The 75th World Science Fiction Convention was held 9-13 August 2017 in Helsinki, Finland. Since the convention found its way to Europe again it was a great opportunity to attend again.
I did not manage to find other people that would like to come with me so I prepared for the trip alone and it cost me a large amount of money. To that day I did not even know how expensive the country be. I was scared it would be similar to Sweden and Norway which I couldn't really afford. All was well though. About it a bit later.
My flight to Helsinki was rather uneventful which was good. Me and my sister were taking the same plane though, what a coincidence. We also sat almost next to each other. When we got there I ventured on a 50 minute trip to the hotel I was staying at. The adventure started. I bought a day ticket because I expected to travel few more times during the upcoming 24 hours. At the metro station I was confused because it seemed that both directions lead to Helsinki. I asked about where to go and I was indeed told that I can take either train to arrive to Pasila.
When nearing Pasila there was an announcement that the Pasila station is under reconstruction. I didn't really know what that would mean for me but I suspected some problems. Anyway I got off there and looked for Pasilan Asema from which I should have continued to Herttoniemi. Google was suggesting that from there I could get directly to where I needed it wasn't something I'd see anywhere else. So a long search for platform 28 started. I've been running around Messukeskus (the exhibition/convention center) for about an hour after I totally gave up. Note that the bus station was supposed to be on a perpendicular line to the Messekuskes 400m away which I assumed was easy to find. I also knew that two blocks from the center there was a local game store - Poromagia - from which I could walk another two blocks to arrive at a different bus stop from where I could go to the place I was headed. I didn't find the shop either (assumed it would be very easy to find it as well). My despair was rather big and I was hungry. Luckily for me there was Subway that I really appreciate. Got a 6 inch Steak and Cheese and coffee and then ventured in a totally different direction, in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. There I found signs showing that buses 50, 58, 59 go from a certain stop, so I followed it and ended up at a bus stop from which I could reach my destination (not the one I was originally looking for).
While I was running around I was also supposed to receive an entry passcode for the hotel. It obviously reached my mailbox but thanks to Google denying me to login I couldn't read it. I was also supposed to get it in an sms but I didn't receive it. So I called to the hotel's office if they could send it to me again somehow. After quite a while I got it! I was ready to take the bus. After 16 minutes later or so I got of in the middle of a highway which was supposedly the stop I was to get off (it was the right stop).
There I found out that the hotel is actually at an convenient place since there was pretty much everything I could need from grocery store, Subway, a cafe, post office etc (including a gas station, tire shop and a car wash ^_~). There was a metro station and the bus station, both being very close. In the hotel there was a public kitchen, sauna, public showers, laundry room etc so all was good!
After finally putting down my bag full (hardly) of clothes I called my sister to see where she is. She was at the Messukeskus getting her badge. I returned there and didn't get lost on my way to the Messukeskus. I got my badge as well and then we headed to the city center where we decided to go to a Thai restaurant and get something good for dinner. I ordered Green curry with chicken which was supposedly the most spicy meal but it wasn't really spicy. It was good though!
I took the metro to Hertoniemi. There I realized that I would have to somehow cross the highway and such. I managed that.
At the hotel there was supposed to be a wi-fi connection for free. Obviously it worked since my phone got online but my notebook didn't. That was rather a disappointment but well nothing I could do about it.
The first day of Worldcon started at noon because since 9am there was registration open. Since I passed through it the day before I didn't need to go there and stand in a line forever. So my first programme of the day was Always Connected, it's Mandatory.
Always Connected, it's Mandatory.
When I entered the room it was totally full but I decided to stand there and still hear what the people had to say. So how does social connectivity affect our lives? One thing that we learned is that even when we are not actively online using our phones the presence of our phone can be distracting us. The reason is because many of us are thinking about what they could have possibly missed. I usually go through my wall on FB and Twitter once per day and then I don't really care what is going on but obviously there are people that have the need to follow what is going on in real time (and they probably have access to the internet 24/7). When walking around I can see people staring at their phone screens and most of the time I see a Facebook on the screen. During the Worldcon it was also one of the most spotted apps, followed by Grenadine, Twitter and Pokemon Go.
