I did something quite cool today.

My mum had a problem with her printer so I popped over and fixed it for her. This is worthy of note on a couple of levels. Firstly, my mum is in her seventies and has just bought her first computer. She doesn’t know the difference between a file and a folder. I had to slow down her double-click speed almost to the minimum before it would react to her double-clicks. She has to get me to do stuff for her like burn her photos onto CD and install her printer. She watches and listens. I talk her through things and watch as she does them for herself. She's learning - slowly - but she's learning.


                        My mum the technophile

What’s really cool however, is that mum is in the UK and I’m in Australia. I got her to install one of the many (free) remote connection tools and now I am able to take over her computer from here and fix her printer. The next step is to install Skype and freak her out with video and audio at the same time.

The technology itself is not that new or even that complex (I don’t think), but it got me wondering.

*****Digression Warning*****

It actually got me thinking about the planet Echronedal in the novel “The player of Games” by Ian Banks.



I went a writer’s workshop conducted by Ian Banks in Edinburgh in the early 90’s. Someone asked him about where he gets his inspiration. After a hilarious story about a journalist being convinced that an author would have to be on drugs to write a novel like “The Wasp Factory”, he said that most of his ideas were mundane observations that he extrapolated beyond the ordinary. He was driving down the motorway one day and there was a fire on the median strip. The fire was travelling down the strip unchecked. Presumably it would continue to do so until it ran out of fuel or someone put it out. He wondered what would happen to a fire on a long strip of land and developed it into the planet Echronedal, which has an equatorial belt-like continent with a fire that has raged for centuries and travels around the planet, driving the population in front of it. The land regenerates after the fire has passed over it. It’s a pretty neat idea from a simple premise and a pretty good read to boot.

*****Digression Over*****

So, I got to thinking about what remote desktop technologies could develop into if we extrapolated them beyond the ordinary. Jimmy Wales is famous for thinking “What if we could take the sum of human knowledge and make it available to everyone?” Well, what if we could, in real time, take a peek at anyone’s desktop? Wouldn’t it be interesting to look at, say, Stephen Hawking’s desktop, watch the screen as he went about his writing and research. Or, keep an eye on Peter Gabriel as he produces his new album. You could have different levels of interaction – observers, contributors, authors, etc. And you could have multiple desktops with varying levels of privacy.

So, if you could keep an eye on someone’s desktop, whose would it be?

DrJim

Image citations
My mum  :o)
The Players of Games - www.amazon.com