Fill this in yourself.
Charlie's Diary: News from the Weird Charlie's Diary Being the blog of Charles Stross, author. [ Site Index ] [ Feedback ] « Back home (again) | Main | Typo hunt: HALTING STATE » News from the Weird Cows with blogs. Yes, that was the subject of conversation in the pub last night. I can't provide any URLs, but I am assured that the dairy industry in Scotland is extremely interested in fitting their herd with telemetry to track everything from their location (via GPS) to their blood pressure, activity levels, and possibly even emotional state: an eventual goal is that the subjects of this exercise will effectively become spimes. As Bruce Sterling (who coined the term) explains it, "a Spime is a location-aware, environment-aware, self-logging, self-documenting, uniquely identified object that flings off data about itself and its environment in great quantities." Presumably the blogging bovines would emit an RSS feed that their owners could browse (or should that be "graze"?) in order to determine that Daisy has gotten into the bottom field again, or is overdoing the clover. NB: I want the wikipedia admins to know that I am very annoyed that someone has deleted the wikipedia article on spimes. It's all very well to do the housekeeping, but it's gone too far when useful resources are being erased before I can link to them from my blog, dammit. (I ascribe the subsequent conversation about GM cows with nitrated oligosaccharides in their milk, and the utility of explosive blogging bovines in any future Pakistan/India conflict, to a combination of beer and jet lag.) Meanwhile, it has been reported that dwarfs represent a growing crime problem in Sweden, with thieves robbing long distance coaches by sneaking miniature accomplices into the luggage compartments inside sports bags. Mind you, that's positively mundane compared to the nude wet meat soil bandit's antics in Cool, California. I was going to try and say something sensible about the Dyatlov Pass incident, but just the facts of the matter beggar the imagination. Sort of like a Russian Blair Witch Project, only it actually happened, kinda-sorta. And I've been brain-wormed by a phrase from nowhere — "I'd sleep with the teddy tonight if it didn't smell so strange". I don't know what it means, don't really know where it came from, and I wish it would go away. (I think it wants to hatch into a story, but I'm not ready to write it yet because I think it also wants to be ... gruesome.) If all this sounds a bit dazed and incoherent, it's because it's a grab bag of my current jet-lagged preoccupations (leaving aside the research into penile degloving injuries, the future of spam, and browsing wikileaks). I'm still a bit disoriented, and I think I'm going to spend the next day putting my feet up with some easy reading. I've just received the galley proofs to SATURN'S CHILDREN (due out July 1st!) and I should really get to work checking them, then pick up tools and crack on with THE REVOLUTION BUSINESS, but all this intercontinental travel and sleep deprivation has left me feeling like a character out of one of William Gibson's more recent novels. And you know what? Living inside that man's head is No Fun At All. Posted by Charlie Stross on February 23, 2008 11:49 AM | Permalink 58 Comments Jonathan Vos Post | February 23, 2008 15:18 1: Mr. Charles jet-lagged Stross, may I repost a comment from a couple of years ago which dealt with the proto-spime theory? Charlie's Diary http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2006/09/into_penalty_time.html Previewing your Comment "The future is here. It's just unevenly distributed." --William Gibson The Science Fiction community and Techie communities alike ignored the first few Science Fiction authors active on the ARPANET (which became DARPANET became INTERNET). So far as I can reconstruct, these first few included Jerry Pournelle and Greg Benford, with me trailing a few months behind. We all spoke about it at conferences (scientific) and cons (sfnal) and were greeted with skepticism. Basically, nobody seemed to see that once this went from niche to universailty, everything would change. You can go back to an earlier generation of prophets: John McCarthy, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart and his team headeed by Bill English at SRI International who created many of the concepts and tools that set the global computer revolution in motion (mouse, computer network as communications tool), Ted Nelson. Weird thing is, even though all these prophets were belatedly hailed for accurate prediction, their OTHER predictions are still widely ignored. John McCarthy warned that the term "Artificial Intelligence" which he coined was so misleading that he's sorry he promulgated it in the 1950s. I've talked to Engelbart about what he calls "the big WHOOSH!" when cyberspace is flooded by an exponentially increasing volume of data from more and more smaller and smaller distributed smart sensors. He's ignored on this, although it's also