Tangential Convergence

Episode 28 - Jesus is The Flash

2011-07-20T10:35:00.000-04:00

Oddly, this episode had nothing to do with Jesus or the Flash, but, you will get the reference once you listen in.

In fact, we got together for the first backyardcast of the season and talked about Google +. We love the 'circles' idea and figure this might be the thing that puts G+ over the top vs. facebook. We are also all pretty sure both are evil....

Politically this reminded us of the quick rise of parties such as Labour in the UK or the Bloc Quebecois here in Canada. The question is, is G+ the next Labour Party or the next Bull Moose Party?

Sci Fi wise the idea that some are plugged in and others not, the whole digital divide thing, is a real concern, This can be seen in films like the Matrix and in an episode I remembered of Sliders...

Oh yeah Robin and I have blogs, Ken does not, yet....

We hope you like episode 28.

Episode 27 - Passwords, Playstations and Politics

2011-05-11T12:57:00.000-04:00

We three sat down to enjoy a lovely beverage, and discuss the playstation outage, the end of term and the exciting recent Canadian election. Robin blames China, Ken blames the Russian mafia, and, I kept silent on this, so don't bug me... Robin has been burnt by the cloud, but will not give any details. Amazon went down too, which is, frankly most of the cloud. When it went down the whole damned cloud, or much of it, went down. The problem is that there are many services, but they often rely on Amazon.

We then rambled about the Canadian election that just happened. It surprised us, and some odd candidates got elected, but we wish them luck (though that did not stop us from mocking them....)

If anyone has a blog post idea for Robin, email him, and you can get a free Algoma University hoodie! Oh and Robin is now on twitter, run for your lives...

Enjoy episode 27.

Episode 26 - Social Media Revolutionaries

2011-02-20T11:43:00.000-05:00

We had to talk Egypt and the mideast in this recent episode, hell it is on everyone's mind. We are somewhat optimistic about the future, though Ken and I are more optimistic than Robin and Isabelle, who sat in and drew us during the recording.

There have, of course, been other revolutions, the colour revolutions and the others that brought down communism in the late 80s and early 90s and of course the ill fated Tiananmen Square protests.

We were somewhat taken aback by the lack of peaceful revolutions in science fiction, and mused on that for a bit.

We hope you enjoy episode 26.

Episode 25 - We're Wikileaking Cheese All Over Mouse Balls and Taking it Downtown....

2011-01-16T10:39:00.000-05:00

OK, that title is a tad odd, you will have to listen in to understand it.

Robin, Ken and I decided to take on wikileaks and its oddball founder, Julian Assange. We had really not a lot of love for Assange himself, but we pretty much agreed that he is a journalist. The odd thing is people are not caring much about where the leaks came from, they are just mad they got published. The other thing we agreed on was that, from what we have seen, there is little in the cables that is anything more than embarrassing. In other words, this is not the Pentagon Papers.

We also agreed, (we were all quite agreeable in this episode) that relating the leaks and Assange's legal troubles in Sweden is a bit much.

We hope you enjoy episode 25.

Episode 24 - Is it ok to tweet 'fire' in a crowded chat room?

2010-11-14T10:33:00.000-05:00

Yeah we know, it has been a long time... Heck, Ken and I went to PAB 2010, did our panel with the Dude and Tom and never talked about it. Suffice it to say, that was fun.

Anyway, we are back, and when we decided to get back into the podcasting scene we needed a topic. Robin mentioned to Ken and I that there was a guy that got in a lot of trouble for posting on twitter that he was going to blow up an airport. This has lead to a grass roots campaign in support of him (not in support of airport bombing, in support of the guy...)

This story lead us into talking about various things, including the echo chamber of social media, the effects that changes in communication type have had on communication, and of course, the holodeck on Star Trek...

We hope you like the show, and we are glad to be back.

Download episode.

Episode 23 - Zuck you...

2010-06-05T09:55:00.003-04:00

We got together before the Stargate Universe season finale to discuss facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's awesome performance at the D8 conference (you have to watch the video, seriously).

