WorldCon, part 4 -- Friday panels, etc.

Got to the hotel fairly early, and checked baggage.

11:00 Locus Awards
Presented by Connie Willis, who had a very silly "PowerPoint presentation" (actually cardboard signs) of Locus 'history'. I particularly liked the one on the Ark, "Flood likely to boost demand for disaster SF". She mispronounced Cory Doctorow's name, though, to her great embarrassment. Even *worse* embarrassment when he mentioned that, at an earlier awards ceremony that she'd hosted this year (which he wasn't physically at, but he called a fan's cellphone from somewhere on the other side of the planet), she had mispronounced the name of his winning story. Neil Gaiman cleaned up, winning awards for Best Novella, Short Story, and Non-Fiction Book. He said that discoverng that "Sandman: Endless Nights" is actually non-fiction will haunt his nights forever.

EDIT: Forgot to mention Terry Pratchett's acceptance speech for "Best YA Novel" for The Wee Free Men. First, I had no idea he had such a silly-sounding voice. High-pitched, and with a bit of a lisp. After explaining how he'd written a book full of, basically, violent Glaswegian soccer hooligans, and which moreover featured witches as positive, respected characters, he was greatly disappointed to be winning awards and getting library recommendations. "Won't anybody have the common dethenthy to *burn* it?!"

12:00 The Future of Forensic Evidence
Mildly interesting. Was more about current-day cutting-edge than future speculation, so I already knew much of what was discussed.

1:00 Interactive Fiction: The Nexus of Storytelling, Simulation and AI in Video Games
I had hoped to crash this panel, but I showed up a bit toolate to gracefully attemt that. This being a topic near and dear to my heart, I didn't actually hear much new. It was distressing that the panelists, despite saying that they wanted to see new and different paradigms of storytelling, mostly weren't interested in discussing anything that wasn't, at root, a fantasy RPG. They were totally unreceptive to looking at The Sims as an example of successful interactive storytelling, for example. Chatted a bit with learnedax afterwards about automated story-generation, then dragged him along to...

2:00 The MIT Media Lab: A Visit From the Future
Naturally, kestrell and I *had* to go to this one. Marvin Minsky apparently thinks he's just a few years away from building a "learning machine". Favorite observation (paraphrased): "Emotions are easy, they just involve selectively shutting down parts of the mind. It's thinking in the first place that's hard."

3:00- ~5:30 was dealing with hotel SNAFU, but I did catch the last bit of "Drunk on Technology". Sadly, my brain was so fried by the hotel problems that none of it went into permanent memory. Oh wait, there was one thing that Cory Doctorow said he wanted (I forget if this was a prototype device or just a thought experiment): a toaster with an internet connection, that would toast your bread with a picture of today's weather on it.

After that was dinner. After that, I hung out in the ConCourse with various Carolingians for a while. Was pretty brain-dead, though, so went to bed early

WorldCon, part 4 -- Friday panels, etc.

Got to the hotel fairly early, and checked baggage.

11:00 Locus Awards
Presented by Connie Willis, who had a very silly "PowerPoint presentation" (actually cardboard signs) of Locus 'history'. I particularly liked the one on the Ark, "Flood likely to boost demand for disaster SF". She mispronounced Cory Doctorow's name, though, to her great embarrassment. Even *worse* embarrassment when he mentioned that, at an earlier awards ceremony that she'd hosted this year (which he wasn't physically at, but he called a fan's cellphone from somewhere on the other side of the planet), she had mispronounced the name of his winning story. Neil Gaiman cleaned up, winning awards for Best Novella, Short Story, and Non-Fiction Book. He said that discoverng that "Sandman: Endless Nights" is actually non-fiction will haunt his nights forever.

EDIT: Forgot to mention Terry Pratchett's acceptance speech for "Best YA Novel" for The Wee Free Men. First, I had no idea he had such a silly-sounding voice. High-pitched, and with a bit of a lisp. After explaining how he'd written a book full of, basically, violent Glaswegian soccer hooligans, and which moreover featured witches as positive, respected characters, he was greatly disappointed to be winning awards and getting library recommendations. "Won't anybody have the common dethenthy to *burn* it?!"

12:00 The Future of Forensic Evidence
Mildly interesting. Was more about current-day cutting-edge than future speculation, so I already knew much of what was discussed.

1:00 Interactive Fiction: The Nexus of Storytelling, Simulation and AI in Video Games
I had hoped to crash this panel, but I showed up a bit toolate to gracefully attemt that. This being a topic near and dear to my heart, I didn't actually hear much new. It was distressing that the panelists, despite saying that they wanted to see new and different paradigms of storytelling, mostly weren't interested in discussing anything that wasn't, at root, a fantasy RPG. They were totally unreceptive to looking at The Sims as an example of successful interactive storytelling, for example. Chatted a bit with learnedax afterwards about automated story-generation, then dragged him along to...

2:00 The MIT Media Lab: A Visit From the Future
Naturally, kestrell and I *had* to go to this one. Marvin Minsky apparently thinks he's just a few years away from building a "learning machine". Favorite observation (paraphrased): "Emotions are easy, they just involve selectively shutting down parts of the mind. It's thinking in the first place that's hard."

3:00- ~5:30 was dealing with hotel SNAFU, but I did catch the last bit of "Drunk on Technology". Sadly, my brain was so fried by the hotel problems that none of it went into permanent memory. Oh wait, there was one thing that Cory Doctorow said he wanted (I forget if this was a prototype device or just a thought experiment): a toaster with an internet connection, that would toast your bread with a picture of today's weather on it.

