An Eternal Golden Braid

This picture, dear readers, is of your humble blogger playing drums in his high school rock band (we were going to conquer the world, but that dream is another story). Although this picture was taken over 30 years ago, I had never seen it until a few months ago when it arrived in an email from ... Baghdad.

My friend "Mike", bass player in the band, had an older brother "Jack" who was a photographer. He was hanging out with us snapping photos (35mm analog, of course) while we were jamming in a little lot downtown in 1973. He'd taken some pictures at previous gigs, but I had never seen these and had long forgotten about the event. Meanwhile, Jack joined up with the military shortly after high school. After a long career (including stints in both Gulf Wars), he retired from the military, signed up with a defense contractor, and headed back to Baghdad.

At any rate, before he headed back to Iraq he was cleaning out his garage and found these old photographs. He scanned them, brought them on a data key to Baghdad, and emailed them back to his brother who sent them on to me.

I can't quite describe the feelings brought up by having this picture of me in my carefree youth delivered from a war zone halfway around the world via email. The impact of this confluence of such disparate eras, places, technologies, and perspectives was just overwhelming. It was almost a visceral experience of the unity of matter and thought described by both mystics and quantum physicists - one of Hofstadter's Eternal Golden Braids, stretching across decades, continents, and consciousnesses. And here it is in a blog on the Web ... where will you take it next?

IBM's leap into virtuality

You know things are getting weird when IBM's CEO is spending a lot of quality time in virtual worlds, but here you go. Sam Palmisano boasts of having two Second Life avatars (button-down and casual). He's giving speeches not only in the real Forbidden City in Beijing, but in the fake Forbidden City IBM is building in SecLife.

So what is reality, boys and girls? You can go to Venice, or go to the fake Venice in Las Vegas, or go to the virtual Las Vegas in Second Life where you can find a virtual version of the real fake Venice in the real Las Vegas, or ... is this getting weird or what??

Meanwhile, IBM is investing time and money to hype a virtual world ... so they can sell more of the hardware, software and services that the creators of these worlds will need to keep up with the increased demand. Meanwhile, the virtual world becomes more and more like the real one (complete with corporate sponsors at every turn). I hate to come off as cranky, but if we're going to create whole new realities with no physical constraints, can't we be a little more, well, creative??

Welcome to As Worlds Collide

Greetings! I named this blog for the Seinfeld episode where George, upon seeing his hidden life with his girlfriend intersecting with his "normal" life with his friends despite all attempts to keep them separate, shouted in despair: "worlds are colliding!"

I'll be posting random musings on the intersections of social organization, the Web, politics, the arts, and more. As my subject matter is inherently chaotic and amorphous, I don't know what will come next, but am trusting in the laws of chaos that some coherent patterns may emerge. If you see them, let me know!