File Formats

My first efforts of writing fiction was on a Commodore 64 – and even if I had any of its floppies, I couldn’t read the discs, nor would I have a word processing program to read the files.  When I got a PC I bought Word Perfect, but that was many PCs ago, and I’ve since converted those files to Word.  If I live to be 100 (1951) will I still be able to read those files?  If by a miracle I do live a century I’m pretty sure I’ll be a sentimental old slob who cries over his ancient snapshots.  Will I be able to find the ones I want and still view them?  Is it .jpg forever?  I’ve been buying audiobooks from Audible.com since 2002, will I still have my audiobook library to play in 2051?  Or all the Kindle books I’m buying now?

Standard file formats are critical to long-term preservation of data.  How long will Amazon maintain the DRM copy protection on my Kindle books and Audible audiobooks?

Data Migration

I’ve lost count how many computers I’ve own after eleven.  Every time I get a new computer I need to move all my files over and that’s a pain.  I’m always making a new folder and throwing stuff in it, so the number of files I’m saving constantly grows, and every few years I try to clean things out and it’s a big job.  Usually when I get a new computer I just copy everything in My Documents to the new My Documents folder.  But what if I got a Mac?  Or what if in 2022 they come out with some far out new computer system?

File Organization

If you start with one folder, and organize your digital life into sub-folders, what is the best structure?  I sure wished that iTunes hadn’t put ripped audio books into My Music years ago, because that’s causing problems moving my music to the cloud.   Is there a way to plan for future snafus?

Is there an optimal structure that will stand the test of time.  By structure, I mean folder organization.

\Jim Harris

\Audio Books

\Data

\Ebooks

\Mind Maps

\Music

\Numbers

\PDF

\Photos

\Words

\Essays

\Fiction

\Videos

Let’s imagine a future where we have federally regulated data banks like we have money banks and we can trust them implicitly.  In this future, data bank replicates our data in layers of backups, that for anything short of Armageddon, will be completely secure.  Should we put all our data in one place?  In the above chart I could remove \Music because I have my music stored at Google, Amazon and Apple.  I could also remove \Photos because of Picasaweb.  I could also remove \Audio Books and \Ebooks because of Amazon.

Because we don’t have data banks and because my cloud storage is limited at Dropbox and SkyDrive, I will let those other companies maintain my media files.  But if we did have trustworthy data banks, I’d probably want all my content in one location, which means precise organization is important if I’m collecting files for life.

Data Inheritance

There is another thing to consider – what happens when we die?  When our parents die we inherit their papers, books, records, photos and so on.  Won’t we do the same things with digital files?  When I die I want my file structure copied over to my wife’s data bank, and if I wanted, I’d like to give copies to all interested relatives and friends too.  Having a well organize file structure would make it easier for people to go through my digital processions.

Cloud of the Future

Someday we will have data banks.  We might even have laws that require our data to be saved for historians.  Can you imagine scholars from 2782 AD trying to research our times?  I saw a wonderful show on Nova last night, “Mysteries of a Masterpiece” about art historians working to validate a work of art as Leonardo da Vinci.  The scientists had lots of physical artifacts to examine.  If our world goes digital, what will future researchers have to figure out how we lived?

Moving to the cloud is the first step towards this future where we have data banks and preserving digital data for all time.

JWH – 1/26/12

However, if you own a computer and a tablet, or a computer, smartphone and tablet, then reading about Evernote and Dropbox might be worth a few minutes of your time.  If you’re like me and juggle a lot of devices then learning to squirrel your digital crap all over the cloud becomes more vital.  At home I have both a Windows and Linux desktop, at work I have Windows, Linux and Mac desktops, and between the two locations I have an iPod touch and iPad 2.

What a pain it is to think of something you want and realize you left it in your other computer.  Moving to the cloud is in its early stages, so 100% tried and true solutions are in the future.  As society evolves towards the day when internet access has five nines of uptime, 99.999%, then we can develop a new paradigm of trusting our files to the cloud, and that will be the difference between life before personal computers and life after them.

