Thoughts in time and out of season...

As I was looking back at this mostly abandoned blog, I kind of liked the bit about predictions.

So I wanted to tell you some other completely unverifiable things that I said, "You know what would be an improvement?"  That later came to pass.

First thing - I messed around with DOS long after it had run its lifespan.  I always liked to have DOS level access to my processor to get all of the RAM and processer overhead of a graphical OS.  Along the way I switched over to DrDos which later became Calderra's OpenDos.  In the end, it was a 32-bit multitasking DOS.  Pretty bad ass.  Long file names, multiple DOS applications running concurrently without windowing... running at full tilt if they were the foreground process.

Anyway, as I was adding ethernet card drivers (in DOS) and loading a TCP/IP stack (manually) - I said, you know what I'd like?  I'd like a low level DOS like environment that was just enough to run the JAVA virtual machine so that I could inherit everything JAVA as the primary OS level.  And then run a GUI on the virtual machine.  This would solve the hardware problem.  As long as you could get the machine to run a JAVA virtual machine, you could always slap an OS on it.  And that's what Android is.  LOL

I came very close to getting it working too.  LOL  Though instead of a linux stub underneath I had OpenDos, and was using the gcc compiler to compile JAVA under DOS and get its TCP/IP stack to work successfully with the DOS TCP/IP stack.  The compile went smooth, the VM worked under DOS.  But I could not get TCP/IP working - so I could do graphical things, but I couldn't get it to work online. :(  My idea was - I'd start a relic computer revival.  Bringing them the gift of a virtual machine that gave them more function than they had in their era.  A backwards compatible salvation from the scrapheap.

Anyway - you can do that today by looking up Android-x86.  It can be used to wake up old junk computers with a fresh Android face.  That's the very thing I was trying to accomplish.

I also noted that growing prevelance of viruses demanding a new solution to how OSs are handled.  They need to be ROM based.  If they are read only, viruses can't write nasty shit into them.  And all of your mobile devices have ROM based OSs.  Doesn't matter if it's iOS or Android or anything else in that form factor - its  a ROM based OS.  Infection hardened mobile devices.  It's literally evolutionary in response.  It's like browsers having pop-up blockers built in.  An evolutionary response to what the environment became.

But yeah - those are 2 examples of coming things I recognized would come to be.  But wasn't able to create myself.  I knew they were coming gosh...  in '94.  In 97 when I was carrying a PocketPC, people used to look at me funny when I was poking at the screen. And crack jokes when I was reading an ebook.

Now that nearly everyone is carrying an internet enabled pocket device - no one notices.  And who'd think twice about someone reading on a kindle?  That's the world I live in though - they don't recognize the next thing when they see it and go kicking and screaming into the future.  Nooo!!!  Not change!   Surely the world will end.  The apocalypse will come!  The earth will fall out of orbit around the sun and go wandering aimlessly through the black dark void between stars.  It'll be horrible.  Until you love it.  Or you don't.  Either way - its inevitable.

Change is inevitable - adaptation is up to you.  And adaptive people are more capable.  Never doubt that.  If you can roll with it and pick up the skill - you're worth more for having it.  So resistance is not only futile...  its ridiculous.  If I were a borg I'd have a top hat and curly moustache and I'll say, "Resistance is not only futile, it's ridiculous."  Then I'd twist my moustache and wiggle my eyebrows.

It's kind of like the whole Lady Gaga thing.  There you're looking at transhumanism.  Her body modifying and enhancing wardrobe and wigs and contact lenses - all hallmarks of transhumanism.  Using computers to augment and modify range of voice and autotuning also hallmarks of transhumanism.  Across the board.  Lady Gaga is the transhuman experience.

Weirdly enough, I'd place her in weird company.  GWAR for example.  GWAR was early transhumanism.  Even earlier would have been KISS... with their painted faces and costumes with extreme height enhancing boots.

Anyway, I digress.  The world is a funny old place.