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for crackheads
Tuesday, September 19 2000
For want of a better messaging system, most of the tech types at my company use AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). It works rather well, but occasionally it's conducive to mindless chit-chat and emoticon abuse (AIM happily translates the text forms into cutesy-pie graphics). Today, in the calm aftermath of a particularly protracted bout of server problem solving (also known as "fire-fighting"), Julian (the youthful Operations Manager) and I were going back and forth with titles for a hypothetical "For Crackheads" self-help book series. "Piano for Crackheads," I wrote. "Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Crackheads" responded Julian. Back and forth we went, culminating with my suggestion of "Lemonade Manufacture and Retail for Young Urban Crackheads."
Later Julian sent a list of fellow techies a link to a story about the "ultimate laptop." It's a bit of whimsy informed more by high-energy theoretical physics than computational theory. The most interesting concept in the story was the equation of information with entropy. I'd never thought of it that way, but (if one allows that noise is information too) it makes perfect sense. My favorite line from the piece was in regard to how a black hole might be used as a computer, "This is a one-off computer, exploding with the answer to its calculation."
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