Overall we pretty much agreed that there is little privacy on facebook, but Isabelle and I had less problem with that than Ken and Robin did, indeed, I always figured I would only put stuff up there that I would say to someone's face, and Isabelle seems to be of the opinion that we live in a post privacy world. Robin, on the other hand, would like to live as some sort of hermit...

We discusses a bit of stuff about 1984 and A Brave New World as well, which of course make sense considers how the state in those dystopias knew everything about you.

Ken and I will be at Podcasters Across Borders 2010 on a panel with Tom Merritt of TWiT.tv and the Scarborough Dude called "What If My Boss Find Out" so if you are in Ottawa in June, look us up!

Enjoy episode 23.

Episode 22 - We're here, like exactly right here...

2010-03-21T13:02:00.002-04:00

We got together before Caprica to talk about location based apps. You know like Foursquare and Gowalla. This came about because I bought a new iPhone, and found out that the pics you take get geotagged automatically. This was a bit of a surprise, but also maybe a tad creepy.

Robin was pretty sure it was creepy, and said that he would never use it. Ken said it was not that different from sending a letter with a return address on it.

We talked a lot about the historical and science fiction aspects of location too.

We did our best to improve the audio this time, hope it helps.

Direct download link.

Episode 21 - When the Red Red Robin Comes Goo Goo Googling Along

2010-02-07T10:00:00.004-05:00

The whole Google vs. China in an out and out war of err, something or other inspired this episode. I made the point that this was Google, in essence, acting like a state level actor and this seemed somewhat novel. Well, both Ken and Robin pointed out that say the British East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company were in essence states within states, even having their own armed forces. I said this was different because Google does not have a royal charter or anything.

This of course lead us into a discussion of Corporatism, which is in a way a lot like medieval guilds, and well, a lot like the fascism of Italy or Portugal.

Corporations taking over the world eh, how about Rollerball!

Robin also gave us his most recent views on google wave and I talked about my most recent appearances on Fourcast with Tom Merritt and Scott Johnson.

Direct download link

Episode 20 - But You're My Mom!

2010-01-12T17:43:00.003-05:00

You will have to listen to the episode to get the title..

Anyway, Ken, Robin and I welcomed a few guests to the monumental episode 20, Alanna, Dwayne, Isabelle and Madeleine joined s this time out. Ken and Robin have been working getting an ebook platform ready for the U library. This initiative is Ontario wide and that is cool. Apparently there will even be an iPhone app. This made Dwayne happy, as he is obsessed with his new iPhone. Alanna also likes the iPhone and used one in Europe recently.

Robin pointed out that while to the average user the most important thing is the UI, there is a huge backbone there, and people literally risk their lives putting in that infrastructure. He then told us that cars are silly, and a lively debate ensued.

It was great to have Ken and Robin back together for the show, and the guests made it even better. Thanks to everyone.

We all hope you like episode 20.

Episode 19 - Lordy Lordy Look Who's......

2009-11-01T11:25:00.005-05:00

Robin, Isabelle (pinch hitting for Ken) and I got together the other night to talk user interfaces, usability and the internet. We started by talking about Windows 7 and Ubuntu and the horrible product that Isabelle was using in a French class she teaches at the University.

We then realized the internet was forty years old this week, which means it will leave its wife for a younger woman and buy a sports car... This lead us into a discussion of the history of huge communication changes, and Robin came up with what I thought was the best one of all, the invention of writing.

We talked a little sci fi of course as well.

We missed Ken this time out, hope you can be back next time buddy.

Enjoy episode 19 (just changed the web provider, hoping that this helps).

Episode 18 - Remembering the Interrupted Creativity

2009-08-30T20:50:00.003-04:00

Well this is the final episode before the coming academic term at Algoma University, where we all work. The topic turned, not surprisingly, to education. (A note, the SD card that I use on the recorder ended up filling up so we end abruptly around 59 minutes or so, perhaps this is some sort of sign to shorten the damned episodes a little...)