Since most people have a phone and access to the internet people expect others to respond immediately or pick up their phones. People should learn that sometimes the person called can't comply or shouldn't because for example the person is driving, is not present or is asleep. Many of us have their phones or other devices turned on and online during the night for example. I'm used to getting messages during the night but some people should realize that there is a high chance that I won't reply. I also do not really have my phone around most of the time so getting hold of me is not that easy. I may find out that someone called or sent me a message 10 hours later. All this doesn't mean that I ignore you or do not want to talk to you. Some people accuse me of this and later become aggressive and start threatening me because I haven't replied to their 20 messages they sent me that I didn't see yet. Honestly, I don't like this and it shouldn't be happening. That's also a reason why I usually close Facebook while playing an event. I don't want to be distracted while playing. My response time will be likely somewhere between 30-50 minutes when that happens. One more thing people should realize is that I don't actually have internet access on my smartphone. Sending me imessages or messages on FB won't get an immediate response because I need to get online first. I may be an exception but after you find this out it shouldn't be too difficult to understand this, right?
What was discussed the most was the use of phone while driving. Different countries have different measures and sometimes even laws that prohibit the use of a cell phone while driving. Certain apps won't be accessible while the person is moving too fast for example and this thus applies to both the driver or passenger. Sometimes enforcing the law is not really going to help much. We have countries in which using the phone while driving is forbidden but in those countries for example the use on a bike is not forbidden, that's also quite an interesting thing. The game Pokemon Go brought many problems that people (or Niantec) didn't expect. People were paying attention to the game rather their surroundings and it sometimes ended in an accident. In some countries after people filed complaints about pokemon spawning at strange places Niantec actually changed the spawn locations. The pokemon stopped spawning at highways and railways for example since those are dangerous places to be catching pokemon at.
We also talked about social networks. There is also a certain behavior people adopted and many people want to be up-to-date to what their friends are doing etc. This is something that can be also devastating for some people because they somehow want to be as cool as their friends etc. This can lead to depression in some cases and I believe that. While I'm fairly immune to this I'm not immune to a large flood of comments on something that is going on. The reactions of people are often very aggressive and since now things are rather aggressive in the USA we can learn a lot about some of our friends and many people we don't even know. Racism, transgenderism are the topics of today. What one can read are often hate posts and that is something I don't really want to read. I get a lot of hate everyday in my ordinary life. Since I'm part of the oppressed group I can see what happens in reality, seeing people claim something else while having no idea how things are is painful. Getting hated for stating the facts is even worse.
Another thing that can have a weird impact are targeted ads. I'm also a person who ignores ads and if I pay attention to them it's usually because I'm interested in how I was targeted for a certain thing. In my case I'm often targeted with Asian Dating Sites, Poker and Expat ads. If you don't know me, this isn't because I'd be particularly searching for dating sites or something, one of the most used keywords on sites I visit or search is 'Singles' which refers to a single trading card game card (at least that's my explanation for being targeted with these ads^_^).
Here you can see that the algorithm used is totally wrong. Those ads are just strange but not hurtful. Imagine though someone who is expecting a child. This person will be looking for all kind of things they need to take care of a newborn child. Now imagine that the person experienced a miscarriage. The child won't be born but that is something that the ad targeting 'thing' won't know. It will still show ads related to newborn children which will be a painful reminder of what happened.
Life announcements are kind of weird of FB as well. Why would I want to learn about such things via Facebook? I noticed that many people actually give a very big importance to those on FB to that extent that they take that as the primary means how to announce things. Well, if I'd want to get married I'd send a paper invitation or announcement to those I care about.
What else I learned at this panel was that people probably use Facebook for staying in touch with their friends. It is more of a communication platform than a social media platform nowadays and many people are leaving Facebook. Advertisement and such were moved primarily to Twitter.
There is an upside to Facebook though - it is a good place where to raise awareness to things (it works). BTW If you think that FB knows everything about you, you should note that Google knows even more about you since it actually mines data from everything from searches, purchases and overal online behavior. This is something you can observe yourself.
Go watch Black Mirror if you haven't seen it already
Exotic Cosmologies
After the first panel I failed to get where I wanted several times due to very long lines and me not getting into the room. Next, I managed to get to a talk about Exotic Cosmologies. The presentation is available here. The talk was a good one but there isn't much I can comment on so if interested you can download the presentation to see what it was about.
Destroying the Universe with Vacuum Bubbles
I wasn't really sure what this talk would be about but I found it soon. In 2013, at CERN, Higgs boson was confirmed to be detected (the particle was discovered but it wasn't certain that it was Higgs boson). During those years there were people trying to warn that collisions of particles in LHC could possibly destroy the universe. While it was explained that this won't happen since LHC is not 'good enough' to produce such collision (the collider would need to be bigger than the planet Earth) the feared effect is something that could possibly happen based on what scientists observed and calculated. So what the feared effect was? A vacuum bubble.
