[extropy-chat] a futurist prediction

[Emlyn]

Hi Brett, long time no email. How's the big wide world treating you?
I've replied to your email inline below.

On 25/08/05, Brett Paatsch <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> Emlyn wrote:
> 
> > FWIW, I haven't been overly bugged by all this twentycen partisan
> > political crapola, because I'm using gmail. It's inherently threaded,
> > so the tech threads have a 2 or 3 next to them (number of posts) while
> > the political ones have numbers that are 50+ sometimes, but the
> > threading keeps it contained; I see them as equal weighted, rather
> > than being swamped by the political stuff.
> 
> When you say its "inherently threaded" I don't follow. How are
> incoming posts from say the Exi-chat list "inherently threaded" so that
> you can read just the tech stuff if you want and avoid the political
> stuff if you don't?

I've attached three pictures of my gmail user interface. The first one
is the main screen, the second one is where I've clicked on a thread
and you can see the unread message at the end of the thread, the third
is where I've clicked on the thread message list higher up and then
selected an old post to view. Note in the first pictures that emails
are grouped by subject, with a number of posts next to each one. It's
really simple and surprisingly usable. Actually it's the best email
interface I've ever used. It's not very customisable, but I haven't
found that I've needed to customise it so far.

> 
> As you know Emlyn, I have an IT degree, but I *still* forget or don't
> keep track of all the features of all the bits of software. Most of what
> I hear I have to discount as salesy blah blah from people who haven't
> got much of a clue themselves. At least until the time I get irked enough
> by some limitation to formulate a plan to learn and listen to some of
> them asking what I want to know, not what they want to tell me. There
> isn't time to check everything. But if you, who likes this stuff are getting
> value from it, its probably pretty damn good (at least for what your
> doing with it ;-).

I hear you absolutely. I have enough technofetish to investigate new
things, but I am very lazy too, and I am the world's worst
administrator. Most techies I know wont use gmail because they run
their own mail servers, etc etc etc. But although I know how to do all
that stuff, I refuse to because I don't have a 24x7 server
infrastructure at home, and have no hope in hell of achieving one.
These days I even find Microsoft Word too annoying because I'm always
using different machines with different installations of software,
often not controlled by me.

So, I prefer web applications to desktop applications. They have a
drawback that they absolutely require you to be online, but I've made
it my business to satisfy that requirement. Their benefits are zero
installation, being available everywhere, being run by people who are
usually excellent administrators, and usually being free.

My favourite obviously is google, but my next favourite is gmail, best
email system I've ever had, no hassles, almost non-existent learning
curve, huge capacity.

And if this is ever relevant to you, my next favourite is the Yahoo
calendar; it's a really excellent web based schedule, which you can
keep private or share with people as you see fit. You can also combine
in other people's schedules if you want to see them inline with yours,
and you can set up email or sms alerts for important events in your
schedule. And again, it's free.

> 
> > And I get practically no junk mail, and it's extremely reliable, and
> > the ads are ignorable or actually relevant (the same as with a google
> > search, small print on the right side of the screen), and the
> > interface is excellent, and the capacity now grows continuously
> > (pushing 2.5gb last time I looked), and it's free. If anyone wants an
> > invite, just ask :-)
> 
> Thats an invite to gmail, again, or an invite to something else? I took
> your gmail invite and I think I lost my gmail account, or perhaps didn't,
> because I wasn't ready, it wasn't important enough to me, to take the
> time to make the change.
> 

I mean an invite to gmail. I'll send you another one; they are really
easy to come by these days (for example, I have 50 at all times it now
appears), and you can use it if you want to.

> I reckon a lot of Exi-chat posters are like me. Smart but lazy. Looking
> for the easy way. Budgetting time, in a way, like most people budget
> money, because time, is also precious, and the serious thinking we like
> to do, but we don't like to waste it on trivial administrative stuff.

That laziness is extremely important; it's actually, as you've said, a
response to a strong demands on one's time. All the applications I
favour are on the quick & easy side of the fence, rather than super
configurable but complex (which suck up all your time for dubious
returns).

I've committed myself to learning more about the Linux and open source
worlds recently, which can only really be done one way - by immersion.
The most annoying thing about it is that the Linux world is all about
complex & super configurable, which means huge learning curves &
massive time investment. I'm trying to push through it because I think
the Open Source / Free Software has discovered some really interesting
and relatively new ways of organising collaborative creative effort.
But the cost of penetrating that world is very high...

> 
> Funny thing is one persons trivial administrative stuff is anothers living
> and passion.

My passion is building software, making music, and all things
transhuman. The administrative side of computers is definitely not a
passion, it's something I mostly loathe, and I continue to search for
ways to make it an unnecessary evil. Web apps (the new breed of really
excellent ones) seem to be a major part of the solution.

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *