Outlaw Blogger Gangs

Partial Map of the Internet: Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

The Internet is one of the greatest inventions of your time stream's society.  You know this as well a I.  It connects everyone with the information they desire without judging that information (at least, in situations where free speech is allowed and there is net neutrality).

With all the possibilities that are created by the Internet, it would take the complete and combined efforts of time normal statisticians, physicists, biologists, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists to assess the full potential impact of the Internet on the future.

Fortunately, you have Anachronists like me who can use Augury to "cheat" and this and tell you what's out there.  This week, I want to focus on a few different possibilities that we know will come out of the Internet.  The Internet Age encouraged the move from modern to postmodern.  What happens when we move on from that?  One option is below the jump.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Sunday Seminar Series: Misunderstanding

Easy to misunderstand. Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,


In your own time stream, exploration is a thing of physical locales and geographic or astronomic travels.  At the University, we are instead explorers of temporal distances.  This sort of work is more stationary, but hazards its own perils.

Join me for this week's Sunday Seminar, adapted from my lectures for our introductory Anachronism class, CHRN/AUG 100.

I think the main hazard that we face as Anachronists is misunderstanding.  With our new ability to manifest whenever we would like, the danger is doubled.

Let me tell you the classical problem of misunderstanding.  It is best related through the anecdote of Clinton IV, a space  colony I have studied.

The colonists of Clinton IV learned early on that they were not alone on their world.  They found this very excitig at first, but as attempts to contact the local humanoid lifeforms failed or ended in disaster, they became discouraged.  It took a century for the xenobiologists to realize their mistake:  just because a creature looks and acts intelligent, does not always mean it is.

There are many classical misunderstandings we can make. One of them is to use our own cultural framework to read a source.  Thankfully, Dr. Bacon's mindset simulator is helping somewhat with that.  But you must be ever vigilant.

There are other sorts of misunderstandings we can make as well.  These aren't based on cultural frame problems, but instead on simple bad "facts".  Sometimes we just have the wrong assumptions, and we assume that a source says a society was at war when in fact they were playing a sports game.  Hint, hint, football fans.

These two classes of misunderstanding lead to bad conclusions and pollute the literature when they appear in our sedentary activities.

But, if you make these mistakes on assignment to a time stream, they can be deadly.  So watch out.

There's one last class of misunderstanding that is unique to being on assignment, though: that's where you don't consider your own effect through your presence.  When you visit, you're in a unique offshoot of the time stream that is affected by your presence.  It's almost the same, but not completely.  If you're going to collect evidence, make sure you didn't accidentally create that data.

And with that, I leave you to your sports games.  Hopefully the referees have had a good class on misunderstanding.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

The Academy for Cultural Guardians

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

  In my research I have turned up a number of bizarre time streams, as you no doubt know.  This week, I've tried to focus on some of the stranger among them, at first the wolf-people, and now today a world where culture has taken on something of a life of its own.

  This is one of the odd time streams where the laws of physics are ever so slightly different, in ways somewhat too complicated to go into in detail here.  The bottom line is that culture has become something of a tangible and measurable thing.  I consider it to be something like the Ley Lines suggested by archaeologist Alfred Watkins in your own time stream.  Different cultures somehow converge around pathways of something that I think of as a sociological ether.  Consider it a sort of addition on to the laws of physics that you are used to.

  Horrible things can happen, however, when there are strange convergences of these cultural ley lines.  Across the world of this time stream, there are places where the smallest living thing can be transformed into a hideous monster.  Perhaps a wayward squirrel outside of Copenhagen could become the grand monster Grendel and terrify the countryside, all through the effect of this cultural ether.

  To combat this problem, the people of this time stream have instated a cultural exchange program.  This system ensures that at least there will be several people in every community who are able to rise to the challenge of the strange creatures that come out of the woods without balking when they meet their culture's greatest nightmares.

  But these cultural exchange students, "guardians," as they are called, must first be trained.  Below the jump is a primary source from one of the classes at their Academy for Cultural Guardians.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Temporal Tuesday: Dances with Wolves

Image by Colin Purrington via Flickr

Dear Readers,

  Imagine with me for a moment something that I think you won't accept as real.  Imagine a world where hominids did not win the evolutionary race to dominance.  It's not the most likely time stream after the hominids develop opposable thumbs, of course, but then the idea that evolution can diverge across time streams might be something you hadn't considered yet.

   When I was earning my second undergraduate degree, the one I got from the University itself, I took a class on evolutionary biology.  The professor cited Anachronism data that showed a time stream where humans' primary evolutionary competitors came to the forefront instead of humans.  This other animal had an intelligent mind, a social mentality, and was a most effective hunter.  This animal was the wolf.  The main reason that wolves and humans did not turn out the other way around in your time stream is right on the edge of your hand; they lacked the opposable thumb.

  Today, imagine a time stream where they did not.  I have (mostly) translated this species' quirks to make the piece more accessible.  The only word I cannot translate is the name "Rolf," though it's curious that this name appears in both wolven as well as German, though they have very different meanings.  Since the wolves are deeply religious, it's been easy to find analogs for other names.  For example, a wolf name meaning "the first wolf" is easily replaced with "Adam."

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Julie [Orig: "Young One"] clambered up the ramp outside the temple. [Reversed knees would not handle steps well]