So I attended a very fun concert last Friday -- geek performer extraordinaire Jonathan Coulton at the Somerville Theater. Coulton's a former computer guy who now makes his living entertaining people (many of whom are themselves of the techie persuasion) with his melodic and charmingly nerdy songs. His audiences are full of computer geeks and sci-fi fans, mathletes and robotics experts, people who dabble in artificial intelligence and neural networks, and -- when he's playing near Cal Tech or MIT, some honest-to-god rocket scientists.
Anyway, one thing a lot of these folks have in common is that they are, in their own way, trying to change the world they live in. They're imagining a better way of doing things, a better way of living, and trying to figure out how to get there (and maybe take others along for the ride). Despite the inevitable hiccups, some are pretty successful in that, while others -- well, a lot of them discover that the "perfect" realities they envision aren't quite so perfect after all. Some of that lies within ourselves, and some stuff is just plain out of our control.
We read up. We prepare ourselves, mentally, emotionally, or physically. We come up with a plan. We will do [fill in the blank] and everything will be perfect! Sound familiar?
Current members of the GUS team:
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