Test Information Space

Utility of Information

2011-06-26T16:45:00.001-07:00

People are constantly subjected to recommendations or having decisions made for them. There is a question about who makes what rules, e.g. public, state, multinational, or doctrine, and how these coexist in a culture. A network is also capable of this and therefore can assume a greater portion of influence as it bypasses the others’ constraints. There is a concern about determinism.
How is it possible to avoid losing the user to machine supremacy? Dominance can be attained through any of several avenues. In economics, capitalism can lead to monopoly. Political centralization can become tyranny. Technology automation can arrive at autonomy. There are some cases where these may not be bad, but it is necessary to be able to prevent or remedy them if they are.
There are enough natural crises expected that technology has a role to play in solving them. Fully automated civilizations are still the stuff of scifi, e.g. Correction, Moderator or Pox. The goal is to maintain options along the way and to have something that answers to humanity for as long as possible.
The amount of information that can be reviewed is growing fast. There is an expanding infosphere that people are impacted by, yet have less and less knowledge of. The consumer has to make decisions about health, voting, purchasing, dependents, and assets. Information technology has been useful for organizations and institutions that handle facilities on behalf of patrons. Networks have migrated from messaging, documents, and locations to social groups. Search does not cover it all. Getting the right information to the right place and person requires a lot of preparation.
Utility is the notion of value to the user. This can be measured individually and in the aggregate. There is no common agreement on the appropriate formula or method yet. As a result, there are some superstitions in the form of heuristics or ideologies. People want the advantages of better infrastructure and, when it comes to information, this includes the grids that handle common resource demands according to supplies, prices, and regulations. Technology advances are adding new approaches. Right now, these are propelled by investors. At some point, they may become emergent and self-organizing.
Users of these systems are known by their profiles. They may have preferences and patterns of activity. The former may be abstracted to represent what people need and desire. This describes motivations for the development of further solutions. In terms of information, they often require advisories such as answers to questions, or prediction and planning. There may be urgency of action such as procurement or protection. Admin concerns include provisioning and problem-solving. The actors that do these for the benefit of someone are often called a proxy. Where these may have been professionals in the past, they may metamorphose into machines, or at least a capability of those to remain in synchrony with peoples’ propensities.
The exploration of these topics could take many forms. This one provides discussion of terms and practices, and includes links to sources. There are many issues yet to be resolved. Eventually it may bootstrap into a utility that can describe its own operation.

Continued draft 2

Overcast

2011-04-29T14:15:00.001-07:00

Test news included Amazon EC2 outage, cloud development and coverage, startup beta, and prototyping. There were thirty-five recent links.
Draft on Utility of Information in progress. This is a blog which discusses capabilities and issues of grid components for advisories, action and administration of test information.

Books:
Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City, Foth, 2008. Looks at case studies on the theme of urban space or cyburg. The following terms are described - augmented: overlay of digital symbols onto physical maps or scenes, enacted: shows informational and social relationships rather than spatial extent, transducted: where technology is an actor in addition to people,coded objects: material objects that rely on code to function, but do not keep their own records,code/space: spaces dependent upon software to function, coded space: spaces that are enhanced by coded process but which can exist without them, logjects: impermeable and permeable coded spaces that also have records. There are twenty-nine chapters. Site urbaninformatics.net.

Reality, Universal Ontology and Knowledge Systems: Toward the Intelligent World, Abdouliaev 2008. This is an example of information computation. Its goal is an Intellectual Knowledge Society, "an intelligent civilization (culture) sustained by knowledge infrastructure and machines, where a personal, economic, societal and environmental development is mostly driven by ontological AI technology". Machine reasoning, like natural order, is based on treatment of entities and causal relationships. Ontology is emphasized for both mathematics and the semantic web. A formal theory of language is constructed for use in search, representation and question and answer systems. Words are arranged by groups, types, and rules. The reality, representation and reasoning machine (RRR) and Universal Knowledge Transducer are used to process natural language for the Digital Aristotle base. It proposes a Unified Standard Entity Classification System (may also be labeled Universal instead). There are eight chapters. The preface, including chapter summaries, is shown on Amazon. Content is also on Safari. This does not cover the full range of functionality and user experience discussed in the draft above, but it is a verbose snapshot of this area of research. Keywords include entity, knowledge representation, natural language, ontology, scientific knowledge, semantics, set theory, taxonomies, and Wordnet.

Intelligent Information Technologies and Applications, Sugumaran 2008. Covers multi-agent systems using semantic technologies. Mobile agents can do data mining, and methods have to hide sensitive information. Shopping catalogs expand product findability and offers are discovered by ontology. A process data warehouse captures complex design and development dynamics. Multiple agents can be involved in the enterprise, or do selling or auctioning. A framework for quality of web services is proposed. End users are surveyed about interface agents. A multi-agent system for academic advising does information customization. Agents can support dynamically adjusted learning methods, e.g. as e-learning advisors across domains.

Coincide Effect

2011-04-04T14:49:00.001-07:00

IEEE proposes cloud standards. Page Speed Online analyzes how to make it faster. FCC and Samknows provide routers to measure broadband. Firefox speed may depend upon add-ons. AffirmIt! is a Ruby testing framework. Wildcat Discovery automatically tests thousands of battery cells. Ways are under development for marketers to measure emotions. There were 30 recent links in several other categories.

Book reviews:

Physics of the Future, Kaku 2011

This is a view of likely technological advances during the rest of the century based upon current research. It is written by a practicing scientist and may seem conservative compared to other popular futurists and speculative to journal publications. It is summarized by description of a day in 2100 under a type I global civilization. Author video.

World Wide Mind, Chorost, 2011

The author’s cochlear implants inspired him to think about how these enhancements can be connected to the internet and then how the combined social interactions would lead to a new order of self-awareness. Trends are extrapolated for the instruments and their applications. This might also be of interest for user experience or requirements as a subset of network science. Author video.

Biosystems Engineering, Nag, 2009

This book looks at the uses of bioengineering including those for agriculture. The combination of genetics and system analysis are used to make sustainable environmental modifications to address some of the critical needs due to impact of things like population and climate in the future.

In Form Fate

2011-03-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

Testing news includes uTest Express, user experience, threats versus vulnerabilities (PDF), actors, NASA Mars, and radioactivity. Printing has expanded from 3D prototypes to add mobile antennas, computers, insect bots, and human kidneys. Technology discusses exoskeletons. Trends include a plastic computer processor, Chinese chips, an artificial leaf, biological computers, and nerve cell chips. Beta sites were WorkFlowy. There were 71 recent links.

Book reviews:

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, Gleick, 2011

The book covers how information has been treated in the precursors of the Information Age up to and including Google, Twitter and DNA databases. There is no standard definition, but there is the theory that the title refers to of Claude Shannon, and the overload of too much (TMI). The only irreversible process, and thus of any cost in terms of physical energy such as heat generation according to Landauer and Bennett, is erasure. The text briefly comments on data mining and machine intelligence, but does not dwell on the directions, not does it consider metadata, ontology, semantic web or augmented reality. Some of the author's previous interests in chaos theory, quantum, entropy and thermodynamics are summarized. It goes more deeply into the abstractions of concepts such as meaning, language, writing, cryptography, paradoxes, numbers, measurement, logic, communication, transmission, computers, networks and genetics along with the major contributions of a host of researchers. There are fifteen chapters and extensive notes and bibliography. Author video.

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Turkle, 2011

There are two parts about the author's concerns about social intimacy and solitude based on practice and research. People decide how to keep devices busy. Questions about privacy and civil society bear on democracy and sacred spaces. People tend to identify with their machines They are vulnerable to overanthropomorphizing the capabilities of social robots. The companions offer safe havens. Some of them require nurture and others can double for caregivers for self or valued others. They may be an alternative to digital immersion. Online self-presentation has become a constant, in some cases also when in physical proximity like cyborgs, while in others for retreat to rehearsal or confession. There are fourteen chapters. Author site.

Storytelling for User Experience, Quesenbery and Brooks, 2010

There are sixteen chapters which appropriately have anecdotal stories. Business narratives are usually told in either reports or presentations. The latter can be oral, written or multimedia. User experience can be structured as prescriptive, hero, familiar or foreign, framed, layered and contextual interludes. Ingredients include perspective, characters, context, imagery, and language. These are intended to engage the audience in some way. They put a human face on research data. They can describe usability tasks for tests and reviews, and design ideas and requirements. Analysis activities identify fragments which are built into stories and personas. These can be found from listening, questioning, instructing, logs and note-taking. Good research ethics are relevant.

Instrument Fiero

2011-03-07T12:55:00.001-08:00

A/B testing supported by Optimizely and SumoOptimize. Firefox 4 Beta announced. RStudio is an IDE for R.

Intendix produces brain computer speller. Mogwee app is for mobile social group chat. Battery made from aerogel. Geotrio posts video tours. Senate maps wireless spectrum.

Security avatar questions travellers. Geminoid is a realistic android. Robotics react to human emotions and play basketball. There were twenty recent links.

Book Reviews:

Reality is Broken: why games make us better and how they can change the world, McGonigal, 2011. Video

The author looks at trends in collaboration and augmented reality. Games provide a satisfying and social way to accomplish tasks and improve skills using positive emotional activation. They show how to tackle unnecessary obstacles. One of the goals is to develop massively multiplayer foresight. This is expected to be a 68 billion dollar industry in 2012. Ten instances of global epic scale efforts are detailed for health, climate, peace, and economics. There are three parts for fourteen chapters. Book site.