central to The Singularity (whose prophets have been described at length elsewhere). Ted Nelson, when he accepted the top award at, I think, the 5th WWW Conference [the one in Australia], said (I paraphrase from memory): "You all thought I was crazy when I explained Hypertext and Hypermedia. Now you all use it. But you still think I'm crazy, and don't listen to all the other things I say." Charles Stross is an interstellar treasure because, besides his stylistic gifts and discipline to work hard and long through pain, he HAS listened carefully to The Prophets. he has though long and hard, and come to surprising and compelling conclusions. I thus predict that many things he'll say in Halting State will turn out to be embedded in Words of Prophets Pournelle, Benford, Nelson, Englebart, McCarthy et al. I've used computers for forty (40) years, and emailed since before the Net, and was on the Net before it had more than about 1,000 netizens. I've been consciously writing Hypertext since I met Ted Nelson in 1973 or 1974, and saying so, and several of my publications of the mid-to-late 1970s prove this. But now EVERYONE (well, a billion or so, 1/6 of the world) are amphibians, half in, half out of cyberspace. Should we first lungfish crawling up the shore be heeded? The fate of the world depends on this. Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | October 2, 2006 7:49 PM Spudtater | February 23, 2008 15:25 2: "criminals of limited stature" WBAENFARB Graham | February 23, 2008 15:32 3: The first thing that comes to mind reading the Dyatlov Pass account is the paradoxical undressing that is sometimes seen in hypothermia. The massive injuries to some of the bodies I would guess resulted from an avalanche, but it's difficult to know whether that would be plausible without knowing the layout of the area. As is commonly the case, the mystery may really arise from the paucity of recorded facts rather than from anything inherently unlikely. M. Werner | February 23, 2008 15:44 4: As a police officer of many years experience, I admit I've never seen anything quite as odd as the naked meat burglar. You just have to wonder what was going on the guy's warped psyche.... The dwarf crime raises a number of interesting problems. How do you conduct a line-up of the suspects? "Him, the short one!" Or..."Will number Five through number Two please kneel..." "Round up the usual dwarf suspects!" Dave Hutchinson | February 23, 2008 17:03 5: That's why I like it here; you always bring us the very weirdest stuff. I was going to google `penile degloving' to see what the hell you're talking about, but I decided maybe...not... dan Goodman | February 23, 2008 17:07 6: In the early 1990s, I heard research foresters discuss doing similar things with trees (not including location; they tend not to roam.) Egg Syntax | February 23, 2008 18:10 7: Although I'm slightly bitter that I missed the vote on deleting the 'spime' article, I've at least created a redirect page to go straight to Sterling's page. Egg Syntax | February 23, 2008 18:22 8: Per my last comment, I find myself wondering whether Wikipedia has become the de facto arbiter of the survival of neologisms? Certainly it's not true in all cases, but in the case of 'spime,' the votes of eleven people may turn out to decide whether the word lives or dies. Certainly my first instinct when I encounter an unfamiliar term is to run it through Wikipedia; if there's not an entry, I may not bother to pursue it further. Alex Fiennes | February 23, 2008 19:01 9: I'm not sure if they are still there, but there was a grazing project on the Pentlands 6 months ago that featured cows with GPS transmitters. The devices also measured tilt as well as position so that it was able to monitor when the cows were eating - something to do with a feasibility study of whether it was practical to graze larger animals on topologically interesting landscapes... I suspect that it was organised by the SAC. Till Westermayer | February 23, 2008 21:02 10: If anyone is interested: the deletion debate for Spime can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_November_23 and in long here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Spime The content of the last deleted revision of spime looks (without links) like this: Spime is a neologism for a currently-theoretical object that can be tracked through space and time throughout the lifetime of the object. The name “spime�? for this concept was coined by author Bruce Sterling. Sterling sees spimes as coming through the convergence of six emerging technologies, related to both the manufacturing process for consumer goods, and through identification and location technologies. * These six facets of spimes are: 1. Small, inexpensive means of remotely and uniquely identifying objects over short ranges; in other words, radio-frequency identification. 2. A mechanism to precisely locate something on Earth, such as a global-positioning system. 3. A way to mine large amounts of data for things that match some given criteria, like internet search engines. 