We talked a bit about our experiences in education, including one from Robin where he talked about a prof whose name I edited out at Western. The key, you should not complain if the course materials are in Arabic...

Of course we talked a little about education in the past, and some sci fi, though not much. We also talked about the importance of memory vs creativity in learning.

Then Ken told us about blowing stuff up with the Canadian Armed Forces...

Enjoy episode 18

Episode 17 - Searching For Evergreens

2009-08-06T20:50:00.004-04:00

Yeah, we have all been talking about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal and Bing and google and what have you, but have you ever thought about the searching you do, and have done well before there were search engines? I am talking here about library searching. Yes of course, Ken and Robin are our library guys here at Algoma University, and if you have ever listened to TC at all you know that we talk a lot about libraries, but this is a very special episode.... (cue cheesy music).

We were joined by Art Rhyno of the University of Windsor and Dan Scott and Kevin Beswick of Laurentian University, librarians all, ok Kevin is sort of a poser librarian, but well, I was outnumbered by the librarians. Happily, later Maddie and Isabelle showed up. These guys are setting up an open source catalogue for our libraries. This is VERY cool, even for me, captain psychology. Evergreen, the open ILS system is now used all over the place, even Armenia!

Now there are times in this episode where I have no idea what the heck they are talking about, but for the most part they made it clear. The key thing here is that they are doing this open source, and this is the opposite of the way it usually works.

We did not talk too much Sci Fi in this one, and only a little history. The history we did talk about was about the Library of Congress, that apparently was started out by a donation from Thomas Jefferson, who knew? OK, like all the library guys knew and I am an idiot... I think the Dewey Decimal System is a scam, as Kramer mentioned in Seinfeld. Apparently Dewey is not open, whereas Library of Congress is. This just reinforces the point to me.

Many thanks to Art (who has a community newspaper in Essex, ON) Dan Scott (who has a fine blog called CoffeeCode and self confessed library nerd in training Kevin Beswick.

Oh and Dan has the best radio voice ever.

I hope you enjoy episode 17.

Episode 16 - Google Wave of Mutilation

2009-06-29T17:34:00.003-04:00

It has been a while for sure. Ken, Robin and I often got together on the weekend during the last few months, but it was usually to talk about and watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Well, much to the delight of Josh from Israel, the hockey season is over, and we are back with an exciting new topic. Man what a lame sentence... Anyway, in episode 16 we talked about the new Google Wave initiative, that is explained here.

Robin and Ken did their homework and explained it to me. Wave seems to be a mashup of a wiki, all of your social networking and social media stuff, google docs, and email. Oh and twitter... This may replace email, but we were all quite skeptical.

Both Ken and Robin are not twitter people, though, I am. They claim not to have enough time in the day for all of this social networking, damn it I say, make time!

We discussed communication tools that have changed the world, such as printing presses, the telegraph, the phone etc. Robin feels this wave thing is just the phone coming back at us with more content, and he is opposed to phones. I am with him on this.

Both Robin and I remembered the ABC tv after school special called, The Wave from about 1981 or so. It was creepy..

We ended by talking about how many times we had met Prime Ministers, Premiers or the Queen. Both Robin and I figure she is not our leader, as we did not have a chance to vote against her. Ken believes this makes us traitors...

Shout outs to Jim from Fort Worth, and Josh and Esther from Israel. Thanks for the feedback guys.

Enjoy episode 16

Episode 15 - The GhostNet (and the virus) in the machines

2009-04-06T21:12:00.010-04:00

This episode, we congregated beyond the confines of Dave's and Isabelle's comfy basement and returned to stately Hernden manor, which was last heard of in Episode 7 - Olymtech for those of you keeping score at home.

Without Battlestar Galactica to keep our motley crew talking, we turned this week to two separate yet tangentially related occurrences: the release of the report documenting the discovery of GhostNet by researchers at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto and the InfoWar Monitor as well as the imminent activation of the Conficker.c virus on April 1st. Heady times indeed!

