Except it wasn’t. Clearly.

In development, it was an intriguing prototype that wasn’t likely to go anywhere unless it got expensive enough that no one could buy it. On release, Nintendo created only two games that could use it. Those would be the only two games ever released for it, and for good reason. And even today, with folks developing sophisticated games for old systems for the sheer challenge of it, and despite how many of the original systems were sold, there are still just the two games. (Watch the video for details.)

So in short, it never fulfilled its purpose.

As a robot, that is.

It was an excellent marketing ploy. The robot could sit in a shop window and draw people in. The breathless ad copy on the packaging could promise a “toy experience” that got past parents’ objectives to another video game system. And underneath it all was the vague sense that it could be the future. You never know, right?

Except it wasn’t. R.O.B. was a flop as a robot, as an experience, and as a technology.

But it was successful as a distraction.

Whenever I could get access to one, I read it cover-to-cover. Well, I probably skipped over the front bits with their opinions and letters, but I definitely spent time on everything in the back, including the ads. The science-magazine ads had a delightful mix of very-specific technical tools I wanted but didn’t understand or couldn’t afford – oscilloscopes, glassware, the occasional computer – but also bizarre ads for dubious contraptions like electric-shock pads to build muscle mass. (That one had a photo of arm wrestling with the huge caption “RUSSIA WINS?” because 80s cold-war movies.) The comic books dispensed with anything scientific or practical and focused on the dubious contraptions, with full-page spreads of “novelty” catalogs. Joy buzzers. Switch blades. Chattering teeth. Mini binoculars and spy cameras. And most intriguing of all: x-ray glasses.

The blurb under “x-ray glasses” always contained the keyword “illusion” to take the sting off, but it was surrounded by enticing phrases like “see bones through skin” and “see through clothes”. As an adult, I can look at that ad and easily spot the real message: this thing provides the illusion of seeing the bones in your hand, if you squint and aren’t familiar with what the bones of your hand should actually look like. If you look at someone from a bit of a distance, their clothes seem to take on a ghostly edge as though you could see through them to what’s behind the person. It’s a bit of a laugh for 5 minutes, and then you put it away.

Oh, but the implications to a kid! Especially a kid who just read through 5 minutes of a GI Joe or X-Men soap opera episode where either technology or “science” gives people powers. What if it really means you can see the bones in your hand, even if it’s using an “illusion” to show them to you? What if the “illusion” of seeing through clothes is of the person underneath, which is as good as the real thing? After all, the joy buzzer does something, and the switch blade is an actual knife, and even the chattering teeth do what they say in the big print.

What if it really works?

And if there was any barrier put up by skepticism or critical thinking, that one question was enough for my childhood optimism to swarm right over. And even if someone else tells me “it says it’s just an illusion”, then I have the perfect counter. I know it’s an illusion, but what if it really works? Bam, if I hold onto that cognitive dissonance, then it’s worth the purchase.

Which works in reverse, too. If I buy the glasses and try them on only to find that it’s an illusion that doesn’t show me bones or bodies or the insides of anything, really… “it didn’t work”. “It said it was just an illusion.” “Oh.” But does that stop the next person? Of course not. Because to them, what if it works? And that’s enough to keep people buying.

All that said, even though I understand the draw, I’d still be shocked if a doctor pulled out a pair of x-ray glasses to diagnose a pain in my arm. “Let’s see if there are any broken bones.” It wouldn’t just be a reason to doubt their diagnosis, it would be enough to doubt their competence.

This isn’t about generative AI specifically, but that’s what brought it to mind. I get sincerely baffled when someone leaps from “it’s just a language generator, but the ad said it could do this” to “I saw a demo that looked kinda like this if you squint” to “I’m going to base a critical decision on this.” “But it doesn’t actually do that,” I say, but they have the perfect cognitive-dissonance counter. “I know it’s an illusion, but what if it works?” And I have no recourse but to wait for the glasses to arrive, to watch them put the glasses on, and then watch them take the glasses off 5 minutes later. I want to be kind. “OK, how would you like to handle that critical decision now?”

It seems like there’s an endless supply of x-ray glasses out there. Crypto. Ride sharing.  ”Full Self-Driving”. Or a political candidate. Or a stainless-steel truck. Or a VR headset. Or “we’re going to Mars.” I can point straight at the part of the ad that calls out the illusion. And do it over again. And again.

But what if it works this time?

Luckily we live in a time when that’s a choice. I don’t just mean Youtube Premium or the ad-free tier of Disney+; most of the Web is built on delivering content without conditions on how I use that content.

Wait, hold on, I hear you say. That’s not the web I see at all. And you’re right, of course. Everything you see has ads: embedded in the paragraphs, floating alongside, popping up to play you a video, hijacking every link. The content being delivered has ads along for the ride.

