Nanotechnycian

Figure 1. Tyhry gets distracted
while hacking a New York database.

 Hacking Nanites. A major theme in City on the Edge of Tomorrow is that Tyhry is Earth's first nanotechnycian. The image to the right (Figure 1) shows how Mr. Wombo usually depicts Tyhry in scenes where she is at work in her nanite programming laboratory. Sadly, Mr. Wombo has no idea what Tyhry is up to, which is actually just fine... the image only has to look highly impressive. However, we can ask: what is Tyhry looking at?

Sedron Time Stream. Tyhry was born several decades after the Huaoshy put an end to all further time travel by changing the dimensional structure of the universe. However, there is still one available way for information to flow backwards through time which depends on a part of our universe called the sedron domain. Tyhry is one of the few people on Earth who can obtain useful information from the Sedron Time Stream, but that information flow often takes place at the edge of her conscious awareness. 

Figure 2. Tyhry's vision.

Sometimes Tyhry suddenly has the mysterious feeling that she is being watched. Maybe these kinds of strange cognitive tickles are due to her own efforts in the future to transmit important information back into the past, an attempt to complete a time loop and provide useful information to herself from the future. I've previously written about such a time loop that involves Brak (see The Telepaths of Site Q). However, at the time of City on the Edge of Tomorrow, Brak has not yet been born (Brak will be Marda's first child).

There in Figure 2 is what Tyhry thinks she sees when she looks over her shoulder. Maybe a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, but not so for Tyhry. For Tyhry, her life's experience has been a never ending chain of successes. There is nothing that she has ever tried to do that she has not found a way to accomplish. 

Tyhry with a cloud of nanites.

Tyhry feels no great pride from all of her many accomplishments; Manny the bumpha has provided Tyhry with advanced nanotechnology that makes even the seemingly impossible, possible. 

Imaginary Friends. The impossible? Tyhry grew up not imagining a friend, but living with a loyal companion, the replicoid named Anthony. And from a very young age, Tyhry was envious of her mentor's (Manny) amazingly beautiful hair. Tyhry learned how to program hair nanites and provide herself with artificial hair. Fascinated by the idea that Antony is an artificial life-form, a replicoid, Tyhry learned how to create replicoid copies of herself. Simple.

Since nothing exceeds Tyhry's grasp, she has never felt the need to mutter words like these to herself (but see Figure 3):
"Had I been two, another and myself,
Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" (source)

Figure 3. Two headed Tyhry.

There are several kinds of copies of Tyhry in City on the Edge of Tomorrow. Through study of the Reality Simulation System, Tyhry has learned how to use the simulator equipment to make replicoid copies. Through the years, Tyhry has made several such replicoid copies of herself; usually they stay in a simulation fork of the Ekcolir Reality and help with projects in Tyhry's nanite programming laboratory. However, whenever Tyhry is inside the Ekcolir Reality Simulation, one of her replicoid copies is present at home, in the Final Reality, pretending to be the original biological copy of Tyhry in that Reality.

Tyhry has also been experimenting with ways to make miniaturized replicoid copies. These often have defects, and Tyhry has no qualms about destroying defective copies of herself. Tyhry's ultimate goal for her replicoid experiments is to learn the secret of creating nanoscopic replicoids that can "plug into" the Bimanoid Interface.

Figure 4. Two copies of Marda.

As told in City on the Edge of Tomorrow, Tyhry is surprised to discover that there were biological copies of herself that lived in Deep Time, during the Ekcolir Reality. After getting over the initial shock of that discovery, Tyhry realizes that Manny lives by the motto: waste not, want not. If copies of Tyhry proved their worth in the Ekcolir Reality then why shouldn't Manny deploy another Tyhry copy in the Final Reality?

 World Thinkers. Both Tyhry and Marda are trying to find a way to provide telepathy to everyone on Earth. Marda's method is to create brain implants that will link human thought to a global communications network. Tyhry's strategy is not too different, but she wants to use ten billion nanoscopic replicoids to link the minds of every person on Earth into the Bimanoid Interface. I expect it will be in Part 8 of City on the Edge of Tomorrow when Marda discovers that a copy of herself existed in the Ekcolir Reality (see Figure 4). 