Although I’d like to be a cyborg and meld my brain with silicon I’m not quite there yet, but I do think of the Internet as my auxiliary brain and that presents some problems.  Before the Internet going to work meant leaving my main auxiliary brain at home – how inconvenient.   Sure, someone invented the laptop and it was a good idea at the time, but it was only a stopgap solution.  After we got smartphones and tablets it became pretty obvious trying to sync all our crap between every device we owned was a losing battle.  The solution was to put all digital kipple in one location and then let all the machines, big and small, fetch what we needed from that primary storage.

What this means is the cloud is our new auxiliary memory and the machine we use is less important.  The old fanboy battle between PC versus Mac becomes silly.  If I can read my docs, listen to my music and look at my photos from any device, does it matter how big or small it is, or who made it, or even who owns it?  Instant access is what counts.  Memories are best served fast.

When the cloud becomes our digital memory deciding how to organize memories becomes significant.  I’m playing with two tools, Dropbox and Evernote.  Both are free to use with an introductory amount of cloud space, but fill up your cloud attic, and you’ll have to pay for more space for your white elephants.  That’s cool, but I haven’t committed to either one yet because I’m still evaluating how they store my memories.  I’ll probably buy into both, but I haven’t decided.

Dropbox is like having a hard drive in the cloud.  You create folders and store whatever kind of files you want.  It’s very computer centric.   When you join you get 2gb of free space.  If you convince a friend to join they give you another 250mb of space.  If you get enough friends to join you can get up to 8gb of free space, but after that you rent larger blocks of space.  By the way, if you join from this link I’ll earn some extra space.

Evernote is different, it’s database centric.  Evernote is a free-form database where you leave notes, either ones you type, or ones you email via a smartphone, or clip from the web, or cut and paste from your own computer documents.  You can even embed PDF files.  If you spend $45 a year, upgrading to the Premium version, gets you more memory processing features and more storage space.

The neat thing about Evernote is being able to search your collection of notes.  Since I’m getting old and the access speed on my biological memory has become erratic, untrustworthy and slow, having cloud base memory with search is nifty indeed.  Because Evernote is a free-form database, throw your data in any old way, it doesn’t matter, and let search find it for you.  You can be as sloppy or neat as your personality.

Both programs install as programs on your computers, work from web apps, or install as apps on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

I can access Evernote and Dropbox from my PC, Mac, Linux, iPad, and iPod touch.  If I think of something I want to remember, or read something I want to remember, I can choose to remember it the old way, or I can memorize it in my auxiliary memory.

JWH – 1/24/12

I started storing content on the net with Gopher and began developing web pages when Mosaic came out.  I’ve always kept my favorite bookmarks on a file I coded in HTML and used it as my home page in all my browsers.  I had set up iGoogle years ago but never really committed to it because I loved my own homely home page.

This morning I started playing iGoogle again and decided to make it my home page for Chrome.  Chrome is my default browser at home, but I also use IE 9, FireFox and on rare occasions Safari.

We’re all moving to the cloud.  Some people might not know it yet, but we’re all moving to the cloud.  Any device with a IP address is on the Internet.  Programs and content stored on devices you own are local.  If you store you primary copy of data off your local device you’re living in the cloud.  Most people find that scary.  I do too, although I’m willing to give it a try, so I’m moving my data to the cloud but I’m keeping backups local.  Think of me as a belt and suspenders man, at least for now.

I’m going to write a series of posts about living in the cloud and review programs and services that I find worthwhile.  My first step is exploring Google’s cloud offerings.  I’ve already put my songs in Google Music.  I can play them on my PCs, Mac and Linux boxes at work and home, and on my iPod touch and iPad.  I’ve also started uploading my photos to Picasa’s online storage.

The thing about moving to the cloud is committing to a company that hosts the servers.  The big choices now are Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.  The first three also have their own browsers.  (Maybe Amazon should align itself with FireFox.)  I have content with all four companies, and moving to the cloud implies I expect these companies to stay in business for the rest of my life.  I’m not sure which company will become my primary cloud home, but I’m going to test them all.