But I was talking about what the Web is built on, at least for now. When you’re reading something like you are now, you’re looking at a copy I sent you. Your browser asked my server what it has, and my server sent you an HTML file, some images, a few other bits and bobs. Your browser then chose to combine those in a way that suits how you read. Is this page thin so it fits on your phone? Is it wide so it fits on your 4K monitor? Is it read to you by text-to-speech? That’s all possible because the Web is built on me sending you the components of what you want, and you rebuild them to suit.

So where are the ads? Not in the standards (or not yet). I could choose to send you an ad along with the components for this post. A particular image, some HTML to describe how to display it, how to pop it up, how to make sure it gets onto your phone screen or your 4K screen or (less commonly) into your screen reader. But here’s the thing: your browser still chooses whether to display it. Just like it can ignore the Windows-specific instructions, or ignore the night-mode display values, or the super-large-screen background images. It’s making choices all the time. So why choose to display the ads?

A physical example: when you get the (postal, physical, snail) mail, it has things you want to read (or have to read) alongside things that were sent to you as advertisements. Grandma’s card and a Jiffy Lube offer. The water bill and Disney On Ice at the Civic Center. When you sort out the mail (which I’m sure you do diligently), you probably toss the things you want to read in one pile, the things you need to read in another, and the other stuff goes… yep, in the recycling. You don’t open Grandma’s card feeling guilty that you “blocked” the flyer for 20% off an oil change you don’t need because you don’t own a car. You don’t pay the water bill by carefully placing it behind Elsa (on ice!) and then removing it after 15 pre-defined seconds. You toss the stuff you don’t want. You focus on the stuff you do. Why would anyone expect anything different?

So when I look at updates to the Web that threaten to take that away, that force Grandma’s card to be glued to the flyer, that shred your water bill if you don’t pay Elsa her due… I’m against those. I’ll avoid them, I’ll stop using them, I’ll support whatever’s not that.

Or should it? As an individual, I actually dislike magical interfaces. I groan when I read setup documentation, because it always has 3 steps that fail somewhere between step 2 and 3. “Take the device out of the box, place it next to the main device, and it will pair.” Right. And if it doesn’t? (For me, it rarely does.) Then suddenly I’m in 300 more steps that are spread out over a dozen sites, hidden among the worst documentation interfaces possible. I’m pushing the one button on the device in a staccato rhythm while reinstalling the operating system of the other while draping a mylar blanket over both to block stray radiation, and… I realize I’m on the wrong end of the magic.

What I prefer in a case like that is good old fashioned* infrastructure. Plug A into B, tell B that A exists, tell A that B is what you want. Once they’re paired, remove the plug and you’re in the same situation the magic would have left you after step 3. Except! If you run into a problem, you know how to drop into the infrastructure and perform the same set of steps to get you back where  you need to be.

(*It’s not actually old fashioned. We just get used to the infrastructure that works, and it feels like it’s always been there. Infrastructure that doesn’t work is technology, and we get used to it not working and route around it.)

To design infrastructure vs magic, the difference is asking, “what happens when this goes wrong? How can someone using this get to the part that isn’t working and direct it manually?” That’s where the difficult work of engineering comes in, because you need to ask not only how your system works when it all works, but how the whole system it relies on behaves when it doesn’t. What does the process do when there’s no internet? What does it do when the signal from the other device is too weak? What does it do when the list of devices it sees is too long? When the device doesn’t speak the right protocol?

A lot of that design deals with falling back. If the latest protocol doesn’t work, is there an older one that might? If the signal is weak, is there a way to connect that doesn’t use radio? And above all, how do we communicate this to the person looking at it, so they know which part needs help?

So it’s hard work, but really it’s doing the work needed to create full automation. It’s not just automated when it works; that would be magic. Putting me in a place to fix it when it doesn’t work automatically is good infrastructure.

Our sewer system stopped working properly. A few weeks ago we had a major rainstorm, and something about the 50-year-old system gave in. (We suspect it’s because a neighborhood of houses were built on top of it.) Long story short, we can bring in as much water as we want, but we have to be very careful about how much we emit. Ahem.

So I’ve been carrying a lot of water lately. K worked out a manual system for greywater recycling – one of the benefits of having a big property with trees and zones and such – and it keeps us going while the sewer gets repaired. But even a short shower is a lot of water to schlep. A lot. Every extra minute is something I’m going to feel later.

I often think of a Lunar visit like a camping trip, and I imagine others do too. You do without, you make do with limited supplies, you put up with the extra time it takes to clean anything, to cook anything, to carry water. You rely more on disposable things, bags of trash and waste. But what happens after a week of that, when you need to live there permanently? How do we get from camping trip to sustainable, without shifting to use even more water? And where does all that water go?

