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Creation and the Internet |
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Written by Douglas Couch
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Tuesday, 13 April 2010 13:22 |
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I think humans may have made their next evolutionary leap but I don't think it changed our DNA this time.
We've always been a creative species. We can't be satisfied with using rocks as a tool to open a clam. we work to find better ways and to develop new tools. The addition of the Internet as a way to share information and new techniques is spawning a creativity explosion beyond anything I've ever seen. We're expanding our minds through the use of external storage and collaboration.
While attending college, I thought the resources available there were amazing. There were/are books, magazines, periodicals of all sorts and proceedings from conferences and findings from research and this all amazed me. What amazes me even more now though is what 'average' people are doing in their workshops around the country on a daily basis and sharing with others. Go to a site like www.instructables.com or letsmakerobots.com, makezine.com or even www.motherearthnews.com and see what people are accomplishing.
Just a few examples are things like inexpensive CNC machines capable of cutting gears or etching circuit boards. There are 3D printers that use resins or plastics to create objects directly from your computer like the Reprap device or the Cupcake CNC. The Chris Anderson of Wired magazine spends his free time making UAV's (Unmanned Arial Vehicles) like the predator drones the military uses only he builds them in his workshop at home. There are a million and one things you can do with simple microcontrollers like the Arduino and most of that information can be found online as well.
I have the feeling that we are crossing a threshold. When I think of an idea I can now quickly google it to see how many other people have already come up with alternate methods of doing that. When I find ideas I can use I 'clip' them and drop the info in a note in Evernote. I add my own concepts and ideas, make a quick sketch on the napkin, snap a pic of it and sync it with the rest of my notes or with Dropbox. Later, when I have the chance to relax and let myself really develop an idea I can pull up all the information, try out some ideas and post the results out on my blog or instructables.com (it's how I composed this!) I think we may be approaching a time when the concepts of knowledge ownership, patented ideas, and proprietary technology may be a thing of the past. How much longer will it be before knowledge in general becomes Open Source?
So we have all of these crazy smart people out there sharing information and trying new things and meeting up at Makerfaire, Defcon and Burning man and inspiring each other to new heights. I just can't help but think that it will lead to something totally amazing and world changing. I don't know what it will be... Maybe the next household robot helper, perhaps silicon intelligence, an accidental cure for obesity, or maybe just a totally new way to interact with this information.
I'm tired of waiting to see what the Apple's and the Sony's of the world are going to come up with next. I think it is time for another inventor to step out of his garage and turn our world on its head.
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 13 April 2010 13:31 |
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Written by Douglas Couch
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Tuesday, 30 March 2010 22:32 |
So what would you do in a case like this as a parent?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/us/30bully.html?th&emc=th
Assuming of course you caught it before the conclusion of this incident.
In this unfortunate case it is too late. The student bullies are being prosecuted for crimes. The staff and faculty of the school are being reprimanded for not taking action. And everyone is wondering what happened and how it could get this far.
How did it get to the point in our culture where children (yes, they are still children at that age) are able to enact their own modern day version of "The Lord of the Flies" right under the noses of responsible adults? Aren't they supposed to crash on a deserted island in order to stoop to this level of barbarity? Where were the parents? Where were the teachers and administrators? Where were even the student leadership? Oh... well, it appears they showed up for the vigil after it was all over.
I know that schools have their own social orders and their own cliques. I know what it's like to look for the acceptance of your peers and to want to be liked. I also know that schools don't exist in a vacuum or another dimension. These students rode buses or were dropped off by parents, walked past teachers, librarians, and school nurses, they dumped their bags on the floor as they came in the house, sat on couches in living rooms texting their friends, and interacted with their families in a million small ways that probably contained clues that just shouted that something was wrong. Now one is dead and nine may be criminals.
And it was all ignored. And it is all tragic.
What would you do if your kid was being bullied? Would you call someone? Would you change schools? Would you brush it off as highschool drama? What if your kid is the bully... is that so much easier? Do you laugh at the cruel jokes and feel grateful your child is in the "in crowd"?
