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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.

Do the ends ever justify the means?

If this were the end, if these were the means, can we walk away with a shake of the head, accept the result, the way it came about?

How will we know? How do we judge? What shall be the criterion by which we weigh the pros and the cons and declare this war worth its cost?

Will we ask about the dead, the maimed, the injured, compare their numbers to those killed and deprived of their liberties under the regime of Saddam Hussein?

Will we use a calculator? Graph paper? Huge scales of justice? Bodies on one side, bodies on the other? Will there be a relative point scale, 10 points if tortured by Saddam? Minus five if Iraqi soldier? One hundreds points per member of the Anglo-American alliance of the willing? Extra points for children, women, innocent civilians?

Will the price of oil figure into the equation? Will the sales of SUVs rise or fall? Can you feel it at the pump, when you fill the tank? Heat the home? Will the Arabs squeal if oil plummets towards $10 a barrel? Can the open spigot pay the price of the war?

Will we do the math, or will we feel it in our gut? Will liberties gained exceed liberties given? Will we feel more free, less free? Will we care?

If we search everyone, throw-up checkpoints, x-ray every box, trace every dollar, will it feel right? Will it feel wrong? Will the military drumbeat rock our world, keep us safe for rock and roll?

Can torture and detention make us, keep us free? Liberate nations? Keep them secure? What will you trade from the Bill of Rights to stop a Bill of Wrongs?

What will the war cost? How will the billions get counted? Will it matter that we spent over $50 billion to Britain’s $3 billion? Did they get a discount? Will the friends gained exceed the friends lost?

Who will lose more sleep? The liberated? The liberators? Whose dreams will be realized, whose nightmares created?

Who will audit the war? Which accounting firm has earned the right to fool us one more time? Will we count fingers, toes left behind, limbs? Will Geiger counters register numerical levels of depleted uranium for inclusion on a chart? Can the soil be cleansed?

Will the television ratings show we returned to the news, revisited the networks we abandoned for food, gardening and fishing channels?

Will vote tallies tell the tale of the war? Will the United Nations gain? Will it lose? Will Congress register an opinion, pass judgment, exercise the power of Declaring and Making War?

The bastard is gone, the West is won. Was this destination worth this journey?

Do these ends justify these means?

Do the ends ever justify the means?

Discuss

posted by Jim Griffin at 8:26:20 PM | permalink

The Tao of Pho

LONDON -- Writing is less expression than a way to think, so I often choose topics more from curiosity than experience, floating ideas and testing waters more than arguing a definitive course.

Blogging is especially supportive of this concept, wedding as it does discussion groups and brevity with reactive thought, world events catalyst for discourse and dialogue.

This essay will be an exception, because if I am expert on anything, it is Pho, the global discussion group, the ever-growing mailing list named after the Vietnamese beef noodle soup that spawned its meetings. I am an expert only because I started it with John Parres and continue to finance its digital operation.

I like to visit the United Kingdom generally and London specifically, though they are more and more American every day, more a trip down the street than across the pond. Today's field trip is a day's layover from Helsinki to Los Angeles, a night to share with the London Pho group and several business visits thrown in for good measure. I've not previously attended London Pho and I’m looking forward to the evening, especially so because this particular group of Phosters is chock full of huge brains and creative genius the likes of which you rarely find in one place at one time. And the dry British sense of humor is a joyous icing on the cake.

Pho the group was started in Los Angeles when John Parres and I started sharing meals, arguing and exploring the issues confronting and surrounding the digital delivery of art (primarily music, but also video, text, graphics and all media). We relatively quickly added a mailing list that grew dramatically to its thousand-plus readership today (an exact count isn't possible because of the pass-along effect, particulary virulent with Pho, because some fear identification with this sometimes rebellious group).

More than a meeting, more than a list, Pho is metaphor for the larger issues that we discuss. Self-organization is the inevitable rule, anarchy the delicious result, viral growth the usual effect. We've made attempts at democracy, but this group needs none of it; Today we know this group is governed best when governed least.

John Parres and I share administrative duties, adding new users and generally maintaining the subscription list that the onehouse.com (named after the notion of many lives under one roof) server uses to reflect a message from any user back out to the entire group. Like the Los Angeles Sunday brunches in Chinatown at Pho 87, the many Pho groups organize their own meals, notifying the crowd via the list, and meals are generally paid by passing the hat.

Some gatherings are quite regular, others few and far between. If there is a major media conference, or even some small ones, there is probably a Pho group assembling for the express purpose of sharing a meal and good discussion. NAB Pho, Midem Pho and the like take their places with the more established regular groups, and both types happen simply because the attendees want them to do so.

Why Pho and not some equally irrelevant name like First Tuesday? Because soup is good, cheap food and mostly because Pho kitchens generally allow anyone to keep the table without shoeing the group out the door to churn the table. Pho groups can and do meet anywhere, with the only commonality an inexpensive meal, likely at an ethnic dive.

The list generates hundreds of messages a day, none of them censored mostly because it is impossible to control. The server is an automaton that merely reflects traffic to the group. The most we can do to edit the content is to edit the subscriber list and urge the group on occasion to stay somewhere near the topic at hand.

Still, Pho is such community that at times the digital issues of the day give way to the compassion and comfort only familiar voices can provide. September 11th was a prime example, but there have been others, including the war.

The best gatherings, like the best message threads, surround prominent events. The Future of Music Conference, annually held in Washington, D.C., after the turn of the year, hosts the largest, best Pho gatherings at a superb kitchen called Nam Viet in Arlington, Virginia. Specialty Phos like that one I attended in Vienna, Austria, several weeks ago are also hits more than misses, with the result a planted seed that survives the event.

