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| Topic: Technology |
10:22 pm EST, Jan 30, 2005 |
Are people really free if they're always reachable? WiFi is Fine. Just Say No! to the Nokia. Wired weary |
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Tool for Thought, by Steven Johnson |
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| Topic: Technology |
5:43 pm EST, Jan 30, 2005 |
As your once and future agent will kindly tell you, 2005 will be remembered as the year that remembrance agents went mainstream. This essay by Steven Johnson appears in the Sunday NYT Book Review. If the modern word processor has become a near-universal tool for today's writers, its impact has been less revolutionary than you might think. The word processor has changed the way we write, but it hasn't yet changed the way we think. The raw material the software relies on is an archive of my writings and notes, plus a few thousand choice quotes from books I have read over the past decade: an archive, in other words, of all my old ideas, and the ideas that have influenced me. Tool for Thought, by Steven Johnson |
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Reputation in Artificial Societies: Social Beliefs for Social Order |
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| Topic: Technology |
10:39 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
This book deals with reputation as a socio-cognitive mechanism able to strengthen collective action and promote social order, both in social systems and in artificial systems, such as online communities. In the book, the reader can find a thorough survey on reputation in many disciplines, a sound socio-cognitive theory of reputation, and some agent-based simulations that allow one to appreciate the theory put forward by the authors. Reputation in Artificial Societies: Social Beliefs for Social Order |
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They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators |
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| Topic: Technology |
10:21 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
An illustrated history of American innovators -- some well known, some unknown, and all fascinating. This profusely illustrated and elegantly written book profiles 70 of America's leading inventors, entrepreneurs and innovators. Along with such obvious choices as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, Evans profiles Lewis Tappan (an abolitionist who dreamed up the idea of credit ratings), Gen. Georges Doriot (pioneer of venture capital) and Joan Ganz Cooney, of the Children's Television Workshop. From A.P. Giannini (father of consumer banking) to Ida Rosenthal (the Maidenform Bra tycoon), Evans shows innovation as both a product of and a contributor to the grand apparatus of American society. And his spotlight is on the true American elite: the aristocracy of strategic visionaries, creative risk takers and entrepreneurial adventurers thriving in their natural environment, the free-market democracy of the United States. Evans doesn't neglect the latest generation of innovators, among them Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He concludes with a note of caution, pointing out the nation's recent loss of dominance in the hard sciences. But just as Edison was inspired by popular biographies of innovators before him, so might the next generation of scientific and commercial explorers find guidance in Evans's exciting survey. They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators |
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Skunkworks At Apple -- The Graphing Calculator Story |
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| Topic: Technology |
5:03 pm EST, Dec 25, 2004 |
The secret to programming is not intelligence, though of course that helps. It is not hard work or experience, though they help, too. The secret to programming is having smart friends. I had none of the traditional power over others that is inherent to the structure of corporations and bureaucracies. I had neither budget nor headcount. I answered to no one, and no one had to do anything I asked. Dozens of people collaborated spontaneously, motivated by loyalty, friendship, or the love of craftsmanship. We were hackers, creating something for the sheer joy of making it work. Skunkworks At Apple -- The Graphing Calculator Story |
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| Topic: Technology |
11:34 pm EST, Dec 20, 2004 |
First of all, this NYT is well worth reading. You might actually be interested in buying the product! k wrote:
] My interest in the politics of the word hacker has reached
] an all time low. An all-time low, perhaps, but it hasn't bottomed out yet. Who cares? Why not focus on something Important, like wordsmithing the GPL? ] sidetrack asisde, the story's interesting because it shows
] what a motivated individual can do, without the generally
] presumed benefits of a formal degree. Her motivation is admirable, but strong motivation is not a substitute for the college experience, any more than good looks are a substitute for kindness. When you use a phrase like "generally presumed benefits of a formal degree", it certainly sounds like a disparaging remark about classrooms, or books, or the System, or the Shaft, or somesuch. While most college students do encounter all of these things, they also encounter each other, in an environment that promotes scientific exploration and open collaboration. If you go to the best college you can get into, and seek out the best students there, you are likely to learn as much from them as from the professors. Working alone, Jeri has accomplished something impressive. If she had finished high school and gone on to MIT, Stanford, or any of several other schools with a rich spirit of entrepreneurship, she might well have become a legendary Internet billionaire extraordinaire, instead of a gadget guru hawking her warez on QVC. She may still get there, and I wish her all the best. A Toy With a Story |
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The Economics of the Internet Backbone |
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| Topic: Technology |
12:25 am EST, Dec 20, 2004 |
This paper discusses the economics of the Internet backbone. The author discusses competition on the Internet backbone as well as relevant competition policy issues. In particular, he shows how public protocols, ease of entry, very fast network expansion, connections by the same Internet Service Provider (ISP) to multiple backbones (ISP multi-homing), and connections by the same large web site to multiple ISPs (customer multi-homing) enhance price competition and make it very unlikely that any firm providing Internet backbone connectivity would find it profitable to degrade or sever interconnection with other backbones in an attempt to monopolize the Internet backbone. The Economics of the Internet Backbone |
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Engineering Expressiveness |
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| Topic: Technology |
11:49 pm EST, Dec 19, 2004 |
I got to thinking once again about how computers have changed the way we engineers communicate in writing and in planning presentations. On the one hand, computers have given us this vast freedom of expression, but at the same time they have established a pattern of conformity that has narrowed the range of expression to a tiny sliver. In the future, perhaps the paper clip will ask whether you would prefer this in the style of Hemingway, or perhaps in the style of Dickens. As computers empower our expressiveness, they also plot to take it away. Engineering Expressiveness |
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| Topic: Technology |
4:00 pm EST, Dec 18, 2004 |
Decius wrote:
] this author seems to be confused about the greater point,
] which is that books and buildings full of them
] are rapidly going the way of the horse and carriage.