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Morozov, 2011. Video

The internet, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter, are used to promote democracy and activism, but are also a means of surveillance, censorship and propaganda by authoritarian governments. Cases are shown in China, Iran, and Russia. There are eleven chapters.

Climatopolis, Kahn, 2010

Sixty percent of the population will be urban by 2030. Carbon dioxide will cause air temperatures to rise. The author is an economist and optimistically expects a successful capitalist response from many innovations. There are several lessons. Each city will respond differently. There will be migration, rebuilding and booms in the aftermaths. Government activism increases risk-taking, taxes go up and corruption degrades quality. Climate models vary on predictions of rates and amounts of sea level rise which will impact coastlines. The scenarios for NYC, LA and China are looked at in depth. There are nine chapters. Also see synopses here and here.

Thinking Machines and the Philosophy of computer Science: Concepts and Principles, Vallverdú, 2010

The papers show summaries of multiple opinions on research topics such as information, biological computing, quantum mechanics, robotics, and security.

There are five sections for twenty-two chapters by thirty-two contributors in addition to the editor. Also on Safari.

Spoilersphere

2011-02-28T16:15:00.001-08:00

Intel has BIOS implementation test suite. YouEye performs eye-tracking during tests. Aspiritech testers apply Asperger’s. Microsoft uses controlled experiments for business. Landing page tests listed.

Interactive Fabrication does realtime 3D. Hololabs has a 3D augmented reality editor. NMQ has 3D radar mosaic.

Robot subs used for longer term periods. Demolition robot slices concrete. Self-aware robot models body, thoughts and theory of mind. Stochastic robots put themselves together and take others apart. Cheetah-Bot made for pursuit. Robot marathon completed. Segway solowheel is self-balancing. Snakebot reaches heart.

Atomic antennae do quantum transmission on chip. Organic microprocessor announced. Phononic produces advanced thermoelectric devices. Millimeter-scale computer chips are prototyped.

OpenMesh provides internet-less routing. Brain-computer interface does multi-tasking. Swype eases mobile text input. OnSwipe self-publishes for tablets. HelloFax does transmits online. Batteries do self-repair. Solar caps put on landfills.

CapLinked has private investing platform. Seismic Warning Systems alert before earthquakes. Disaster relief model handles chaos. Video monitor automatically detects life jackets.

Book Reviews:

The End of Discovery, Russell Stannard, 2010

This book is about philosophy of science. The argument is that basic science has found things that are fundamentally unknowable. The description of the state-of-the-art is accompanied by questions that show the current limits. The nature of consciousness and free will is brought up initially. Others deal with what things are, their causes, proof, measurement, observations, past occurrences, and how to select between theories. Figures are used to understandably illustrate complex propositions and a few equations. There are thirteen chapters.

The End of the Long Summer, Dianne Dumanoski, 2009

This is a lyrical treatment of many environmental ideas. The basic thesis is that a future based on climate change and global warming cannot be avoided. The ozone hole was a demonstration of industrial civilization's side-effects and the fact that nature is unpredictable. Humans have learned to dance to the music, however business cannot proceed as usual. Shift is volatile and rapid. The destiny is not set since there are choices. Technofix is a temptation, for example geoengineering, but the proper values include life, resiliency, diversity and survivability in contrast to survivalism. There can be overconnectedness as in hypercoherence. Humanities' place is on Earth. Conservationists hope that people will be able to still enjoy animals several millennia from now. The best statement may be Carson's Silent Spring. This is a Massachusetts author. There are nine chapters.

Mesh Plexus

2011-02-20T14:46:00.001-08:00

Embedded quality concerns highlighted by Accenture. Test lab management organized by Parasoft Virtualize. Mutual Mobile tests enterprise apps. SOASTA performs cloud and mobile load tests. Strike has simple task manager. Google bookmarks imports directly from delicious.

Wolfram reviews Watson. Satellites learn to dodge obstacles. Roombots morph into furniture. Meka Robotics combines Kinect and ROS. Lasers transfer data on-chip. Antilaser absorbs light.

BrainDriver kit for mind over motorcar. Compare to driving while blind. Ants lead in network trails.

inboxQ sweeps Twitter Q&A. RIM acquires Gist contact manager. Greplin searches social media. Crowdsourcing may speed social development. Wikistrat observes how tech propels global middle. EFF reports expansion in federal surveillance. Hackers spoof news via Wi-Fi.

Doctor’s brief presents Tech and Medicine. Nurses are apprehensive of alarm fatigue. Human skin becomes printable. Nanobioconnect hosts directory.
Mississippi powers underwater turbines. Geothermal Energy plentiful in Iceland. There were thirty-one recent links.

Book Review:

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, Brian Greene, 2011

Nine types of parallel universes are proposed including quilted, inflationary, brane, cyclic, landscape, quantum, holographic, simulated and ultimate. The questions include how to test these theories, e.g. involving features which are common, or correlated, to the known universe, possibly through computation, and whether they can be used to solve problems. Various components such as black holes, string theory, and branes are explored and related to each model. There are eleven chapters. Audio comments

In Media Res

2011-02-14T10:04:00.001-08:00

Pen.io publishes pages. SpeakerText does transcription. TigerText does secure texting. Mobile Basecamp released. Automated reading clarifies historic maps. Cloud contest announced. HP challenges Google for cloud. Paygr does service classifieds. DIY blogs Ramshackle Solid and Homegrown Evolution feature case studies.

Universal flu vaccine handles all strains. DNA adhesives used to label valuables.

Anonymous claims Stuxnet source. Night Dragon virus penetrates energy firm systems. Medical Device Innovation Initiative fast tracks regulatory approvals. Unmanned combat air system US Navy X-47B tested.

Motorika provides robotic rehab. Affetto does realistic faces. Bilibot Project makes robotics cheaper. eRockit and YikeBike offer electric bikes.

Nanowires do computing. On-chip photonics speed up processing. There were twenty-five recent links.

Book review:

Verification and Validation in Scientific Computing, Oberkampf and Roy, 2010

Scientific computing is finding more uses in engineering and research. This book is about model verification. The questions are how well a simulation matches an actual activity, or how to get experimental data for a mathematics of micro- and nano-scales, and whether reviewers will find the results credible. Verification activities are shown for software, solution, model and management. Predictive capability is summarized in several steps for identifying sources of uncertainty, characterizing them, estimating error and uncertainty in the system response quantities (SRQs), updating the model, and analyzing sensitivities. There are five parts for sixteen chapters, and an appendix.

Ventral Casting

2011-02-06T10:14:00.001-08:00

Apps for Development seeks evaluations. Sysadmins called to improve testability. Coverity leads market in automated software testing. Topicmarks does document summarization. Wrangler simplifies form-based data cleanup. Linked open data adds value. EMC released Greenplum visual language for big data. Canvas learning management system announced.

White house publishes innovation strategy. Startup America supports entrepreneurship. National Power Grid has security issues. FBI search engine developed. Local Motors announces transport design battle. National Security Space Strategy published. Russians resume plans for spaceplane. China announces 2020 science goals. Clean nuclear power is a priority in China. Japanese elderly not quick to accept bot care companions. RoboEarth networks bots globally. Surgeons communicate with nurse bots using gesture recognition. David Hanson's bot heads advance.

Video discusses implants for humans and brains for bots. Heart cells are made from skin. Accelerometer is made of paper. Nestle tests products in huge stomach. Neer tracks group member locations. Ericsson texts money transfers. AT&T expands mobile banking. Walgreens fill prescriptions by cell cam. IntoNow promotes social TV. Digital museums are browsable in Google Art Project. There were thirty-three recent links.

Book Review:

Verification and Validation in Systems Engineering

This book looks at how architecture frameworks use SysML and UML 2.0. Techniques are classified as informal, static, dynamic or formal. These use inspection, testing, simulation, reference model equivalence checking and theorem proving. It proposes a unified approach to evaluate designs, including comparative metrics and procedures There is a case study of an ATM. Semantics, probabilistic behavior and performance analysis of activity diagrams are considered using the PRISM model. There are thirteen chapters.

Info Ops

2011-01-30T10:57:00.001-08:00

Data deluge includes new terms. State unites in Sputnik Moment prioritizing tech innovation. All-Seeing Eye test results in contention. Egyptian election revolt disconnects media excepting network surveillance. Cyber police activated in Iran. Facebook handles hacks from Tunisia. Bluetooth is useful to insurgents. Mobile phones are to be tested in space. Android 3.0 SDK announced. Digital docs use steganography. Universal memory seeks to replace flash and DRAM. Alternative energy may take about three more decades. Robot hands become more robust. Cloud bots get smarter. Visual microscopy automated. Autom supports weight reduction. There were twenty recent links.

