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At around five minutes past 11 AM – Sydney time – on June the 3rd, 2010, I acquired my 6,825th follower on Twitter. This is a moment I’ve been waiting for with anticipation for a few months, since I did a simple bit of math:

Wikipedia reports that the estimated world population as of 1 June 2010 is 6,824,700,000.

This means that each and every one of you are one in a million. Each of you are, to me, a proxy for a million of your peers.

Most of you are Australian.  Some of you are American.  Fewer are European.  Almost all of you can write in English.  But absolutely every last one of you are incredible, the beginning and end of my day, an endless fountain of entertainment, a deep well of knowledge, and collective mind that far surpasses my own.

Thank you.  You truly are one in a million.

• Please describe what it is you do/did for a living:

That’s a difficult question.  I write, I teach, I give public lectures, I research, I consult.  This all more-or-less has something to do with technology and its impact on people.  Also, I do a little television!

• What fulfils you about your job?

I am almost entirely self-directed.  I research the subjects which interest me, I lecture and speak about that research.  This means I have enormous freedom to do as I please.

• What bothers you about it?

Being self-employed is actually very scary.  The satisfaction of a steady paycheck simply isn’t there.  If the consulting & gigs stopped coming, I’d starve.  Or, have to find another line of work.

• What was your first job?

Making donuts!  After that, I couldn’t eat a donut for about three years.  I’d had my fill.

• How did you come to be in your line of work?

In 1994 I invented VRML (a 3D interface to the Web) with my friend Tony Parisi.  Then I wrote a book about VRML – which sold quite well – which led to a teaching job, which led to a faculty position, which led to much more writing and teaching and researching and lecturing.  It all happened quite organically from 1994 to 2004.

• Where did you grow up?

New England, mostly in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, which is a beautiful suburban town on Narragansett Bay.

• Do you have a partner / what is your partner’s name?

I’m single.

• How did you meet?

N/A

• Kids? Ages, names?

N/A

• What was your father like?

My father is very much still alive – I see him nearly every day, thanks to the wonders of Skype.  My father is gentle, wise, patient.  I’ve learned a lot about how to be a good human being from him.

• What was your mother like?

My mother held the family together for several years while my father recovered from a severe illness.  She’s all about the work ethic.

• Where did you go to school?

North Kingstown Senior High School, then on to MIT.  But I never graduated.

• Cast your mind back to the playground… what were your school years like?

A bit difficult.  There’s no question that I was always a nerd, and always classed as such in the complex social rankings of High School.  Eventually, I formed a clique with all of my friends who were a bit too nerdy to be in any of the other High School cliques.  The amazing thing is that we’re all still in touch today, thirty years later.

• Have you travelled and seen much of the world?

I’ve been fortunate to see a lot of Europe, the USA and Australia.  I’ve seen quite a bit of Japan, but not much else in Asia.  I really want to visit India, but my friends tell me that a trip to India should take at least three months.

• What do you do to relax?

I like to read – my flat is literally stuffed with books (mostly history and science fiction).  Plus I do like watching documentaries, going out to the movies, and cooking.  I’ve recently rediscovered my ability to cook!

• · What are you reading, watching or consuming at the moment?

Reading: “Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead” by Paula Byrne

Watching: “Glee” – just started watching the first series, and loving it.

Consuming: lots of Italian food – which I cook at home!

• · Tell us about your pet hate?

I hate it when people aren’t on time!  I am a very prompt person, and really that’s a sign of respect in other people.  It drives me nuts when someone is supposed to meet you/call you at a particular time, and they don’t do it.

• · What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in your life?

I have, at times, been described at ‘mercurial’.  Sometimes my moods have run the show.  Part of growing into full adulthood has been coming to understand why my moods are configured the way they are, and how I can learn to acknowledge them without submitting to them.  That’s probably been my biggest challenge.

• What have you learned along the way?

The only thing that matters, when all is said and done, is how much you love.   Hopefully you are loved in return, but that part isn’t guaranteed.

You friends are your sanity.  If you ever think you’re going nuts, check in with them.

• Most unusual experience?

Very hard to explain, other than to say that it was more paranoid than anything out of a Philip K. Dick novel.

• What are the goals you are still working toward?

I’d like to write some more books, but the idea of what the book is as an object is mutating wildly right now.  I guess I’m really saying that I’d like the opportunity to work on some more ideas and share them.  Is that a goal?  Because that’s what I’m doing right now.

