I'm in Milan to give a talk on uploading your mind into digital form, as in my novel Software. It was a long trip, I always forget how nightmarish and draining air travel is.
It’s always a big hassle getting dial-up service to work when I first come to Europe, in fact I have a lot of trouble even making a phone call, what with all those confusing extra prefix digits. Last night I was unable to do either.
This was kind of worrying me, to the point where I dreamed about the phone and network connectivity issues most of the night. Amazing how much of my identity resides in my ability to plug in. We’re social animals. The virtual link becomes of particular urgency when I’m isolated as on a trip in a land where I don’t speak the language.
This morning I wanted to get to the venue to check it out, they’d been phoning me to come in today. It’s this kind of trade fair/cultural event called FuturShow 3004, held in a different Italian city every year. I was supposed to call the organizers to request a taxi, but couldn’t get the phone to work, and then decided to take the metro.
But the Metro is broken, not just the train, the whole line is broken, like for the rest of the day. Italian style. And I’m in California business mode, all rushing and sweating to be at the FuturShow venue at 9:30 sharp to hear Bill Gates pitch the Windows Media package, and meet my hosts. But, then, seeing Italians all around me, and the big buttery yellow buildings, I snap out of it.
“Do like in Italy.”
Nobody cares when I get to the FuturShow. The organizers that I’m imagining to be “expecting” me are Italians, for God’s sake. Whenever I get there will be fine, even if it’s tomorrow.
So I looked around downtown for awhile, got two good sights under my Mars Rover belt — I walked on the roof of the cathedral, a great stone Gothic wedding-cake. And I went into the local Prada store, which may well be the original Prada store, given that Miuccia P. hails from Milano. Then eventually took a beat old tram to FuturShow.
;)
At the show I posted roughly this entry into my blog and emailed home, kind of rushed, as I had to be interviewed for some afternoon TV show. They’re all intrigued by my “lifebox” notion of digital eternity via uploading your software. They even printed a little essay I prepared for Milan’s paper, Corriere Della Sera.
***
Eventually I got the dial-up to work; the kicker was that I had to include the prefix “1,” in front of the phone number. Yes, that’s a comma. The guy at the desk told me, “Put one comma your number,” but I thought he was using comma metaphorically to stand for the idea of a temporal wait, so I’d only put 1 into the number and had been trying to dial by hand with a hand-timed pause to represent that mysterious comma, and then plug the computer in… And it’s not like there’s a comma on a phone keypad. But when you type your number into the dial-up software’s edit box, you can put a literal comma. I feel a hacker’s nerdish delight at this little puzzle’s resolution.