Book review:

The Next Decade, George Friedman, 2010
This book looks at the near future of US foreign relations in terms of a realignment of the balance of power through actions of the President as Commander-in-Chief. There are two themes, the unintended empire, and whether it can be managed to allow the republic to survive. The US global military supports economic policy. Its President is always engaged in the art of war. This will move beyond recent fear of rising oil prices and Jihadist war and establish surrogates in each region. While democracy, human rights and social progress are still important, strategy becomes more of a concern than ideology. The issues are economic, geopolitical, demographic and technological. There is an aging population, contracting workforce, and lack of water. The state, in the form of the DoD, is more powerful than the market for long-term investment. On the American contents, Cuba is likely to be a target of influence, Latin America will include Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. The latter's violence and corruption will be resisted at the border and cartels are expected to be in control there, while US hypocrisy will scapegoat members of its government staff during investigations. Canada is stable. In Asia, Korea, Australia and Singapore balance Chinese splintering and Japanese assertiveness. India surges economically, but is not a threat to China, and is balanced by Pakistan to keep its expenditures on Army and Air. In Europe, Brits' interests are closer to US, and Poland is important to containment since Germany dominates economically, backed by France allied with Russian military which seeks to balance US with radical Islam. Denmark blocks Baltic sea exits. NATO is irrelevant. In the Middle East, US withdraws from Iraq, distances from Israel, and has detente with Iran. Sunni Turkey eventually rises and is important to Russian containment in Balkans and Caucasus. There are fourteen chapters.

Datapole

2011-01-23T09:53:00.001-08:00

Mobile is hot as Google's priority this year, app market of 25B in several years, Bubbly has voice tweets, and PLX XWave is a brain monitor. Tablets replace Wintel. Travel includes an all-automated hotel. Vending machines recognize faces. Philosophy promotes testing. Accessibility can be validated using A-Prompt and Cynthia Says. TestFlight can be used for IOS betas. Security has warnings about attack toolkits, non-Windows systems, printers, resumes, and smartphone seizure, though it may have over-hyped cyberwar. Remote guide dogs announced. Robotics features a comedian and window cleaner. DIY gets alerts from physical mailbox. Internet TV offered by Roku. 3D digitization is exploited for medical visualization. FEMA is looking to adapt to social media. Touch Press displays data dynamically in books. Qwiki searches for information experiences. Firefox 4 released in beta. There were 37 recent links.

Book Review:

Design Driven Testing: Test Smarter, Not Harder, Stephens and Rosenberg, 2010

DDT goals are to fulfill requirements, validate design and verify code. The tests are derived and refactored from the code. This is contrasted to test driven-design. The authors have implemented a process using UML dubbed ICONIX. A conceptual design is positioned midway between the use cases and detailed design. Ten-step lists are each outlined for TDD, DDT, unit, controller, scenarios, requirements, antipatterns, design, integration and algorithm testing. Sequence diagrams are shown throughout. Mock objects and services are used, and unit tests included in builds. There is some discussion of automation, but metrics are not detailed. The style of the book uses allegorical narratives based on satires of alice in wonderland and the temple of doom. This includes some poetry. There are twelve chapters and an appendix from original presentation on subject of use cases. Tips interspersed in the text, as well as inline notes or footnotes that link to other sources. Code samples demonstrate the techniques for a mobile Palm Pilot mapplet to do travel GIS hotel search for a web site.

Scrimmage LOC

2011-01-16T13:08:00.001-08:00

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Automated testing improves usability. Ten ways good and bad hackers operate. PQ Labs SDK can handle 32-finger touchscreen. Stack Exchange has an answers community. Newsle filters friends in the news. DIY combines real and animated video. PixelOptics automatically focuses eyewear. Drones used for construction. Scooba robotic washer updated. Growbots learn on their own. New consumer bots shown at CES 2011. Vanishing commons and means of dissent point to global elite. Wall Street has its own code. Political implications of networking hint at Machiavelli 2.0. JFK Library now digital. Mass. Workforce Training has grants. Globalization may be superceded by the Walled Wide Web. Universal Electronic Card implemented in Russia. Bulgarian cybercrime expert missing. Tunisian cyberattacks linked to government. Superstreet routing has smoother, safer traffic. Snowmobiles are fitted for all-weather racing. Fruit Flies do computation. 34,000-Year-Old Organism found alive. There were 25 recent links.

Books Review:

Fundamentals of Information Systems Security, Kim and Solomon, 2010

Chapter 7 has testing recommendations. The goal is mitigation of risks due to threats and vulnerabilities. Security testing paths include reconnaissance, network mapping, and testing of vulnerability and penetration. Scans show vulnerable services that require a patch. Configuration hardening turns off unnecessary services. Covert testers act like hostiles. Intrusion detection systems may be network or host-based. A Security Information and Event Management system organizes log files. Benchmarks include ISO 27002, NIST SP 800, ITIL, COBIT, COSO. The Disaster Recovery Plan can be tested using checklist, structured walkthrough, simulation, parallel or full-interruption. A security gap analysis compares what the system has and what it needs. The book has 3 parts, 15 chapters having quizzes, and 4 appendices. There is a comprehensive glossary of key terms, and a list of references. The rest of the book has preparation for the Systems Security Certified Practitioner.

Net for Sale

2011-01-09T12:12:00.001-08:00

US citizens to get Internet ID. LG ties smart grid to smartphones and tablets. Trimensional has 3D scanner for iphone. Factual has web and mobile APIs. Forrester says third of users will have tablets by 2015. Vuzix makes video eyeware. Videoscape promoted by Cisco service providers. Viewdle tags photos. Google Hotpot ranks realworld locations. Hipmunk does flight search. Clever Sense has location-aware concierge AI. Dedicated AIs are more successful. Hybrid Assistive Limb is a robotic exoskeleton. Industrial robot name Little Helper. OpenStack provides open-source for clouds. OpenStudy supports social study groups. DIASPORA open-source socnet in alpha. Minimal blogging editor outputs RSS. Feed.nu converts a blog to an android app. DKIM vouches for email. Social Security expects next computer to be years behind demand. Kneber botnet hits government. MAINGATE is new mobile defense network. Amazon Web Services used for wifi hacking research. Estonia starts cyber army. Wikistrat produces geopol journals. Eagleman looks at brains and behaviors. Convergence creates revolution in biomedicine. DNA test determines physical characteristics such as hair color. There is a digital Radiation Detector. Oil Prices begin to dig deeper. High tech Horse Show announced. Gilt Groupe carries luxury brands. Thirty-five recent links.

Book Reviews:

The Master Switch, Tim Wu, 2010

A separation principle of content from transport would maintain an open internet. The author discusses the history of telecommunications and describes an open-to-closed cycle. Convergence in this context means monopoly. This results from a paradox of how US consumers chose convenience over freedom. Other factors are network effects, power of integration, economies of scale, and will to power. There are five parts for twenty-one chapters.

Chance Favors

2011-01-02T09:52:00.001-08:00

Besides augmented to sound, other accessibility tools like Thimble do text to Braille. Photogene provides mobile photo editor. Jama makes requirements management software. VizThink supports visualization. OpenInvo aggregates innovative opportunities. Living earth simulator announced. MSR makes AI Go. Opensource decreed for eastern Europe. There were ten recent links.

Book Review:

Advanced ICTs for Disaster Management and Threat Detection: Collaborative and Distributed Frameworks, EleanaNik AsimakopoulouBessis, 2010
Title is acronym for information and communication technologies. Editors emphasize natural and technical disaster types. There are three phases: preparation, situation, and analysis. Some recent advances include smart-web radio to translate text to voice for dissemination and radio telecontrol to use power distribution lines to network measurement, communication and switches. It also has scenario-based reasoning for conflicting objectives. Topics include crisis management, disaster risk reduction, systemic disaster management system, educational game, disaster media, rapid onset informatics, tool deployment, early warning, med info systems, social media, web2.0, 3d and virtual world models, mathematical models, sensors and computing, and personalized evacuation data. It cites a variety of blogs. If the reader is interested in environmental development as a prevention measure, then additional sources may be required.

New Year’s Greetings

2010-12-26T20:30:00.001-08:00

Mechanical Turk provides pool of internet beta testers. Mass High Tech has feed on startups. Google converts wave to shared spaces. Electronic authentication built into banknotes. Smart grid gets smarter. Hydrogen and oxygen produced using solar energy. Bruce Sterling discusses Wikileaks. Surveillance on police. New Year’s security trends. Software requests made by sysadmins. EditPad has online text editor. Delicious does semantic analysis. Groupon trains journalists. Local gifts shown on eBay. Wall St. computers trade on news. Numenta AI apps discussed. Pen provides biofeedback. Developer makes prosthetic tentacle. Gostai Jazz telebot. Eclipse Phase has posthuman game. New ScienceFiction.com site. New Zealand put UFO data online. The Last of the Humans 2010 second edition technothriller about the rise and fall of machine-controlled civilization on Earth was revised and expanded to eight chapters on Amazon and Scribd. Twenty-three links added. (Photo: Boeing X-45 )

Pace Time

2010-12-20T08:39:00.001-08:00

Arbor graphs DDOS stats. The US is establishing an Internet Privacy Office. Supercomputer benchmark measures graph handling. CrisisCommons handles disaster data. List of computer mishaps. A simple site registration utility is provided by Facebook. S4 Momentum tracks social media. Social branding is marketed by Wildfire. Recommendations for Personal Media streaming. Spabba does bookmarking since delicious may be divested. SEO tips for ebooks. 750 Words has online writing editor. Video of Health 2.0 keynote by Tim O’Reilly. Contest offers health prize for in-patient predictions. Body Browser searches anatomy. Muro does browser-based art. Game development is free using UDK. Film-like mocap improves games. Cyborg beetles can fly. PR2 robots sold. Humanoid bot announced in France. Automated round vac prototyped. Startup tech trends listed in addition to Crowdfunding and Chile. Molten Salt stores energy. MapQuest has site in US. Thirty-one recent links added.

