Writing
Mapping the Multiverse
Mapping the Multiverse
Table of Contents
Preface
This story is a walkabout through the technologies that connect and entertain billions of people. Interwoven is the journey to map the multiverse. What kind of person even thinks about mapping the multiverse? The kind of person whose first major world wide event was watching an unscripted reality show on a fuzzy black and white TV. I was sitting on the floor at the neighbor’s house where we had gathered to watch the first astronauts walking on the moon. It was unscripted, except for, “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”
Technology started slow with three channels on the tube TV which developed into streaming video on high definition flat screens with computer animation. Music reached me from a few stations on a small AM transistor radio. Communications changed from hand written letters and house phones, to internet chat, email, mobile voice and video calls and music.
The good old days? Come on! I prefer what Gen X company founders initiated: smart cars, Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Search and Translate, and generation Y leading the way with OpenAI. And, there’s the wonderful sciences of space telescopes and extraplanetary mars rovers.
We have been influenced by the technology giants of my generation, generation Jones: Steve Jobs of Apple and Pixar, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Reed Hastings of Netflix. I used IBM’s first personal computer with Microsoft’s first Disk Operating System on my first consulting job. Now, I work on an Apple laptop. I research and buy products on Amazon’s website. I watch Netflix. I fixed my Tesla’s high voltage logic unit by watching YouTube videos. When the internet started to become popular, I used the first commercial web browser, Netscape, which morphed into Firefox and Google Chrome. The Netscape support team asked me to come work in California. I did.
Social views and cultural icons have changed. Spider-Man was a low-res TV cartoon character. Batman was humorous. My teen music was Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, AC/DC on the Highway to Hell, The Doors were Riders on the Storm, Elton John was the Rocket Man, David Bowie was Ziggy Stardust, Rush would Fly by Night, Bruce Springsteen was Born to Run, Fleetwood Mac would Go Their Own Way, Jimmy Buffet was in Margaritaville, Billy Joel was the Piano Man, and Meat Loaf was a Bat Out of Hell. My beginner books: Peanuts, my first novel: Dracula, The Hobbit, Foundations, Ringworld, Dune, The Day of the Triffids, and Johnathan Livingston Seagull.
J.K. Rowling is a generation Jones writer. At each book release there were lineups at worldwide midnight bookstore events. Other gen Jones greats: Princess Diana, Michelle and Barack Obama. Generation Jones in the movies: Keanu Reeves, Mike Myers, Michael J. Fox, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Whoopi Goldberg, Michelle Yeoh, and Peter Jackson. In sports: Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Garry Kasparov the world chess champion who played against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue.
This book’s style of writing was influenced by gen Jones writers: Michael Lewis whose books were made into movies: Moneyball and The Blind Side, Malcolm Gladwell who popularized the 10,000-hour rule to achieve expertise in a complex skill, and my travel hero, Anthony Bourdain.
I enjoy drawing multiverse diagrams. I’ve created new geometry. How new? Google AI quotes me when asked, “hypercubes without hidden lines,” includes content from my Wikipedia Hidden Line article. My four and five dimensional hypercubes without hidden lines are the first posted on the internet.
I’ve taken Nike’s advice, Just do it! Which fits in with Yoda who said in a Star Wars movie, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Yes, just do it! Else, “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take,” said Wayne Gretzky. This book is me taking a shot at drawing a map to the multiverse.
October 2025
Stacy David Thurston
A Universe of Many Dimensions
At twenty-two I decided to stop being homeless. For two years I wandered across North America as would Crocodile Dundee on an Australian style walkabout. I was a Charles Bukowski social outlier living Tales of Ordinary Madness. I was a Buddhist monk contemplating life paths. I had carried a book of ancient Chinese philosophy and Einstein’s book titled, Relativity.
Einstein wrote of spacetime: the three spatial dimensions in the directions of up and down, left and right, backwards and forwards; and the temporal dimension in the direction of time. I thought there should be more dimensions, but I couldn’t point in the direction of a fourth spatial dimension anymore than I could point in the direction of time.
I was finished being a migrating butterfly living wherever in a tent. I wanted interesting computer work and to study the structure of the universe. My new path would be to university with two goals: 1) Get enough education to work in computers. 2) Figure out how to draw in multiple dimensions.
It was a curious question, how to draw in multiple dimensions? This was before the internet and I couldn’t find a book on drawing n-dimensional cubes. I would have to develop my own way. It would take two years to get enough education to work in computers, and gain the skills to draw multidimensional cubes.
The practical question was, could a homeless high school dropout handle university courses? I would take a test course and see. In the spring of ‘82, I moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, found a bachelor apartment in a house, got a job on a golf course, applied to the University of Manitoba and was conditionally accepted. I signed up for first year, first part of calculus. I passed! I signed up for the second part of calculus. I passed! I received credit for another math course by writing and passing the final exam. I was on my way to major life changes. As I did when I was on the road, I got myself two books: a sociology book and a book of Shelley’s Romantic age poems to guide myself through social cultural changes.
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New page in progress: geometry notes.
CAD design and 3D printing of 2, 3, and 4 dimensional cubes.