August 9, 2010 – 10:33 pm
In an apt follow-on to yesterday’s post, computer scientist Jaron Lanier contributed an Op-Ed piece to today’s Times on what he sees as a budding secular religion — a kind of soteriology-by-Singularity that has taken root, he argues, amongst our technological elite. We are far too quick, Lanier writes, to see a kind of transcendence [...]
I’ve previously mentioned the idea of the Technological Singularity, which I described as the belief that: the convergence of accelerating accomplishments in nanotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, computer science, neurobiology, and artificial intelligence will soon result in a cascading series of mutually supportive breakthroughs that will amount to a discontinuous historical disruption, the anthropological equivalent of [...]
Here’s a nice example of the graphical representation of quantitative data, from Adobe Flex guru Michael McClune. It’s a 3-D map of the distribution of various types of crime in San Francisco. Related content from Sphere
The bottom having fallen out of the recording business, for the past ten years or so I’ve been writing software to earn my daily crust. You probably know that programmers spend a good deal of time “debugging” the software they write (I’ve often felt inclined to refer to the remainder of what we do as [...]
As you all know by now, NASA’s mission has been redefined by the Obama administration. The conquest of space having lost its luster, the agency’s new primary objective, as explained by director Charles Bolden, is to make the Muslim world “feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.” Our investigative-reporting [...]
Writing in the Washington Post, one Stan Cox, who presumably grew up in the jungles of New Guinea, suggests that we abolish the air conditioner, an artifact of human ingenuity that I consider to be roughly on a par with the invention of the wheel, or the taming of fire. Mr. Cox (rhymes with “pox”) [...]
Readers of these pages will know by now that America, along with Western civilization generally, is most likely headed straight down the toilet. But it wasn’t always so. We’ve been focusing so relentlessly here of late on our accelerating collapse that I thought it might be nice to take a look back at a happier [...]
If you’re like me (which, of course, you are) you’ve been saying to yourself, as you have watched the accelerating march of technological progress these past few decades, “Yes, yes, all very nice — but where’s my flying car?” Well, according an item in today’s news, it may now be on the way. Have a [...]
For those of you who pay attention to these things, a long era of American technological superiority in air-combat systems appears to be at an end with the deployment of the Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA. This aircraft’s raison d’etre is to match or exceed the capabilities of our own F-22 Raptor, and early assessment seems [...]
Florida scientist Dr. Rainer Meinke has a new and clever idea for sealing the leaking oil pipe. Here.
I’ve written in the past about the idea, popularized by the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, of an impending “Technological Singularity”: a convergence of accelerating progress in computer science, neuroscience, and biotechnology that will, in a few decades, lead to a kind of critical mass in all these fields, with historically discontinuous effects. (If, as [...]
It’s a busy stretch just now: I’ve been putting in long days at work, and will be traveling tomorrow evening. So for tonight, here’s a timely piece by Wellfleet resident John Stossel about the realities of “green energy”. He reminds us that it is unrealistic to imagine that there is anything in prospect anytime soon [...]
I’m old enough to remember the Apollo 11 mission, the one that put men on the moon for the first time ever. It was a pretty big deal. (We won’t be doing that again anytime soon, thanks to You-Know-Who.) Now, with a hat-tip to my boy Nick, here’s the fateful launch as you’ve never seen [...]
Here I am again, toiling away in the office on a Friday night, just to earn a crust. I suppose I shouldn’t complain, though; for all I know I could soon be replaced by one of these. Related content from Sphere
February 18, 2010 – 11:05 pm
Having got home rather late from teaching class, I’ll leave you this evening with a brief but truly uplifting item: about the implementation, finally, of a technological fantasy I’ve been entertaining for decades. Seriously, this is outstanding. Have a look here. Related content from Sphere
January 24, 2010 – 12:47 am
It’s been a busy Saturday, and what time I’ve had for writing today I have spent commenting here and elsewhere, rather than on the gestation of new posts. So, it being late, and with my computer on the fritz (a new one is on the way), I’ll just leave you with this amusing recent story [...]