Books Reviews:

Intelligent User Interfaces: Adaptation and Personalization Systems and Technologies, Panagiotis and Germanakos, 2008

This book is about how to improve findability. Major sections include theory, content, process, applications and security. Personalization refers to an individual's or group's unique needs and preferences. Adaptive features fit to these, context, and structure. Some of the common topics are user profiles, recommendation, models, hypermedia and e-government. Seventeen studies by thirty-eight contributors discuss categories such as privacy-enhanced personalization, emotional intelligence, e-learning assistants, open learner modeling, digital memories, cognitive style, adaptive parallel media stream servers, web usage mining, visualization methods, ontology-based, semantically adaptive, intelligent information, middleware architecture, web-based instruction, access/navigation/search, and adaptive hypermedia.

Surviving Cyberwar, Stiennon 2010
This book details methods of cyber intelligence. Cyberwar is dated from 2008 since, though there were network attacks a decade before, they were not coordinated military offensives. The author proposes four essential pillars which drive the war: technology, logistics, command and intelligence. Cases of social media being used for this as geopolitical tools are shown. Trojans are effective. Denial of service, the classic internet asault, is currently defended in ad hoc fashion. The simple assumption by network and endpoint security are that eachother are hostile, similarly by data for the user. It looks at the level of preparedness of major states and explains the US CNCI. Counterespionage has entered a new age. Future government depends upon how network security and privacy develop. There are fifteen chapters. It was published before the wikileaks controversy.

Crowdseason

2010-12-20T08:37:00.001-08:00

MakerBot has a 3D printer. Holograms are used for animation. Samsung offers 3D memory modules. Archaeology model shows an underground village. ChromeDeck is a browser app for Twitter. InteraXon mentally commands computers. New tool for scientific visualization. Drone navigates flight using terrain. Video of robotic strawberry picker. There is a contest for Cosmological Lensing analysis. Crowdsortium catalogs best practices. List of good data blogs. Google adds an eBookstore. OpenLeaks is new clearinghouse for curated secrets. There is a call for US technology investment by China. Shift has beta fashion site. Bacteria are used for computer circuits. Plants exhibit swarm intelligence. Collisions are expected between spacecraft and junk. Twenty-one recent links added.

Book reviews:

Integrating Usability Engineering for Designing the Web Experience: Methodologies and Principles, Spiliotopoulos and others, 2010
This book includes website usability cases, practices and theory. Quality factors are accessibility and user interfaces. Methods use development steps, questionnaires, scenarios, inspections and testing. Examples are shown for 3D apps, ecommerce, learning management systems, and marketing. Utilities are discussed such as literacy tools, screen-readers for blindness, and captions for deafness. It lists some of the regulatory guidelines. There are three parts for eighteen sections.

Counter Logic

2010-12-05T14:38:00.001-08:00

The internet has public resources for improving community wealth. Tools for datamining and code metrics include cmetrics, FLOSSmole, FLOSSMetrics. and SLOCCount.Award for software testing and debugging: 1, 2, and 3. Utilities assist scenario forecasting. Kurzweil's futurist performance was graded. AI is used for sports betting. Security adds computational forensics. SocialSci is a science research network. Engineering addresses world problems. Trees have been added to google earth engine. Digital evolution arrives at fireflies. News stream made from bitly links. CreateSpace self-publishes media. Irish expats have a social network. Comicspipeline.com shows arts in progress. Veterinarian designs prostheses. Phylo is a genomic game. Video discusses bioliberation. There were twenty-eight recent links.

Book Reviews:

Model-Driven Software Development: Integrating Quality Assurance, Rech and Bunse, 2008

An effect of a good model is to define the terminology and to automate analysis. The control and data flow are often similar to classical code-driven processes, but may be easier to handle since formats are less difference. The book has four sections for eighteen chapters from fifty authors. They discuss quality evaluation and improvement for specific domains. UML was an early instance; peer review was a quality method. New developments are shown for embedded systems, automotive, service engineering and infrared telescope. Some of these have used Matlab/Simulink/TargetLink. Metrics include matrices for maintainability, reusability, portability, efficiency and performance, for example. The book describes case studies. Models are inspected for completeness, consistency, traceability, and correctness. Empirical testing is still used to characterize system implementations.

Making Software, Oram and Wilson, 2010
This is a set of scholarly research papers which is interesting for, not only the results, but also the methods and the places under study. There are two parts on general principles and specific topics by forty-five authors. The table of contents shows the titles and subjects for thirty chapters, each of which also has a list of references. Part of the book's implicit knowledge comes from how the authors answered their questions as well as how they present the evidence. The question becomes how to measure and improve these skills in other organizations and on a more continuous basis. The most common areas of interest are productivity metrics and measurement. These are shown for different software development process models and code bases. They also look at the limitations of education. There are some new concepts such as socio-technical congruence as a measure of coordination.

Endgame

2010-11-22T13:14:00.001-08:00

Approaching the conclusion of the year, predictions for the next begin with announcements for the cloud and security. An easier messaging system is introduced for Facebook and AI may eventually use data. Gravity graphs interests. Ipad may have a new digital newspaper. A personal network supports photography. Indeed searches business classifies. States publish statistics. Developers can use head or gestural interfaces. Augmented reality is used to compose music. Robots learn by doing. Radio uses saltwater antenna. Stuxnet may have been built to change nuclear processing. Drones can survey Mars. Fins offered as prosthetics. A teacher plans to put a camera inside back of head. Climate is answerable to science. Carbon nanotubes are inflammable. Maxwell’s demon has been demonstrated. There are contests for movies, and med and bio images.

Recent links (from about twenty-eight):

This Video Will Blow Your Mind (Probably) | The Creators Project
YouTube - Authors@Google: Kevin Kelly
YouTube - Digital Art@Google: DJ Spooky

To Be Is To Question

2010-11-08T16:34:00.001-08:00

IBM personalizes internet. Australia has a digital city. Adobe adds cloud filesharing. Verify gets user feedback on screens. Impure visualizes data. A biological brain navigates a vehicle. In electric cars, a Chevy gets an IP address, and an Urbee is made on printer. Also in 3D, Janus does interactive scanning and holograms do displays. Invisible material disappears. Chip PC is in the plug. Blekko searches selected sites. Gdb does profiling. Sensors warn of landslides. Technoscience combines science and engineering.

Book reviews:

What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly, 2010
The author seeks the essence of technology as a force the equal of nature. Technology has features such as evolution, complexity, specificity, diversity, and energy dependencies. He introduces the term technium as a form of civilization, an emergent system of accelerated life. Many advancements happen simultaneously in multiple places, e.g. the Axial Age. This is the result of new technologies increasing the odds of successors. There are four parts for fourteen chapters. It is written in an optimistic, mind-expanding style. He covers the ideas of many other authors such as Joel Garreau and W. Brian Arthur. There are twenty-books in the reading list including authors such as Ray Kurzweil and Steward Brand. Though not cited here, there have been efforts to formalize technology's philosophical roots, theory, and predictions, reviewed earlier on this blog and google books.

Recent links (of about twenty-four):

video

YouTube - Tom Chatfield: 7 ways video games engage the brain
YouTube - Authors@Google: Alice Walker

Pathos Least

2010-10-31T12:16:00.001-07:00

The internet adds Everest and loses Tehran as US boosts broadband. WiFi direct protocol groups devices. Cell doubles as remote. Semantic web publishes R2RML and MathML 3. China boasts supercomputer lead. Computers used for emotion meter. Intel has press site. HealthTap individualizes care. Knight funds media contest. Security weaves code and judges cyberwar while Iranian hackers trade botnets. No math word problems, but some tips on stories versus statistics. Google does spreadsheet visualization and random street view. AutoBot links car to web. Traffic lights save gas. Digital museums open to public and print 3D. Nook adds color reader. NASA introduces A-Train and tests flight deck. Robots plug into brain and use beanbag hands.

Book reviews:

User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn, 2004

This approach is from Agile User-Centered Design. Stories can also be added to Scrum. Extreme programming, XP, centers on testing, automated and acceptance. The testing is for usability, performance and stress rather than code coverage. There are various techniques used for developing the stories. They are modular for estimation and testability. A case is shown for a workshop having user role cards and story cards. A story card is a reminder of features to discuss. Each bug report is considered its own story. The planning game customer prioritizes their user story cards for the next iteration after developers have indicated the effort estimations for each. Tests are prepared prior to the code. Stories are grouped. A paper prototype is created and refined before programming begins. The UI is postponed for as long as possible. User goals can be listed from which stories will be derived. Burndown charts are used to track iteration hours. Another measure of momentum is the number of story points over time where each is an estimate for an ideal workday. The term smells is used for problems between participants, e.g. customer won’t do the stories, for which solutions are proposed. There are four parts beside an appendix on extreme programming. Each has a chapter summary, responsibilities of the developer and customer, and questions.

Previous links (of about thirty-four):

video

The Poetry of Science: Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson - K21st Essential 21st Century Knowledge
YouTube - R.A. Mashelkar: Breakthrough designs for ultra-low-cost products
The Future of Money on Vimeo
Digg - Deadly Memory Card Testing: Overkill Edition [Video]

Ghost Parking

2010-10-25T12:34:00.001-07:00

Time to put those campfire stories to good use. If you’ve ever wondered what it all may lead to, see Cast Shadow.

