Roaming the Internet, Part 2

In his remarkable book, Marooned in Realtime, science fiction author Vernor Vinge postulated a world where universal networking and a rapid evolution in human-computer interfaces led to a "discontinuity." The people who were online when the discontinuity occurred--nearly the entire population of the earth--simply vanished into another plane of existence, while the few who happened to be isolated from the network for one reason or another at the crucial instant were left behind to ponder the mystery of an empty world. Vinge's latest book, A Fire Upon the Deep, foretells a much different future. A future where theInternet grows to embrace the galaxy, but, as Figure 1 illustrates, the limited bandwidths across interstellar distances and the difficulties of communication between alien species perpetuate text-based newsgroups little different from the ones we know today.

Of course, when news postings are shipped across gazillions of light-years, filtered through multiple AI translators, and stored in archives that outlast the races that created them, one is never quite sure what to believe:

The Known Net had existed in some form for billions of years in the Beyond. It was not a civilization, few civilizations lasted longer than a million years. But the records of the past were quite complete. Sometimes they were intelligible. More often, reading them involved translations of translations of translations, passed down from one defunct race to another with no one to corroborate--worse than any multihop net message could ever be.

The most important piece of information for potential users to know is that the resource is gigantic and is growing larger. If it were an eggplant, we'd be in real danger.

-- Steve Cavrak, University of Vermont

My flight wasn't until evening, so I had time to have lunch with Bob. We went to an old hangout, the Italian restaurant Pan Pan. Normally, I try to stick to Asian food while in Asia, but Pan Pan is an exception. The Italian food is excellent, and more importantly, they have excellent durian ice cream.

Durian is one of those mysteries of the East. On the outside, it's about twice the size of a pineapple, with very sharp spikes about a half-inch tall sticking out all over, making it advisable not to fall asleep under a durian tree at harvest time. Inside, there are a half dozen segments of creamy, pale flesh that looks sort of like a banana. The durian's most famous feature, however, is its powerful, distinctive smell.

The taste is great, but the smell does tend to dissuade many westerners from taking an immediate liking to the "king of fruits." I describe it as tasting something like a cross between a mushy banana and brie, but one Englishman I know refers to it as "a bit like eating strawberries and cream in a public lavatory."

 Crypto: 0
 As received by: Transceiver Relay03 at Relay
 Language path: Samnorks -> Triskeweline, SjK: Relay
 Units
 From: Straumli Main
 Subject: Archive opened in the Low Transcend!
 Summary: Our links to the Known Net will be
 down temporarily
 Key phrases: transcend, good news, business
 opportunities, new archive, communications problems
 Distribution:
 Where Are They Now Interest Group
 Homo Sapiens Interest Group

 Motley Hatch Interest Group
 Transceiver Relay03 at Relay
 Transceiver Windsong at Debley Down
 Transceiver Not-For-Long at Shortstop
 Date: 11:45:20 Docks Time, 01/09 of Org year 52089
 Text of message:
 We are proud to announce that a human exploration
 company from Straumli Realm has discovered an
 accessible archive in the Low Transcend... We have
 postponed this announcement until we were sure of our
 property rights and the safety of the archive. We
 have installed interfaces which should make the
 archive interoperable with standard syntax queries
 from the Net. In a few days this access will be made
 commercially available...