“Minority Report science adviser and inventor John Underkoffler demos g-speak — the real-life version of the film’s eye-popping, tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface.”
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Category Archives: Science & Technology
“The internet: Everything you ever need to know”
This list — by John Naughton– is pretty good. If one of the Learfield Grown-ups came into my office and asked, “So, what do I need to know about this internet thing? Keep it to 10 things or less.”, I’d send him this article. Here are just a few nuggets. I encourage you to read and bookmark the page.
“We’re living through a radical transformation of our communications environment. Since we don’t have the benefit of hindsight, we don’t really know where it’s taking us. And one thing we’ve learned from the history of communications technology is that people tend to overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies — and to underestimate their long-term implications.”
“The trouble is, though, that everybody affected by the net is demanding an answer right now. Print journalists and their employers want to know what’s going to happen to their industry. Likewise the music business, publishers, television networks, radio stations, government departments, travel agents, universities, telcos, airlines, libraries and lots of others. The sad truth is that they will all have to learn to be patient. And, for some of them, by the time we know the answers to their questions, it will be too late.”
“HUXLEY AND ORWELL ARE THE BOOKENDS OF OUR FUTURE — Aldous Huxley believed that we would be destroyed by the things we love, while George Orwell thought we would be destroyed by the things we fear.”
As a tool for a totalitarian government interested in the behaviour, social activities and thought-process of its subjects, the internet is just about perfect.
“Copying is to computers as breathing is to living organisms.”
These snippits make the article seem more negative than it is. That probably says more about me than the list. I especially liked the survey asking folks in the German city of Mainz (in 1472) what they thought about the implications of Gutenberg’s printing press.
The $99 PC and cloud computing (1997)
In 1997 Po Bronson wrote The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest. The novel was the story of some Silicon Valley types who set out to design a PC that would sell for $99. Here’s a bit of the plot from Wikipedia:
“The team finds many non-essential parts but cannot come close to the $99 mark. It is Salman’s idea to put all the software on the internet, eliminating the need for a hard drive, RAM, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, and anything that holds information. The computer has been reduced to a microprocessor, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, and the internet, but it is still too expensive. Having seen the rest of his team watching a hologram of an attractive lady the day before, in a dream Andy is inspired to eliminate the monitor in favor of the cheaper holographic projector. The last few hundred dollars comes off when Darrell suggests using virtual reality gloves in place of a mouse and keyboard. Tiny then writes a “hypnotizer” code to link the gloves, the projector, and the internet, and they’re done.”
Does that “put all the software on the internet” part sound familiar. I mean, shoot, that was 13 years ago. Shows how long folks about been thinking about “cloud computing.”
I liked Mr. Bronson’s early work. The Nudist on the Late Shfit and What Should I Do With My Life (non-fiction) in particular.
The Divine Code of Life
According to the back flap on his book, Dr. Kazuo Murakami is “one of the top geneticists in the world and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, one of Japan’s leading research universities.”
In The Divine Code of Life, he makes his case for the idea that how we think can activate good dormant genes and switch off negative ones. Here are a few factoids that got some high-liter:
- “For any one child, there are seventy trillion possible combinations of genes.”
- “As far as we can tell, only about 5 to 10 percent of our genes are actually working; what the rest are doing remains unknown.”
- “All living things use the same genetic code.”
- “Imagine that you could collect all the DNA from the world’s population of six billion people. It would weigh only as much as a single grain of rice.”
- “The information contained in our genes, if printed in book form, would amount to three thousand volumes each a thousand pages long.”
I can’t say that this was a fun read, but I like the idea that we can have some control over something as… basic? … as our genes. I suspect this is where some of the really big medical breakthroughs will happen. Are happening.
Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information
I confess the title of this book hooked me. I saw an interview with Oxford professor Vlatko Vedral and was intrigued by the idea that everything (me and the universe) can be reduced to bits of information. (Wikipedia)
But I can’t say I enjoyed (or understood) most of the book. I suspect he knows his stuff but just isn’t very good at explaining it to non-phyicists. Better reads: Quantum Enigma; Biocentrism.
Truth 2.0
Arianna Huffington makes some predictions of what comes next for the Internet and I sure hope she’s right. A few excerpts:
- “An online tool that makes it possible to instantly fact-check a story as you are reading it — or watching it on video. Picture this: It’s last summer and you are reading or watching a story about health care, and Sarah Palin or Betsy McCaughey is prattling on about death panels. Instantly, a box pops up with the actual language from the bill or a tape rolls with a factual explanation of what the provision in question really does. And this is a non-partisan tool. So when, in the midst of the legislative debate, President Obama says “I didn’t campaign on the public option,” the software will fire up and instantly show you where support for the public option appeared in his campaign plan, and clips of all the times he mentioned it in public after he got elected.
- A .com innovation that immediately provides a reader or viewer with the background knowledge needed to better understand the data and information being delivered as news. The powers-that-be — both political and corporate — have mastered the dark art of making information deliberately convoluted and indecipherable. For them, complexity is not a bug, it’s a feature.
- Our future tool will also automatically simplify needlessly complicated laws, contracts, and linguistic smoke screens. So when a politician or Wall Street CEO performs the usual verbal gymnastics in an attempt to befuddle and bamboozle us, his words will immediately be translated into clear and precise language. It will be Truth 2.0.
- In the future, software will be created that allows us to pull the curtain back on the corridors of power and see who is really pulling the levers. A great early iteration of this was provided by the Sunlight Foundation during the recent health care summit. During its live streaming of the discussion, the Foundation offered a dose of transparency by showing, as each of our elected officials was speaking, a list of his or her major campaign contributors. It was simple, powerful, and spoke volumes about the extent to which many players in the summit were bought and paid for.
I think this will happen because it can happen. I hope this scares the shit out of the politicians and power-brokers.
Verizon, NFL to stream NFL draft, games
From Digital Sports Daily:
The NFL and Verizon wireless have struck a deal to put live games on mobile phones, the Wall Street Journal reports on Tuesday. The two companies will partner in time to stream the NFL draft which begins on April 22, on to mobile devices.
In addition to the NFL draft, Verizon will stream NBC’s Sunday night football, the NFL Network and the Red Zone channel but not games shown on FOX, CBS or ESPN.
The NFL Red Zone channel, which was previously only available on satellite and cable, airs live look-ins of every key play and touchdown from Sunday afternoon games.
Verizon Wireless will pay the NFL $720 million over four-years to be the exclusive mobile home of the NFL. The ability to watch every out-of-market MLB game on iPhone came last summer, making the NFL just the second pro sports league to show pocket sized games.
The games will be available on Verizon’s 3G network so users aren’t required to find a Wi-Fi hotspot to watch games. NFL mobile will then go to 4G network as Verizon replaces its 3G network by from this year to the end of 2013.
TED Talk: Time and gravity
Prof. dr. Wubbo J. Ockels is a Dutch physicist, and also the Netherlands’ original astronaut. He is a Professor of Aerospace Sustainable Engineering and Technology at the University of Delft.
TEDxAmsterdam: Wubbo Ockels from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo.
Ockels explains how ‘time’ is created by human beings, as a way our brains can make sense of gravity. The speed of light is constant, because it is made by us: it’s the clock by which we have calibrated our existence.
Time-lapse video of Milky Way
The White Mountain from charles on Vimeo.