A strange attractor in the car park at Wells

Greg Egan has a short story in Axiomatic, "Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies", where humanity has had some kind of mass sea change in which prevailing belief systems manifest as psychic forces that compel all within their range to believe, and the city of the story is divided into zones of belief that vie and shift, with the protagonist one of a minority who seem to have kept free by constantly keeping between the zones, never being overwhelmed by any one belief system.

The protagonist finally realises that his nomadic journeying around the city is not free at all: he is confined within the physical limits of the strange attractor which corresponds to his own libertarian beliefs.

I thought of this as we walked across the car park in town towards the library this morning. Clare kept pulling off to the right. Eventually, as I gazed at her oddly, she became self-aware and advanced an explanation: "I'm being pulled towards Whiting's."

This being the hardware emporium  which could keep a body entertained for a week.

So much smartness gone to zero

On the desk was a thick volume describing the "IP Multimedia Subsystem" (the architecture and design of voice telephony in carrier Internet Protocol systems - it's as complicated as it sounds). It was surrounded by books on DNS (Domain Name Service), Internet Security, MPLS VPN Design, Broadband Access Architecture .. so on.

The Library didn't want any of them. They hesitated over a fat biography of Oppenheimer ("American Prometheus") and were up for the odd science popularisation ("Not Even Wrong"). With no little embarrassment the rest were pushed away.

So 90% of my 'donation' was repackaged into my shopping bags and off I trundled to the charity shop. What would the British Heart Foundation make of sophisticated books describing the engineering of the most advanced and complex system in the world today (possibly excepting the LHC), namely, the public Internet?

The lady on the counter took possession of my pile indifferently. I apologised, saying it was unlikely they would get much interest on her shelves.

"Doesn't matter," she replied, "We have a bookman who comes and collects."

And well they might, but I fear these erudite volumes will still end up as pulp.

I know how much time and effort goes in to writing a technical book (I have written one). The checking of facts, history and protocols; the writing and rewriting to make arcane technical stuff as interesting and comprehensible as possible. Within five to ten years, it's all obsolete and the value of the work has discounted to zero. (But it was not wasted).

Donating to the library

The shopping bag dumped on the library desk, the startled librarian: "Some of these books look like they've never been used."

I nod sagely, "Reference books. Tell me, do you actually want technical stuff like 'Routing in the Internet'?"

Yes, apparently. They can be sent to a bigger library such as Bridgewater (sic).

I intend to donate the bigger portion of my telecom books. It's not altruism - I know this stuff and it dates so fast that an Internet refresher is the only way to get current.

I value the newly-empty shelf-space and have a, possibly naive, vision of some earnest eighteen-year-old studying BGP intently from my donation and henceforth devoting their life to network engineering - to the greater good of humanity.