Book reviews:

Design Informed: Driving Innovation with Evidence-Based Design, Brandt and others, 2010

This book is about architectural research methods which seek evidence to answer specific questions about cause-effect. In a series of a couple of dozen case studies and interviews, it characterizes the six quality attributes of hypothesis, epistemology, metrics, strength of evidence, external validation and transparency. It discusses the 2005 Latrobe hypothesis which has three parts for collaboration between architect and clients, use of both empiricism and induction, and metrics. A process of prototyping and testing is used to make buildings. Software is used for analysis and prediction. Computer models are used to find and demonstrate solutions. Compelling measurements from the realworld support the conclusions. The computer is then used to include these types of measurements in architectural designs. Actual designs are made which use the newer solution approaches. There are seven chapters.

The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution, Timothy Taylor, 2010

The author questions how humans became intelligent and whether tools and therefore technology predated humans. He proposes a set of three levels, system 3, flint tool or artificial tech arising after system 1 inanimate natural pebble, and system 2 natural biological mollusk. His style mixes data and personal anecdotes from in the field. He updates the arguments of initially proposed by Darwin regarding trial and error with newer findings and inductive reasoning to demonstrate that technology enabled human biological evolution. The human brain is three to four times larger in size than a primate's, but smaller than it was 150k years ago. The chart spans ten million years and shows an average increase and several dips. Much of the content has been externalized by technology so the modern head may be more efficient in the social context. This is similar to body mass and coordination which used to be required to get food. Civilizations may succumb to environmental disasters since some tend to worsen due to social practice. Competition between humans was a significant selector and technological advantage allowed symbolic development. Skeuomorphs mimic previous designs using new materials. Anti-science creationism may be an artifact of human models that led to questions of causality for the artists. Infant slings were an initial tool used upon walking upright and which also encouraged brain size. Groups have their own techno-culture and their tools may seem alien to others. This included cooking bowls which led to different diets and centralized preparation like the later fast foods. The first chipped stone tool found preceded homo sapiens by almost 200,000 years. Chimps, who probably were derived from the same ape as humans about seven million years ago, also use these types, as did Tasmanian aborigines isolated from the mainland. Otzi the ice man, from 5000 years ago on the high Alps, had more complex ones like from an early assembly line.

Telling Stories: A Short Path to Writing Better Software Requirements, Ben Rinzler, 2009

The thesis is that there is an analogy between writing requirements and a story. The book is concise and readable and formalizes a requirements method. The instructions show how to illustrate dataflow and UML. There are outlines and a document template. The outline formats differentiate an Agile version from more robust. Scenarios are used to show the success and exception results of each application process. The latter word is used in several contexts such as for the requirements themselves, for the system, and for the software elements. It assumes that the review considers feasibility.

This title is a happy medium as an anecdote, however the full length treatment is full of caveats. A story is a narrative, where the requirements are more of an agreement. There are a lot of differences. The audience of designers, for example, will have an expectation that there is enough detail for them to do specifications. System analysts and testers will seek to itemize features and constraints so that they can be tracked throughout the development and validation processes. Perhaps the story explains the why’s, the requirements the what’s, and the designs do the how’s. It does list usability testing and brings up availability, for example.

In summary, marketing presentations might lean more heavily on the story side, and software on objectives. Other approaches along these lines have included object-oriented parsing of text to objects. Scenarios and scenes are also used in test descriptions, e.g. use cases. Analogies are used in technical documentation. Complementary approaches might also include user actions as problem-solving or decision trees.

Recent links (about thirty-six):

video

Diminished Reality: Impressive Video Manipulation In Real-Time (Video)
YouTube - O'Reilly Webcast: The Myths of Innovation - Remixed and Remastered
YouTube - Heribert Watzke: The brain in your gut

ai Intellitar

browser First Alpha Of Opera 11 Released, Developers Can Now Build Extensions

climate

Blotting Out Sun May Soon Be Banned : Discovery News
Flower Power: Genetic Modification Could Amply Boost Plants' Carbon-Capture and Bioenergy Capacity: Scientific American

computer Researchers one step closer to 'bootless' computer - Computerworld

digital-libraries Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: Why There Can Never Be A Competitor to Google Books

disaster

Layer 8: IBM says software helps predict natural disasters | Network World
Building a Giant Lab to Test Disasters - WSJ.com

ebooks eBook price comparisons for iBooks, Kindle and Nook - Leatherbound

holography This Rocking Lead Singer is a 3D Hologram (video) | Singularity Hub

journalism WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Chased by Turmoil - NYTimes.com

mathematics Dr Dobbs - Linear Equation Breakthrough

mobile

Glasses With HUDs Just Became A Little More Affordable | Techi.com
What is Mobile Virtualization and Why is it Important? - ReadWriteCloud
picplz for iPhone & Android - See what's happening now
Mitek Systems

music Google India Blog: Introducing Google Music Search (India) at Labs

payments Citibank First to Test Revolutionary Credit Card System, Card 2.0

physics Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Mass Can Be 'Created' Inside Graphene, Say Physicists

privacy Every email and website to be stored - Telegraph

robotics

BattleBricks: MakerLegoBot: The Lego Mindstorms NXT 3D Lego Printer
Buzzll.com: Singing Humanoids
IEEE Spectrum: Japanese Snake Robot Goes Where Humans Can't

science

First All-Digital Science Textbook Will Be Free | Wired Science | Wired.com
publicscience.ca - Science that Protects You
E. O. Wilson, Harrison Ford Ask You to Give a Damn About Biodiversity

security Coder for CIA: Drone Targeting Software "Far From Ready"

smartgrid

IEEE 1901TM BROADBAND POWER LINE STANDARD FOR 500 Mbps COMMUNICATIONS APPROVED - IEEE Smart Grid
NIST Lays Out Spec to Turn Power Grid to Network Grid | ITworld

space

Record-breaking galaxy found at the edge of the Universe | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
NASA Ames' Worden reveals DARPA-funded "Hundred Year Starship" program | KurzweilAI

spacecraft International Docking Standard

telescope Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: How To Handle The World's Largest Digital Images

Cell Complex

2010-10-19T11:26:00.001-07:00

Usability test sites are listed below. Visualization has Circos tool. Machine learning can automatically read the web and derive laws from data. Biotech do-it-yourself has reached the garage stage. Japan has machines that win at chess, economize both heat and smartgrid, sing like humans, and crawl like snakes. Surveillance has video analytics and privacy concerns. Movies have character makeover. Security has memory hardware ID, Bugat trojan, cyber cold war and first strike alert. Space tourism is less than a couple of years away. Water shortages are prevented by intelligence, startups and solar power. Ebooks have self-publishing, search, blog converter, and writing nook.

Book reviews:

Undercover User Experience Design, Cennydd Bowles and James Box, 2010

This is a comprehensive do-it-yourself description about many facets of the topic. The undercover manifesto values bottom-up change, delivery, timeliness, sociability, and action. There are details about critiques, deliverables, design process and problems, research, usability testing, and UX design. UX adoption begins in web design, and proceeds to check-up, integration, ownership, allies, education, persuasion, trust, stories, skills, and ROI. The content of the book has dynamic highlights, notes appear in side-boxes. It has tips for Agile as well as waterfall design. There are recommendations for using the process with various types of customers including developers, visual designers, content specialists, product owners, marketers, SEO specialists and senior managers. It talks about metrics, A/B testing, common design review pitfalls. Types of test include rapid iterative testing and evaluation, and remote. Tools range from sketching wireframes and storyboards, to apps, to dedicated sites. Research methods include feedback, surveys, and third-parties. Author sites www.cennydd.co.uk and twitter.com/boxman.
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, Andrew J. Bacevich, 2010

The title simultaneously refers to the beltway, namesake, possible result, and the name of the national security consensus since WWII which is no longer as effective. The sacred trinity now holds that the US needs global presence, power projections and interventionism. The inability to distinguish institutional well-being from that of the nation has led to the present conditions. This affected historical figures such as Allen Dulles, Curtis LeMay and Maxwell Taylor. The author takes issue with the way things have turned out for the US. The arguments are nonpartisan. The return to counterinsurgency demonstrates an abandonment of victory as an objective. The US could revert to the tradition of military for defense and Just War. Americans would see soldiers stationed in the country as citizen-protectors. This frees up resources to restore the economy.

Previous links (from about fifty-four):

test

    Turn Visitors into Customers with Performable.
    Easy User Experience research - whatusersdo.com
    Webnographer Home
    Remote Usability testing, online customer experience research, usability testing software. Userzoom
    User Experience | Website Usability Testing and Evaluation
   Usability Testing
    Treejack :: Optimise your site structure using tree testing.
    OpenHallway
    Navflow
    Remote & Online Usability Testing Tool | Loop11
    IntuitionHQ, make website usability testing part of every website project
    FiveSecondTest
    CommandShift3 - It's like Hot or Not for web design
    Chalkmark :: First impression testing.

astronomy Planet hunters no longer blinded by the light | International Space Fellowship

automotive CarWoo!

climate Old Weather - Our Weather's Past, the Climate's Future

community Get Satisfaction | Customer Community Software - Love your Customers.

economics Coming Soon: World Government and Global Currency - Beyond Money

education Next Gen Learning Challenges

invention Dean of Invention : Planet Green - On TV

maps The Web 2.0 Summit Points of Control Map

social Multitude

social-networks MYCUBE

technology Garnter's Newest Hype Cycle: Discuss

transportation Everyone's Private Driver / UberCab

windows Windows Live Mesh 2011

Point to Pole

2010-10-11T04:07:00.001-07:00

Political artifacts are sweeping much of the attention. Next generation designs consider networks, environment, globalization, and personalization. Architecture seems to be maintaining eyes and ears and administering disapproving dread on behalf of a someone or something in the central keep. Votes are predicted and ballots are built according to the pulse from purchases, product use and promotional responses for goodness’ sake. Some take the quest to the furthest outposts which then become the new melting pots. Others meld to media and march the machines in their stead. Statistics are a snapshot of what needs to be shaped next and there is a cloud of colors around the computation.