Tyhry, the graduate.

Finding a copy of herself in Deep Time will be a lucky discovery because Marda will have a strong telepathic linkage to her copy. That telepathic contact will lead to "the city on the edge of tomorrow" (New York, Virginia) and that will allow Tyhry to realize that her existence in the Final Reality was also anticipated by the existence of two copies of herself in the 20th century of the Ekcolir Reality. 

Tyhry and Marda have both recently graduated from college when they make their journey to New York. For her senior research project, Marda developed an cerebral implant and tested it on herself. Tyhry monitors everything that Marda does and Tyhry has secretly taken Marda's idea for a cerebral implant and modified it using advanced nanotechnology that is not available to Marda. Figure 5 is a rather overly-dramatic depiction of Tyhry during one of her cerebral implant experiments.

Figure 5. Brain Surgery.

 Synapex Linkers. Now having reached 14,000 words into my new science fiction story City on the Edge of Tomorrow, I'm thinking about how Tyhry will deploy one more type of nanite in an attempt to establish a telepathic mind link to Naseh. I've long imagined that Ekcolir was genetically crafted and carefully designed so as to be able to telepathically influence the minds of Asterothropes. 

 What about Naseh? When he was sent to Earth, Ekcolir was on a mission to end the Time Travel War and to accomplish that he needed to make Trysta fall in love with him. For City on the Edge of Tomorrow, I imagine that Naseh is constantly transmitting an Ek'col-like emotion-controlling telepathic signal and Tyhry is receptive to it, making Tyhry experience a persistent fascination with Naseh (the same is true for Tynyo). Tyhry desperately tries to establish a synapex link to Naseh using some of her programmable nanites.

Deactivated

 Other News. As described in this blog post from 2020, the wikifiction blog was started at just about the same time when I began using Twitter. I have stopped using Twitter. Why? I recently saw someone who was still using a Yahoo email account and I thought: Am I one of those old-timers who can't let go of old things? Yes... but not everything.

The Last Straw

 The Last Straw. Through the years, the people who I had grown to appreciate on Twitter seemed to gradually drift away. Then there was a period of time when Twitter relentlessly crammed things into my feed, bad things that I was not interested in. Recently, most of my use of Twitter has been related to baseball. I felt like there was a problem when I seemed to derive maximal satisfaction from watching the fans of losing teams melt down and rant. The last straw was the way that gambling seemed to take over my baseball feed. I tried to mute all the silly gambling accounts, but finally I had to give up.

Next: a story writing collaboration with ChatGPT.

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15 Years of Blogger

I started using Blogger 15 years ago, in April. I did some meta-blogging about the Blogger platform last year when I was feeling particularly unhappy with Google and their limited support for the Blogger service. In this blog post, I want to reflect on my blogging experience.

And Twitter, too

Twitter anniversary (click image to enlarge)

I also began using Twitter in April (of 2009). This blog, (wikifiction) was not my first Blogger blog. I started the wikifiction blog just about the same time when I began using Twitter. Almost all of my tweets are related to science fiction.

However, as can be seen in the image to the left, I do respond to other people's tweets that have nothing to do with science fiction.

Going Viral

April 5th - Traffic to the wikifiction blog

Here in 2020, as a science educator, I have felt the need to link some folks on Twitter to good sources of information about the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of the people who visit this blog are from the USA, but today there is heavy traffic from Italy (see the map, to the right).

The wikifiction blog has a special connection to Italy. In the Exode Saga, I imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality, the Etruscan civilization dominated Europe, not Rome.

Map source: CSSE at Johns Hopkins University

Also, in my story "Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus", I imagine that the young Mary Shelley visited Italy during an outbreak of malaria. That experience brought her in contact with an alien visitor to Earth.

Little did I know while writing that story back in 2016 that Italy would become a hot spot for the Covid-19 pandemic. While viruses have been a topic of discussion here at this blog prior to 2020 (example), I've only made a few virus-related posts to Twitter (example).