I’m starting with Google, and to show my commitment I’m setting iGoogle as my default home page.  It allows me to customize my home page extensively with a variety of widgets.  Here’s my first effort.

Because Google is pushing Google+, it’s revamped it’s many separate tools into a toolbar that Googlifies everything. 

From this home page I can search Google and Wikipedia, click on links to my favorite sites, see Gmail, RSS feeds, weather info, do math, get driving directions, search YouTube, and every thirty seconds be visually reminded of a different moment of the past.  Plus, I have a pull-down menu to a vast array of other Google features.  If I click on the photo it takes me to Picasa web, where I can click on a photo edit button that brings up the wonders of Picnik photo editing.   All the companies that Google has bought over the years is finally coming together in one command center. 

Oddly enough, there’s no widget for Google Music.  Google needs to add a Google Music Player widget.  If I kept my Chrome window opened to full-screen I could even use 4 columns of widgets.  iGoogle provides very flexible screen layout options and colorful themes. 

iGoogle is a cloud portal tool, a feature that Microsoft, Amazon and Apple don’t have, and puts them at a disadvantage.  This matters a lot if you’re using multiple computers, and too a lesser degree if you’re using smartphones and tablets.  I have a PC, HTPC and Linux workstation at home, and a PC, Mac and Linux workstation at work, plus I have two mobile devices, an iPod touch and iPad.  This provides a tremendous incentive to put my digital possessions  in the cloud.  My photos and music are available to all my devices at any location.

I have Microsoft Office on my PCs and Mac, and have a nice Outlook client on my iPod and iPad, and hope to have Office apps on my iPad soon.  I’m very Microsoft centric when it comes to productivity programs, and Microsoft offers various Live apps that are starting to compete with Google’s cloud tools, but it doesn’t have a portal like iGoogle.  I can store photos on SkyDrive but it’s not the same.  Microsoft has no cloud music like Amazon and Apple does.  But it is obvious that Microsoft is getting serious about the cloud.

Amazon and Apple are really lacking when it comes to furnishing a cloud home base.  They are more like mini-storage rental sites, where they will keep all my junk.  Amazon’s portal is it’s front page, and Apple’s portal is iCloud, but it’s home page is very limited compared to iGoogle.  (How did Apple let Google have the i-name?)  Apple assumes people live on their iPhone, iPad and iMac, and everything else doesn’t matter, but I’m not ready to ditch Windows, Linux and Android.

iGoogle isn’t slick like Apple products.  It’s not even as slick as Microsoft programming.  I’m hoping some of the technology they bought with Picnik might jazz up Google’s cloud apps in the future.  iGoogle is good for people who want to work over the widest range of platforms.  If you’re a Apple true believer, it won’t matter.  If you’re totally devoted to Amazon and Kindle, it might not matter.  But if you live in a world of PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, then it’s well worth a look.

Not only does living in the cloud offer cross-platform sharing of data, it also backs up data.  If your house burns down, your digital belongings are in the cloud.  Eventually I want to replicate my data across two or more cloud servers to have even more protection, in case one company goes out of business or suffers a prolong outage.  Switching to iGoogle is just the start.

JWH – 1/22/12

iBooks Author can revolutionize education but not for textbook publishers.  iBooks Author looks so easy to use that kids could use it.  Apple got the purpose of iBooks Author back-asswards.  It’s not for creating textbooks for kids – it’s a program for kids to create textbooks.

Learn by teaching – that’s where it’s at.  Instead of requiring school kids to read textbooks, we should require school children to write their own textbooks.  And with some extra support this could be a totally new educational paradigm.

If we gave kids stock portfolios of photos, videos, illustrations, graphs and told them their assignment for the year in each subject was to create their own textbook, using their words and provided multimedia, would they learn more by doing instead of reading?  Teach them to take content from wherever as long as they rewrite it in their own words.  Teach them the same rules non-fiction writers follow to be professional, legal and ethical.   Homework is writing the textbook, not reading it.  The content is out there to find in libraries, books, magazines, on the net, or by interviews.  They just need to shape what they learn in a persuasive way, and develop their own lesson plans, activities and end of chapter questions.