Recent links (about twenty-seven):

Book Reviews:

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future, Laurence C. Smith, 2010
The author is a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences. There are three parts for ten chapters. Each chapter provides trend data and describes what 2050 will be like. The forces are demographics, resource demand, globalization, climate change. These all include technology. Ground rules included no silver bullets or world war III or hidden genies, and the models are okay. There is a trend toward urbanization. Resource depletion is analyzed. Carbon-free energy sources include hydropower, wind and concentrated solar thermal power. Water is in contention between farmers and cities. Computer models indicate rising air temperatures in the north. Trade can increase around the north pole without need for major contention. There is a third wave of immigration to the northern rim and the arctic seabed. Ancestral traditions merge with modern business practices. Models of abrupt climate change indicate probability that northern fresh water will not be affected and it may redirect water to the south. The new north may be like the American West at the start of the nineteenth century.

video

YouTube - Hans Rosling: The good news of the decade?
YouTube - Digital Art@Google: James Tunick and Jack Toolin
YouTube - Barbara Block: Tagging tuna in the deep ocean
Tim Jackson's economic reality check | Video on TED.com

application Ovi app wizard beta

censorship The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog

computation Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: The Post-Singularity Future Of Astronomy

disaster A flood of toxic sludge - The Big Picture - Boston.com

ebooks Worldreader.org - Books for All

games

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
IBM INNOV8: CityOne

government Tech CEOs tell US gov't how to cut $1 trillion from deficit

ideas Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Where Ideas Come From | Magazine

linkedin LinkedIn and PwC Launch Breakthrough Career Mapping Tool for College Students | LinkedIn - Public Relations

medical Berkeley Bionics

review 'The Social Network': A Review Of Aaron Sorkin's Film About Facebook And Mark Zuckerberg | The New Republic

robotics

Boy of 15 fitted with robotic heart â€“ Computer Chips & Hardware Technology | Geek.com
IEEE Spectrum: Humanoid Robots Rise. Now, Can They Walk?
IEEE Spectrum: Omniwheels Gaining Popularity in Robotics

security Collective Defense: Applying Public Health Models to the Internet (PDF)

space

Update: Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Makes First Glide Flight | Autopia | Wired.com
The Space Game

statistics Truthy

tags FollowYours

tv Quick Tour - Google TV

Act of Reason

2010-10-04T14:39:00.001-07:00

The internet is broadening as its component types become more speciated. It carries more virtual goods and prototypes by DIY makers. Cell phones handle mobile payment. Journalism trends are visualized. Social media is used to tell stories. Ebooks have new readers for Kindle and Blio. Data drives discovery. Original manuscripts are viewable. Fiction publishing includes anthologies of scifi. There is a backlash to blacklisting.

Recent links (about twenty-six):

video

YouTube - SingTel Cloud computing in Augmented Reality

YouTube - Sebastian Seung: I am my connectome

answers Quora

climate NASA - Climate@Home: Creating a Virtual Supercomputer to Model Climate

game Brain Odyssey

maps Polymaps

quality Mass offers "Seal of Commonwealth Quality" - Boston Business Journal

security Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: The Hot New Thing in Biometric Security is... Ears

space

NASA - IBEX Finds Surprising Changes at Solar Boundary

A Habitable Exoplanet - for Real This Time | Wired Science | Wired.com

telepresence IEEE Spectrum: A DIY Telepresence Robot

Time Leaves Turns

2010-09-28T11:47:00.001-07:00

There are signs of life swimming against the tidal forces. One may wonder how to test determinism itself, outside of philosophical scenarios. IT permeates most, if not all, domains. The fact that the volume of data exceeds comprehension invites advanced methods. Some of these preserve values. The inherent ideology affects conclusions. It is not clear how to prevent this. It is also a challenge to characterize it, but there seems to be a growing awareness of its significance going forward. In order to prevent narrow-minded short-sightedness, there are proposed diversities which mimic nature, however these can be bypassed through clever systemic exploitation of knowledge gaps or compartmentalization. This also occurs in analysis and operations. The security that defends also biases. Historically, things which are not protected tend to be plundered. Software is considered a work-around for bureaucracy, science a progression toward truth. Setting them at logger heads may have spectacular effects, as hardware can attest. If this is necessary, then a perceptive observer of the resultant chaos may discover an approach that surpasses the past. The next trick is to show the math.

Recent links (twenty-one):

Book Reviews:

JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass, 2008

This narrative covers the background to the fateful day. The thesis is that the protagonist, following the missile crisis, threw himself in the way of a nuclear bullet headed for the country. His predecessor had warned of a mil-industrial complex. The antagonist is a then Cold War organization, portrayed as acting like a separate state after he decapitated it, who saw withdrawal from the proxy war in Vietnam as a defeat. The title uses a phrase from theologian Thomas Merton. There are six chapters and an appendix speech. The author reportedly intended it as the start of a series which would also include MLK, MX and RFK.
zero history, William Gibson, 2010

The book describes a quest for military fashion. It is a character-driven continuation from the previous two novels which includes recent economic context. They have distinct manners and voices and are each chasing their own cultural trends. The title is about a character who has no credit record and the news assumes a death spiral. There is a lot of depth. Cool is yet unadvertised. Expert at their tradecraft, the players tend to go rogue. The setting is described in detail, London is like an “intricate antique toy … bought at auction”. Brand images from realworld things are compared like apps made from root code or true worth. It includes authentic samples of elite terminology. Locative art became augmented reality. Tracking is ubiquitous. The big ant figurine symbol shows up in luggage. There are eighty-seven chapters. Point-of-view changes among the major characters other than Big End. The audiobook lends it a voiceover quality.

video

YouTube - Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from
Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles Â« K21st â€“ Essential 21st Century Knowledge

AI

CyBeRev Home

LifeNaut -

blog Windows Live Outsources Blogging, Migrating 30 Million Users To WordPress.com

calendar Welcome to CalendarGod

climate NASA - NASA Study Shows Desert Dust Cuts Colorado River Flow

energy Using Clean Technology to Remedy Energy Poverty: Scientific American

geospatial CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones' â€¢ The Register

government BetaCities

profile ResumeSponge

quantum Kiwi scientists make atomic 'breakthrough' | Stuff.co.nz

robotics Flying Robot Swarm Takes Off | Wired Science | Wired.com

security Virus Targets Industrial OS, Reaches Iran's Nuclear Plant

space First Habitable Exoplanet Could Be Discovered by May | Wired Science | Wired.com

test Performance Testing | Performance Testing Resources

voice VoiceBase

wireless Super-tough wireless sensors 'to be dropped into volcanoes' â€¢ The Register

women Sharp Skirts Smart Networking for Women Entrepreneurs

Nu Matters

2010-09-21T12:27:00.001-07:00

Some of the big names in their fields announce changes of opinion including Tim Berners-Lee, Stephen Hawking, and Chris Adnerson of TED. Rob Dunbar talks about ocean acidification. Nicholas Christakis forecasts epidemics from socnet analysis. Problems are being redefined and prioritized. Predictions for next year have begun. New products push the limits of mobility, computation and automation. Weather Waker original scifi can be read on Scribd and Amazon.

Recent links (about forty):

Book reviews:

Cyber War, Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake, 2010

The author discusses govnet, his proposal for private critical infrastructure networks, which the internet architects and privacy advocates were not supportive of. The first third of the book describes the way things are setup and the rest goes into defensive and offensive strategies. The actors are described such as state-run cyber warriors like Russia’s successor to FAPSI, or nationalist hacker groups. Defenses try to promote security by filtering attacks or by disrupting the parts of the network that are required for them to operate. These are non-lethal, but may lead to other types of warfare. There are costs to cyber-crime which demand better counter-measures. There is a speech at the end that sums up the recommendations for a treaty, risk reduction center, and cooperation among victim nations. There are eight chapters and a glossary, but no index. The problems and solutions are ongoing. National servers are used within the cloud framework to protect important data. Countries seek to monitor all types of traffic for security reasons, e.g. Blackberry decryption by India. This becomes sensitive when data may be used for commercial advantage. Other nations may develop their own advancements for private or global networking, such as China’s post-IP efforts.

The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, 2010

Philosophy is dead, science makes the discoveries. M-theory is a candidate for a theory of everything. Descartes formulated the concept of rules of nature. Laplace postulated scientific determinism. Brains follow physical causes. Free will is an illusion, yet economics is based on it. Reality is a model and set of rules connected to observations. The book reviews the history of physics, e.g. Feynman, and concludes that the universe is a part of a multiverse, some of which have life, and began from nothing as a quantum event.

Digital Triage Forensics: Processing the Digital Crime Scene, Pearson and Watson, 2010

This process is intended to eliminate the overly busy lab delays between evidence gathering and analysis. It is different from the in-country RCFLs that are also backlogged. It has been used by Weapons Intelligence Teams since 2004 for cell phones and SIM cards which were used as part of tactical operations, activity records for payment, or detonators. Inspection is initially carried out by TALON robot. Photography in the dark avoids white light which may be targeted or interfere with others’ night-vision. Investigator bias is an issue for defense attorneys. The forensics exam consists of preparation, collection, examination, analysis and reporting. A computer BIOS’ clock may be set differently from standard time, so it must be checked and matched by forensic apps. Data on a cellphone can be accessed by other devices over networks or the cloud. There are specialized applications to review, bookmark and copy data from mobile devices and storage cards for investigative reports, e.g. for contacts, messages, call history and content. There is a glossary. Also see mobileforensics.wordpress.com or www.nfstc.org.