January 14, 2010 – 11:50 pm
I’m in rather a bit of discomfort sitting at the computer tonight, having pulled, with a loud “pop”, something in my after rigging while teaching class earlier this evening. So I’ll leave you for now with an advisory item that’s been making the rounds about online security. Here. Related content from Sphere
January 11, 2010 – 11:52 pm
I’ve lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, since 1982. It’s one of New York’s prettiest residential neighborhoods, and generally has a lot going for it: Prospect Park, great restaurants, good schools, beautiful Victorian architecture, a wonderful library, convenient subways, concerts at the Bandshell, and so on. It’s been a great place to raise two kids, and [...]
December 27, 2009 – 11:44 pm
I’ve been slacking off over the holidays. I’ve hardly even read the news, and I’ve had nothing to say even about the Mutallab incident (others have said it all by now, anyway; in particular, Janet Napolitano’s idiotic comment that “the system worked” has been ridiculed amply and deservedly). As usual, my family gave me books [...]
November 6, 2009 – 7:16 pm
In a recent post we mentioned that some of the boffins at CERN had begun to suggest, apparently seriously, that the problems that have dogged the development of the latest generation of high-energy particle colliders — first the Superconducting Supercollider here in the US, and more recently CERN’s Large Hadron Collider — might actually be [...]
October 19, 2009 – 10:57 pm
Time travel is a persistently tantalizing idea, and has been a recurring theme in literature and other cultural media since at least as far back as the Mahabarata. Today it lives at the very edge of scientific plausibility: never entirely ruled out, but subject to persuasive objections. One of the most problematic is the “grandfather [...]
October 13, 2009 – 10:31 am
National Geographic recently added a new feature to its website: a zoomable map du jour. I particularly enjoyed today’s offering, depicting 50 years of space exploration. Here.
August 23, 2009 – 2:14 pm
From my daughter Chloë comes a link to a dazzling video showing the state of the art in robotic manipulation of small objects. Here.
David Pogue, the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times is hopping mad. Why? It’s those annoying little messages you have to listen to before you can leave voice-mail for a cell-phone user. You know: “At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for [...]
Once again, it is approaching midnight, and I am still at the office, lashed to the wheel. This should not last much longer, I hope — perhaps things will be back to normal next week — but for now, serious bloggery remains entirely out of the question. Fortunately, you needn’t turn away empty handed, for [...]
Here’s a handy item for you hobbyists out there: courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists, it’s the Nuclear Weapon Effects Calculator. Enjoy!
By way of Dennis Mangan, here is a review of the new hybrid car from Honda. It is less than favorable.
It’s been a busy weekend — it often seems there is less free time on the weekends than during the week — so there has been little opportunity for brooding and writing. For tonight, then, here’s a cheery little item about Google and you. Related content from Sphere
As a PC user and programmer, I’ve had to listen for many years now to hipper-than-thou Mac users telling me how their favorite machines are simply better. Sure, Macs are beautifully designed, with a pleasing integration of hardware and software. But they are also more expensive, and there is a great deal of software for [...]
I’ve written a few posts lately about Ray Kurzweil’s notion of an impending technological “Singularity“, a sort of “omega point” at which exponentially accelerating technological trends will converge, with world-changing effect. Now Dr. Kurzweil and several others have founded, at NASA’s Ames Research Center, an institution called the Singularity University (modeled on the International Space [...]
April 15, 2009 – 11:14 pm
It’s late, and I have been distracted, as often happens, by a conversation at another website — this time an engaging thread at our friend Deogolwulf’s lair on the subject of consciousness and materialism. So for tonight, here’s a glimpse, from this year’s TED conference, of some very clever engineering. Related content from Sphere
The boffins at the University of California have just alerted us that use of Twitter may imperil our moral faculties. Apparently the problem is that no sooner has the popular messaging service delivered to us a 140-character synopsis of some calamity than another “tweet” comes along, driving the old one from our consciousness before we [...]
March 11, 2009 – 10:19 pm
I think one of the most amazing gifts of the technological revolution of the past few years has been the use of satellite imagery to create dazzling applications like Google Earth. I just love it, and I love it even more with each improvement in coverage and resolution. But now, according to a recent item [...]
