Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Couldn't sleep well last night. Did some work from home just to catch up. Did some house chores: dishes, house cleaning. Vermicelli noodles in chicken broth with spinach for lunch. Napped. When I woke up, I had a vision of what the Web would be like many years from now. I can't explain it exactly, but it was a feeling of being able to call up huge quantities of very specific data and have it all be meaningful, relevant to the task at hand. In some cases, it was simply to show off what the technology can do. One example: you could request to see portrait headshots of every British celebrity that lived from 1965 to 1980. They could be shown laid out as thumbnails or just as easily flashed full-size, rapid-fire like a flipbook. Sort them instantly by age, last name, first name, date of death, and so on. People today have already put up large databases and let people manipulate them in lots of different ways, but I felt as though I saw—in a semi-dreamstate—a next giant leap beyond that. In a different dream, I dreamt I was a secret agent. I was in an office or someone's home—luxurious rooms with dark wood floors and furniture. There were 2 or 3 other people in the room or a nearby room. We were waiting for something or someone—I'm not sure which. Time passed slowly. I had polished silver boots that came up to my knees, but I didn't have them on. I had the feeling that when I stepped into them, something amazing would happen. Dinner at home with Patrick: Domino's pizza. Patrick is not yet fully recovered from the cold he gave me, and had a long day going to class, meeting his language partner Erik, and then meeting Jason Baum for more writing instruction. I'm starting to feel more like normal. I'm coughing up bright and dark yellow blobs of phlegm now and then, but at least the painful sore throat is gone.