We also took time out at the beginning of episode to read listener email from Joshua in Israel (hi Josh!) and raise him to the pantheon of minor Internet celebrity-hood (the fame clock is now ticking...).

GhostNet reads like it is right out of a fictional TV show like 24 (hat-tip to Christine): a suspected cyber espionage network of over 1,295 infected computers in 103 countries, 30% of which are high-value targets, including ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs. Conficker.c is yet another of these pesky viruses that make IT types sweat and talking heads on TV lick their lips in anticipation of reading news that hopefully will be sexy and apocalyptic.

This led us to talk about cool hacking topics like social engineering which interestingly enough has less to do with modern, l33t code than it has to do with good 'ole fashioned confidence schemes. Conficker.c reminded us of very ancient biological viruses and what these have meant in human history and medicine. Along the way Ken plugged cyber-punk author Richard K. Morgan whose superlative creation, ex-UN Envoy Takeshi Kovacs, watched his comrades tear themselves apart after being infected by a Rawlings Virus strike at the Innenin beachhead.

We wrapped with the lovely Isabelle playing word association with us in the segment we like to call "Them Guys is Smart".

As a bonus, Dave interviewed guests at Alanna's house the next night, asking them about computer viruses.

So, a big shout again to Josh and we hope you enjoy Episode 15.

Episode 14 - So Say We Four, Part Deux, or, It's Not the Alcohol It's the Vodka

2009-03-23T20:42:00.004-04:00

Last Friday was the finale of the amazing sci fi show we have talked so much about, Battlestar Galactica. I was out at the psychology honours thesis conerence but I made it home in time to hang with Maddie, Isabelle and Ken and watch the end of the show.

(By the way it is pretty good that Maddie is getting all of this podcasting experience, as she is taking over for Isabelle on Broca's Area soon).

Once the show ended we all started talking, and we figured we ought to record this episode, even without Robin. He actually asked us the next day 'what are we going to do on Fridays now?"

It was cool to see a resolution of the show (and there are spoilers here in the episode). We talked about colonization in general, and New France in particular a bit. Then, out of nowhere, I got the hiccups. Isabelle blamed it on the alcohol, but I am pretty sure it is the fault of the vodka, not the alcohol (which may be a subtle distinction...) I used my grandmother's old cure of drinking a glass of water upside down, and I was fine!

We hope you enjoy episode 14.

Episode 13 - It's My Duty 2 B 1337 LOL

2009-03-09T19:09:00.004-04:00

So, we are pumping these things out like crazy eh? Robin is quite the motivator, as is his choice of Scotch for this week. The three of us went to the Algoma University Senate meeting as we do each week and before the meeting Robin told a story about not getting the proper sort of documentation that he needed for a project. As the story unfolded it was pretty clear this was about nothing other than a bad email, so our topic: communication.

Communication has changed a great deal in the past few years what with email, IM, twitter and the like.

I lamented the lack of communications problems in Sc Fi, but frankly, what are you going to do, the stuff has to be readable, watchable.

Historically one wonders if people were lamenting the decline in language when the phone came out, or when wax tablets started being used.

This episode features the debut of our new segment "Them guys is smart" moderated by Isabelle. When you hear that bit you will understand the title.

Enjoy episode 13.

Episode 12 - Robin Hates Clouds (but loves net neutrality!)

2009-03-04T22:25:00.020-05:00

Cloud computing was the topic: connecting all kinds of computers together and seeing what happens. Terms were defined, examples given and discussion ensued. Ken mentioned Evergreen, the new computing system we're going to install to organize the library; Dave talked about time sharing on a VAX computer back in his undergrad days. General discussion about online storage and applications in the cloud developed into a musings about the cost to develop and run software in an organization, and how cloud based computing can challenge that model. Then Robin freaked out.

