Staticfree Blog

It's about time. I finally made it to one of Dave Weiner's Berkman Thursday weblog meetings. I ended up showing up a bit late, as I couldn't get a fix on exactly how to get to where I wanted to on Mass. ave. (don't pretend to be in a car, walk on the other side of the street).

Before I went, I listened to one of the recordings to get a feel of what was going on. I anticipated a meeting overrun by a large collection of pale, scrawny geek guys, but it turned out to be a refreshingly eclectic group. I arrived, hovered a bit, and eventually landed at the table, fitting in by pulling out my laptop.

I find that an increasingly popular phenomenon: a group of people existing in meatspace proximity, yet simultaneously conversing and residing in a virtual space as well. In this case, everyone was chatting in IRC while Dave talked about how keen public aggregators of common content are (and how easy it is to find this common content if people continuously send you links to it). It allowed silly conversation to go on, while also having a more serious discussion. Both would feed on each other: the IRC channel providing links and flames based on the conversation IRL. All we need to do now is remove the keyboard, screen and shove as much of the tech into an implant. Let this sort of discussion/metadiscussion happen every day.

All in all, I met a bunch of interesting people who don't mind chatting about the social problems of crpytography over a very tasty indian dinner. I'll be going back if I can manage to plan it into my week (things always come up on thursdays) and see if I can drag a friend or two along with me.

I really must stop this habit of posting blog entries before I go off to work: my computer keeps yelling at me to get going. "Yeah yeah, µ, I'm on my way."