Let’s say we have a class of 8^th graders studying American History. Not only will they learn history, but writing, research,  grammar, punctuation, publishing, graphic design, rhetoric, lesson plans, and so on. Wouldn’t they learn more than just reading a text book on American history? Wouldn’t it be more fun?

There are problems.  We have to make sure students don’t just cut and paste from the Internet. And we have to teach them about intellectual property rights. The Internet is full of multimedia they could steal, but that’s not the message we want to teach. We should teach them the problems faced by editors and writers, like dealing with plagiarism, libel, fact checking, writing level, target audience, and more.  All they need is access to portfolios of legal stock multimedia.

Students studying literature could use Project Guttenberg to create their own anthologies and write introductions, study guides and annotations.  Wouldn’t math be more fun if you could write your own textbook that used real world examples you care about, like The Mathematics of Interplanetary Flight.  Imagine being in school and one of your assignments is to develop a textbook called Nine Decades of Popular American Music?  I always had a hard time remembering the rules of grammar – would I have done better if I had to write them into a textbook with my own favorite examples?

Try and imagine the world of 2025 where the high school graduation requirement is the authorship of 24 textbooks.  Imagine starting college having written 24 textbooks!

JWH – 1/21/12

Who are we talking to?  Ourselves, of course.  But we’d like to think that someone is listening.  That’s why people believe in a personal God – to have a listener, to not be alone.  Lonely kids make up imaginary friends, well adults make up God.   We don’t like to be alone in the universe.  Nor do we like to be helpless.  The desire for an all-powerful, caring, father figure is completely understandable.  Even if he’s going to let us suffer and die, we want someone to talk to.

On the other hand, are we really alone in our heads?  We tend to think of our thoughts as ourselves, but if you observe closely, they aren’t.  Descartes, “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am” is another illusion.  Pay close attention to your thoughts and you’ll realize the quality you feel as Me is actually listening to your thoughts.  The Me observer is so close to the thoughts that it thinks its doing the thinking.  Stare at something and not think, and then watch when a thought arises.  There is a separation.  In other words, you aren’t alone.  It’s you and your thoughts.  The observer and thinker.

Animals are observers like us, but without thoughts, or a thinker.

Now here’s the kicker.  It’s the thinker that needs to talk. It’s the thinker that needs to communicate with God.  If you just BE and turn off your thoughts you’re just an observer, there is no God, or even desire.  It’s the thinker that wants, that desires, that creates God, and all the other stuff, like mathematics, history, philosophy, justice, love, etc.  It’s the observer who is aware, who is conscious, and who dies.

So, why does the thinker want to create God?  Why does the thinker need this imaginary friend?  Before awareness in animals there was no observers of reality.  Hydrogen became stars without notice.  Animals perceive reality through an infinity of senses.  Animals can feel the warmth of the sun without knowing what it is, because they don’t have language to think.

Then we came along and started thinking.  Thoughts see things that don’t exist in reality.  Thoughts see other thoughts.

Why? 

Our thinking minds are quite creative.  It’s my thinking mind writing this now.  And my Me-ness observes that.

Children create imaginary beings to have someone to talk to.  We create God to have someone to talk to. 

What we really want is another thinker to talk to.

JWH – 1/21/12

Having the label “spinal stenosis” gave me something to research on the Internet, and generally I found the same recommendations to hold on off surgery for as long as possible – but with reasons why.  Many people ended up worse after surgery.  I even watched videos of surgical techniques for spinal stenosis.  Mucking around so close to the spine scares me.  By the way, how do surgeons know what they seeing, body parts aren’t color coded like in books and the old Illustrated Man model.

I decided to bide my time and see if new surgical techniques would be developed.  A few months ago I started seeing sites on the Internet advertising laparoscopic surgery that promised miracles for spinal stenosis sufferers, so I set up another appoint with my doctor.  I was hoping he’d have good news.  He said microsurgery was still surgery and warned me that a lot of places made a business off of selling procedures and they might not work for me.

