“What a fascinating modern age we live in.” — Jack Aubrey
It dawned on me today just how much life has become like Star Trek, in almost every way that matters – except bald men commanding starships on diplomatic missions to worlds where all creatures are humans with crinkley foreheads, funny ears and/or facial tattoos.
Taking a break from writing, coding and such, I went for a walk down to the harbour. While there, I received emails from people, monitored the precise position of my girlfriend’s plane (inbound from Hong Kong) and then, out of the corner of my eye, a big sod-off tanker began to drive into harbour.
Out of curiosity, I googled the name. I had expected to discover – at best – what country the flag above her bridge was from, and to do so before the stern of the ship (with the name of her port of registration) became visible.
Instead, I got a plethora of information – everything from her gross tonnage, date of commissioning to the literally precise, up-to-date position in the world. First damned hit on google.
This may be the information age – in a way that never ceases to fascinate me, amaze me, astound me, and occasionally make me giggle like a school-girl on too much sherbert… but geeze, what a mess all the information is in. So much fascinating stuff, pooled together by obsessed fans of everything from Monarch Butterflies to 1920s tram cars to specific kinds of storm-water drains.
But what to do with all of it? We’ve started seeing some fascinating stuff begin to happen – google is the obvious one there, but there’s interesting things like Wolfram Alpha as well that deserve a mention.
Seeing things like the tracking of ships and planes got me thinking about how all of this might benefit simulators of various sorts. The latest flight simulators already model weather taken live from the real part of the world you’re flying in – why not take shipping info and the like, too?
Maybe it’s just minutiae freaks like myself, but the idea of all this being simulated or – rather – represented in something like that would just plain excite me. Anyone got any other ideas of creative gaming/simulator-related uses for the kind of information we can now find easily and freely on the World Wide Intertubes?
PS. I don’t feel this blog post was either funny or interesting enough to be posted without a random picture that made me laugh while watching kayakers down by the bridge.
PPS. So here is the picture.
PPPS. I didn’t make the picture.
PPPPS. It’s not mine.
PPPPSS. Never drink too much orange juice with your vodka.
Post a Comment