There is a heightening awareness of what may become a cost to society of our reliance on technology. An article in New Scientist explores the issue.
It is only available to subscribers, so I googled the headline to try to find out who might have posted it. Within nanoseconds I had found a full version of the article at this blog which I then blogged about at the GRMP blog.
Isn't it remarkable - the very technology that makes things so easy to find, also makes it incredibly easy and perhaps inevitable, that the material that is available by subscription is available free. And I think that it makes the point that the business model of subscription is one that is at risk because of the googleization of media.
But the important point of the article is that the more complex systems become, the more potential there is for system failure.
I was in a meeting at an ad agency today discussing some creative concepts.
I took the guy through a concept that he liked. And then I started talking about the web and how there is a general acceptance (in my opinion) that everything out there is true.... And the reality is something quite different.
He looked at me ands said, "reality is what people believe".
Topic-specific search-engines hope to challenge Google, at least in some areas
ARE you a generalist or a specialist? The question can be asked of people, but it is increasingly being asked about internet search-engines, as specialist or “vertical” sites take on generalists such as Yahoo! and Google. Some are already prospering: GlobalSpec.com, for example, a profitable search-engine for engineers, has 3.5m registered users and signs up another 20,000 each week. “They own that market,” says Charlene Li of Forrester, a consultancy.
This is due in large part to GlobalSpec's definable customer base. Its knowledge about the needs of its users sets it apart from the generalist search-engines, says Angela Hribar of GlobalSpec. Vertical sites, which serve up search results from a carefully selected group of topic-specific websites, can also target advertising at particular audiences more precisely...
Why Truemors ? an extract from the About us section of Truemors.com
Take a note of their belief in demonstrative technology — products/solutions that enable the open exhibition and expression of information, emotions, and opinions.
" First, call us romantics, but we believe in the democratization of information—that is, access for everyone to everything. A long time ago royalty and religious leaders had scribes. Around 600 the Chinese printed using negative reliefs. Around 1450 Johann Gutenberg combined hundreds of years of progress into the screw printing press.
Fast forward to 1985 when Apple (Macintosh), Aldus (PageMaker), and Adobe (PostScript) produced “desktop publishing.” A few years later people could create web sites. Then blogging appeared on the scene. Still, people needed a computer and a blogging tool like WordPress or TypePad to disseminate information.
As Steve Jobs would say, “There must be a better way.” Not that Truemors is in the same league as Gutenberg, Apple, Aldus, Adobe, etc., but now people just need a phone or web access to tell the world.
Second, we also believe in demonstrative technology—that is, products that enable the open exhibition and expression of information, emotions, and opinions. Where democratization implies that the many can read the content of the few, demonstrative technology enables the many to create content too. Thus, Truemors is the melding of democratization and demonstration—and you thought it was just a web site. "
I had an opportunity to meet Guy KAWASAKI last week at an AMCHAM event in HK.
An Apple Fellow, and now MD at Garage Technology Ventures www.garage.com , Guy makes for a compelling funny and pithy speaker.
I got talking to him about VQUENCE and his main comment was show people what a vquence is and also – so when do you ship ?
He sent me a copy of his ppt. centered around his latest book ‘The Art of the Start’ and I managed to get a picture with him “advertising” VQUENCE.
In conclusion he told us to 'kick butt' and after reading our white paper said " ..I could make the case that it's a very valuable service for people who are pushing out video. "
He also mentioned a neat company called iStockphoto.com which he is mentioning around on his travels - it's cool .
by
paul bambury
on February 24, 2007 01:37PM (EST)
There have been significant developments recently in Quantum Mechanics.
Einstein was talking about this field of science when he said "God
doesn't play dice". Quantum Mechanics is seriously weird and
counter-intuitive.
Quantum Computing
This recent Wired story
reports the demonstration of the D-Wave Systems 16-qubit,
specific-purpose quantum computer and includes an interview with the
father of quantum computing, Oxford University theoretical physicist
David Deutsch, who "...invented the idea of the quantum computer in the
1970s as a way to experimentally test the "Many Universes Theory" of
quantum physics -- the idea that when a particle changes, it changes
into all possible forms, across multiple universes."
Quantum Crypto is more developed that Quantum Computing and has been commercially implemented on optical networks by MagiQ Technologies. This technology employs Heisenberg's Uncertaintly Principle to achieve a highly secure crypto solution.
Interestingly, Quantum Computing has the potential to make current
mathematical approaches to cryptography redundant, as the massive
parallel computing power available will render current algorithms
vulnerable to brute force attacks. However, Quantum Crypto is not
beleived to be vulnerable to this type of attack.
