Bear, Greg - A Seamless Future

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A SEAMLESS FUTURE

Spreadsheets at the Fifth Decade

I'm eighty and sitting alone in a room. I've never been much of a mathematician, preferring to dabble

rather than to plunge deep into the discipline. But I'm experiencing a kind of math unknown to even the

most brilliant before my generation. I'm navigating through what might have once been called a

"spreadsheet," a space where objects perform like numbers; the algebras and calculuses of non-number

data is a sea I can swim in. Number plays a small part too; Amy, my home thinker, relegates number to a

side channel I seldom notice.

Images drop from the thinker space I share, results made up as picts--meaning-packed icons that can

change and flow to suit my needs and my questions. I wish to understand the present state of the

economy of greater metropolitan Seattle to decide whether to shift assets into tax-free bonds. The

resulting pict--a three-dimensional creature more bear than bull, its horns sporting a yellow CAUTION!

SLOW road sign--is green with red edges. When I ask for the thinker's best guess, the first pict

reappears, telling me that the investment is "Maximal within four years given predicted downturn."

My own finances occupy a small part of the thinker's time. The thinker is plugged into a good many

sources and draws conclusions round the clock.

I pull out of thinker space and look through my office window across small, blue, sparkling Martha

Lake. I've lived here for forty-five years, and only in the past ten have I personally been able to chart the

lake's health with the aid of my "spreadsheet" and home thinker. Object algebra collates all the lake's

characteristics; sensors implanted by Northwest Joint Water Authority (bond rating maximal, blue bull

icon with green edges) tell me what I want to know. The lake is in good shape, but somebody's old

septic system has failed. Detergent and bacteria counts are up. The thinker correlates pollution and

location and posits a particular home address as the likely source. I wonder who would still resort to

bacterial sewage disposal when compact nano systems are so much cheaper and easier to maintain...

The thinker contacts that address, but there is no answer. Someone will have to go knock on a door.

I need to experience solid reality after an hour in thinker space. I volunteer to go for a walk and alert the

neighbor. These folks might be a bit behind the times. They would probably feel confused if a fully

equipped city arbeiter--a mechanical worker--came tracking up to their door.

As I walk, I try to think back to the years before nano and neural net thinkers, to put myself in the frame

of mind of a recalcitrant neighbor.

I bought my first computer in 1983, and learned how to use a Supercalc spreadsheet shortly thereafter. I

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Bear, Greg - A Seamless Future

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