In order for us to understand how a vacuum bubble (caused by vacuum decay) could come to existence and destroy the universe we needed to know what is a Higgs boson, Higgs field and Quantum tunneling. Since some people may not even know what a particle and force is we also got a short explanation of Standard model and different kind of forces.
In exotic cosmologies we learned not only about obsolete models but also about some theories how the universe could be destroyed. Big Rip, that we learned about, is just one of the possibilities. Another one and rather recent one is Vacuum decay which this talk was about. In order for this to happen we have to consider Higgs field being everywhere in the universe with non-zero value of strength. The strength varies depending on its potential (how much energy it has).
The Higgs field potential determines the state of the vacuum permeated with that Higgs field. It can either have a low energy state or a lot of it. We in theory live in a universe which is in a meta state, meaning that it can go either way. Either start decaying which can result in a vacuum bubble or become stable. In this state it is possible that a certain part of the one vacuum could 'move' by quantum tunneling into the other vacuum (talking about positive/negative vacuum) creating a bubble that would then start expanding (at light speed) and destroy the whole universe (the other way round it would create a singularity to which everything would collapse). Quantum tunneling isn't very likely though so for this to happen we would have to wait for roughly 10^600 years (an example).
Apart from this not being likely to happen, there are in theory ways how to avoid that - little 1 gram black hole could deal with the vacuum decay.
Red Mars/Green Mars
For years many people talk about colonizing Mars even though we don't even know how to get a manned ship there. There are people that believe that we would eventually colonize the planet. Some want it to be terraformed and some wish the planet would stay as intact as possible. There are many scenarios of what can possibly go wrong and how things would be handled. During the past convention and this convention I listened to various opinions on this matter and they highly vary. Apart from technological problems, there are also issues with laws. The Outer Space Treaty is very outdated and not specific enough. It certainly should be updated. It doesn't even specify what 'harm' is. There are things that are not even considered or talked about in the Treaty - terraforming and colonization did not seem as something that would be possible in the near future. Note that one of the 'problems' is the fact that space flights might turn commercial and this is something no one expected decades ago.
Anyway Mars is not the only planet or rather object that we could colonize or land on. There are other interesting places we could possibly try to go be it some of the moons like Europa, Titan or our Moon. Before we get to Mars though we should first explore objects that are closer to us, be it Moon or an asteroid.
While I didn't really enjoy this panel due to it being far too theoretical there is something that caught my interest. Sheyna Gifford was the moderator for different panels throughout the convention. She was part of a Hawai'i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation mission #4 that consisted of 6 people (a field biologist, a fluid physicist, an astrobiologist, a space craft engineer, a medical doctor/neuroscientist, a space architect) living for a year in a 1200 square foot dome located on a Mauna Loa Volcano slope (8200 ft above sea level). These kind of missions are important if one day humankind would really go into space, land on a planet and try to live there for a while.
The first day at Worldcon was rather frustrating because getting to a room was very difficult. There were simply too many people and I failed to get where I wanted several times. I was actually very lucky I made it anywhere. Here's a picture of one line that was way too long for all of us to get in (me included). Note that this is only a part of the line...
When the first day of Worldcon was over I went back to the hotel. I bought something for breakfast, an energy drink so I wouldn't need to wait a long line for a coffee and pay a lot for it (lines everywhere at the convention center), and also something to eat for dinner. I ate and then spend the rest of the evening and part of the night talking to lowman02. I was very happy I could do so. He brought joy to my life and I really hoped I could meet him one day in person. He is like my twin. Finding a person who is similar to me is really awesome and it means a lot to me. I never thought I'd ever meet such a person and obviously I really needed such a person in my life. I'll still have to travel to meet lowman02 but I already know that such person is within my reach.
Since my computer didn't really manage to connect to the internet I couldn't chat with lowman02 via Magic Online where we ran into each other and where we usually 'interact' (lowman02 got interested in me after I ran into SugarDaddy and SugarDaddy told lowman02 about me). Lowman02 mentioned that I can also contact him via Skype so I installed the app on iphone and hoped that the phone would survive it. Unfortunately this app shares one thing with Magic Online. Both are serious memory leaks and drain the battery very fast. So next time I should bring a power bank with me!
It was a very long day and it was time to sleep. I managed that and looked forward to another day at Worldcon (more posts may come).
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