Robin who was well into celebrating his first paycheck in a long time with a bottle of Jameson's went off on a drunken rant about net neutrality. FOR THE RECORD: Robin is an ardent supporter of net neutrality. He was just thinking about unfair bandwidth allocation practices in a far away place. Feeling rather passionate about this far away place and prodded on by the bottle, he shot his mouth off in every direction and forgot utterly that we were talking, in general, about Canada. Robin and Dave sparred over the issue of net neutrality, Dave supporting, Robin dissenting. Robin then went on to attack Web 2.0 and then Yahoo! Mail. Bottom line, Robin has promised never to bring Jameson's to a taping again.

The issue of autonomous action (ie. working without a connection to your boss via email etc.) was discussed as well as the notion of information as stimulant, by Ken. Captian Kirk was mentioned. Dave did his Sean Connery/Captain Marco Ramius, impression and we passed the bottle, pondering Star Trek and submarine movies.

Dave and Robin sparred (again) over Web 2.0. Robin - really drunk - over simplified things a whee bit and went right off the rails with a defensive rant about people calling the IT help desk and being an IT guy in general. Dave and Ken developed and discussed conclusions: the good the bad and the ugly of the cloud.

Closing music:
"The Letter" by Dan Brodbeck and Corey Thompson, you will see why when you listen to they lyrics...

Enjoy episode 12.

Episode 11 - The Authors Guild Is Mad at the Amazon

2009-02-17T22:43:00.005-05:00

Amazon.com that is.

With the release of the Kindle 2, the Authors Guild of the USA came out against the text to speech capability of the new kindle. Their "reasoning" is that this capability violates copyright. Yeah, that's right, a computer type voice will stop the sales of audio books. Odd that Amazon would do such a thing, what with them owning audible.com. There is an alternate hypothesis, and that is that it will help the sale of audio books, and that getting content available to people, say oh like blind people (like me) might actually be a good thing. Oh those crazy authors...

We officially welcomed Robin Isard to the show as our third TCer. Both Robin and Ken went to library school and are librarians here at Algoma University, they actually quite like books. (Note the understatement). They got all excited about handling medieval manuscripts, which I would too if I had ever done it.

We talked about the death of paper, and books, and how on Star Trek the captains always seem to like actual books. That led us into a series of Shakespeare references in Star Trek which Isabelle and Madeleine thought quite funny and (hopefully) cute.

We also talked about self publishing, such as Tom Merrit's Boiling Point (which is a really good book) and my friend Dave's book on getting in to grad school.

Welcome Robin, and we welcome your comments. Oh and thanks to Craig and Christian for the Scotch.

Enjoy episode 11.

Episode 10 - Another CENSORED Episode So Quickly?

2009-02-07T19:13:00.005-05:00

Clever title eh?

Ken and I got together before BSG to discuss net censorship and censorship in general. This was originally Isabelle's idea, and you can hear a bit of Isa and a bit of Madeleine during the show.

Censorship is one of those hot button issues. There are times, maybe when it is ok. You know the whole yelling fire in a crowded theatre thing. That said, it is pretty hard to censor the net, as it is distributed, and it is also technically hard, even if you want to stop people from seeing the Scorpions (though that may be a laudable goal...)

We talked about both positive and negative censorship. Negative censorship is when you are told not what to print, whereas positive censorship is when you are told you must print certain things. The positive variety is one of the hallmarks of a totalitarian society. It turns out both Ken and I took the history of totalitarianism with the same prof at Western.

This brought us around to talking about dystopias like 1984 and We. We is probably the first of the dystopia genre. I think it is also the best.

As usual I talked a bit about a Canticle for Liebowitz because, well, because it is a cool book...

Enjoy episode 10.

Episode 9 - 1 2 3 4 I Declare A Digital TV Format War

2009-01-24T15:54:00.004-05:00

We sat down with a lovely bottle of gin and discussed the upcoming (or completed, depending on your country) Digital TV transition. Now of course Ken and I are well aware that it is not really a format war, but this transition has some of the hallmarks of so many other format wars.

