Complex Systems
Yes, I see that InFlow exists (but has no download). Smartdraw doesn’t have auto-layout. And The Brain is a really cool little application but keeps hiding parts of the content. Amazing. I thought we were futher along the network mapping curve.
Some friends and I decided that we want to write a Web 2.0 manifesto over at ChangeThis. We submitted our proposal to the ChangeThis team and they accepted! So now we need you to go over and vote for us on this page! Here is the summary of the proposal: There is a change occurring [...]
Okay, here goes my attempt at creating a totally incomplete, biased, and opinionated summary of why you should care about Web 2.0 as a non-techie geek who can barely use their computer to begin with: Why do it at all? · Web 2.0 is about connecting people: it won’t change the world, it [...]
It is only when you take into account the sum total of a person’s associations, actions, talk, relationships, you get a more complete picture of them in the real world than if you just listen to their words. The corollary in the web 2.0 world (or web 1.0 world for that matter) is that the [...]
Microsoft was right to crush Netscape and Java. I realized the other day that I spend a huge portion of my time in a browser. I use Firefox on the PC at work and Safari on the Mac at home. From home, I will have Outlook Web Access on one tab, Gmail in another tab, [...]
This article from the Wall Street Journal discusses the rapid increase in traffic that Wikipedia
is experiencing. I’m not at …
Here is an interesting article on the differences between Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and Microsoft. One does R&D and then gives direction to a community of partners, developers, hardware suppliers, and content providers. The other starts from the same point but then develops (or acquires) the entire software architecture internally and then delivers it fait accompli [...]
From the Register: QUOTE Three “bored” German teenagers blew a staggering £80 million (₠130 million) in just two hours after they ran amok in an online spending spree. Using stolen credit card details the trio bought airplanes, works of art, designer clothes, restaurants, industrial machinery, patents and sound systems. They were arrested by police on [...]
My nephew Matt sent me a link to this Wired article on rat neurons being used to control a flight simulator. In essence, they have plugged the feedback and the control systems into the neurons and have found that eventually the neurons learn how to “fly” the virtual plane. Now, I have heard of using [...]
I love stories like this one at the Christian Science Monitor about Chris Anderson, a New Zealand scientist using crops to clean up contaminated mines. (Thanks Z+Partners for the link.) In one fell swoop, he has come up with a process to improve the environment (both by having plants around and by having the plants [...]
This is an extremely long post on Massive Change, the multi-media exhibition that is intended to be the starting point for a global discussion on the role of design in creating our world. Here is a bit from their website that gives you a sense of the goals of the project.
“The vast majority of people are computer-generated. Some are very complicated and consume a whole Pentium by themselves. Some are so simple, you can run a few hundred on a computer.” - Bob Lucas, division Director, California’s Information Sciences Institute, talking about the game he helped port to Linux called “Urban Resolve” that is being [...]
Here is some very interesting research from the National Institute for Health on the two different decision making processes being observed in the brain using functional MRI. It appears that when faced with a decision between a short-term emotional reward and longer-term logical reward, two different parts of the brain are involved. This brings to [...]
It’s not the specifics of this article that are interesting, but more the fact that I’m constantly humbled by natures complexity and intricacy, much of which is invisible to us. When researchers learn these tiny little tidbits, they always make me smile because I think there must be a googoljillion other processes just like it [...]
I love Ray Kurzweil. Here is a short but interesting interview from CIO magazine where Kurzweil predicts things that will sound outlandish to most people: • outsourcing is a good thing and in the bigger picture not an issue because it’s not a zero-sum game – he gives a 200 year view of these similar [...]
I’m pretty sure that I did not get 27 referrals from www.diamondweddings.com yesterday but that’s what my Blogware is reporting. So I checked out their site and they seem to be some sort of aggregator that points to other sites and it is plastered with a row and a column of Google ads. The whole [...]
Am I the only person who seems to see the connection between the Wikipedia and the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. From the current Wikipedia definition: Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is a “copyleft” encyclopedia that is collaboratively developed using wiki software. Wikipedia is managed and operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. In addition to standard “encyclopedic” knowledge, [...]
It has been said that politics makes for strange bedfellows, but a more current turn of phrase would be that standards wars make for strange alliances, orphan code, and gouged customers. For this story to be relevant to you, we need to recap: • Apple hit it big with iPod – REALLY big. • Apple [...]
Damon Darlin at the Business 2.0 blog pointed me over to the Musicplasma site which I think is one of the coolest social networking mapping web-apps ever. Type in a artist name. Hit SEARCH. It maps out the connections between that artist and all other artists in a great visual map. Click any other artist [...]
I am extremely interested in this field of bio-energy and am excited by all the possibilities of using microbes to convert solar power into useable hydrogen as well as to store energy similar to traditional batteries. Here is a great Wired Magazine article on some of the upcoming possibilities.
What a nightmare this year’s election is going to be in Florida. For any of you who are interested, I HIGHLY recommend reading this very long article at the Independent.co.uk website on the state of the Florida election systems. It’s absurd.
Bruce Schneier comments on the new “Trusted Traveller” program. Also, who’s creating all of the Orwellian program names in the U.S. government?
You have got to love the ability of spammers to adopt new measures to get their mail read. Microsoft has been pushing SenderID, but now spammers are using SenderID headers to get through the filters. When I attended a Privacy conference about four years ago in Quebec, a Microsoft rep was there talking about how [...]
I am thrilled to see Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, one of the premier Valley VC firms, has launched his own blog. One of his recent posts discusses the very ideas that I mentioned in my blog-defining first post – namely that the next 20 years (2005-2025) will bring the same amount of change [...]
Wired wrote this great article on the MoveOnPAC, which was started by two founders, Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, only six years ago and which has become “one of the most revered activist groups in America, supporting Democratic political candidates with tens of millions of dollars in advertising, as well as countless hours of telephone [...]
Similar to my post yesterday on swarming algorithms, Steve Jurvetson, head of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also believes in the wealth of knowledge that we have yet to tap simply by exploring nature’s many inventions. Nice to see he agrees with me!! I’m kidding of course. The area of bio-mimetics has been discussed for quite some [...]
I am always fascinated by the cross-over from biology into electronics, hardware, software, and architecture. Nature has given us a nearly unlimited set of patterns and structures that are resilient, clever, fast, light, and adaptable. It is up to us to find them and learn from them. For example, Australian Defence scientists are studying the [...]
Everything old is new again. It’s all about timing. These are only two of a few choice phrases that may describe something that is afoot here in British Columbia. Some major global, national, and provincial forces are in play that are driving the development of a new (to us) association that may be created in [...]
I love Craig Venter for his long view, his burning curiousity, and his adventurous spirit. And probably because he pisses so many people off in the scientific community for being a dilletante. And yet, he has done more for the development of the various *omics (genomics, proteomics) than almost all others to date. This article [...]
I have put these articles into this blog because I am seeing a whole host of news and interesting articles now that I refer to as evolution articles that cover ongoing mutation-based miniature arms-races where both sides are actively developing their skills and each side often holds the upper hand for only a short time [...]
