{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/406",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 406,
    "subject": "Monitors, Landers, Green and Blue",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-07-15T00:43:14+00:00",
    "last": "1997-07-15T00:43:14+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0007-0524@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Kevin McGuire",
        "address": "kmcguire at itw.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-07-15T00:43:14+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Monitors, Landers, Green and Blue",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "With regard to Ron's monitor question (which quite frankly echoed my \nown...) - I understand Wolfe's explanation, but this behavior seems, \nwell, a little out of character for the glass monitors, and what I \nhad taken them to be.  My understanding was that the monitors were \ndata gathering tools of Mainframe, each with its own (limited) subset \npersonality, though capable of communicating and sharing info with \neach other.  Questions monitors handle in the BOTLS seem mostly \n\"where is so and so?\" though clearly they observe lots of stuff.  \n\nHere's what is sticking in my craw - the monitor, apparently on its\nown (possibly in conjunction with mainframe, but wouldn't this\ninvolve Pas or the sprats?) observes that Q is inhumi, and that Q\nhas persuaded the occupants to choose one planet over the other, and\nis so mistrustful of Q/inhumi that it reverses the decision of the\nCargo it had originally asked, and once it has decided this, it\ndoesn't inform the Cargo of their new destination (they find out by\nlooking out the window).  This implies a lot more initiative and\nsynthesis than I had given the monitors credit for.  So, does Silk\nand the rest continually underestimate the monitor's powers (a not\nunreasonable thought) or is the monitor in the lander a bit\nsharper/more independent?  Or was there a Monitor Directive #305 -\n\"If an inhumi says left, go right,\"?\n\nThe latter seems to me unlikely, in that from what Wolfe has said in \nthe various Q&A sessions, the Whorl was launched without any \nknowledge of the inhumi presence in the Blue/Green system.\nKevin McGuire    |\"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than\nPhiladelphia, PA | when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right\"\n                 |    --Laurents van der Post"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}