March 10, 2009 – 10:52 pm
You may have heard of a physicist and mathematician by the name of Stephen Wolfram, a man of remarkable gifts who was doing important work in particle physics by age 17, had his doctorate from Caltech by 20, and who went on to build an enormously successful business venture around a software product called Mathematica. [...]
A knowledgeable and inquisitive reader, having joined me in puzzling over the strange “blacklisting” errors we have just experienced here for Asian IPs, thought I might find a certain year-old Slate article interesting. I did indeed. It describes the findings of one Babak Pasdar, a network-security expert who was called in by a major telecommunications [...]
February 18, 2009 – 10:40 pm
Automakers, at least the ones that still have employees, are scrambling to design alternative-fuel vehicles. On the drafting board, or already out on the road, are cars powered by electricity, ethanol, natural gas, hydrogen, and even french-fry grease. But while I was poking around online the other day I discovered that even as early as [...]
February 9, 2009 – 11:03 pm
Kevin Kim mentions, in a post published this evening, his curiosity about what he refers to as “real-time searching”. If things had gone a little differently back in 2006, real-time search would be a lot farther along than it is: this is exactly what the start-up company I used to work for, PubSub Concepts, was [...]
January 30, 2009 – 11:37 pm
In this clip from 1981, the future swims into view.
December 18, 2008 – 6:32 pm
A couple of years ago we mentioned the Antikythera Mechanism, a 2,100-year-old clockwork device that was recovered in 1902 from a Mediterranean shipwreck. The gizmo has baffled the boffins since the day it was found, as it represents a level of engineering expertise that nobody would have imagined to have existed in 80 B.C. (and [...]
December 14, 2008 – 2:21 pm
Making the rounds at my office last week was a video clip about the exponential pace of technological change. To the accompaniment of an urgent techno-pop soundtrack, in an onimous minor key, it presents a series of factoids illustrating the implosion of accustomed time-frames, giving the viewer the impression that the acceleration of technological, social, [...]
December 7, 2008 – 8:41 pm
Reader JK, who has his ear to the ground at all times, alerts us to some worrisome news. Apparently the prevalence in the environment of certain chemical pollutants has reached such high levels that a broad assortment of vertebrate species are producing increasingly “feminized” males. Related content from Sphere
November 13, 2008 – 10:02 pm
If you think your IPhone can do it all, you ain’t, as they say, seen nuthin’ yet. Have a look here.
October 14, 2008 – 10:46 pm
Google has, for ten years now, been an amazing engine of creativity. Not content with their brand literally becoming a synonym for Internet search, they have kept up a steady output of innovative technology: GMail, GTalk, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Sky, Google Moon, Google Mars, Google Groups, Google Book Search, and on and on. [...]
October 7, 2008 – 11:13 pm
Things may be falling apart here on Earth, but humanity’s nobler impulses have found a worthy expression today, with the release of a gallery of images from the MESSENGER project’s flyby of Mercury. Here. Related content from Sphere
September 27, 2008 – 7:54 pm
CNN is offering a new and helpful feature in their coverage of the recent Presidential debate: a complete transcript attached to a fully indexed video, with a search feature that allows you to enter a keyword or phrase and go right to that spot in the video clip. It’s not exactly an antigravity machine or [...]
September 26, 2008 – 12:19 am
Some of you may be wondering what’s going on around here. There are new links at the bottom of each post, and all of a sudden the place is overrun with garrulous and unfamiliar visitors, some of whom are, well, not quite the sort of commenters we’re used to seeing in here. What’s happened is [...]
August 13, 2008 – 10:37 pm
According to today’s Physorg.com newsletter, fascinating things are afoot at the University of Reading. Researchers are growing little biological brains made of rat neurons, and training them to control robots by way of a Bluetooth connection. The scientists have in fact created several of these wee brains, which even seem to have their own personalities. [...]
August 4, 2008 – 10:50 pm
This is a giddy week for particle physicists: very soon now the Large Hadron Collider, the most potent instrument ever built for the investigation of nature’s most private parts, will be brought on line. (How soon? Have a look here.) [Note: the LHC countdown site now (August 18th 2008) seems to be down. -MP] There [...]