More than 20 years ago, the internet was a new and wild place. There was a lot of potential there, and some were smart enough to do new and interesting things with it. One such was a professor who used it to share links to stories and information, and have some interesting discussions on law, space, and more. He was known as The Blogfather to some, and he helped inspire what became the Blogosphere. His name is Glenn Reynolds, and he blazed a trail and continues to do so.
Neither one of us can remember the last time we met in person, but suspect that it was at least 20 years ago at one of the early blogosphere related events. It used to be common for bloggers to get together in the flesh, especially when passing through a town or area. Not so much anymore, though as he pointed out laughing that we are engaged in a virtual world.
While I was down in Tennessee for the LSESSI conference, he was kind enough to meet me for breakfast one morning. It was good to catch up, remember some people and past events, and discuss the future a bit. We both are passionate about space, space exploration, and even space exploitation. We had fun talking about the early Shuttle days, and wondering a bit about some experiments and avenues of experimentation (continuous-flow electrophoresis and other delights). We ended up talking about the Frog Embryology Experiment on Spacelab J and he was the one who used AI to verify that there were no follow-up experiments done, or at least nothing showing in the public record.
We also talked a bit about some of what lies behind certain advances. For example, the same thing lies behind the ability of Space-X to land rockets upright and military drones: data, and the ability to access and process same. There is a reason for Starlink that lies beyond use here on Earth, as setting up a settlement on Mars and exploring (and more) out from there is going to require lots of data and data transmission. Also, if you want to win the next war here, you need to be thinking about what lies beyond drones. When you have massive amounts of data, the ability to quickly transmit same, and the ability to process that massive amount of data, a lot of interesting possibilities emerge. All I can say is drones are this war, smart is looking to see what’s next.
There may well be a few posts coming up inspired by our talk. Hopefully soon even.
It was a good time, and I thank him for taking the time. It was good to talk people, science, and even next steps a bit. For all that blogging is a virtual world and relationships, it’s nice to meet in person every now and then. Reminds me that I would love to catch back up with a few others. Thanks Glenn!
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