K and I actually talked about greywater systems when we first bought this house. It seems so logical: rather than lumping all this water in with the sewage, give it a (relatively) quick rehabilitation and use it to keep all those trees happy. But like the geothermal heat pump (so logical), the solar panels (still logical), the battery backup, the drip irrigation system… the actual project to build the thing gets mired in planning, financing, hiring capable people, and interfacing with 50-year-old systems. (OK, the drip irrigation wasn’t that complicated. Still enough work to last the entire summer.) I get so excited about the idea and the design, but the execution just makes me tired.

So for now I carry water. And think about it. A lot.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t miss Twitter much, but I did miss you, kind reader.

I didn’t miss any news. I mostly rely on The Guardian because I can read it daily (and no more frequently), I can pay for it directly, and it has an outside-the-US perspective. Space news comes from, well, Space News, as well as TMRO.

I certainly didn’t miss the drama. My life was refreshingly free of fights over apologies for slights over comments about news. Oddly enough, those fights sometimes ended up as Guardian stories, and they sounded pointless by the time they did.

I did miss friends. Even the occasional photo from a vacation or a night out can be nice, or a quick update about a new job or a move. We had our own milestones this year, like moving into our first house, and we only shared them with the few people immediately around us. It felt like losing touch.

With that in mind, I’m goin’ back in. So what’s different now?

First, I don’t sit on a bus for 3 hours a day anymore. Twitter won’t get big blocks of my time, because I don’t have them. In 2018 I switched from obsessively scanning through Twitter to obsessively scanning through Discord (and Slack and a few subreddits), so it’s not like I’m a social media angel now. I just won’t have the opportunity, so I think it’ll be a bit safer.

Second, spending a year without 99% of Twitter reminded me that I don’t need all of it. I don’t even need most of it. My plan is to stop following a bunch of people (because it turns out no one really needs DM access to me) and stick to a few quiet corners of Twitter. Starting today I’m sifting through messages to separate out the ones that bring joy from the ones that only bring drama.

We’ll see how it goes. Until then, Happy New Year!

I’ve talked before about how Twitter is a communication service, not an entertainment channel. I resisted changes to the format, retreated to third-party clients, and relied on lists* to make sure I’m seeing what I want to see, not what Twitter wants to show.

None of that is why I’m taking a break, though. Twitter’s been good to me for over a decade. I met some of my favorite people there. SpaceUp owes its existence to Twitter. (Specifically to @cariann, but that’s another story.) I work at a rocket factory because of Twitter. (Thanks to @malderi, yet another story.) I still hold that if Twitter were to go away, we’d have to invent something to take its place. (Something with a bit more empowerment and a lot less abuse. I can dream.)

I’ve actually spent more time on Twitter this year than before. I commute on buses a few hours a day, and Twitter is a reliable stream of low-effort infotainment I can hold in one hand while hanging on with the other. I can get excited about an upcoming launch, get mad about someone doing terrible things, feel better about someone being noble, get weepy over one thing and resolved about another, and calm down by looking at photos of Earth from space.

And that’s the problem. Once it’s done, all that time on Twitter feels like a waste. A sink. A tar pit made of feels. It’s engaging while I’m in it, but I get off that bus feeling hunched over, worn out, and ultimately unenlightened. Never mind the fact that I’m also contributing to someone else’s stream of social-media dopamine with every retweet and comment.

It doesn’t help that every day the company is growing more Nazi-friendly and less user-friendly, spending more time defending silly new features than defending people from attack. It also doesn’t help that one of the most prominent uses of Twitter is destabilizing western civilization, whether by botnet, crowdsourced horrible behavior, or single-handed idiocy. My gut tells me that Twitter is one more garbage decision away from a mass exodus. (Don’t laugh. It happened to Patreon quickly enough.)

So for 2018, I’m going to try life without Twitter. It’s not a rage quit, but a pause button. It’s not intended to be a judgement on anyone else. I just want to see what days are like without that particular monkey on my back. In January 2019 I’ll reinstall Tweetbot and take a look with fresh eyes. Who knows what I’ll find?

I’m not on Facebook or Instagram, so if you’re curious how to find me internet-socially… I have to ask, why on Earth would you? In general I’ll still be in the small-circle social places, like the Orbital Mechanics blanketfort on Slack and the TMRO audience chat. Heck, you could even dust of the ol’ email and send something to chris at globalspin dot com. Who knows where that might lead.