Also, I’d like to learn the breast stroke!

• Have you been to the Territory?

I’ve been to Uluru & Kata Tjuta.  I have not been to Darwin – I keep waiting for someone to invite me!

• If you live in the Territory – how did you come to be here?

The quick quiz:

• The worst job I ever had was …

Writing software for barcode scanners.  You think they’re boring in the supermarket?  Try writing the software which controls them.  Zzzzzzzz.

• · I often wonder …

Where all of this is going.  You could say that I’m obsessed with this question.  It’s the basic question at the core of all of my research.

• If only I could, I would …

Travel around India for a year.

• · My greatest fear …

Is to be alone.  Without friends, without family, without anyone.

• If money were no object, where would you live?

Sydney.  But I’d own a gorgeous home with an ocean or Harbour view.  And a pool!

• · What did you want to be as a child?

From the first time I touched a computer, I knew what I wanted to do.

• · What accomplishment has meant the most to you?

Writing “The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination”.  It’s a decade old, and – unlike many books about technology – it’s standing the test of time.  A lot of thinking and love went into that book.

• If there was one thing you could change about the world what would it be?

• What was the last thing you purchased that you shouldn’t have?

I’ve lost quite a bit of weight recently, so I went overboard and bought four pairs of jeans.  I really only needed two.  And I’m still losing weight, so these four pairs will be too big for me in another month or two…

• · I dream …

This is an odd question to ask a ‘futurist’ because really the difference between my dreams and my research is, at any point in time, not that easy to discern.

• · My most prized possession is …

I have a first-edition copy of Marshal McLuhan’s “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”.

• · I will never again …

Drive from Sydney to the Barossa by way of Canberra, Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road in just six days.  That was a bit too much of a road trip…

• · What makes me angry, is …

Wilful stupidity.  People who purposely blind themselves to the truth.  It’s very natural, and entirely regrettable.

• · People would be surprised to know that I …

I have very, very curly hair.  So curly that it becomes a natural afro when it gets beyond a few centimetres long.  Hence I keep it cut very, very short.  It may be that, in my 60s, I’ll grow it out.  I’ll look a lot like Einstein…

MUSIC

Please list six (6) popular music choices and give a brief reason for choosing that song. If the song is a particular version (e.g: a live version, special release, cover version, etc.) please give details.

Ideally, we would like to talk about the song’s significance in your life; preferably, selections should be from the 1960s onwards and under 5 minutes duration.

Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine” was the great anthem of my adolescent years.

Sex Pistols, “Anarchy in the UK”; there’s a dividing line in my life, in May 1979 – before and after I heard this song.  Before it, well, I listened to a lot of AOR (Boston, Styx, Kansas), and after it, punk and New Wave and post-Punk and everything that followed…

Talking Heads, “The Great Curve”; this song pretty much rewrote my expectations for music.  It is polyrhythmic yet rocking, the synthesis of white & black music to that point (1981).  It is Parliament and Talking Heads and Adrian Belew.  Perfect in every way.

Pixies, “Caribou”; when this song came on the radio – the day the EP was released, back in 1986 – I nearly lost control of my car.  I did turn the car around, drove to the record shop, and bought the album.  Just like that.

Wilco, “I am Trying to Break Your Heart”; another song that caused me to nearly lose control of the car.  Still an amazing and experimental piece of rock music.

Gomez, “Miles End” may end up being the perfect anthem for late middle age.  I’m not there yet, but I can see what it looks like.

“It’s cold over here.”

“Fuel lines.”

“Oh.”  It looked up and noted the long translucent tubes transferring a honey-golden syrup.  They terminated in the smooth, round belly of the vessel, which seemed to swell visibly as the fuel entered.  “What I don’t understand…”

“There’s so much I don’t understand,” the other replied.  “How and why are just the tip of it.”

“There are rules.  And that’s an end to it.”

*

“Ten percent.”  Reading the gauge.

“I know the rhyme. ‘Twenty percent a third are sent / Thirty percent and halfway spent / Fifty percent, too late, repent.’  I’ve known it since I learned to speak.”

“I know it, too…”

“Then you know we have plenty of time.”  A dark laugh.  “Probably.”

*

“Been to the line?”

“Yes.  Not long now.  T is huge, a colossus.”

“I see T everywhere.”

“Everywhere but here.  Here, at least, we’re safe.  For now.”

“Twelve percent.”

“Plenty of time.”

“It doesn’t make sense to wait.”

