulfilled you as a customer.

This seems to me saavy thinking, and compared to the music business it is downright genius, as the denizens of Santa Monica and similar environs seem to have from what I can tell little understanding of the interrelationship of media and entertainment spending. We are competing with the clock for attention, and with a limited wallet for cash. As a result, we need to learn to persuade -- not compel -- customer behavior.

The number one rule of copyright seems to be that you can't take money out of the customer's wallet without permission (unless you manage the compulsories the business rails against unless they are on the buying side, i.e., from songwriters). As a result, we would do well to start thinking about listening to the customer and performing a lot less lecturing them on copyright and the need to make the rich richer.

I hope there is interest in discussing the basics behind the Digital Pocket. It's basic but challenging thinking for industries that can use new ideas for generating money and less defending old ideas for clinging to the old vine in the Tarzan-Economics-like swing we're performing.

Nuovo is a very smart man with experience aplenty in addressing media markets and ph ... ph ... err, instruments, devices, but definitely not phones, unless you have limited imagination and a spare Euro or two laying around. You don't want to be fined a Euro for calling them phones, do you?

On a somewhat less related note, I am gearing up to try a bit of audio blogging, with pictures, too. When I have a day in the week or so ahead I am going to give it a shot, and perhaps I can treat you to a bit of Elvis vs. JXL sung in Finnish. Nothing like it!

Discuss

posted by Jim Griffin at 3:33:08 AM | permalink

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

I am thinking and writing about time these days: What it means, how we measure it, and so forth. Travelling across the earth and tundra does that, as the miles become reminders that gravity and the clock rarely work in reverse. China and the continental U.S. are roughly the same size, but China has only one time zone to the four-plus of North America.

And then my home server crashes -- www.62chevy.com -- and while I'm across the world wondering whatever and however, it turns out it's the power back home and little else and I am thankful for the little things that go right when it seems they've gone quite wrong. Sorry if that threw off anyone's plans to find out more about whom now Mark, Cory and Xeni have collectively given the car keys of Guestbar blog.

Back to the time: Knowing where you are is now and has always been a function of knowing the correct time. Ships used rocket references fired from Greenwich (hence GMT), and now GPS is little more than a very modern, highly accurate update. The satellites broadcast their known position and the precise time, enabling devices below to judge their position relative to the signals received. These are passive devices, incapable of ratting on you, unless tethered to some transmitter or other means of communication.

What happens if an enemy broadcasts false or blocking signals on the GPS frequencies? What effect might this have on GPS equipment in Iraq? Somehow, someway, unfortunately it seems we may well find out, and sooner rather than later.

I learned today that the Swiss have watches in use that sample the music they hear, all the better to help divvy up the pools of money that compensate rights holders in music for the performance and broadcast of their songs. And the Swiss are now apparently levying on photocopy machines, around $30 a year I'm told, to populate a fund for authors.

I like levies for rights compensation, but not on equipment. I think the levy needs to be at an appropriate turnstile point in the delivery chain, and any turnstile that can pick up and leave the country to avoid paying the levy is not appropriate to the task. I'm all for levying on digital providers, but that is a subject for another day, when I am less tired, when time has taken less of a toll, when I don't have to speak the next day. I am headed for a Lappish Village to talk to telecom execs and explain to them why I think they're a good place for levies, and I suspect I will need all the energy I can muster.

Discuss

posted by Jim Griffin at 4:16:25 PM | permalink

Ole Bluetooth, King Harald of Sweden, Would've Loved This

I am in Levi, Finland, at a meeting where we are talking and playing and working wireless. I pull out my laptop, fire up the bluetooth manager to connect with my cell phone to dial up a connection and ... whoa ... is this slooooow ... where *did* the connection go ... and just when I am about to give up I see hundreds of bluetooth devices on my laptop's bluetooth manager! Headsets, phones, devices, all revealing themselves in low security mode. It's a shock, as I can hardly believe my eyes. Like looking at a Windows Networking window at a LAN party or conference, but these are phones and devices and laptops aplenty. Later I try it in my room and the same thing happens, with a few less connections but the same effect. Tempted to play, I quickly put it away, unsure of the laws surrounding bluetooth hacking in Finland and uninterested in the inevitable confrontation with someone who might later find out I am dialing their phone or listening through their headset.

I like being connected. I like being interconnected. But more and more I am thinking about safe computing, about sending every one of them a business card, about how you could broadcast PowerPoint info via bluetooth. The possibilities, for good and ill, are fascinating, omnipresent and for better or worse they are here and now.

Discuss

posted by Jim Griffin at 9:06:29 AM | permalink

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