The time I can spend standing and walking has greatly diminished.  I’m now down to 15-30 minutes.  My doctor said before I thought about surgery I needed to try a nerve block shot, but also said I was controlling my pain so well with PT that I could still put that off too.  I asked him if I could go back to walking after a shot, and he seemed iffy.  He thought a shot would extend my standing and walking time but it would wear off in months.  I asked him how they worked, and he said they reduced the inflammation in the nerves near the stenosis sites.

My doctor and internet sites warned not to do surgery until I was facing a quality of life issue.  That’s sort of vague.  I can go to work, but I can’t walk between buildings.  I can’t do much shopping.  I don’t want to go on vacations.  However, I’m a bookworm and TV watcher, so I’m reasonably comfortable for that.  I’m surviving without pain by walking a razor’s edge with physical therapy and not aggravating my back by standing or walking too long.  I could risk the surgery, but what if it causes permanent pain of another type?  Right now my feet and legs go numb and I have other weird sensations, and sometimes my back tightens, but I’m not suffering real pain.  I’ve been there, so I know.

If I had surgery how many holes, passages and paths would have to be widen?  And how long will it be before they fill in again?  I’m really fighting arthritis.  Are there ways to fight arthritis in general?

I also got to thinking about inflammation.  If steroids shots would reduce inflammation why wouldn’t other things do the same thing?

My doctor did tell me something that I totally wasn’t expecting but I should have.   He said arthritis was now affecting my L4 and L1 vertebras too.  So things were getting worse.  I didn’t ask, but did that mean I’d need multiple surgeries?

That’s the thing about this condition.  I have a hard time picturing it.  I haven’t seen the MRI or X-rays.  I have seen photos on the net but they aren’t me and they aren’t specific.  I would like to visualize how arthritis degenerates the spine.  I did find this at AAOS.org.  The caption said, “When we are young, disks have a high water content (left). As disks age and dry out, they may lose height or collapse (right). This puts pressure on the facet joints and may result in arthritis.”

This explanation doesn’t explain why steroid nerve blocks would help, but it makes me wonder if inversion tables would?  It also makes me wonder if there are diets to help stop the degeneration, or foods that make it worse.  I am overweight, so I also wonder if losing weight would help, I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t, but two doctors have said it wouldn’t.  The trouble is I’ve been trying to lose weight for half my life and haven’t succeeded.

I also wondered if chiropractic techniques would help.  Physical therapy exercises have saved me from years of pain.  I can limit the pain to almost nothing with daily exercises, and that might be the same as what a chiropractor could do.  The trouble is the arthritis is also building up deposits that squeeze the spine, and squeezes the nerves branching from the spine to my legs, which I don’t think would be reduced by manipulation or exercise, unless exercise reduces inflammation, or causes the nerves to rub against the arthritic growths and kept it from expanding.  But that’s just me wondering, I have no evidence of that.

But I do have a lot of questions, especially for people who have this condition.  I’d like to hear from people who have had surgery, of any type, and people who used chiropractors or other alternative medical techniques.  Do inversion tables help?  Got any diet tips?

I know I need to lose some weight to see if that can help.  I wish I could be as disciplined with my weight loss as I’ve been with my PT exercises.  I need a diet that is non-inflammatory in general, causes weight loss, and is anti-arthritic.  I bought a Bow-Flex to see if more exercise and stronger exercises would help.  All my life I ran or walked for exercise and I can do neither now.  I should swim, but that ain’t in the cards.

I’ve known since I was a kid that getting old means breaking down physically, but I always pictured it happening fast.  I never pictured not being able to walk – I always pictured dying of a heart attack.  When I was at the Campbell Clinic I saw lots of people that looked much worse than me, some were in wheel chairs.  In recent years I’ve noticed old people having trouble walking, the ones with canes, or wheelchairs, or those little scooters.  I’ve seen a lot of people struggle just to go out to eat or or see a movie.  I suppose there are even more that stay at home.  There are millions of people worse off than me, and the thing is I need to pay attention to them, because they are my role models and trail blazers.

Unless I find a miracle cure, and I will try, I’m starting to see my future much differently than I ever imagined it.