People are going to wake up one day and find out their stuff does not work, or does not work the way they expected, the public education campaigns notwithstanding. It would be like it I had a few crates of old records and found out I had nothing to play them on, wait, that happened to me...

The digital divide comes up here. Indeed, the poor, the old (and the old poor I guess...) will probably be most negatively affected by the transition. This reminded me of an episode of Sliders, I beleive I was the only person ever to watch Sliders... Cable companies have jumped on this bandwagon as well, they seem to be subtly or none too subtly telling people they need digital cable. Of course you do not.

Ken mocked me for not having enough HDMI ports on my TV. I have 2 TVs with HDMI ports though, so I think I win.

One wonders how much all of this will affect people once the TV becomes more of just a place to show content, no matter where it comes from, rather than something for receiving just TV signals. This is happening now with TVs, you know, streaming from your xbox, that sort of thing. Isabelle then brought up a great point, the CRTC and the FCC for example, do NOT control the net. This may be a huge change, especially here in Canada where Canadian content rules are strictly enforced.

This led us to discuss 3D TV which we think is stupid, but hey what about the holodeck? The holodeck is cool, and really is not that dissimilar to what people today call serious games.

Special thanks to Tom Merritt of CNET for all of the recent plugs, and welcome to all the new listeners.

Enjoy episode 9.

Episode 8 - Between Democracy and Dystopia

2008-10-08T10:50:00.008-04:00

For Episode 8 we invited along Guest Hosts Robin and Christine to comment on the elections in Canada and the United States. We discussed election processes from a historical perspective as well as introducing some well worn speculative fiction memes about corporate and/or technological dystopias. We had at least one Ingsoc reference and Huxley got dragged in. Robin brought his experiences as Canadian librarian working in The Republic of The Gambia [for propaganda click here] [for the BBC's take click here] in the IT/ISP/networking sector; Christine had some pungent comments about the Liberal Party in Canada. Dave asked us all for election predictions in both countries; the Psychology PhD amazed the two history guys when he gave precise numbers in his predictions; Ken had a chance to rag on voting machines while asking why we trust the humans who are the "machine" now to do it – before completely his voice entirely to laryngitis.

All hail ~~Lieutenant~~ President Yahya Jemmah!

Enjoy episode 8

Episode 7 - Olymtech

2008-08-08T07:05:00.004-04:00

Well, the 2008 Summer showcase for a totalitarian country, err, the Olympics start in moments from when I post this, so we thought this would be a good topic. The tech, the history and the sci fi of the Olympics. I think, BTW, theat this is fair use of the word Olympics, they are pretty bad about suing people...

We recorded in Ken and Christine's back yard while Jonathan and Carys ran around. Christine joined in for a bit as well. Oh yeah, so did K and C's dogs... Before we got into it we talked a bit about Podcasters Across Borders 2008 which Ken and I attended back in June. This was a great event, Ken called it the best conference he had ever been to. Ken is off to discuss an implementation of Evergreen open ILS in Ontario Universities next week. Yeah we know, it has been a long time...

So what of the games? How much are they like the original Olympics? Did guys back then cheat? How would you cheat back then, Olive oil laced with HGH? The tech angle here is really huge actually, the steroids, the possibility of genetic engineering, blood doping, all of that stuff. In Sci Fi there are a lot of examples of such things, of competitions, like the Gamesters of Trisdellion, that Buck Rogers episode with the Olympics games, hell even Rollerball.

(Note: this episode had a really nasty sound in the background, the neighbours' pool filter. I did my best to filter that sound out. Oh and there is a little break in the middle where I inserted Shotgun Loudmouth by Battery Life).

Enjoy episode 7.

Episode 6 - So Say We Four

2008-04-08T16:39:00.004-04:00

We recorded this episode on April 4, 2008, the night of the launch of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica. So warning, there are a few spoilers here, as we recorded before, and then after the show. We also had two of our regular guests, Isabelle and Christine join us on the show. We celebrated by drinking Caprica 6 martinis which are an oz and a half of lemon vodka, an ounce of Triple Sec and an oz of blueberry-pomegranate juice.