While these are both transformational technologies, Quantum Computing
is possibly a boot-strapping technology. It appears to promise
solutions to several currently intractable computational problems and
to dramatically increase computer modelling capacity. Applying Quantum
Computing to scientifc problems such as global climate modelling,
carbon management, nanotechnology and nuclear fusion could lead to the
exponential leap of scientific and technical capacity known as the
Singularity.
Such a quantum leap in human intelligence augmentation will hopefully
develop in time to be applied to the climate emergency. We, and our
computers, will need to be as smart as possible to deal with this.
This may sound like the title of a post-modern computer generated
monster classic. Godzilla versus Mothra zapped through a Predator versus Alien
filter!
But seriously, this may be the most important dichotomy of our blighted age.
Both novels suggest that humans (and posthumans) don't transcend
natural (Darwinian) behaviour. This rings true and provides a great
literary device, the tragic flaw, which lubricates the narratives.
Both authors are familiar with Sociobiology. The main character in
Fifty Degrees Below, edits a sociobiology journal and exhibits, in his
introspection, a growing awareness of the grip that hardwired routines
have on his own and everyone's behaviour. Another scientist in this
novel conducts an intriguing experiment in scientific democracy.
In Accelerando, "godlike" artificial intelligences, descended from
corporations, behave like plague locusts and convert most of the solar
system into Computronium.
This led me this think about our global predicament. The problem is
timing. If we reach the bottleneck first, then the singularity won't
happen in time to help. If we reach or approach the singularity before
the bottleneck then perhaps we can survive it by applying powerful new
technology (artificial intelligence, nanotech, 3D printers and so on).
I guess, this is vaguely what we all hope will happen. Technology to
the rescue.
But didn't technology cause the problem in the first place?
Technology is not the problem. The problem is human behaviour. While our
wise men and women tell us that our survival is at stake, our leaders
are obsessed by distracting territorial and ideological disputes. The
resources of the final flowering of the post industrial economy are
being squandered on the war machine.
Don't we all wonder from time to time why we are in this horrible
predicament in the first place, and why we don't seem to be able to fix
it?
The problem is human behaviour, which is stalled in prehistory. We are
not adapted to the technosphere we have created. We are still running
ancient war games, when we need to be running blue sky scenarios.
More
than anything else we need to develop the ability to manage our own
global behaviour.
I came across an interesting blog called The End Of Money.... written by Dr Chris Martenson.
If you are wondering whether the US economy is headed (and that also means the macro global economy - the world of money is totally interdependant), it is worth a read.
Here is a snippet:
Then, on January 26th 2007 it was reported that Alex Weber of the European Central Bank (ECB) sternly told the Davos participants
that “If you misprice risk, don’t come looking to us for liquidity
assistance”, meaning that he wanted everyone to know that the Central
Bank would absolutely not bail them out if they got
into trouble, and that the wealthiest market players in the world would
have to accept their losses just as you or I would. However, this must
have been entirely too unthinkable an outcome for the Davos
participants because Alex immediately softened that harsh rhetoric by
saying that of course “systemic threats to financial stability” would
be treated ‘differently’ which, - let me access my banker decoder ring
thesaurus function here - turns out to be an alternative spelling for
‘to a bailout’. While Mr. Weber took many words to convey his true
message, I managed to encapsulate it in a single short memo:
“If
you’d like to be eligible for the ECB bailout program, please endeavor
to be sure that your bets are large enough to possibly ruin the system.
Thank you. A. Weber”
I was talking yesterday to Lachlan, who cuts my hair. He travels a lot. Next month he is going to Hawaii. Later in the year to Bali, and then later still to New York.
He told me that he and his partner are going to stay with friends there, who have recently been saying that they are now the working poor in New York, with a household income in the $2-3 Million. That is because people in the financial markets - the big swinging dicks of M&A - can get massive payouts. I read that a receptionist at one of the big firms got $75k last Christmas!
So they have massive discretionary income. But they have no more time than the rest of us.
This interesting Wired article describes some experiments around meme transmission.
Networks are the medium of meme transmission, this much seems obvious,
but not much else is well understood about meme formation and
transmission, except perhaps by advertisers, and they aren't telling.
It's good to see experimental memology, being practiced on the web.
Maybe the methodology needs to be clarified. Double blind experiments
would be difficult on the public network, but there's a good chance
we'll learn something useful from meme experimentation.
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