The Great Geek Manual

The Economist has run a great article on the proliferation of data being generated by the information economy and the challenges it poses. It’s a brief but thought-provoking piece entitled Data, data everywhere written by Kenneth Cukier.

The world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.

Yale computer science professor David Gelernter has published a great manifesto entitled “Time to Start Taking the Internet Seriously” at The Edge.org. It starts like this:

No moment in technology history has ever been more exciting or dangerous than now. The Internet is like a new computer running a flashy, exciting demo. We have been entranced by this demo for fifteen years. But now it is time to get to work, and make the Internet do what we want it to.

… but from there, it only gets better. Gelernter makes some great observations about the information age that we’re living in, both from a technical and philosophical stand point. It’s an interesting read.

Seniors take note!

Over at the What to Fix blog, Daniel compares the increasingly-pervasive technology of today to the use of Heroin in early North America in this thought-provoking essay.

In 1850 people didn’t know how their favorite symphony sounded. Back then, it was common for musicians to work hectic schedules and perform multiple shows in a row. Instruments were frequently out of tune and good, consistent timing was fairly new. In addition, going to the symphony was a big deal: you dressed up, you hitched up the horses, you went into town.

You might only hear your favorite symphony 5 or 6 times in your life. Each time it was probably slightly in a different key, with a slightly different tempo, played with slightly different instruments, and each time you actively strained to hear and remember how it all sounded.

You would sit very attentively, absorbing each and every note and drumbeat of the symphony. It was a play, a painting, an imaginary world come to life, and you were living in it. It was magic.

Source: What to Fix

The crew over at Topless Robot, one of my favorite blogs, recently posted what must be the geekiest Craigslist ad ever… and maybe the most romantic for those gamer girls out there (where ever you’re hiding). It was posted on March 11th for the University Mall in Chapel Hill, North Carolina under the title “GameStop Girl, I want to kill robotic zombie terrorists with you – m4w”.

Dearest GameStop Girl,

When I walked into your store that fateful Tuesday, I expected only to find a smattering of half-decent titles tucked back there amongst the used 360 games. Instead I found you, surrounded by a beam of light, halfway between Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty 3. Your gorgeous dark hair was radiant in contrast with the rainbow of colors on the deluxe Bioshock behind you. The Game of the Year held no interest for me when I saw you look up and smile, even though both could hold me in Rapture.

You commanded the register when it was my turn to check out with the Orange Box. Yes, I was finally getting to play Portal. Lucky me, you said with the cutest smile. Lucky me, I thought, and then knew you had the Portal to my heart. I could care less if the cake is a lie, I’d still want to share it with you.

Oh GameStop Girl, how you make my heart meter skip a beat. If you were being held captive in a mountain fortress by a ruthless mutant mafia gangboss and I had to fight my way through 16 levels of fire-breathing undead ninjas with swords the size of small ponies, I would find a way, even if, after every level, a small man continued to taunt me by saying that you were in another castle. EVEN IF.

So, yes, GameStop Girl, I want to kill robotic zombie terrorists with you. You can even have the deluxe shotgun with explosive scattershot. I’ll just use this knife over here. I’ll do anything for you, just for the small, slightest chance that someday – someday – you and me could be a Wii.

Source: Craigslist via Kotaku

If you thought that you were pissed because you still don’t have a jet pack, you may not want to skip this link. The Usborne Book of the Future is a book published in 1979 predicting the sorts of technology that would be in use in “the year 2000 and beyond”. Some of the beautifully illustrated pictures detail the interiors of space stations and floating cities, while others detail expected advances in artificial technology.

The book is entertaining and fascinating. It also happens to be completely free and available online.

Source: The Pointless Museum

Here’s something I never thought I would write: I just read a fascinating article in The Ladies’ Home Journal.

The article is a list of predictions for the future from an issue that dates back to December 1900. There are twenty-nine predictions in all, and some of them are shockingly correct, despite the fact that they must have sounded like science fiction at the time. Others didn’t come true, but they really opened my eyes to just how far a century of progress has brought us.

Just take a look at these three technological predictions that have actually come to pass:

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”.

Read the rest of this entry » » »

Brajeshwar’s Blog has an interesting article this week. He asks, are you a programmer or a coder? What’s the difference you ask? Read on…

Are programmers and Coders the most neglected link in the Software Development Chain? Coders are like smart assembly line workers as opposed to programmers who are plant engineers. Programmers are the brains, the glorious visionaries who create things. Large software programmers that often run into billions of lines are designed and developed by a handful of programmers. Coders follow instructions of the large program. Read the rest of this entry » » »