“Then go ahead, climb aboard the Zoster and strap yourself down.  Feel the belt as it oozes into your sides.  One with the ship.  There you are, and there you’ll stay.  Staring at the featureless gray walls all around you.  Waiting.  A few minutes – or a few days.  I’d go mad in the first hour.”

“Come with me.  At least we could talk.”

“That’s already decided.”

“You could always change your mind.”

Another dark laugh.

*

“Fifteen percent.”

“Filling up faster now.”  Both looked toward the pulsating fuel lines.

“It doesn’t make sense…”

“There are rules.  And that’s an end –”

“That’s not what I mean.  You don’t have to stay.”

“True.  I don’t have to stay.”

“Then why?”

“I want to find out what happens next.  I want to know, once you’ve gone, once the Zoster has blasted out to the Unknown Beyond, what becomes of those left behind.”

“You know what happens – T comes, and death comes with it.”

“Really?  You know this?  How?”

“Common knowledge.  And common sense.”

“It’s not suicide.  It’s curiosity.”

“Aren’t you curious about the Unknown Beyond?”

“No.  That we know about.  A void, then a landing, then it all begins all over again.”

“But you’ve never been there yourself.”

“Our ancestors have, from time out of mind.  I want something new, something they never saw.”

“Suicide.”

“Curiosity.”

*

“Nineteen percent.”

“Hadn’t you better get on board?”

“If I miss this one, I’ll catch the next.”

“And hope this one isn’t the last.”

“But that’s what you’re hoping, isn’t it?”

“Not hoping.  Waiting.”

“You’ll see us all off, and face your fate.”

“Indeed.”

“You seem almost relaxed in the face of death.”

“I won’t die.”

“You’re a fool.”

“Am I?  Very well then, board the Zoster.  You wouldn’t want to be fooled into missing your ride.”

“And too sure of yourself.”

“A self-assured fool.  Or, just perhaps, the possessor of some hidden knowledge.”

*

“Shouldn’t you be going?”

“Not until you tell me what you know.”

“Twenty-one percent.”

“Tell me.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference.”

“It might.”

“How?”

“I wouldn’t grieve.”

“I hadn’t thought…”  It looked at the other for a long moment.  “Don’t grieve.  I will be safe.  And alive.”

“How?  T is coming.”

“I found a place beyond T’s reach.”

“You’ll spend your lifetime hiding in a cubbyhole?”

“Another space.  Very different.”

“You’ll be safe there?”

“Perfectly.”

“And free?”

“Yes.  Well.  Free enough.”

“And you haven’t shared this?”

“What difference would it make?  Everyone is leaving.”

*

“It will be lonely.”

“You’ll have company.”

“I mean for you, here, once we’re gone.”

“I doubt I’ll be the only one.  And I’ll explore.”

“Is it big, this other space?”

“Vast.”

“You almost make me want to stay.”

“Someone needs to go.”

*

“Twenty-three percent.”

“You can’t drag this out forever.”

“I know.  I know.”

“Here we are.”  They stopped before the entrance to the Zoster.

“So…”

“Yes?”

“That’s it?”

“It is.”

“I want something more.”

“What?”

“This.”  It bulged from the center.

“Your genome?”

“Part of it.”

“For me?”

“To share.”

“Oh.  Well.  Alright.”  It bulged now, as well.  The bulges met, melted, and coalesced back into two smooth surfaces.

“Now part of you will go with me.”

“And part of you will stay.”

*

“I should hurry now.”

“Indeed.  You might have waited too long.”

“Be careful.”

“Have fun.  A fresh start in a new world.  I almost envy you.”

“And I you.”

*

At just under thirty-two percent the space around the Zoster seemed to twist, as if the ship would grow to span all space.  Then nothing remained.

*

The opening was still there.  Obvious, unprotected, easy.  It had to strip down. Removing one layer.  Keeping another.  It leaned against the opening, feeling itself taken up a hundred thousand points, ferried across the barrier.

Let me in.  I want to live forever.

Much has been written – wrongly, I believe – about how Twitter lacks a business model. I reckon that anything that changes the scene as profoundly as Twitter has doesn’t need to have a business model. Certainly not at the start, and, quite possible never does. That isn’t to say that Twitter is condemned to be an eternal sinkhole of money and man-hours. Rather, that most business minds lack the foresight to intuit what this new thing can best be used for.

