On Sun, 19 Aug 2001, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
> > You should meet Mike Kahn. He used an HP1600A and bascially started poking
> > around inside a Nintendo to make it do mysterious things. It made for a
> > very interesting VCF exhibit even if maybe only 15% of the people seeing it
> > understood what was going on.
>
> Well, there are also some minor issues of communication. Mike's social
> skills are as bad as those of the rest of us.
Yes, but that's just part of his charm :) Seriously though, Mike is a
good example of why I take the time and patience to understand even the
most seemingly incomprehensible nerds. One could take him as being
retarded, but in actuality he's a complete fucking genius who is so far
above most peoples' intellects that we just can't understand the world
he's in.
Let's face it, some people in the computer world are socially lacking, but
you stand to miss out on a lot if you don't take the time to try to
connect with them. So no matter how annoying some people can be, I don't
hold that against them, because somewhere behind that wall of
inarticulation can be some pretty fascinating thought processes.
99% of the list don't know who Mike Kahn is, so for your edification, he's
this little oriental guy with a Fu Manchu beard/mustache thing going on,
who roams around the hamfests in the Sillycon Valley striking up endlessly
babbling conversations with random victims causing them sometimes
excrutiating uncomfortableness as they try to determine the most practical
way to ditch him (I had to pass him off to Doug Coward at VCF 3.0 because
I just had to get away; Doug later came to me asking me why I did that to
him...sorry Doug! :) I met him around the time I was promoting VCF 2.0
when he was working on his Nintendo Mutilator (as he called it). At first
I was thinking the guy was just completely insane, but I decided that
there was probably something there beneath the surface worth getting at,
so I stuck with the conversation. Eventually I would get antsy and figure
out some fairly polite way to get rid of him. Anyway, it took me a few
times in bumping into him at the ham fests to figure out that he was truly
a unique and extremely gifted individual.
It turns out he really was doing some interesting stuff with his
Mutilator, which was really sort of an analog paradigm for programming on
a digital computer. More specifically, it allows you to tweak a digital
system using analog controls (potentiometers, sliders, etc). It also was
the embodiment of a programming schema that exists and can only really be
understood in his own mind, though you can see what he's getting at if you
try hard enough. I think if some really high-up computer science guru
like, say, Donald Knuth spent a month with him, two things would happen:
1) Donald Knuth would go insane but 2) before that they would probably
have come up with a truly revolutionary new paradigm for software
development.
It also turns out that Mike invented a camera that can take highly
contrasted pictures using only analog techniques (no digital processing)
and in realtime. He showed me the patent he was awarded for it, as well
as a picture he took with it of the burning Man at one of the Burning Man
festivals at night where you could vividly see both the flames and all the
activity around it. Not even the Minds of Minolta could come up with
this, and he did.
One smart mofo.
So take the time to talk to the weirdos. Sometimes they are smarter than
you think, you smug and arrogant bastards :)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
Received on Sun Aug 19 2001 - 13:58:29 BST