After that was dinner. After that, I hung out in the ConCourse with various Carolingians for a while. Was pretty brain-dead, though, so went to bed early

WorldCon, part 4 -- Saturday panels, etc.

Got up around 9, and figured out how to use the coffee maker for kestrell. Even with the coffee, we were somewhat bleary-eyed, so we made a last-minute schedule change, and, instead of going to one of the more intellectually-challenging panels, we went to...

10:00 Neil Gaiman Reading
For the first time in public, Neil read the first chapter (and a bit more) of Anansi Boys. Was *very* funny, and I'm greatly looking forward to the finished book. Which is probably more than a year away, sigh. You could tell it was a first draft, though, as the scenes set in Florida still had lots of Britishisms in them.

11:00 What's Entertainment? -- A Look at the Future
First panel we saw with Henry Jenkins (the Director of Kes' graduate program at MIT). Unfortunately, he was way outnumbered by clueless people. The same tired old arguments about "kids don't read", "literacy is dying", et cetera ad nauseam. Connie Willis had at least half a clue, as she realized that people had been having this argument for several decades, but she still couldn't seem to move beyond it. Henry Jenkins was the only one on the panel who understood that the societal definition of "literacy" is undergoing tectonic shifts, and that "kids these days" are *more* literate than most of their elders in the New Media. Kes scored brownie points with him by bringing up the way that email and blogging are really just letter-writing and diary-keeping, dressed up in new technological clothes, and that (in these forms) more writing is happening by people in general than has for at least several decades.

12:00 The End of Copyright: Can the Arts Survive the Digital Age?
Another Cory panel. Also featured Charles Petit (Harlan Ellison's IP lawyer), who I recommend as a smart guy and incisive panelist. One panelist, Steve Miller, was very strongly anti-piracy, as he is not only a writer, but a small-press publisher, and sees internet piracy as directly costing him money. Cory Doctorow, at the end of the panel, as an almost offhand remark, gave what I thought was a devastating reply: "What's the alternative? Sue your fans?"

1:00 Tradeoffs between Freedom, Security and Privacy
Yet another Cory panel. Yes, Kes was basically stalking him :-) Also featured one of Kes' *anti*-heroes, Joe Lazzaro, who is some sort of tech director for the Mass Commission for the Blind. At one point he was responding to something Cory said, but forgot his name; Kes buried her face in her hands and whispered "I am *so* not with him." Another interesting panelist was James MacDonald, who apparently used to do real-world intelligence work for the military. He had an interesting list of decryption methods, including "rubber hose", "checkbook", and "dumbass", among others. The cogent upshot of which is that the weakest point in a crypto system is almost always the users. Near the end, unfortunately, the panel degenerated into "aren't terrorists evil", which, while true, is not very illuminating.

... and I have to go to a meeting, so I'll stop here for now. Gosh, there was a lot of WorldCon...

WorldCon, part 4 -- Saturday panels, etc.

Got up around 9, and figured out how to use the coffee maker for kestrell. Even with the coffee, we were somewhat bleary-eyed, so we made a last-minute schedule change, and, instead of going to one of the more intellectually-challenging panels, we went to...

10:00 Neil Gaiman Reading
For the first time in public, Neil read the first chapter (and a bit more) of Anansi Boys. Was *very* funny, and I'm greatly looking forward to the finished book. Which is probably more than a year away, sigh. You could tell it was a first draft, though, as the scenes set in Florida still had lots of Britishisms in them.

11:00 What's Entertainment? -- A Look at the Future
First panel we saw with Henry Jenkins (the Director of Kes' graduate program at MIT). Unfortunately, he was way outnumbered by clueless people. The same tired old arguments about "kids don't read", "literacy is dying", et cetera ad nauseam. Connie Willis had at least half a clue, as she realized that people had been having this argument for several decades, but she still couldn't seem to move beyond it. Henry Jenkins was the only one on the panel who understood that the societal definition of "literacy" is undergoing tectonic shifts, and that "kids these days" are *more* literate than most of their elders in the New Media. Kes scored brownie points with him by bringing up the way that email and blogging are really just letter-writing and diary-keeping, dressed up in new technological clothes, and that (in these forms) more writing is happening by people in general than has for at least several decades.

12:00 The End of Copyright: Can the Arts Survive the Digital Age?
Another Cory panel. Also featured Charles Petit (Harlan Ellison's IP lawyer), who I recommend as a smart guy and incisive panelist. One panelist, Steve Miller, was very strongly anti-piracy, as he is not only a writer, but a small-press publisher, and sees internet piracy as directly costing him money. Cory Doctorow, at the end of the panel, as an almost offhand remark, gave what I thought was a devastating reply: "What's the alternative? Sue your fans?"

1:00 Tradeoffs between Freedom, Security and Privacy
Yet another Cory panel. Yes, Kes was basically stalking him :-) Also featured one of Kes' *anti*-heroes, Joe Lazzaro, who is some sort of tech director for the Mass Commission for the Blind. At one point he was responding to something Cory said, but forgot his name; Kes buried her face in her hands and whispered "I am *so* not with him." Another interesting panelist was James MacDonald, who apparently used to do real-world intelligence work for the military. He had an interesting list of decryption methods, including "rubber hose", "checkbook", and "dumbass", among others. The cogent upshot of which is that the weakest point in a crypto system is almost always the users. Near the end, unfortunately, the panel degenerated into "aren't terrorists evil", which, while true, is not very illuminating.

... and I have to go to a meeting, so I'll stop here for now. Gosh, there was a lot of WorldCon...