I’ve been nominated by Belana and Quinie to list 7 things most people don’t know about me.
Gosh – this is a tough one. Rummaging through the trash of my memories and proclivities, it’s quite a challenge to come up with one thing, let alone seven. Anyhoo, here goes.
1) I hate parsnips. Hate, hate, hate. I’ve never liked them. As a child I also hated mushrooms, carrots and pickled beetroot, but I managed to control my disgust mechanisms. I will eat them without any concerns that I might be poisoned. But parsnips? NEVER.
2) I’m not much of a music fan, but I have a wide range of musical tastes. My music collection is full of songs that I have gleaned from Shazam and Internet radio stations. It’s mixture of samba, rap, female vocals, country and classical. Recent downloads include Missy Elliot, The Chemical Brothers, Florence and the Machine and Miserere Mei. Random as hell.
3) History is my thing, these days. I’m currently reading about the Battle of Waterloo. Other books in my collection include an abridged history of Russia, an abridged history of World War I, the story of Europe after World War II and Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman.
4) I don’t do enough reading these days, so I often listen to podcasts on my way to work. My favourite podcasts are This American Life, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe and 99% Invisible. I also listen to the BBC History Extra podcast and RTE’s history podcast. Not Dan Carlin though. Man, you need lots of time for that.
5) For years I was involved with H2G2, a crazy yet fascinating online community loosely associated with Douglas Adams. My moniker is/was Woodpigeon. I wrote around 30 guide entries on all sorts of random subjects. I drifted away after a while, when real life got in the way and social media came of age. It was fun and I made a lot of great friends, but what a time sink.
6) Ok, this is going to sound hugely nerdy, but I’d love to have the time to properly figure out the mechanics of solid objects. I’d love to be able to develop my own simple physics engine, and understand the principles behind it, where two dimensional objects rotate and move around subject to various different forces and impacts. I’m almost embarrassed telling you that one.
7) Have I changed my mind recently about something I once strongly believed? Yes, actually. I used to be a fervent believer in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator test – you know, ESTP and INTJ etc. Well, it turns out that it’s complete bunkum. Neither Myers nor Briggs had much of a basis for the underlying philosophy of the MBTI and there are much sounder tests of personality around.
That’s seven things. You can wake up now!
We are currently living through a period of time when many big industries are under threat. The industries in question are publishing, music recording, telephony and movie-making, and the threat is the Internet. For the first time in history, the expression of human thought in pictures, words and sound can be sent around the world in the blink of an eye, and for free. It is the ultimate vision of Gutenberg, and the vested interests who wish to make scarce this infinitely available commodity are fighting a losing battle, mainly resorting to courts and politicians. But like Gutenberg, such wars cannot last forever and the world will some day settle into a new economic relationship with the Internet. What will it look like? How will we enjoy music and art and films 10 or 20 years from now? Will the battles continue to rage in the courts or will relatively new players such as Google eventually render the incumbents powerless? What will the business models look like? What scarcities will these businesses exploit? Who will be the winners? 
We are being told that we are on the brink of a revolution in medical care. Diseased and damaged organs can be replaced, not via anonymous donors, but grown instead from cells found in the patient’s own body. These miracle cells are known as stem-cells: generalist cells that can be conditioned to transform into specialised cells: heart muscle, kidneys, skin – anything you like. From there they can be grown in laboratories into complete organs – thus allowing people to gain to have transplants with no concerns about rejection. I have already seen footage showing replacement teeth and bladders being developed. It is possible that this breakthrough will transform medicine in the next ten years. It will be interesting to see to what extent it will have developed.
Passive Impressions 