A viral tweet, March 22nd 2020

While I'm linking to past tweets (Related: the end of Twitter.), I must say that Twitter has now made it more difficult to obtain a link to tweets. Now you need to click on the tweet's ˅ button and select "Embed Tweet". Then scroll up and you can see the link in a hidden display box.

There are a few options for how you can adjust the appearance of an embedded tweet. The image shown below is an example of the "dark" option.

I began tracking the number of Covid-19 cases in the USA on January 26th. The "dark" image shown below illustrates that towards the end of January my thoughts turned to my science fiction story Exodemic, which features the world-altering effects of a virus.

The dark side. January 28, 2020 viral tweet.

Here in 2020, my usual style for blog posts is to include many images along with the text. I have Blogger image archives (example) that go back to the old days when Picasa was used to collect all the images that are used in blog posts.

Now, I routinely link each blog post to a Google Photos album that contains imaginary book and magazine covers.

I've tried to make the old Picasa-generated albums visible in Google Photos, but that does not seem to have worked.

Ghost of Picasa: image "comments" from 2010.

The controls provided by Google for the old blog image archives (like this one) are totally non-intuitive. There is a "MANAGE ACTIVITY" button that when clicked displays the list of "image comments" that I added into Picasa back in 2010.

Bottom Line
After 15 years of using Blogger, I'm still confused by the interface. Right now, there is a "Try the new Blogger" button, but I generally wait until Blogger forces me to use their new versions.

                                                                                Dear Diary

the new Blogger

Even with all the trials and tribulations of using Blogger, it does provide a workable (and FREE) way to keep an online diary. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to migrate this blog to WordPress should Google terminate the Blogger service. 😔
Related Reading: the new Blogger

Next: a complication for Nirutam

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Interesting item from Twitter

Tweet 2020

 yang

yin

I occasionally blog about Twitter because the wikifiction blog began at the same time when I starting using Twitter, back in April 2009. I began crafting this blog post (Tweet 2020) on the day when I'd sent out my 2000th tweet. However, I'm not going to publish this blog post until I have sent tweet number 2020.

I last blogged about Twitter back towards the end of 2018, at a time when I had endured a series of annoying Twitter bugs.

I'd reached 1500 tweets back in August of 2017, so I have been averaging a tweet almost every other day during the past two and a half years.

twit icons

Sorry if I've blocked you

Ever since Twitter removed some of the buttons that once allowed users to control what tweets we see, I've sometime had to block the creators of unwanted tweets that show up in my feed. That does not mean that your tweet was horrible or that I dislike you, only that I don't want to read your tweets. It astounds me that the people in charge of Twitter think it is good for their service when they force people to see tweets that they do not want to see.

Unfriendly user interface
I despise the user interface for Twitter.
Why?
I understand that many users of Twitter are using their phones, but why does that mean that a desktop computer user like me has to suffer with a crummy user interface? The "smart" phone revolution has brought horrible changes to the internet and website user experience. Companies like Twitter dominate the internet and exist only to make money off of users.

Twitter knows I'm on a Mac

What annoys me most about the Twitter interface is that I can't mouse-over these absurd icons and get a little pop-up explaining what the icon represents. Twitter knows that I use a Macintosh, not a phone, so they could easily provide me with a more informative user interface. If they cared. Thanks for not caring, Twitter.

                                              2020 on Twitter

source

Sadly, here in 2020, Twitter continues to function as one of the outlets for fake news and lies from internet trolls. I ignore most of what happens on Twitter.

Most of my tweets continue to relate to my science fiction-related blogging here at the wikifiction blog. Tweet 2020 was no exception.

in the Ekcolir Reality

My tweet #2020 was about my Nov 17, 2019 blog post called "A Phari Tale". Yes, I'm almost 4 months behind in tweeting about my blog posts. That does not bother me because I'm often still weaving together my blog posts several months after I write them. "A Phari Tale" contains a short story in which I tried to restrain myself from my usual habit of making hypertext links for all of the people, places and technical concepts in the story. I had considerable fun creating illustrations for the Lost World Trilogy in "A Phari Tale".