JWH – 1/18/12

Friday at work, I overheard three students arguing about the K named people.   When two left, I asked the remaining young woman, and she smiled and kindly explained they were people who were paid to be famous.  “Umm…  They do that now?” I wasn’t so clueless that I hadn’t notice tabloids exclaiming gossipy stories about K named women at the checkout.  Something about an expensive wedding and a marriage gone bad in 72 days.

Today I looked up the name Kardashian on Wikipedia and found out about their television show.  Even when I had cable I never watched E!.  I really don’t need to know any more about the Kardashians than I do now, and would not recognize one if I saw one.

This amuses me and I chuckle at my own cluelessness.  To the young, knowledge of the famous is a sanity check.  Not knowing the glitterati often gets me a sneer or sarcasm, that tells me I’m out of touch with reality and implying I’m over that famous hill.  I turned 60 last year, and I can’t name the young people who are currently famous as movie stars, TV stars, sport stars, and I would stay rock stars, but is rock is even famous anymore?  I’m just now memorizing Kate Winslet’s name and I saw Titanic twice at the theaters – for the shipwreck.

My pop culture education grades took a nose dive when I gave up cable TV and quit reading TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly.  I do read The Rolling Stone on my iPad, so I know a few new groups, but I had to buy two Arcade Fire albums before I could remember their damn name, and I still can’t remember any of their dang song titles.  Starting in my late 40s, and all through my 50s, I’ve been losing the ability to remember nouns – so maybe that’s why I lost interest in pop culture.  Following the famous requires noun memorization.

I know who Kay Francis and Robert Montgomery were, and I doubt millions of young people do – so there!  Who is clueless now?

Luckily, forgetting doesn’t hurt.  Oh, it’s annoying when I struggle to recall a name I used to know, but it doesn’t hurt.  And it’s not even embarrassing at work when young people make fun of me for not knowing the people they worship.  I remember being 13 and baffled by parents, aunts, uncles and teachers that reveal their low IQ by not knowing The Byrds and Robert Heinlein.

The 21st century is so passé, the 19th century is where it’s at.  My new idols are Anthony Trollope, Louise May Alcott, John Singer Sargent, Edith Wharton, Charles Darwin, … so back under my rock.

JWH – 1/16/12

In Ready Player One people are happy to live in a virtual reality that lets them escape the bleak actual reality.  The United States at mid-21st century is still in today’s recession.  In The Hunger Games, the 22nd century U.S. has collapsed and a new government has formed that’s nothing like what we have today.  In The Windup Girl corporations are even more powerful and the negative effects of technology even more pervasive.  If you combined the speculation in The Windup Girl with Ready Player One they have probably foreseen a future closer to what will happen than what Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov imagined.

There’s little reason to picture the super-science futures of modern space opera happening at all, and at least not any time soon.  By soon, I mean before the year 3000.  And what about what Robert J. Sawyer imagined for us in his WWW Trilogy?  How close is IBM’s Watson to Webmind?

I grew up believing the future would be what Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov showed us.  How do teens see the future today?  A generation ago kids imprinted on Star Wars, but is their faith still firm in that galactic empire fantasy?  Not if they are paying attention to reality.  Ignoring global warming offers plenty of addictive delusions, but really, what science fiction do today’s teens read to see their future in 50 years?  That would be a great topic for a SF Signal Mind Meld.  Is it dark or bright?

Fifty years ago I was ten and all excited about the Mercury program, waiting for Gemini and Apollo.  My early teen years were filled with science fiction books and The Jetsons, Lost in Space and Star Trek on TV.  The future was so bright we had to wear mirrored shades.  As a high school kid I was absolutely positive I’d be watching men and women walking on Mars by 1980 – instead I got MTV and an Atari 400.

Do today’s kids see the future through rose colored glasses?  Do they realize the 1% has already stolen their future by refusing to allow America to work on the problem of global warming, guaranteeing a life like The Windup Girl?  The effects of global warming won’t end our world, but it will but the kibosh on Star Trek and Star Wars space age dreams.

