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.

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!

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

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

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”.

Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. [...] The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place.

It’s clear in the article that the author of number ten envisions a movie theater, but it’s also a fair description of modern teleconferencing or even plain webcams.

Some of them are pretty revealing. Number two, in particular, is a reminder of just how much the human life span has increased in the past century. It make me wonder if my great-grandchildren will be reading magazine articles and pitying me for only expecting to live seventy-five years.

Prediction #2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.

Prediction #15: No Foods will be Exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

And some of them actually sound familiar. I wouldn’t be surprised to see these prediction in a similar magazine article published today:

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Prediction #17: A university education will be free to every man and woman.

And, of course, given that these prediction were made over a century ago, some of them are inevitably dead wrong, even laughable:

Prediction #3: Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling.

Prediction #4: There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.

Some of the predictions read like something straight out of a Steampunk novel:

Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

Prediction #8: Aerial War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities. Such guns will be armed by aid of compasses when used on land or sea, and telescopes when directed from great heights. Fleets of air-ships, hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts. These aerial war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates over their tops as well as at their sides. Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of to-day. They will make what are now known as cavalry charges. Great automobile plows will dig deep entrenchments as fast as soldiers can occupy them. Rifles will use silent cartridges. Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a whole navy off the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below.

Source: “Predictions of the Year 2000″

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.

Some industry experts have put in that—if programming requires a post graduate level of knowledge of complex algorithms and programming methods, coding requires only high school knowledge of the subject. Coding is deemed repetitive and monotonous.

During many events, like the one last week in India at the annual fair of the software industry’s apex body Nasscom, no one mentioned anything about Programmer or aptly the coders. The event, which brought together software professionals from around the world, used up all its 29 sessions to discuss prospects to improve the performance of software companies. Panels chose to debate extensively on subjects like managing innovation, business growth and multiple geographies. But there was nothing on programmers/coders, whom we all believed are the driving force behind the success of any software company.

It has been an eternal battle between the business cubicles and the programmers box if technology drives the business or vice versa. Well, one compliments the other.

Read the entire article at Brajeshwar’s Blog