]
] The ability to provide instant access to all of this
] information anywhere in the world will be a revolution
] in many quarters of the planet that have suffered for
] lack of knowledge. Increasing the speed and ease of access to information is a commendable goal. For those who previously lacked access by any means, these new electronic capabilities can be quite transformative. For those in developed countries with well-stocked public library systems and retail super-bookstores in every neighborhood, the digital library is definitely handy but ultimately less profound. In the United States, access is basically a solved problem. While not perfectly efficient, the combination of Amazon, Borders, and the local public library have produced an effective solution. The much harder problem, and one which the Google project as currently described would seem to do little to resolve, is the learning process itself. On a whim, I can go to the store or library and come home with a printed copy of Democracy in America in less than 30 minutes. Much of the effort of the "access" step is physical (getting to the store) rather than mental. However, it will take a substantially greater investment, both of time and mental effort, to actually read the book and incorporate de Tocqueville's insights into my worldview. The specific mechanisms proposed by Google to assuage copyright concerns will exacerbate the already significant risks of full-text search. You can already see these problems with Google Print. By relying on keyword search as the index and interface into the library, a selection bias is introduced. By strictly limiting the ability of the reader to explore the rest of the book upon finding a "hit", the system substantially increases the likelihood that statements will be taken out of context and misunderstood by the reader. Google and God's Mind |
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The Information Age and the Printing Press |
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| Topic: Technology |
3:24 pm EST, Dec 18, 2004 |
It is difficult to see where the information age is leading ... With so many areas of society being affected, many effects are transitory, many are insignificant, some are contradictory and some are even undesirable. The future of the information age will be dominated by unintended consequences. The technologists are unlikely to be accurate. It will be decades before we see the full effects of the information age. We are not yet to the point we can see the capabilities of networked computers. The printing press changed the conditions under which information was collected, stored, retrieved, criticized, discovered, and promoted. "The first century of printing produced a bookish culture that was not very different from that produced by scribes," and "one must wait until a full century after Gutenberg before the outlines of new world pictures begin to emerge into view." "...roughly during the first century after Gutenberg's invention, print did as much to perpetuate blatant errors as it did to spread enlightened truth." In science, the notion of cumulative and progressive knowledge was absolutely revolutionary. As they read a given manuscript, the marginal notes of "wandering scholars" added any corrective or additive thoughts they may have. As scholars wandered, they carried the knowledge from the manuscript with them and could offer it to others. This capability opens the book into a new dimension with immediate accessibility to definitions of words, alternative means (say, more visually-oriented) of understanding a concept, active discussions of a given topic, further research on the subject, alternative interpretations, etc. The dissemination of knowledge is importantly changed by the immediacy of this new referencing capability. The printed book brought a variety of changes that led to a more orderly, systematic approach to the printed word. These had both obvious and subtle effects. Anyone connected with the network can become a "super librarian," searching remote databases via full-text search for any combination of words imaginable. That the printing press wrought significant changes in this system of learning cannot be doubted. People shifted from being listeners to being readers. Such dramatic structural changes should lead to significant societal and cultural changes, but pinning those secondary changes down is very difficult. Sometimes the unintended consequences come to dominate the intended ones. The printing press belongs in that class. The printing press era was dominated by unintended consequences of applications of the technology and we are already seeing the dominance of unintended consequences in some areas of networked computers. Unintended consequences are not only possible but likely to upset conventional extrapolations of current trends (or even historical parallels). The Information Age and the Printing Press |
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