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(Jon sez:) 
Mark sent me an email telling me he's blazing ahead on the pages for A
Miracle of Science because he's using the drawing as an excuse to avoid
cleaning his apartment.
I'm using my writing tasks for the comic as an excuse to avoid packing up for my big move (I'm buying a house). From this you may determine that our laziness is being translated directly into positive outcomes for you, our readers! P.S. If you're behind on the backstory, you can bring yourself up to speed for this page by reading about the anonymous forwarding server at Lefebvre Industries on Io and how local law on Io blocks our heroes' questions for Ms. Tshisekedi. P.P.S. I'd like to thank Ben Kaplin, Emilie Karr, Jay Garcia, and Bob Elamparo for their recent emails to Mark and myself. I don't have any cool prizes or money* to give out, so instead I'll declare all of you to be Vorstellen Agents. (If I hear that any of you attempted to arrest someone as a mad scientist, I'll disavow all knowledge of your mission. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.) * Now that I think about it, money would be a pretty cool prize. So "cool prizes or money" is a redundant turn of phrase. Um...forget I said it. |
(Mark sez:) 
Ahhh, the zany cyberpunkness of the future. Anonymous forwarding services are of course one of the cause célèbres of every self-respecting crazy libertarian nerd, or at least used to be back in the Stone Age of 1996. The anonymity of the Internet, it was long or at least loudly held, would mean a blossoming of freedom for dissidents in totalitarian regimes or major corporations. Released from the straitjacket of government regulation and societal custom, we would at last have true liberty. Of course, as we now know, once that liberty was made available to all this is the very first thing people did with it, and so that was the end of that wonderful dream. You don't hear much from John Perry Barlow lately.
Nonetheless it is at least theoretically possible that anonymity could be used for liberty, and so Ms. Tshisekedi's company presumably provides a valuable service to the citizens of the future. Or at least one that's very hard to prosecute due to lax computer crime regulations in Jovian space. If the idea of nerds in space appeals to you and you want to read more, I can recommend the following authors: Vernor Vinge (as usual, he predicted all this thirty years ago), Charlie Stross, and Ken MacLeod. Hmm... this may be the longest "Mark sez" I've ever written. I guess now you know what it's like when I warm to a subject. At any rate, looks like that's it from me. Oh, wait, also, I found this comic called Radical Dreamers and, well, I like it, so, you know, read it. Okay, now I'm really done. |
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