Archive for the 'Analysis and Opinion' Category

Beyond Millennials: Information Overload and the Alpha Generation

Posted on December 22nd, 2021 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms, Individual Solutions

Image credit: Peter Merholz on Flickr. Are we running out of alphabet? We have Generation X (born 1965–1980), we have generation Y (a.k.a. Millennials, born 1981–1996), we have Generation Z (1997–2012)… so what shall we call today’s children, born (mostly) to millennial parents after 2012? Actually, no worry about running out of letters: not all letters are in the Latin alphabet. The Chinese script has enough ideograms to last us for millennia… but before we go there, there is the Greek alphabet, now gaining fame for naming Coronavirus variants, and indeed the post-millennial cohort are now officially “Generation Alpha”. So.. Read more

Not Like “Being There”: the Surprising Trajectory of Video Conferencing

Posted on July 31st, 2021 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Video conferencing has a long history… much longer as a dream than as a reality; and it is interesting to examine how that dream has evolved. Teleconferencing by voice goes back to the nineteenth century: Jules Verne’s “The begum’s fortune”, written in 1879, describes a teleconference at the city council of his utopian “France-ville”: “I will immediately convene the Council!” , said doctor Sarrasin, and preceded his guests to his study. It was a simply furnished room, whose three walls were covered with bookshelves, while the fourth had, below some paintings and objets d’art, an array of numbered devices similar.. Read more

Babbage and Turing: Two Paths to Inventing the Computer

Posted on April 29th, 2021 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Off-topic

A younger me at the Babbage difference engine built by the Science Museum Success has many fathers, and so it is hardly surprising that there are numerous claimants to the title “inventor of the computer”. These include innovators like Aiken (constructor of the Harvard Mark I, 1944), Zuse (Z1, 1938), Atanasoff and Berry (ABC, 1942), Flowers (Colossus, 1943), and Mauchly and Eckert (ENIAC, 1946). But two men stand out, head and shoulders above all of them: Charles Babbage and Alan Turing. These two Englishmen invented the computer from scratch, but unlike the others, both failed to construct an actual machine.. Read more

Progress and Pig-Headedness in COVID-19 vaccination

Posted on December 29th, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Off-topic

Well, at long last we have a COVID-19 vaccine – many of them, of which two are FDA-approved – and a vaccination drive is underway, just in time for the new year. I just got my first shot! Edward Jenner vaccinating his son. Note the cow outside! Colored engraving by C. Manigaud. [Source] Here I want to share some thoughts and observations about the vaccine situation. Soon after the pandemic became a thing I listed in my newsletter some ways that this pandemic, or rather our war against it, is different from earlier historical ones. One way I noted was.. Read more

Learning to code in an information-flooded world

Posted on October 1st, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

The world around us keeps changing, and many of the changes are caused by, or related to, Information Overload and the instant access to limitless information resources. Recently I’ve come face to face with one more instance of this fact. I’ve been programming computers – sometimes for work, but more often for fun – for over four decades. I’ve written programs on mainframes, minis and micros. I’ve done it in maybe a dozen languages, including Fortran, Algol, Assembler, BASIC, C, Forth and C++, and with the exception of the first two I always learned them on my own. So with.. Read more

How to Hold Magnificent Conferences in the Time of Corona

Posted on July 21st, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Organizational Solutions

In May I went to a large international conference, EcoMotion 2020, devoted to the exciting innovative field of autonomous vehicles and other novel means of transport. There were 3,000 attendees from 54 countries and 211 exhibitors. It was a magnificent event. Welcome speech at the start of the event Of course, in May I couldn’t possibly have gone to a large conference… not with the blasted Coronavirus imposing social distancing and travel bans. In May I stayed at home. And yet I went to EcoMotion 2020, and it most definitely was a magnificent event. The impact of COVID-19 on the.. Read more

How to Manage Working from Home in the Age of Corona

Posted on April 7th, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Organizational Solutions

The Corona virus is holding the world hostage at the time I write this, and is probably feeling pretty pleased with itself. For my part, I won’t speculate about when this mess will be over, but I retain my optimism that we humans will overcome it… after all, remember the smallpox virus: it had killed millions of us well into the 20th century, but we’ve finally wiped it right off the face of our planet. Now we’re gunning for Coronavirus… I’d be less smug if I was in its place. Meanwhile we’re all stuck at home and have time for.. Read more

Throw Them in the Water and Let Them Swim!

Posted on February 14th, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Back when I joined Intel Corporation in the early eighties the concept of Intel Culture was very real for us employees. I don’t mean the laudable corporate platitudes about respecting everybody and caring for the planet that are standard today; back then Intel was a small company that had yet to win the IBM PC processor contract, and the culture it embodied was the sort of stark “frontier culture” that as an Israeli I could easily identify with. It had originated with Andy Grove, who was then a forceful presence in the company, and it was all about personal responsibility,.. Read more

Our Shrinking Attention Span and What to Do About It

Posted on November 28th, 2019 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms

Photo by Daniel Cañibano on Unsplash Recently I gave my History of Computing lecture to a group of hi-tech employees. After I’d finished, an engineer came to me and complimented me in an unexpected way. “These days”, he said,  “I have a three minute attention span. After three minutes of listening to anything out comes my smartphone… but in your lecture I put it right back in my pocket!” It is pleasant to hear this kind of feedback, but as an information overload expert it set my mind thinking about the first part of his comment. The part about the.. Read more

The Butlerian Jihad and the Dangers of Artificial Intelligence

Posted on September 29th, 2019 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Those of us who grew up with 1960’s Science Fiction remember well Frank Herbert’s Magnum Opus, Dune. That amazing book laid the groundwork for much environmentalist thinking, and has been an inspiration for an entire generation of fans. The story’s feudal interstellar society, taking place thousands of years in our future, has very advanced capabilities, notably faster than light travel; yet one thing is missing: there are no computers anywhere (except for the mentats, who are specially trained human computers). The reason there are no computers in Dune’s universe is hinted at repeatedly in the book: it is the outcome.. Read more