Special report on the Twitter User Interface in 2022

UPDATE: eventually Twitter decided to start using words again... I suppose the folks in charge of the user interface for Twitter got tired of seeing a steady decline in users, so they compromised on their obsession with icons and actually once again provide users with words.

The most desired feature, the ability to easily fix errors in tweets is now available by subscription only.

As of May 2022, Twitter is still aggressively inserting crap into my tweet feed that I don't want to see. Will this disgusting "feature" of Twitter change as the service goes under new ownership? I fear the changes that will come in the future will only make things worse.

Related: the end of Twitter.

Next: playing death dominoes

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No Tweets

me on Twitter for 10 years

I don't have high expectations for online services like Twitter and Google search. However, I was intrigued when after almost ten years of posting tweets, Twitter told me that I had never received a single tweet.

Companies like Twitter and Google have a talent for "updating" the software that runs their user interfaces and not being aware that they have broken their own software. Users of the online services then have to report the problems and if enough people complain then maybe the problem will be fixed.

I started using Twitter in 2009. I am not a heavy user of Twitter. 2018 was the year when I finally reached 200* followers and 200 other users who I follow. In the middle of 2018, there was a period of time when Twitter became unusable. First, there was a day when only about 5-10 tweets would be displayed in my Twitter timeline.

virtual reality

Then came the completely empty timeline.
Then, 12 hours later, back to only about 5-10 tweets would be displayed in my Twitter timeline.
Then 4 hours later, back to "No Tweets yet".

Twitter shows a few tweets
and then, game over.

And then back to just not showing the whole timeline. I found that sometimes I could just keep trying to scroll down even when at the black bird "Back to top" tombstone (image to the right) and get to see a few more tweets.

how social are you?

When this problem started, the first time I saw "Back to top" there was a pop-up message saying that there was a problem, possibly slow server access and I should try to view my timeline later.

More likely, the "problem" is that I'm using an older computer and my browser no longer correctly deals with all the ads, cookies and pixels that Twitter sends to and from my computer.

Black bird of death

When seeing "No Tweets yet", the page kept trying to load and would spend a loooong time waiting for either ads from telapart.com or images from pbs.twimg.com. If I left Twitter running with "No Tweets yet", then a newly posted tweet would eventually become available and was be displayed in the timeline. Then by scrolling up and down the page I could sometimes get some older tweets to display.

Reloading the page during these times when my timeline would not load would cause Twitter to hang for a looong time waiting for useless scripts from abs.twimg.com.

After a couple of months, Twitter finally fixed their bug and I could again use the Twitter timeline correctly. Conclusion: during the months when this bug persisted during 2018, I learned that it was nice to get a break from Twitter.

*Purge
Birds of a feather flock together. However, there have always been some odd twitter accounts that for some inexplicable reason have followed my account. I've always ignored what look like bot accounts. Sometimes twitter cleans out bogus accounts and this week I suddenly lost 7 such "followers" and I'm now at 199 followers.

That's all, folks. Related: the end of Twitter.

Older blog posts about Twitter:
2014
2015
2016
2017
 

Be twither 197

micronews

I occasionally blog about Twitter because I started this blog when I started using Twitter. Some folks use Twitter for microblogging, but I don't. Also, I don't use Twitter as a way to access conventional "news"; I still read a newspaper every day and I listen to NPR. I do use Twitter to get "micronews", which I define as news for a topic area that is not normally covered by conventional news outlets (particularly news about science).

I'll Follow You If...

source

his blog

I've seen it stated authoritatively that it is best for people to tweet several times a day. Moulton's Twitter account dates back to 2008 and he has 197 tweets. You do the math. I think the world would be a better place if most Twitter users tweeted less.

Twitter balances on a knife edge and often tips users into an abyss of noxious self-promotion. It is always nice to find folks (example) on twitter who have interesting websites and who are self-confident enough to not have to constantly tweet about their website. Also, anyone who takes the time to use an image other than a generic photo of themselves for their Twitter "profile photo" has my respect.

seancraven

Sometimes people who I have followed for years on Twitter suddenly evaporate and just stop tweeting. I suspect that some people are happier without social media, so that is my default assumption: if you stop tweeting then I want to think you are happy in the real world and don't need Twitter.

