the ryan king

I currently have 50 GMail invites. Let me know if you’d like one.

I was just talking to a couple of guys in my Internet Systems Research class who are probably going to be writing a Firefox plugin as part of their research project. We joked that Firefox could soon become a platform for everything. Then I realized that that’s not a joke. That’s probably what Google is is doing.

So, will Firefox become the new Emacs? For those who don’t know, Emacs is an old UNIX text editor that is still very popular. The main reason for its popularity is that it really serves as a platform for all sort of other applications. In Emacs you can browse the web, read your email, read news, play games, manage your address book, work with a version control system, write a weblog, and chat with other people.

Now, I’m not saying that any of these functions will get folded into Firefox (or even have plugins written for them), but I’m just saying that given a useful, flexible platform, people will build upon it and they’ll build things that no one would expect them to build.

And why would Google want this? Because it provides a portable platform for innovation free of the Redmond Giant. Google can’t let the platform be controlled by someone else.

My friend, Greg Horton, AKA the Rector (a rector is someone in charge of parish) has written an interesting piece in the Oklahoma Gazette about conservative talk radio.

He discusses, in particular, the problem of having deep, nuanced discussion in such a format:

Christianity is complex, though. It doesn’t lend itself to efficiency or quick solutions or simplification. How do you present the nuances of faith in a medium that militates against nuance?

I’m reading an article right now for my Internet Systems Research class about Google. An interesting read so far, but one thing has jumped out at me- a quote from Sergey Brin (one of the founders of Google:The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.This isn’t really surpising to me.

According to the creation story in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, this is what we, as a human race have always been striving for.

Genesis 3:4b-7:

4…”You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

The question remains though, when Google is the mind of God, will we realize that we’re naked?

Sometime last week, I found a $2 bill in my wallet. I have no idea how it got there, so I have to assume someone gave it to me as change. Weird, I’ve seen $2 bills before, but never heard of them being actually used as currency.

Anyway, since this happened, a bunch of little things have been going well for me, so its staying in my wallet. Am I superstitious? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I don’t want to risk messing up a good thing.