Years ago, back in 2004, April 14 to be exact, a good friend of mine posted a web page.
He sent me a link to it as I presume he did to other close friends.
I took the liberty to capture it as I felt that it was important.
Here is the link to it on my site, as a piece of history.
“I’ve come to view today’s Internet as much like the bad neighbourhood I used to inhabit. It wasn’t always that way–in fact, as recently as a few years ago, the Internet seemed like a frontier town–a little rough on the edges, with its share of black hats, but also with the sense of open-ended possibility that attracted pioneers of all sorts, exploring and expanding the cutting edge in all directions: technological, economic, social, political, and artistic. But today’s Internet isn’t a frontier any more–it’s a slum.”
I never met John Walker, but really miss him!
Ya Know, that is what the author of that web page was in my view.
I never met him in person, we did have some verbal dialog via the virtual setting in “Second Life” as well as some communication via a VOIP internet connection that a few people would get online to chat.
Yep, he was like an older brother or cousin of sorts to me.
I remember giving him a gift subscription to an astronomy magazine. LOL
One could definitely say a “da Vinci” ! of today. His tinkering went from, as he said it, “bending spacetime in the basement” to programing expertise.
I remember one time we discussed two model trains on two concentric loops of track running at the same speed to simulate two orbits of planets. I unfortunately burst his balloon by saying the seemingly inability of two N scale locomotives to respond perfectly to the same applied voltage is an impossibility. He abandoned that thought.
I miss him.
( I’m sorry, we did have a lot of communication about nearly everything under the sun. I’m sure there are a few other people that shared the same privilege. Please excuse me. )
Also I don’t know how many others he shared these images with but I believe these two are looking out behind his property.
He was a damn good friend.
John has a very special place in my mind and in my heart. Like many of you, I met him online, through Fourmilab. Since my son is Swiss and I visited him in Zurich at least annually for several weeks, I had considerable free time in Switzerland. On two occasion, I invited myself to visit Fourmilab and thus had the actual privilege of meeting John in person. He was most cordial. I even brought my Swiss son to meet John on my second visit.
What can I say? John was undoubtedly the most intelligent and gifted person I’ve ever met. Not one in a million; more like one in a billion or so. Whenever I see his thumbnail photo around Scanalyst, I get a frisson and miss him intensely.
Thank you so much for this reminder of who he was. What a loss.
I’m not sure to whom I owe the fact that he invited me on to Scanalyst—I think maybe to @TrinityWaters , or possibly to @civilwestman ? Thank you, whoever! I know I didn’t approach it on my own, being innumerate and ..not at all science polymath-y.
But here’s what I want to say: JW never ignored my pieces nor dismissed them out of hand. He’d often Like, or even respond, which I found immensely satisfying since I knew him as a prodigious intellect. And a mark of that, say I, is that there was nothing that didn’t interest him. Topics are only boring when you know nothing about them. He already knew something about everything, hence was interested to learn more, from anyone, no matter how different from his their interests and talents were.
Yes I feel sad when I see his picture too, but it is a kind of immortality and one I think would’ve pleased him.
I don’t mean this in a religious sense (unless you, reader, want to take it that way)— but I think of the line from the Apocrypha, about how there are certain people, “the memory of whom is a benediction”.
Despite what Mr. Walker wrote in exasperation in 2004, he did not abandon the internet – for which I for one am grateful. I first became aware of him some years later through his “Gnome-o-gram” postings.
(Dear Hypatia – I am not sure whether to believe your claims not to know much about technical matters, but just in case – that is a pun on “nomogram”, a calculational tool popular in the days when an engineer’s status depended on the size of his slide rule, plus an allusion to the infamous Gnomes of Zurich).
At last! Here was someone who could cut through the usual verbiage and explain what was going on in the financial world in terms a rank amateur like myself could understand.
That led me later to the inestimable “John Walker’s Reading List”, which I still consult on occasion. If that tall pile of perceptive book reviews & comments were ever issued in book form, I would pay full retail for a First Edition!
John Walker had a positive influence on people he never met and never knew – and perhaps that is the best any human being can ever hope to achieve.
How very well I understand this impulse, though I have trouble separating software from device! For the past several years, I have had to fight very hard to not throw my phone or my computer. Truth be told, I failed to restrain myself a few months ago and flung my MacBook Air through the air off the side of my bed. Upon arrival there, it bounced off the carpeted floor acquiring sufficient height to his the very bottom of the IKEA Pax wardrobe. I suspect a rather unimpressive glide ratio, since there’s no camber on the lid.
Did you know that the frosted glass in IKEA furniture is shatterproof? I didn’t. The result was that it cracked - the entire thing (19 X 90 inches) - in a manner such that if the pieces were to separate completely - as they in fact, did when I removed the wood frame retaining the glass from its hinges in the wardrobe. I estimate there were somewhere between 1000 - 2000 small pieces along with a few hard-to-see shards, one of which found its way into the pulp of my index finger. Cleaning up after my (VERY satisfying [shrinks call that “de-cathexis]) sidearm pitch, afforded me the opportunity to consider whether or not I ought to repeat the exercise when tempted. Time and money spent also contributed to the calculus.
There was lingering challenge when I discovered that the small pieces of glass adhered tightly to the perimeter slot into which the glass was fitted. At first, I was tempted to remove these, in hopes of being able to re-use the frame and buy only a replacement piece of glass. I gave up that quest quickly. At the cost of a 45 mile round-trip drive to IKEA and 90 incredibly-shrinking USD, I have in my possession a new, this time mirrored central door of our 5-panel wardrobe.
For completeness, I should say this huge wardrobe is filled with clothing and other paraphernalia which has not been used in 20 Years. It has taught me yet another un-answered cosmological question: where does the dust come from coating the shoulders of a dark suit on a suit hangar in an enclosed cabinet. Alas, more unanswerable philosophical questions - the likes of which normally occur to me as I scoop the litter so tenderly groomed by our two beloved Ragdoll cats, Theodore (“the adored” cat) and Rudey (accent on the “rude” - in the boyish, spirited sense).
Somehow, the task of scooping litter, I find, is somehow metonymous with sifting through life’s observations to find signal in the static. Those of us blessed with a scatological slant on eschatology (or is it sCAT-ology?)find this most affirming. In closing, my pronouns are____.
John Walker is still here, living in the crevices of our minds. As long as one of us exist John will exist also.
Lil Jimmy and all,
I lost my wife nearly five years ago to a heart attack.
She died in my arms.
I was giving her CPR until the ambulance people arrived.
Their oxygen was broken, they said, and another ambulance came, but too late.
I could have sued them, but it wouldn’t bring her back.
I found comfort in a grief support group at my church.
We meet weekly at noon on Wednesdays.
I found a neat saying online, and with a few images and tweaks, I created business card sized pass-outs for the group. I also try to have a few on hand in my wallet in case I run into someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one.
They seem to help, and I got a few hugs for them.
Here is the front of the card…
And here is the back of the card…
If anyone wants a few, PM: me an address and I’ll get some out in the mail to you.
Gerard and all,
I’ve experienced more than one fainting events with my wife in the last few years and each time afterward I try to analyze my response and what I could have done better and each time I panic and end up just shaking her and trying to get her to respond. I can’t imaging what you’ve been through. You must have medical experience. Thank you for sharing your card, I think it better states what my thinking was in my previous post. My condolences for your loss.