JWH – 1/15/12

I wish I could understand why this book was so much fun to read!  I’d use the formula to write bestsellers.  This story reminds me of a hip new version of Citizen Kane that doesn’t take itself so seriously.  Set in mid 21st century, aging billionaire James Halliday dies leaving a rather unique Last Will and Testament.  Halliday made his fortune developing a virtual reality universe called OASIS that most people use to attend school, work and play in because the real reality is rather bleak.  Halliday’s avatar tells the world he’s worth over $200 billion and that the first person to find his Easter Egg in the OASIS will win his fortune and company.

Now this gets the attention of the world’s foremost video gamers, as well as corporations hot to own the OASIS.  Our story begins with Wade Watts, a poor kid living in the trailer park from hell, whose only access to OASIS comes from his public school gear, but in his own 21st century Horatio Alger, Jr. way climbs out of poverty to compete with legendary gamers.

The contest designed by Halliday is hard, so hard that no one gets anywhere for five years.  It becomes obvious that the clues are hidden in Halliday’s childhood, just like Charles Foster Kane’s secrets, and only the most obsessed fans of 1980s trivia have any chance of solving the puzzles.  Ready Player One is perfect for people who grew up in the 1980s, but the story is so well told bookworms from any decade will love it.

I wonder how many people born forty years after the the 1980s will ever find our times so fascinating?  It would be like me devoting my whole life to the 1910s – but wait, I am madly in love with Downton Abbey.  And just look at the success of Steampunk!

This might be the clue to Cline’s success – creating great characters set in an fantastically detailed milieu, because if we had an OASIS system to visit, I think we all would find virtual worlds based on the past quite seductive.  Nostalgia is a powerful emotion.  At work the favorite topic of guys my age is music from the 1960s and 1970s.  I’m in a classic science fiction book club where we read and reread books from the 1940s-1970s.  Start paying attention to movies (Hugo, Sherlock Holmes, TinTin, War Horse) as more are set in the past.  Maybe it’s the bad economic times and we just need escapism.  Ready Player One sure made me forget about now.

Other Reviews and Sites – probably to read after reading the book

• BoingBoing (with 27 minute Cline video interview-spoilers)
• New York Times (rave reviews with lots of details)
• Facebook page for Ready Player One
• Ernie’s Blog – lots of great RPO art

JWH – 1/12/12

Google+ has a few nifty new features, some a touch better than Facebook, but to make Google+ practical I’d need all my Facebook friends to move over to Google+ and that would be rude to ask.  Many people I know on Facebook are computer phobic, and it took them a long time to learn Facebook.  Getting them to switch would be cruel.

What to do?  What if Google+ is a superior tool?  What if we all move over to Google+ and Apple or Microsoft came out with an even better product?  Do hundreds of millions of people then move again to another new system?  Given time wouldn’t Facebook add the features we all want anyway?

Mike Elgan is fanatically campaigning for Google+  and currently 374,958 people have him in one of their circles.  Google+ definitely has more geek cred than Facebook, which makes me think I should use Facebook for people I know in real life and use Google+ as a geeky hangout for people I met over the Ethernet.

There are many things to consider.  Is social networking a fad?  Many pundits and friends have already abandon Facebook.  On the other hand, I can only imagine Facebook becoming better and more valuable over time.  Does that mean we should all stick with Facebook because of its initial momentum?  Are we already stuck with Facebook forever?

Mike Elgan claims Google+ can replace our email systems too and that Google+ can become a central hub for all kinds of communications Facebook doesn’t do and the average user doesn’t understand yet.  At least I don’t.

Which is more secure?  Which is more natural at organizing levels of relationships?  Which offers the most features I’d actually use?  Which is easier to use?  Which can be customized more?  And most important, which has fewer ads?  I hate ads.  I don’t have the answers, but I’m trying to find out.

And one last interesting tidbit.  Facebook isn’t indexed on search engines, whereas Google+ is indexed on Google, Bing and others.  Facebook is a closed system, and that’s appealing, I think.  Then again, should you ever put anything private and personal on any computer system?

JWH – 1/10/12