So Long, Sir Clarke
You, I'm sure, have heard that Sir Arthur C. Clarke
left
us last week at the age of 90. Clarke was a true renaissance man. Many forget
that he was a real scientist and technical visionary. He invented the idea of
orbiting satellites and later proposed them as a way to bring the Internet to
the Third World.
I was lucky enough to correspond with Sir Clarke for several years. Even though
he was way over in Sri Lanka, Clarke read AmigaWorld while I was editor
in chief. Clarke loved the Amiga and used it to explore Mandelbrots, geometrical
shapes that expand inward and out infinitely. The shapes they form also make
great hippy T-shirts. These fractals drove his novel The Ghost from the Grand
Banks.
Clarke would fax me his thoughts, along with clips of Mandelbrots carved into
corn fields in England as well as stories about the 25th birthday of HAL, the
computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I now have a prize collection of letters
and newspaper clippings from one of the world's greatest minds. Who says journalism
isn't cool?
Clarke more recently survived the tsunami and worked to find better ways to
predict these waves and warn coastal inhabitants.
What's your favorite Arthur C. Clarke work? Let us know by writing me at [email protected].
The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation
is also a good place to park some of your extra dough.
Posted by Doug Barney on March 24, 2008