The topic, the uses and misuses of science fiction. OK, so it is not a tech story, but too bad, it is a geek story, we are branching out. Basically Ken thought of this idea when comparing say BSG to more fantasy type stuff. In other words, explosions vs. story. Isabelle says the worst Science Fiction movie ever is Highlander 3 and she also hates Tron. This took Dave and Ken aback.

Starship Troopers is an example of a great sci fi book that turned into a bad sci fi movie. We wondered aloud if Gulliver's Travels is Sci Fi and came to a bit of a consensus that the genre was invented by Jules Verne.

We even delved a bit into comics and superheroes. It was a great time, thanks to Christine and Isabelle, oh and the black Shure SM 45.....

Enjoy episode 6.

Episode 5 - Do We Save Or Weed Out The Weeds?

2008-03-09T11:16:00.003-04:00

On February 26, 2008 a new Global Seed Bank opened in Norway. The idea here is that if some horrible disaster happens, well we could at least plant some baby corn and purple basil. Or, could we? What did they put in the vault, what types of seeds are in there? Are there weeds? Is there weed?

This got us thinking about repositories of knowledge, which Dave though was what libraries are. Ken corrected Dave, as he often does. However, there are libraries that are more like repositories, like the Great Library at Alexandria, or the Library of Congress.

Dave always brings up a Canticle for Liebowitz, also tries to bring most any conversation around to talking about the Name of the Rose. Both of these works are about preserving knowledge. Preserving knowledge is what the fictional Memory Alpha was about in Star Trek. Preserving the world was what the horrible movie Independence Day was about, but that is another matter....

Isabelle and Maddie listened along to this episode and made the occasional comment, as well, Isabelle stepped on for a few minutes for Dave. Isabelle made an interesting point about youtube. Youtube itself really is a thing that preserves knowledge, who knew?

Enjoy Episode 5.

Pondering Ponderables

2008-02-08T21:50:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone. It has been nutty around the virtual homesteads these last few weeks. The good doctor and I partook of heady discussions today in Senate around the future of our university as an independent, non-affiliated star in the glittering constellation of provincial universities. Needless to say, everyone is pretty much tired of listening to me harp on about projected library costs through to 2013, so I began pondering where Dave and I should wander next in the podcast.

One thing I would like to go back to at some point is some sort of comparison of Creative Commons, CopyLeft, etc. to other periods of intense thinking of rights, relationships, and all that jazz (do not tell the RIAA! -- I'm only going to take some of that jazz). Where have these come from? What cultural elements combined, and especially what is lacking in our society that has led to all sorts of people defining rights, drafting mini-constitutions and so on.

Woodrow Wilson liked to do that sort of thing for fun as an academic (and I suppose as President, SEE League of Nations), but it seems a lot of people in their own way have become Locke and Hobbes, Mill and Bentham, and so on. If I can re-word Kant: Is it Enlightenment? Or do we just have a lot of little sandboxes being fenced differently?

Dave and I also have been involved in some "blue-skying" about using Web 2.0 tools for recruitment and marketing. It was interesting to mix with different sorts of people from the campus who would come at the final product(s) from different perspectives. And of course everyone around the table brought different awareness levels of the big bad Web 2.0 world, so that made it interesting and could make for something to yap about.

Anyhooo, we will get back on the tubes as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience and comments. And remember... it looks like BSG will be back in April!

Episode 4 - Format is the Enemy of Content

2007-12-02T08:40:00.000-05:00

Yes we still exist. However, working at a University you tend to get sorta busy during the term. We aplogize to our listeners, especially faithful commenters like Markus and Rachel, not to mention our recent emailers, Tom and Autumn.