Or would you even know it was happening?
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 30 March 2010 22:53 |
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Written by Douglas Couch
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Tuesday, 16 February 2010 23:44 |
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I watched a show last night called MODIFY. Not to spoil it for anyone but it was mostly about Body Modification which encompasses peircing, tattooing, slicing, dicing and anything else in what appeared to be an attempt to becoming different *looking*. I was wholely dissappointed with the show with the tiny acception of one small mention of a person who had embedded magnets under his skin thus gaining a new ability to sense magnetic flux.
My dissappointment lay in the fact that I was hoping that the show would be about true human augmentation instead of being about a bunch of people who feel so out of sorts in their own skin that they in some cases mutilate their own bodies. When the show was over the only thing I could ask is why? Other than the esthetics of it there was no good reason for most of the mods. The ability to hang from hooks by your own skin doesn't strike me as highly advantageous in any way.
On the other hand I also heard about someone who attached pager vibrators to his belt with a digital compass that would buzz the vibrator to the north on a regular basis so he essentially gained a constant sense of direction which augmented his experience of the world. Advantageous? Maybe not particularly but definitely additive in the sensory field.
Also in the field of augmentation, yours truly tried his hand at one of the more mainstream types... LASIK or actually PRK in my case. I'd love to say that it was a great experience and rave about it but honestly I'm still lukewarm on it and would hesitate to advocate the idea to anyone. I ended up exchanging my good reading vision for mediocre driving vision without contacts. Unfortunately I was one of those lucky guys that could wear contacts for days and never suffer bad effects and had a prescription that was better than average sight. Now I kind of feel like I can sort of see most things and don't have to fumble for my glasses in the middle of the night. A good trade? Not sure.
That being said, there are a few other augmentations that I would probably sign up for pretty quickly. Memory augmentation would be awesome. Even if it was simply an embedded calendar/clock that could remind me of appointments, tasks, anniversaries, etc. Can you imagine going to the grocery store with a list of a dozen items and not getting home to realize you'd forgotten the most critical thing? (Coffee creamer of course) Instant recall of names and faces would be a snap and I would no longer grope helplessly for the name of the person I'm talking to at the moment. (more sleep might help that too...) And I can't even count the number of times I've measured a board or a plumbing part, walked across the room and then had to go back and remeasure again.
How does a "head's up" display sound? Supposedly there's experimentation going on to allow direct injection of video signals ot the optical nerve. All I'm asking is for them to figure out how to do that without wrecking the signal I get already. I'd like an overlay on my eyesight that does object recognition (back to remembering faces again) or maybe an x y ruler so I can make quick but accurate measurement estimations. I haven't even touched on the possibility of having incoming email streamed to one side of your sight. (We might end up with a few more auto accidents...)
Does the iPad look cool? Try running a couple fingers across the palm of your opposite hand. Press harder. Use a fingernail or barely make any contact at all. Do you think Apple can make anything nearly that sensitive? So how's about using your palm as an input device. Multi-touch input? Yeah... we can do that. Let's modify that display a little and use both eyes so we can output in 3D. Now we can manipulate drawings and data in three dimensions with no external input, save it to our internal memory and then copy it to a share with a thought using wi-fi. Hopefully IPv6 has enough IP's for all the humans AND their devices.
Now I just need to worry about getting my wetware hacked!
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 16 February 2010 23:50 |
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Written by Douglas Couch
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Sunday, 21 February 2010 21:36 |
It's a pretty well accepted phenomenon that computing follows some kind of multi-year tidal flow. Like some kind of odd werewolf in response to the moon we follow a course, sure that it's the *best* way to do something only to be convinced of the opposite a few years later.
