Blog/YoBlog0805EveningEdition

20060805 Evening Edition of the Yoblog

The party at the MIT Museum after hours was super-terrific-wowie! The antisocial nerd that I am, had I not googled up the MIT Museum website and found out that they rent out full access to the museum to host special events, I wouldn’t have gone. I went there purely for the museum artifacts—and to touch them, as I might not have been able to during the daytime surveillance. However, the Web 1.0 VC gathering turned out to be a surprise blast. I heard vaguely about the Web 1.0 theme, and I had expected a bunch of people attempting to relive the “glory” (in the derogatory sense) of the “old days,” where basically all .COM’s were guaranteed funding (which is no longer the case now, alas). That was actually the case, except I’d expected serious presentations of old ideas. So, dressed in the 3/4 sleeves of the Web 1.0 era, I’d planned on giving a brief spiel of my old MetastaXis—if the economy hadn’t changed in 2000, this would have been the second company I’d be founder of in high school, and the first multimillion dollar company I could have started in high school. (These were different days, and I was a teenager in California—back then, every other Cal teen ran a web dev company.) The problem was that our angel died, as apparently all its other investments crashed and they went into paranoia halt-all mode, etc., etc. But anyway, the Web 1.0 theme at the party was more a parody than regretful reminiscence. People went full out wild and crazy with their wacked out ideas, and had there been more time, I would have given the following spiel:

Me: (Hands the VC’s NDA’s; in an affected Pakistani-accent:) Please sign these NDA’s. I cannot start until you assure me of your omerta—it is the wish of my godfather. You must sign the NDA, or my godfather, the good Don, will… make an offer you can’t refuse.

Me: (heavily affected Pakistani-accent; like Abu in The Simpsons) My name is Priya Varicatena, and although I look Chinese, I’m actually Pakistani. I am associate professor of quantum bioengineering at Stanford University, and this is my colleague (points to an invisible presence next to me) Dr. Adrian Grey. Adrian is a transparent clairvoyant—he’s invisible and he sees the future. The history of my lab, as you may know, is filled with success after success—with no intermittent failure. Adrian’s foresight has ensured us this fortuity. My lab’s findings have been a tremendous source of funding for Stanford, and only a fraction of our capital has made Stanford the richest university in the world. I own Stanford University.

Me: (heavy Pakistani accent) It is 1998, but we see the year 2020 with absolute clarity. There is something called Internet 5.0, and it is very good. It interconnects the multiverses, so that you can email or even instant message your parallel universe self to discover “what could have been.”

Me: We call our project Multiversality, and the goal is to bring Internet 5.0, the multiverse, to the present reality. We have gone far on the project, and we now only need funding for globalization. Adrian has transcribed from his clairvoyances the technical details of the Internet 5.0 infrastructures, and I have simulated a local incarnation via the molecular computer ADA-42. (Hands the VC’s an invisible box.) Here is a working model that has access to the four adjacent quasi-layers of the multiverse. You may try it. You can ask your “possible potential self” in another parallel universe a question.

Me: (Affected Pakistani accent) You may wonder why I’m appealing to you—or why I am betraying Stanford. You see, it is really a very big matter. Stanford—the bastardic llama goat!—is refusing me tenure. Perhaps they believe this is a strategic move of theirs—perhaps they believe I will stop producing these revolutionary results once tenured. But, whatever, with your support, I will no longer need them. You see, this project will make all of us richer than Vishnu—this is the future, available now. I, the Pakistani, give you Multiversality!

Except some of the punchlines in there might be too obscurely academic, (quantum bioengineering being a discipline is a joke, currently, at least, btw). I decided to be Pakistani for a while since I get inspired into whole spiel based on my first thought of the last line. Having a punny name like Priya Varicatena for this fake business presentation was also a necessity.

Oh, and I also got to meet Dr. S. Wolfram---he was one of the fake VC's! His response to my Fredkin question proves my original assumption, and in a way, justifies the criticism against him. I probably would have gone crazy and asked for a signed photograph otherwise. (Then again, I should have done that just to resell to Mathematica-fanatical friends.)