Mac Tonnies

However, there are some true ghosts on Twitter (example); people who once shared their interesting ideas via Twitter, but who are now gone from our world. It makes me wonder... I would not be surprised if Twitter went out of business and the entire Twitter database got dumped. However, another possibility is that the electronic records of Twitter will live on far into the future. Think about Isaac Asimov's story, "The Last Question". I like to imagine that in some sense the electronic imprint of this age might be kept for eternity.

ghost account

There are also a large number of ghostly twitter accounts that are historical remnants of failed experiments (example). It makes me wonder: what if I wanted to start using a handle like "tweetfic"? Would that be like walking on a grave?

source

Some of these little Twitter experiments last longer (example), but I'm worried about @VeryShortStory, an account which stopped tweeting about six months ago. {May 7, 2018 update: 4 tweets in the past 5 months, 1 today}

source

Nothing Unusual
Some people who I have followed for years on Twitter simply provide a steady stream on on-topic tweets (example). Thank you for providing me with evidence that Twitter has a useful function in the universe.

source

Some people who I follow might not be a geeky as I am, but they are funnier and/or more clever.

Anti-Social Networking

almost 200

The fake "follow bots" constantly come and go. Typically, for a short period from 24 to 48 hours these bots follow my Twitter feed, then they unfollow.  As a scientist, I care about numbers and truth. Why doesn't Twitter automatically show how many accounts you have unfollowed, blocked and muted and how many tweets flow from your account each day on average?

I love arbitrary numerical milestones because they remind me to grab an opportunity for critical analysis, reflection and introspection. I drop into Twitter for a few minutes each day because I have carefully collected a select group of 186 accounts to follow. I'm guaranteed to see something that will transport me out of myself and into another mind in such a way that it makes me adjust some little dangling aspect of my mind. If I'm really lucky, I get to see a tweet that adds something new to my brain, a new rivulet of thought that might grow into a wide river.

betwither

Betwither
I tell myself that I don't actually use Twitter. Instead, I have created my own little {what-I'm-forced-to-call} anti-social network of people who ignore the capitalistic game that social networks play. We can call this anti-social network "Betwither": it accidentally slipped into a crack that was inadvertently created in the Twitter user interface.

I hope you read all 32k
of the tweets from each of the
4,979 accounts you follow

There is biology at work here. The human brain evolved so as to allow efficient tracking of social interactions with about 200 people. Most of those people are your family, friends and other acquaintances in the real world. With effort, we can accommodate a few other online acquaintances, but beyond that it just becomes a forest without trees. Oh, so you follow 4,979 Twitter accounts? That's what it says, but, no, you don't. Not the way I follow my carefully selected 186 accounts (and remember, some of my 186 followed accounts were created by people who died several years ago).

Hey, since this is fantasy, I'll send it out as science fiction spam (source).

strike!

Baseball
When I was a kid, I enjoyed playing baseball, a team sport where you could compete against yourself and your inability to get a hit most of the times when you went to the plate. Following a baseball game via Twitter is an odd experience. First of all, you have to block all of the annoying robospam accounts that are trying to sell you fake autographs and all those baseball-related products that are made in factories in distant countries where the workers/robots don't even know what baseball is.

And you have to block all of the accounts of the internet trolls who have no interest in sport, they just want to tell you that "your team sucks". Finally, what remains is a small group of fans who come online to share their enjoyment of a game. It is very sad and annoying that Twitter makes it so much work to find those "good folks" among the noise.

Still, I prefer to listen to fans talk tweet about a game rather than watch a baseball game on television. With modern T.V. it is too easy to see the bad calls made by umpires, the loafing players who make million$ and the idiotic behaviors of those millionaire players such as sliding head-first into first base. Listening to a radio account of a game while following the tweets of fans is fun and informative. Let's continue to celebrate new technologies that allow us to expand our opportunities for learning and entertainment.

Related: the end of Twitter.

Next: In search of a new narrative structure

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