One example of this is the ebb and flow of computer support at a university (and perhaps elsewhere too). Departments hire support people to handle their computing needs. Sometimes they're people in the department who just happen to be good at computing and sometimes they hire experienced IT personnel but usually they are paid less and only appreciated when they come to the rescue and recover lost data or fix the printer. At some point a manager decides this is an inefficient way to handle things. "A few experienced central computer support people can handle all of these departments more efficiently and with a lot less cost." A decree occurs and all the computer geeks come back to Central Computing like salmon swimming upstream to the pool of their birth. Chaos ensues. Perhaps organization actually occurs and efficiency is gained, but at some point, possibly years later, someone, out in a department, realizes how nice it would be to actually have his own computer guy working just for him. And the cycle starts all over again.
Something I thought I'd never see again (like bell bottom jeans) is a return to "dumb terminals" or "thin clients". When I started in computer support over 15 years ago it was everywhere. In every business office there was at least one little green screen terminal with a serial connection to The Mainframe. Most of the business of the enterprise was managed through these terminals and PC's were really only used for some basic word processing and solitaire. Individual PC power slowly started outstripping the combined capacity of the big iron until it really didn't make sense to *not* use all that power. Enter PC bloatware and the heyday of the office suites. Everyone has the incredible capacity to do amazing things right at their desk and they can *still* play solitaire!
Now, amazingly enough, I'm witnessing another low tide! The enormous computing capacity of our personal computers has seemingly outstripped itself. We can buy systems with the equivalent of 4 processors and what seems like limitless memory and storage. What we are finding is that although we may need this kind of power from time to time the large majority of our day is spent browsing the web, editing documents, and... of course playing solitaire. For some of these low power apps the computer we just bought is overkill. So what do you do with all of that spare power? Nothing usually... it just hangs out there and heats up the room and draws a few more amps from the outlet.
 That's where all the new terminal services/desktop virtualization comes into play. You get all the benefits of huge computing power when you need it, but when you're not using it then Jane in Human Resources can use it to create a new brochure about fairness in hiring processes. I'm seeing groups dipping their toes in the water and a few "proof of concept" projects are spooling up to see how things go. With economy, energy efficiency and "greening" becoming key words in every enterprise the thin client's day may be coming once again. Now we can buy small, cheap, low power computers that don't need an upgrade until they break. We can put one of these on each employee's desk to save money and power and move the high end computing back into the machine room. Whether it's the old standby of Windows Terminal Services, new VMWare Desktop Virtualization or the open source Linux Terminal Server Project there are some excellent options out there. We can put our applications on central servers, our data in "the cloud", and get our mail and news from Google(tm).
I'll be interested to see how this all plays out. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to call central support to restart my terminal session... my solitaire game is locked up.
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Last Updated on Sunday, 21 February 2010 22:32 |
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Written by Douglas Couch
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010 22:33 |
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 I'm watching the tail end of the State of the Union Address. Of course I'm watching it streaming on Boxee on my HTPC. I can't speak to the politics, but the video is coming in fine. It may not be as good as cable or satellite but for what I pay monthly ($0) you can't beat it.
It would probably also look good on the new iPad that was announced today by one of the other leaders of our country (Steve Jobs). Both Obama and Jobs are very engaging, very charismatic. I really want to buy what they are selling. Steve has shiny new technology and Barack has some very convincing promises of where he would like to lead our country. I want to believe what they are saying... believe that they can solve my technological and sociological needs... but I'm feeling a little jaded right now.
The iPad appears to be simply an overgrown iPod touch that won't fit in my pocket (and has a funny name). It was supposed to somehow break new ground, be something new that no one has ever seen before but it really looks just like my iPhone. Perhaps I'm missing the true experience just by looking at it online. I'll admit I wasn't sold on my iPhone until I used it for a week or two.
On the other side, my government seems to be a little overgrown itself right now. The economy is bad, bills are stalling in congress, and the promises of change are coming slowly if at all. I'd like to believe that real change can happen but the large machinery of government lacks any momentum and exists as a kind of cracked Rube Goldberg machine that goes through dozens of detailed processes only to pour a cup of coffee. It's my hope that somehow President Obama can cut through the mechanisms and give us all the ability to pour our own coffee.
Perhaps I'll drink it while watching TV on an iPad.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 January 2010 23:02 |
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