4. Tools to virtually construct nearly any kind of object; computer-aided design. 5. Ways to rapidly prototype virtual objects into real ones. Sophisticated, automated fabrication of a specification for an object, through “three-dimensional printers.�? 6. “Cradle-to-cradle�? life-spans for objects. Cheap, effective recycling. With all six of these, one could track the entire existence of an object, from before it was made (its virtual representation), through its manufacture, its ownership history, its physical location, until its eventual obsolescence and breaking-down back into raw material to be used for new instantiations of objects. If recorded, the lifetime of the object can be archived, and searched for. Spimes are not defined merely by these six technologies; it is, rather, that if these technologies converge within the manufacturing process (CAD and automated manufacturing are already in wide use in the manufacture of many things today; RFIDs are becoming more and more prevalent in consumer goods) then spimes could indeed arise. Contents * 1 What is an “Object?�? * 2 See also * 3 References * 4 External links What is an “Object?�? The use of the term “object�? may seem abstruse and overly generic. As an example by what is meant by “object�? in the context of spimes, consider a pair of tennis shoes. A tennis shoe can be thought of as an object in the manufacturing cycle — it first exists as a digital specification for a shoe, then raw materials are gathered and formed into the shoe, an RFID may be embedded into the fabric, and then it is sold. Location and searching for this shoe may involve asking a computer search engine “where are my shoes?�? To which the reply may be “your shoes are under your bed,�? which would combine identification, location, and data mining (linking the shoes to your ownership of them). Once the soles wear out, the shoes may be sent back to the manufacturer, who will break them down back into raw material which could be used to fabricate a new pair of shoes for you. "Spime" was probably first used in a large public forum by Sterling at SIGGRAPH Los Angeles, August 2004. The idea was further expanded upon in Shaping Things. See also * An internet of things * Everyware * Next nature * Hyperreality * Cyberspace * Semantic Web * Spam References * When Blobjects Rule the Earth Speech by Bruce Sterling, at SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, August 2004 * Sterling, Bruce (2005). Shaping Things. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-69326-7. “A SPIME is, by definition, the protagonist of a documented process. It is an historical entity with an accessible, precise trajectory through space and time.�? * Bruce Sterling's speech at the South by Southwest conference in March 2006 The "Spime Elevator Pitch" is about halfway through (22 min 30 sec.) * Bruce Sterling's videoblog interview - Minnesota Stories, March 23, 2006. 6 minutes. * Bruce Sterling's talk “Shaping of Things to Come�?, given on 13 December 2004 at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. * Bruce Sterling's talk - Lift Conference, Feb 3, 2006. 34 minutes. * The Internet of Things: What is a Spime and why is it useful?, given on Google Tech Talks 30 April 2007. 49 min 5 sec External links * MIT PressLog: The Ultimate Guide to Spimes * Del.icio.us spime tags * Beyond spimes: Kirkyans * On the Path to a Spime-Filled Future: Proto-Spimes * Ambient Findability: Talking with Peter Morville, Boxesandarrows, Liz Danzico This content was part of Wikipedia prior to November 27, 2007. Wikipedia admins can see the list of authors here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Spime Mike | February 23, 2008 21:55 11: I remember working on a physics project in '84 related to cow telemetry. Apparently when cows fall pregnant their activity patterns change, and this occurs before other visible signs. Telemetry data would help identify this in a timely fashion to reduce pre-term losses. The brief would have been more interesting if had been to detect whether or not said cows were being chased around by Swedish dwarfs. Robert Sneddon | February 23, 2008 22:01 12: M. Werner @ 4: "Round up the usual dwarf suspects" This actually happened a couple of years ago, in Iraq. A US patrol was tasked to go into an urban area (possibly in Baghdad, maybe elsewhere) and arrest a suspected high-up in an insurgent group. He was described as distinctive in that he was a dwarf. When the truck came back it had about thirty dwarves on board (and as it turned out, not the dwarf they had been looking for). Dwarfism in Muslim countries is regarded with some prejudice and a small enclave of dwarves had settled in one of the urban areas that was coincidentally the area the US troops had been sent to raid. Since all the dwarves looked the same to the troops, they rounded up all of the dwarf suspects and bought them back to base... Marilee J. Layman | February 23, 2008 23:01 13: Ah, Charlie, I see from my LJ that you've remembered where the teddy remark came from. One of my cats died and his companion has been very lonely so I got her a teddy bear to sleep with and what I actually said was "I'll sleep with the teddy tonight so it won't smell strange." Charlie was lag-reading. Charlie Stross | February 23, 2008 23:24 14: Via Making Light, here is your weekly ration of stigmata-afflicted vagina bears. Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) | February 23, 2008 23:26 15: I'm glad you told us about that, Marilee. Charlie might have gone on to write that story without remembering the context of the quote, and we all know how nasty Charlie's imagination can get ("Antibodies", "A Colder War", "Missle Gap"; need I go on?). I was afraid we'd end up with something like Sturgeon's "The Professor's Teddy Bear", only scarier. Almost 50 years after I read that story I still occasionally have bad dreams about it; rather not have to go through that again. Dave Hutchinson | February 24, 2008 00:17 16: Charlie@14 - hmm. You really need to get some sleep... Charlie Stross | February 24, 2008 00:24 17: Bruce @15: what makes you think that knowing where I got the sentence from will defuse it? Little ticking meme bombs ... Dave @16: Can't sleep ... the clowns will get me ... Dave Hutchinson | February 24, 2008 00:26 18: You've got the clowns too, huh? I thought it was just me... Dave Hutchinson | February 24, 2008 00:40 19: Actually, while we're both fighting off the clowns, I wanted to ask, why didn't `Something Sweet' find its way into Toast? I'm not complaining, you understand, it just seemed a strange ommission. M. Werner | February 24, 2008 00:41 20: I'm trying to picture the face of the commanding officer when the troopers pulled in with a truckload of dwarves... Anyone remember the rather distasteful X-files episode with the Indian dwarf who entered the country INSIDE his victim? Mike | February 24, 2008 03:44 21: @18. Clowns everywhere. I have a recurring nightmare of Carly Simon singing "I had some dreams they were clowns in my coffin/You're insane/You probably think this song's out to get you/..." Soni | February 24, 2008 03:56 22: Don't worry - keeping the meat wet prevents the clowns from coming in. And even if they do get in, the soil trails will confuse them and lead them out to the truck. Where the exhumed plants will get them... Andrew G. | February 24, 2008 04:43 23: That sentence ties in nicely with my fear of Teddy Ruxpin. Alan Kellogg | February 24, 2008 07:52 24: I was thinking of the other kind of teddy when I remembered a bit I pulled on some people in a game of Tunnels and Trolls. Evil cult's temple, ladies temple robes, maleficent mutation producing vampire cloaks. taking this to the present day we get... Heroine's best friend finds a tatty old teddy, is over come by the urge to put on said teddy. She declines in health and vigor and weight as the teddy improves in appearance. The worse she gets the better the teddy gets. Best friend dies. Heroine is given teddy, fights off urge to put teddy on. Until... Pulls herself together, takes teddy off, finds that regular clothes are now too dang itchy and scratchy to be tolerated. Unless she wears the teddy. Can she defeat the gruesome garb before she gives in again? Will she find a way to do her weekly shopping at the grocery without causing a fuss? How many threads do her cotton sheets need per inch until they stop giving her a rash? Complication; Her eight year old daughter puts on the teddy in a game of dress-up. (I'm evil, you need to ask?) Francois | February 24, 2008 08:47 25: Speaking of teddy bears smelling odd, Something Positive had a week-long story starting here: http://somethingpositive.net/sp03052005.shtml derek | February 24, 2008 08:51 26: I'm getting more and more into the habit of using Google as my URL of first resort when I want to provide context, e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=spime+object This is not because I hate Wikipedia: quite the opposite, it's because I'm tired of the endless entitlement tantrums wikipedia.com gets from "customers" dissatisfied with some aspect of the free ice cream. This way takes the pressure off wikipedia, as nobody ever blubs wah! wah! Google downgraded that article I like! Plus, if there is a popular Wikipedia article, it will likely appear near the top in a Google search anyway. Ben | February 24, 2008 09:25 27: That Dyatlov incident reminds me of this one really neat SF story I read where the Soviets were using weaponised shoggoths. I can't remember who wrote it now... The freakiest detail is the girl's missing tongue. Alex Fiennes | February 24, 2008 10:48 28: @9: Link for SAC based GPS project for cows: http://openscotland.gov.uk/Topics/Research/15597/SAC2006CPb Connie | February 24, 2008 13:49 29: Yes, Charlie, you SHOULD crack on with The Revolution Business...mutter grumble cliffhanger mutter sniff.... Alex | February 24, 2008 14:15 30: 23: That sentence ties in nicely with my f… truncated (13,860 more characters in archive)