Point Omega, Don DeLillo, 2010

The visual mind consists of heat, space, stillness, distance, and time observes the narrator. “We want to be stones in a field” according to the subject of his film about a military analyst named Elster who also says that “The true life is not reducible to words…”. The title derives from their discussion about the evolution of matter and de Chardin’s ideas, a paroxysm, but the subject also desires another war to shape history. They do discuss the meaning of words like rendition. There is a lot of detail about the narrator’s and subject’s impressions of eachother and others. Elster's daughter visits and the disappearances of she and the caretaker lead to a number of clues including those from his wife. Some disconnected scenes add others. The emotion of foreboding is enhanced by the prologue and epilogue in third person in 2006 where the author describes the viewing, and fateful viewers of, a slow-motion Hitchcock film which he saw several times and was where he got the idea for the novel. The middle four chapters are in first person. This number may be analogous to the stages of matter, humours or seasons referenced in the text. Both narrators discuss concepts of time, words, and film. The settings are NYC and the desert.

automotive

EFuel100, Earth's First Home Ethanol System, a Product of E-Fuel Corporation

Welcome to BUMP!

benchmark Kraken JavaScript Benchmark

books

No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty, 2004

How to Write a Damn Good Novel Volume II, Frey 1994

climate

IEEE Spectrum: Pure-form Big Chill Scenario Seems Vindicated

Scientists warn geo-engineering unlikely to curb dramatic sea rise

cloud Strategy Roundtable: 5 Cloud Computing Opportunities for Entrepreneurs

cms Jambok

design 7 Excellent Websites To Get Design Feedback Visually Instead Of Emailing Back And Forth | Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers

marketing QR Codes: Are You Ready For Paper-Based Hyperlinks?

metal Neither Pen Nor Pencil: Write Endlessly In Metal | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

mobile

Pew Survey Finds Predictable Trends Among Mobile Phone Users

Internet Founder Tim Berners-Lee Details 4 Concerns About Future of Mobile Web (Nokia World 2010)

multitouch Multi-touch Technologies for Human-Robot Interaction: UMass Lowell Robotics Lab

network 5 Ways Networking is Being Reinvented

ocean YouTube - Rob Dunbar: The threat of ocean acidification

prediction Nicholas Christakis: How social networks predict epidemics | Video on TED.com

robotics

The HRP-4 humanoid robot unveiled

Honda's Exoskeletons Help You Walk Like Asimo (video) | Singularity Hub

science Chinese science and technology has long way to go, says Russian expert

scribd The future of reading and publishing is social - Introducing new Scribd home and profile pages - The Scribd Blog

security

Mobile Forensics Central

E-Evidence Information Center - Home

Briggs Softworks: Directory Snoop - File Recovery and Wiping Software for Windows

simulation How galaxies are born inside computers

social-media Seven Important Social Media Trends For The Next Year

software Dr Dobbs - Google Relaunches Instantiations Developer Tools; Now Available for Free

surveillance Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: Intel Outlines An Era of Friendly Surveillance

test

Dr Dobbs - Code Coverage, Performance Profiling Tools Released

uTest Lands $13 Million For Software Testing Marketplace

transportation What happens when you leave a skateboard and a tank alone in a dimly lit room? (video) -- Engadget

video YouTube - Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation

wearable Looxcie Wearable Camcorder: Capture Unexpected Moments

Hidden Com Part

2010-09-12T09:11:00.001-07:00

Internet media lets stamps go live, opensource code connect cities, anesthesia cross continents, search be multilingual and faculty tune syllabus stats. Tech tests Turing, engineers climate, buys self-powered parts, and ends the big bang, while art and scifi plug the void. Videojug promotes beta.

Recent links (about twenty-nine):

ai Is the Turing Test Still Relevant? A Plan for Developing the Cognitive Decathlon to Test Intelligent Embodied Behavior, Mueller (PDF)

art

YouTube - Ben Cameron: The true power of the performing arts

YouTube - Alwar Balasubramaniam: Art of substance and absence

augmented-reality Royal Mail Launches First Intelligent Stamps | eWEEK Europe UK

bookmark Trailmeme and the Web of Intent

books The Evolutionary Void, Peter F. Hamilton, 2010

climate Climate scientists suggest geoengineering approach with engineered nanoparticles

cognitive You Are What You Touch: How Tool Use Changes the Brain's Representations of the Body: Scientific American

database CouchOne - Your Data. Anywhere.

economics

The Optimistic Thought Experiment | Hoover Institution

Guest Post: Could Tiny Somaliland Become the First Cashless Society?

education Khan Academy

environment Early Warning Signs Could Show When Extinction Is Coming | Wired Science | Wired.com

forum Qvaq - Easy Discussions for Everyone

government Announcing Civic Commons - Code for America

media As It Moves Away From The Wikis, Wetpaint Launches TV News And Entertainment Site

medical Medical Daily: World's first transcontinental anesthesia

mobile Dr Dobbs - Autonomous User Interfaces for Mobile Apps

ocr ABBYY OCR SDK for integrating intelligent and accurate OCR, ICR, OMR, barcode recognition and PDF conversion technologies

power Self powered parts will be electronic mainstay by 2020 - Pacemakers to power themselves | TechEye

quantum Quantum computing - separating hope from hype

robotics

Observations: Open-source personal robotics seeks a community to make it affordable [video]

robots ready to take over your home on [technabob]

science Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Non-Expanding Cosmology Attempts To Oust Big Bang Theory

space SpaceWeather.com

test

Performance Testing

7 Excellent Website To Test And Compare Website Speed | Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers

Dr Dobbs - Unit Testing Tools 'Suite' Up

translation Linguee - The web as a dictionary - German/English

Big Project

2010-09-06T16:30:00.001-07:00

The border between environment and society is blurring. Natural scarcity may not be reflected in prices because of temporary subsidies, but economics is adjusting to new equations based on population, climate and urbanization. Science is directed to reveal all of the parameters and relationships. Development looks at reuse and hazard reduction. Biotech has a global market base. Computation puts the expanding data into perspective. Technological determinism adds network archaeology. Society learns how to respond constructively to challenging events.

Recent links (about 30):

academic Welcome | MIT150 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology 150th anniversary

biotech The BioBricks Foundation

books

The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, Evan Marshall, 2001

Writing the Blockbuster Novel, Albert Zuckerman, 1994

Dynamic Characters, Nancy Kress, 1998

climate Climate Change: A Software Grand Challenge | Serendipity

computer Dr Dobbs - IBM Claims World's Fastest Microprocessor

disaster World Natural Hazards Website | Natural Disaster Management | Disaster Agency Hawaii - PDC

environment

Technology Review: Robotic Storm Tracker Gets a Big Test with Earl

Weather conditions tie fires in Russia to floods in Pakistan | Environment & Development | Deutsche Welle | 01.09.2010

The Deepening Crisis: Scientific American

Hurricane Earl Weakens to Category 3 Storm - WSJ.com

Environmental Hazards: Assessing Risk and Reducing Disaster, Keith Smith, 2004

YouTube - Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development

mathematics Impossible Soccer Kick Leads to New Physics Equation | Playbook

mobile Mobile App Helps Emergency Crews Assess Damage During Disasters

network Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: The New Science of Network Archaeology

publishing

Subutai Corporation

Moving Tales - Bringing Stories to Life on your iPad

robotics

IEEE Spectrum: NASA Ready to Send Humanoid Robot to Space

Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: Robots Take Out the Trash

science ScienceDirect - Home

semantic The Semantic Puzzle | Why SKOS thesauri matter - the next generation of semantic technologies

sports IBM at the US Open - Analyzing Every Volley, Serve and Overhead Smash - ReadWriteCloud

statistics The Big Data Explosion and the Demand for the Statistical Tools to Analyze It - ReadWriteCloud

telepresence IEEE Spectrum: Telepresence: A Manifesto

urban

How Can Los Angeles Adapt to Coming Climate Change?: Scientific American

Augmented Reality Coming to DC Bus Stops Today (Photo)

video New Microscope Enables Real-Time 3-D Movies of Developing Embryos [Slide Show]: Scientific American

Book review:

Biology Is Technology, Robert H. Carlson, 2010

This is a study of the economics of biology. It reviews the trajectory of technology, biotech, genetic engineering and industrial projections. Gene-sequencing already has international sites and a critical mass is evolving for a growth in synthetic parts exchange. Opensource is creating a participative market. Current applications include biobricks, iGEM, biofuels, and instant vaccines among many others. The turning point is that the human has become a product which redefines the producers and consumers themselves and increases the complexity of behaviors. Limits on innovation concerning rights and patents are discussed. There are risks of runaway effects which need to be better understood and monitored where possible. The opening questions about what biology is, and what biological engineering will be, are ongoing. Readers interested in bioinformatics would need additional sources.

Impervious

2010-08-31T08:05:00.001-07:00

Sustainability issues grow as large urban centers add a million people, or or up to about 5%, per year. Social responses to acts of nature need to be tempered in order to prevent environmental disasters. Demand increases for tech solutions. Automation extends to robotics and space.