Just a few minutes ago I was “followed” on Twitter by DealsDirect.com.au, which is one web site that I allow to spam me every morning with their daily sales brochure. It’s mostly cheap plastic crap that’s turned out by the thousands of factories in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, but some of it – particularly the Manchester – is of good quality. (Some of the electronics on sale aren’t so bad – and most of that is made in China, whether you buy it from Apple or Lenovo.)

At the moment that I followed DealsDirect.com.au on Twitter – turning a one-way relationship into a bilateral connection – I had a brain wave. I immediately understood how Twitter can make their business model pay: they can charge for sending rich-media Tweet. I wouldn’t necessarily ever have the need to send a rich-media message, but DealsDirect will want to send mixed media messages, messages of arbitrary length, every time they reach out to me. It’s not enough to spruik a product with words – pictures are necessary. A “click to buy” button is necessary. And given the analysis that’s possible by looking at my tweetstream, it should be possible for the canny retailer to offer up exactly what I need, when I need it.

I don’t know that this would be a big change, technically, for Twitter. I rather doubt it would be. It would force a change on the various Twitter clients (Twhirl, TweetDeck, etc.) to accommodate the rich text messaging.

And, hey, I would pay for rich text messaging, once in a while. When it’s important. And if it’s easy and inexpensive to do so, I’m sure many of the other Twitteratti would do the same thing.

This morning, as I cruised through the normal feed of websites, I came to the front page of Talking Points Memo, which normally features short posts on the left, and some video coverage on the right hand side of the page.

This morning that video was an imbedded Qik video, an interview with comedian Harry Shearer (Mr. Skinner, to you Simpsons fans), recorded at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Recorded on a mobile.

Sure the quality stinks. If they’d used a thousand-dollar consumer-level HD camcorder (such as my own Canon HF-10), the video quality would be fantastic. But the folks at TPM already know that there is no “gold standard” for video. They are using an external, handheld microphone, which means they’ve grasped the importance of sound recording. In video, sound tells the story.

I wonder just how many other of the “Big Tent” bloggers are using Qik at DNC08.

With the advent of iPhone, there’s been a rise in talk about the “mobile Web”. The Web itself has been mobile for several years – at least since I strapped a wireless modem onto the back of my Palm Pilot (this would have been 1998 or 1999) and started surfing.

What we have now isn’t precisely the mobile Web. It is mobile, and some of it does involve the Web (or, more precisely, HTTP), but that is not the whole of the story, or, in eighteen month’s time, will that even be the biggest part of the story.

I’ve already installed my first 3G killer app on my iPhone – SimplifyMedia. It became immediately clear – just over the course of a 30 minute walk to the grocery and back – that I would blow through my rather meager 500MB Vodafone data cap very quickly using SimplifyMedia. Streaming media is just too irresistible.

Streaming media is not specifically a Web technology. It integrates well with the Web, it can even be delivered via the Web, but it is not the Web.

Qik and Flixwagon, which both provide live video broadcasting from my iPhone, do post those videos to a website. But very little of the Web is involved in moving the video stream from my iPhone to their respective sites. So, once again, this is not the mobile Web. This is something else.

And I’m convinced that using the term “mobile Web” will only constrain our ability to entertain the possibilities for pervasive 3G networks.

I’ve been using WordPress for my blog for the past three years. Although I have occasionally dived into it – adding a few themes or plugins – only recently, with this blog and this other blog have I really started to explore what’s possible.

Over the last 24 hours, as I updated all three of my blogs to WordPress 2.6.1, did I have a good look around both at the management interface for WordPress, and for the incredible number of plugins available for it. WordPress is clearly a viable ecosystem now, with thousands of plugins, thousands of themes, and something like 70 million users.

Which means I made the right decision, three years ago.

Best of all, upgrading – which has ever been the bane of WordPress users – has gotten easier and easier. I am going to try the Automatic Updater plugin next time I upgrade. It broke my blog the last time I used it. But I reckon it’s all a whole lot cleaner now. And if that’s the case, then WordPress will be damn near perfect.

Just finished reading Om Malik this morning. I rather like his take on the developments of the business and technology of Silicon Valley. But I liked him better pre-heart attack, when his world was smaller, when he wrote about things he cared passionately about, and when he didn’t make his posts a lame attempt to promote his own forthcoming events.

Note to those of you who blog: I am already giving you my very precious attention. That should be more than enough. If you spruik mercilessly, you’ll drive me away. And I doubt I’ll be alone.