[ Thanks to Jason
Perlow for this link. ]
“Surprisingly, what 2001: A Space Odyssey could not predict was
the rise of the information revolution and the Internet. In 1968,
we were in the middle of a huge space race with the Russians to
send a man to the moon. We were more concerned with building
nuclear weapons and fighting a cold war against communism than we
were with the spread of information. If he was making the movie
today, I think Kubrick would have had Dr. Floyd fire up his laptop
and contact his daughter via chat using high-speed wireless
Internet. Audiences of 1968 were impressed with videophones and a
base on the moon. Would they have been as impressed with a
housebound society that bought everything it wanted over the Web? I
don’t know. At least they’d be happy to know our computers aren’t
psychotic.”
“While some of the aforementioned future advancements haven’t
yet come to fruition, some have. For example, everyone could have
had videophones years ago. So how come nobody has them (except for
the yuppie freaks that bought them from the Sharper Image a few
years back)? Well for starters, most people don’t like being caught
off guard wearing their jockey shorts — I certainly don’t. As it
stands, two-way video communication seems to be reserved for
teleconferencing, where groups of people from afar meet under
controlled circumstances. In most respects however, people want
their privacy. But if you absolutely have to contact somebody
instantaneously, and e-mail just doesn’t give you the warm and
fuzzy feeling of knowing you have somebody captive for a few
minutes, nothing beats Instant Messaging (IM) — and you can safely
do it in your jockey shorts.”
“Before my editor gets royally pissed with me for writing
the remainder of my column about something completely unrelated to
Linux, I have to tell you that IM isn’t just for Windows; there’s a
whole world of messaging clients waiting for you to try out. So,
let’s get rolling.“