{"id":3084,"date":"2008-10-26T09:32:03","date_gmt":"2008-10-26T09:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/26\/weird-windows-by-various-autho\/"},"modified":"2008-10-26T09:32:03","modified_gmt":"2008-10-26T09:32:03","slug":"weird-windows-by-various-autho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/26\/weird-windows-by-various-autho\/","title":{"rendered":"Weird Windows by Various Authors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I tagged Ethan Zuckerman&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ethanzuckerman.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/23\/woices-and-weird-windows-on-the-world\/\">post abpout video &#8220;windows&#8221; to other places<\/a> in a links dump recently. The idea is to put big video screens and cameras in fast-food restaurants around the world, and provide virtual &#8220;windows&#8221; into other restaurants in other countries. In talking about the idea, Ethan threw out a great aside:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(If I were <a href=\"http:\/\/craphound.com\/\">Cory Doctorow<\/a>, say, I&#8217;d write a short story about the idea rather than wondering how to build it, where a group of kids in Brazil befriend another group in China that they meet randomly over the monitor. The keep returning to the restaurant at pre-agreed times, hoping the random algorithm will connect them to their friends, rather than to a room of bewildered, unsmiling Germans.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I mentioned this to Kate the other day, as we were driving down to Boston to visit her parents for the weekend, and she replied &#8220;Of course, if it were a Mike Resnick story, he&#8217;d spot the Perfect Woman through the window, and spend the rest of the story chasing her.&#8221; Which, of course, set us off on how this idea would be used by various SF authors:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If it were a Neil Gaiman story, the windows would occasionally look in on fast-food restaurants in mythological cities.<\/li>\n<li>If it were a Bruce Sterling story, the window thing would be a brilliant digression in a lerger plot about&#8230; capitalist&#8230; terrorist&#8230; computer hackers&#8230; I don&#8217;t remember what, but the window thing was really cool.<\/li>\n<li>If it were an Iain Banks story, the window thing would somehow lead to people having kinky sex, and possibly running afould of gangsters.<\/li>\n<li>If it were a Vernor Vinge story, the computer controlling the windows would become self-aware, and start match-making between people in different countries.<\/li>\n<li>If it were a China Mieville story, the windows would look in on the squalid kitchens of fast-food restaurants in other countries, and everybody would be miserable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The possibilities, of course, are endless. So leave your favorite in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I tagged Ethan Zuckerman&#8217;s post abpout video &#8220;windows&#8221; to other places in a links dump recently. The idea is to put big video screens and cameras in fast-food restaurants around the world, and provide virtual &#8220;windows&#8221; into other restaurants in other countries. In talking about the idea, Ethan threw out a great aside: (If I&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/26\/weird-windows-by-various-autho\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Weird Windows by Various Authors<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,18,37,29,75,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-books","category-pop_culture","category-sf","category-society","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}