The amazing thing is that, in the four intervening months between episodes 3 and 4 there has been no change in what we wanted to talk about. Format wars affect us all. Indeed, the writer's strike going on in the US right now (which means no new episodes of House, Numb3rs or the Unit, much to Dave's chagrin..) is about formats. Writers get nothing for internet video. So that is why they are on strike, seems like a good cause.

The classic format war is VHS vs. Beta back in the 1980s, and now we have HD DVD vs. Blu Ray. In between we had Amiga vs. Atari ST vs PC vs Apple, we had cassettes vs records, hell, you could even consider Papyrus vs. Paper, sorta....

This comes up of course in Ken's line of work. What if you have a database that was built in the 1970s that nobody now knows how to rad? Dave mentioned that on Star Trek they never seem to have a problem reading alien computers, indeed, it seems that everyone uses some for of UNIX in the future...

Please email us, and thanks for you patience.

Enjoy Episode 4

Episode 3 - Did Medieval Scribes Have to Deal With Analogue Rights Management?

2007-08-26T09:29:00.000-04:00

We have had a bit of an absence, but are now back better than ever. OK, that may be a cliche, but we are back nonetheless.

TC Episode 3 is devoted to DRM, digital rights management. You know DRM, the stuff that stops you from doing what you want with stuff that you actually own. We both come down on the anti piracy side of things, but we also are opposed to DRM. It breaks stuff, and it simply does not work, everything is crackable.

We talked some about historical stuff and ideas about copyright. It seems this is a rather old concept, much to Dave's surprise, if not to Ken's.

Probably the best known sci fi book with copies and copying as a theme is The Man in the High Castle. We both love that book, and both hope to hell that Hollywood does not make a movie out of it (or a movie out of a Canticle For Leibowitz, but that is another matter....)

Enjoy.

Direct Episode Download.

Isabelle strikes again

2007-07-17T10:38:00.000-04:00

Isabelle has made this awesome logo for TC. Thanks Iza! Isabelle also made the music for the podcast. She has also done the music and logo for thunderbird six, as well as the music for Why? and Broca's Area. (The Broca's Area logo was not her doing, it was made by one of our listeners). I wish I had some sort of talent...

Episode 2 - Helpless Without the Internet but we Can Still Get Herring From The Hanseatic League

2007-07-12T07:18:00.000-04:00

On July 11, 2007 a fibre optic cable was cut somewhere between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury ON. Well we are in the Sault, and that meant no long distance, no cell coverage, no ATMs, and NO INTERNET. This was very distressing. Well in troubled times like these, friends come together and draw strength from each other. OK, we couldn't get online so we had to interact with real people.

Well this seemed a fine topic for TC episode 2. Going offline. There are many examples in Sci Fi and history of people being on and offline. Of course there are always a number of Star Trek references in any of our discussions as well as Battlestar Galactica. Historically one could think of the so called Dark Ages as a time when much of the West was offline. However, there were still networks, but they were slower than dialup...

Enjoy.

Direct episode download

Episode 1 - The iPhone and Gutenberg

2007-07-03T19:52:00.000-04:00

Well the iPhone came out on June 29, 2007 so what better tech story to start with? It turns out that the iPhone reminded the two of us of some other tech innovations, such as the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, TV etc. Now we are not comparing the iPhone itself to these much more important innovations, but well Steve Jobs, Steve Gutenberg... OK, we meant the printing press guy, not the actor.

When you think about it, the iPhone, and other multimedia devices like it, are not unlike the tricorder. That must have been one hell of a wi fi connection that Spock had.

Thanks to Isabelle for the music.

Direct Episode Download

Coming Soon

2007-05-29T00:36:00.000-04:00

Coming Soon, the Tangential Convergence Podcast.

One tech story per episode will lead us somewhere, where? We have no idea. With Dr. Dave Brodbeck from Algoma University's Psych Department and Ken Hernden, Algoma University Library Director. We are a couple of geeks, interested in history, Sci Fi and Tech. Give us 30 min and we will take you, umm, well we will take you somewhere where you did not expect ot go.

A thunderbird six podcast.