[*] OK, a confession about lists. If you take a look at my account right now, I’m following 530-ish people. However, I never view my timeline directly. I have two private lists called “Daily Reads” and “Extended Reads”, with 60 people and 380 people respectively. That lets me see everything from the 60 people I don’t want to miss, and skim through the rest. I sometimes worry this is misrepresenting that “follow” idea, but then I realize how little anyone actually “follows” when they’re following thousands of Twitter accounts.

In this case, I’ve been thinking about how it might feel to walk around a city on Mars. It’s likely to be mostly underground to help shield against radiation, but there should be as much daylight as possible to save energy. On Earth, that kind of daylighting comes from skylights, windows, and (my personal favorite) light tubes.

But what about on Mars? Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth is, so it gets less light on the surface, but how much less? Is walking down a Martian street destined to feel like a gloomy overcast day?

First I had to get a grip on how to measure daylight. An obvious comparison is solar radiation, measured in Watts per square meter. Depending on time of year, Mars gets between 1/3 and 1/2 as much solar radiation as Earth, because it’s about 50% farther from the Sun. That’s handy for figuring solar power output, but the human eye isn’t so linear.

Another way is illuminance, measured in lux. Though the exact conversion factor between solar radiation and lux is a bit tricky due to the eye’s reaction to different wavelengths, I gather that the relationship is linear. Thus, using some standard Earth values and scaling them:

(I’m assuming that indirect daylight is scattered as well in Mars’s pink sky as it is in Earth’s blue. Something to check later.)

Filling in a few other Earthly values for comparison:

So it looks like daylight on Mars wouldn’t look too different from daylight on Earth. It’s orders of magnitude more light than during “golden hour” on Earth, which is plenty to get around by. It would probably feel like a partly-cloudy day, since there would be more light than even the brightest overcast day, with sharply-defined shadows.

For daylighting, this probably means that Martian interiors would need twice as many Solatubes to get the same level of illumination, but we’re still talking about a fraction of the available daylight. In other words, using Earth-style lighting techniques should keep a Martian city street from feeling gloomy.

*Note the use of Wikipedia sources. Kids, don’t use Wikipedia as a source if you want anyone to take you seriously.

I call them Joi’s Laws, because SF writer Joi Weaver put them so well. (The headlines are her laws; the rambling context is mine.) Each one is a challenge: avoid this common crutch when starting your own story. Think of them like the Bechdel Test for solid science.

No FTL Travel

Space is big, and ships are slow. That’s the reality for at least another century, so embrace it. Faster-than-light travel lets your characters hop from star system to star system, but what are you really gaining? How is a rock around Epsilon Eridani inherently more interesting than a rock in the Main Belt?

Even if your story is set in the far future around a far star, FTL travel is dispensable. Joss Whedon didn’t need it for Firefly, and his (solar-system-sized) universe was packed full of interesting locations.

No Aliens

Everyone knows it: aliens in most stories are just humans with funny foreheads. Even the most unusual aliens in the most mind-bending stories turn out to have mostly human attributes, because a) it’s hard to imagine anything truly alien, and b) it’s harder to relate to truly alien aliens. So stop trying. Humans and animals have bizarre enough variations to fill a century of stories.

My own corollary: No Monsters. Monster stories are great and all, but 99% of new sci-fi is already cluttered with zombies, mutant viruses, and killer robots. Next time you need something terrifying, how about the interplanetary DMV instead?

No Artificial Gravity

This one is tough even for me. I’m obsessed with gravity, and I honestly believe we’ll be a second-rate spacefaring species until we learn to control it. Still, no one is close to controlling gravity even a little bit, so spaceships with a solid one-gee field working at all times are still pure fantasy.

Besides, fifty years of astronaut hijinks teach us that weightlessness is one of the best things about space travel, and we haven’t yet explored the spectacle of low-gravity sports. The only reason your characters would actually choose to be in a one-gee field (occasionally) is due to health concerns, and a treatment for bone loss is much more believable than gravity control.

“It’s more a guideline than a code.”

Good stories can still be told if they violate Joi’s Laws. (I’m going to see the next Star Trek film just like everyone else.) They’re not a guarantee of a good story, either. If you want to tell a *new* story, though, keep these in mind to give yourself a bit of a real-science challenge.

“We wouldn’t be here without this.” He tapped on the floor. “I don’t mean the floor, or the neighbors downstairs. I mean the ground underneath us.”

“That’s right.”

“We also wouldn’t be here without this.” He held up is palm, and this time I wasn’t sure what he meant. “We wouldn’t be here without the sky.”

“That’s also true.” I stood up and turned out the light. “Good night.”

He wasn’t done, though. “The sky wiped out the dinosaurs so we could take over.”

“Mm hmm,” I said, without even a pause. “Good night.”

“Good night, daddy.”