12.31.01
The finale of 2001
Well this is it, the end of 2001. We still don’t have HAL, we still don’t have personal hovercrafts. I can burn video to optical discs and play them, but the discs are still 5 inches wide, not two or three like they ought to be. And the optics are 2 dimensional, not 3d hologram like they need to be.
We’re still using inches and not centimeters. I’m going to put a base 12 (or perhaps base six) numbering system for everyone to use.
Europe has the Euro coming online, and that’s a good step, but personal money is not completely electric yet. I can *buy* everything electronicly, but my debit card can’t have money added to it just as easily.
I’m still not running OS X. I will, but the Mac Interface/UNIX underpinnings thing should have been ready to go in 1996/97, not 2001.
Laptops are good. They’re finally getting very good. My next Mac will be a laptop I think. But it’s not solar powered. A lot of things are still not solar powered. Some of it’s wind powered. That’s a good step, but Distributed Power Generation still isn’t here.
Computer displays are stil stuck in the sub-100 dpi area for the most part. I *really* hope MacOS X’s display engine being vector based will be able to scale up to higher dpi monitors. My flexible display, like a sheet of electronic paper, still isn’t here.
No PDA is as good as the NewtonOS.
Pen interfaces suck, and voice interfaces suck even worse. Someone better get subvocal voice recognition working soon, or there will be hell to pay.
I still haven’t learned French. That was my only real resolution from last year. I think I can start putting more effort into that now. I’ll get French films with English subtitles and English films with French subtitles. That will be easier now that we have a DVD player, and it should provide me with a better submersive experience.
I do have a very cool portable digital music device, which actually was a very old ‘To Do List’ item that had been resolved by the MiniDisc player. Well screw that. MP3s Forever.
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Apple has something planned for Macworld. Something big. *No one* knows what it is. Steve Jobs *is* Willy Wonka. I wish I had got off my butt and finalized my plans for going down there, but considering the Keynote is Monday, I don’t think it will happen.
I don’t have any big plans for next year. Holding onto my job seems to be a big goal in the New New Economy.
All I can look forward to politically is that George W. Bush will be one more year closer to the end of his presidency.
And the film of the second book of the Lord Of the Rings Trilogy: Two Towers will come out. Much goodness.
Happy 2002. Let’s hope it’s better than ’01.