Looking through some code, listening to Jackie Mittoo, realizing I just spent a good 20 minutes getting a lot done entirely inside my head. Just clicking around, reminding myself of where things are, reading some docs, sipping my coffee, making decisions. Untangling a knot.

I try not to forget that everyday we are building machines with our minds, little repeatable electron storms. Keyboards convert our ideas into tiny etchings of magnetic information on a hard drive, that when played back through an electronic brain, breathe and react to stimulus. Monitors magnify that process. Isn’t crazy to think about it that way? A terminal window full of code files is just a microscope for your hard drive. You’re writing things that move a little arm around that makes tiny electromagnetic dots on it. All these things are happening all day long. We’re instructing a robotic stylus how to etch a whirring platinum disc just so.

I’ve noticed recently that Kindle books sometimes have lots of typos. And I’m also noticing that they’re most likely because of shotty OCR than human error (is it possible it was easier to OCR a book than just get the source files?). For example:

“I suppose there’s nothing wrong with my not having a life. So many people no longer have Hues that you really have to wonder…

So I’m sitting in this coffee shop drawing the letters in my head.

Hues
Lives

Ah, I see what happened here. Nice try, computer.

Then I feel a little weird for noticing, and for a second I’m bummed that I let my brain take me out of the story. But then I remember I’m reading Microserfs, and I actually feel great about it. It was a thematically appropriate typo, and I think I responded the way the book would have wanted me to. Then I logged onto free wifi to tumble about it, because we live in the future, and this is how we’re running out the clock.

It can be pretty simple, but no politicians ever say so. All graphs courtesy of The Oil Drum, a very important website about the future.

So, global supplies of oil are flat. We aren’t making way more oil every year, we’ve plateaued as a species, and we just can’t get more out fast enough.

Here’s global demand. There are emerging markets that are growing (China, India I’m looking in your direction) and now they have the cash and need for oil they never did before. Supply and demand. It’s not Libya, it’s not unrest in the middle east, it’s not that Obama stopped offshore drilling. Earth has x amount of oil, and y number of people who want it. And y is growing, but x is not. That’s all!

(Source: theoildrum.com)