Five years later, the collective wisdom of Pho would fill a wall of three-ring binders, even if printed double-sided in agate type. Its ever-changing roster of participants reads like a combination of the people outside the Velvet Rope, and those within: Industry heavyweights abound, joined by a roster of the globe's finest art lawyers, barristers and solicitors, all of them put to shame by the smartest artists, creators, students and just plain fans.

If you care to join us, visit pholist.org or just drop me a line at griffin@cherrylane.com.

Discuss

posted by Jim Griffin at 6:24:47 AM | permalink

Finland is a Teen-Ager

HELSINKI -- I love Finland, almost as much as I love my America and my family's native Ireland.

I certainly intend no disrespect, and only admiration, when I relate to you that Finland is a teen-ager, bursting with potential, a young person in an adult's body, beautiful to behold and eager to make good on its promise, powerful beyond its own realization, the envy of everyone but themselves, hindered by an awkward self-loathing that is difficult to comprehend.

Finnish women are surely one version of the world's ideal, their blond hair and fitness complementing their role in a society that seemingly knows no gender, the Finnish language without words to discriminate between male and female. Finns grow up knowing that woman or man, they can run the country or the company in which they serve, because women have in fact run the country and are seen as every bit as strong as their male counterparts. Recently a 48-year-old woman led her centrist party to power in a coalition government, succeeding yet another woman leader, and while men drink in the bar the lobby teems with women making deals.

Still, Finnish women often dye their hair, eschewing the blond ideal, and pierce their mouth, their nose and their ears in a form of self-mutilation that rejects their tradition and heritage, one young woman telling me that to be Finnish is not her idea of a positive image, explaining that the blonder than blonde look is a sign of in-breeding she rejects. It reminds me of Finland's hyper-modern architecture, a massive middle finger in the air pointed at its Russian parentage, steel and glass contrasting the buildings of czars and dictators.

Finnish men behave identically, if less loquacious in their expression. It is said that most Finns know six languages and speak none of them, but I've found this to be true only if you seek small talk. If your ideas are big and your goals broad, you'll enjoy high-bandwidth discussion and intense debate. Finland's Paavo Nurmi was a gold-medal-winning marathoner, setting the pace for a long-term society that patiently awaits extended, brutal winter for the reward of a endless summer days of sunshine.

When first I tried to learn Finnish, I mapped out the translation for typically American phrases, such as Hello, How Are You? (Hei, Mita Kuuluu.) I quickly learned that the average Finn doesn't respond well to such inquiries, wondering first why you want to know how they are, and then accurately guessing you don't really want to know how they are, so it was back to the drawing board of learning words for Finnish animals, numbers and foods. By the way, Microsoft still hasn't figured out this gaffe, using the phrase in a series of Internet advertisements as if it were a typical Finnish greeting.

A quick look at the web site transparency.org shows Finland at the top of the world's list of honest brokers, a country devoid of bribery and corruption to a greater degree than any other, with the transparency extending to the sauna, the posting of every person's salary at the post office once a year, a place where new buildings are as transparent as the culture.

My message to Finland: if you could see yourself through the eyes of the world you would feel no shame and abandon your profound sense of insecurity. This is a country destined for more greatness, a country whose Nokias and Linus Torvalds are the beginning, not the exceptions.

Discuss

posted by Jim Griffin at 2:43:20 PM | permalink

From WTC to WTF

HELSINKI -- It is just after noon here on Sunday, following an April snow storm bigger than I've seen for years but par for the course here, above the 60th parallel. I walked back to my hotel last night from across this small city, and as the wind whipped snow across my face like a desert sandstorm, I was amazed that nothing fazed armies of clubbers from storming pubs across this city, even at two in the morning.

Just moments ago CNN began streaming accounts of friendly fire taking at least a dozen lives, an American jet bombing U.S. special forces, and I am now wondering if there is a good bet to be had on who killed more of the Anglo-American alliance of the willing: The United States, or its enemy, Iraq?

Like iatragenic disease (that illness caused by the health care system), if we tally the death toll from our "accidents," will we find we killed more of our own than the other side?

Excuse for a moment that we have killed so many of our opponents, the bodies stacked high and dumped in trenches, because in war that is the point, to kill with killing machines and men and women trained to behave like lean, mean killing machines. Excuse it not because their surviving families and friends will excuse it but because this is all besides the point. And let's not mention the civilian casualties: They are too sad to discuss, none of them participants in this exercise in so-called "diplomacy by other means." To be more accurate, they died not so much from diplomacy as they died in earnest, terrified and powerless to change their circumstance. Make no mistake: They died at our hands.

When this nightmare ends, when we tally the wins and losses and dead and injured and homeless, what will be the score? What will we have accomplished? Is there a category for the tattered, bloodied corpse of the United Nations, once the hope of international co-operation and now proof that we Anglo-Americans with all our fancy schools never got past the First Grade and its lessons to play well with others?

Where I once sat on the fence, I now feel had, bamboozled, deceived, and the shame is not so much mine as it is ours.

Yes, I now realize there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and haven't been any for years.

If there were, they'd have used them by now.

Still wondering? What happened to that fleet of chemical-spewing drones? Those long-range missiles aimed at Israel? The fabled nuclear program? The alliance with Osama? Gassing us after we crossed the red line around Baghdad? If you don't use what you've got to defend the capitol city or your international airport, you don't have anything at all.