Recent links (about 23):

ai "The Age of Assistants": The View From Inside SRI

augmented-reality "What Mountain is That?" New App Takes AR Outside the City Limits

disaster

Database | EM-DAT

International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR)

Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature: Scientific American

email HOW TO: Undo "Send" in Gmail

emotion EmoRate

events Online Event Registration â€“ Sell Tickets Online with Eventbrite

robotics IEEE Spectrum: Cyborg Fly Pilots Robot Through Obstacle Course

security David Ignatius - Pentagon's cybersecurity plans have a Cold War chill

smartgrid IEEE Spectrum: $25 Billion European Smart Grid Market by 2020

space BBC News - Alien hunters 'should look for artificial intelligence'

ui Make: Online : Multitouch robot swarm controller

urban

World's Fastest-Growing Megalopolis Hides in Fog | Raw File

Reinventing the City to Combat Climate Change

visualization David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com

Book reviews:

Urban Risk Reduction: An Asian Perspective, Shaw et al, 2009

Urbanization is outpacing general population growth in Asia. Case studies are described for localities and types of environmental disaster. Urban issues range from household, community, city, region, to nation. Lifestyles create hazards which induce, or worsen natural, events. The culture can be built on safety and resilience. Action planning may require assistance of specialized agencies. Pilot cities demonstrate projects such as local resource organization, citizen empowerment, and smaller units and chain of command. Lessons are learned from disaster recovery. A management information system was useful in at least one case. The decision-making pyramid includes global, national, city, building, and individual. Environmental issues include air and water pollution, waste and sewage, noise, land use, drainage and transport congestion, slums, flood and other common issues such as disease, fire, or crime. Strategies are sensitive to survival, peace, innovation from tradition, and sustainability. The disaster management cycle has its own information and communication issues in each phase, non, before, during and after. Risk reduction involves knowledge, perception, deepening, preparedness and dissemination. Surveys measure public awareness. Frameworks are provided by Millennium Development Goal, Hyogo Framework for Action, and UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. There are eighteen chapters, two parts, twenty-four authors.

Disaster Risk Management Systems Analysis: A Guide Book, Baas, 2008

This book has a toolset for the characterization and strengthening of DRM at the international, national, province/district/municipality, community and institution layers. A framework enumerates initiatives for each of the periods for disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery. Preparedness links both development, through mitigation and prevention, and humanitarian assistance, through relief and recovery. Another framework for sustainable livelihoods indicates which households are most vulnerable. There is a list of key questions for leaders. A form is shown to document the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats across levels. There are six modules, two annexes and many figures, relational maps, and checklists. It can be downloaded as a PDF from the web.

Ecological Engineering: Principles and Practices, Patrick C. Kangas, 2004

Humans stress natural ecosystems through simplification of species and metabolic shifts. Research in emergent ecosystems includes agriculture, urban, and coastal or estuarine. Since prediction is limited, engineering epistemology requires building improvement based on design and test. Future directions include ecological nanotech, terraforming, biosensors, ecosensors, universal pollution treatment, and aquaculture. Technoecosystems maintain a balance between living and hardware systems. Since the laboratory includes the environment, the hacker code of ethics applies to ecological engineering. Treatment reduces costs of pollution. Ecological economics adds measures of emergy or embodied energy, natural capital, sustainability, carrying capacity and many types of ecosystem services to improve life-support value. Sold waste management discusses landfills, composting, and industrial ecology. The energy value of the waste is the same as that used to make the product. Wetlands are used for wastewater treatment by spiraling. An identical decay equation for decomposition evolved in parallel, linking design intuitions for both biodegradation in ecology and wastewater engineering. Restoration ecology connects to succession and is explained for salt marshes, artificial reefs, and educational exhibits. Microcosmology includes living models and replication issues. Soil bioengineering is shown for urban imperviousness, stormwater management bioretention and agricultural erosion control. This realm includes beavers, coastal vegetation and self-building machines. Biodiversity is increased by exotic species. The food web describes feeding interactions. The series of multiple states in catastrophe theory is used to explain invasion. Control theory ranges from machine analogies to biotech. Circuit symbols are used for ecosystem models. H T Odum coined a lot of the names of new ecosystems. Principles include energy signature, self-organization and preadaptation. There are nine chapters

Building Safer Cities: The Future of Disaster Risk, edited by Kreimer et al, 2003

Actual and new types of disasters are discussed, e.g. due to rapid urbanization or climate change. Impact and preparedness affect several geographic scales of security, environmental and human, including economics. politics, and society. There are several major worldviews. The main concerns are globalization, environment, social vulnerability, and protecting infrastructure. The various methods of balancing costs of risks include privatization, government taxation and globalization. Africa often suffers export losses, which leads to tens of thousands of youth mortalities, when other countries have disasters. Hazard reduction involves robust design, flexible and adaptable systems, reversal of vulnerability trends, and societal preparedness. Coastal zone classifications include protect, retreat and accommodate. Resilience measures how much disturbance can be absorbed, and the capability for self-reorganization. Regional analysis, management and action are required for flooding. Study approaches include scenarios and consequences. The fact that life support networks, e.g. utilities, affect eachother as external technological causes has not been taken into account traditionally. Critical infrastructure includes telecom, power, energy, storage, transportation, water, financial, emergency services, and government. Buildings can be retrofit using new tech for earthquakes risk. These were papers for a conference of international financial institutions. There are four parts, twenty chapters, twenty-six authors. They may develop literacy for the terminology. Most chapters have conclusions or recommendations. The web had PDFs and Google books has full content.

Counting Heads, David Marusek, 2005

This novel is a scifi cyberpunk mystery. There are three parts, forty-five chapters, and an epilogue. Chapters are numbered, e.g. up to 1.3 or 2.29. Part 3 adds days of the week to the titles up to Friday 3.13. It begins in first person for part 1 which was originally a short story. The year is 2092. There are a pair of main characters. Tech includes nanotech, clones, robotic insects, friendly AIs, wearable valet processors. holopresence conferences, and high velocity surface travel. HomCom is the initial antagonist. There is a realistic world. The rest of the parts are told in third person after forty years have passed. The point of view changes among several main characters. The antagonist may be an AI. A glossary would be appropriate. The title refers to heads for which the body can be replaced. A sequel was published, Mind Over Ship.

Area Than Light

2010-08-24T21:26:00.001-07:00

The real world gets a game layer, iris scanning, risks, relief, aquabatics and solar sails. See new AI, telepresence and climate control videos. Smartphones support sign language, and publishing does augmented reality. Economists seek new values amid a network of cities. Machine learning gets a prediction API. Semantic web and simulation get faster. Cyberpunk titles get reviewed.

Original scifi Streetseekers and mystery Casadrome added to previous Last of the Humans. Also from Amazon.

Recent links (about 23):

YouTube - Eliezer Yudkowsky - The Challenge of Friendly AI (1/3)

YouTube - Peter Molyneux demos Milo, the virtual boy

augmented-reality Can Augmented Reality Help Save the Print Publishing Industry?

books Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic, 2008

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing Disaster Relief

economics America's Lost Decade(s) - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review

games YouTube - Seth Priebatsch: Building the game layer on top of the world

internet Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: The Fear-Based Psychology of the "Internet Kill Switch"

machinelearning Google Prediction API - Google Code

mobile Better Than FaceTime? Researchers Test New Mobile Technology for Deaf

nanotech YouTube - The Weather Machine: Nano-Enabled Climate Control for the Earth - 1

ocean Innespace

optical Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: Using Einstein's Relativity to Speed up Supercomputer Simulations 10,000%

satellite NASA - Sailing Among the Stars

scifi

Infoquake, David Lewis Edelman, 2006

Halting State, by Charles Stross, 2007

The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams, 2008

search The Future of Internet Search - Project Syndicate

security Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World. Welcome, Big Brother | Fast Company

semantic-web Dr Dobbs - Semantic Web Bottleneck

social-networks Flowr. Real-time Collaboration, knowledge exchange and smart information flow.

telepresence YouTube - John Delaney: Wiring an interactive ocean

urban Beyond City Limits - By Parag Khanna | Foreign Policy

In Turn Troth

2010-08-18T21:16:00.001-07:00

The internet wants to be the answer. It has tied together all of the testimonials and provided search to find sources, and rankings to reveal the best. Women can review unbiased medical advice, and patients all of their records. It can reshape itself from smartphones if needed. Show sensors tell people what to hear. Robotics reports progress in batteries, walking, emotions and space travel. The brain is almost mapped. Beyond scifi, the imagination is also scenic, intriguing and mysterious.

Recent links (twenty-two):

answers

Sprouter
Swingly | It's time you got some answers.

books The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer, Sandra Scofield, 2007

cloud

Exploring How to Build a Cloud With Smartphones - ReadWriteCloud
IBM's Cloud Computing Coming to a Hospital Near You
4 Tools for Assessing Cloud Performance - ReadWriteCloud

cognitive Reverse-Engineering of Human Brain Likely by 2030, Expert Predicts | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

fiction Foreign Influence, Brad Thor, 2010

manufacturing Global Guerrillas: RESILIENT COMMUNITY: Forget Afghanistan, These are Needed in Detroit etc.

medical ChickRx: Expert Info on Sex, Fitness, Relationships, Dermatology, and Health

ranking

FindTheBest.com | Find. Compare. Decide.
The Best Top 10, Top 100 & More Lists: List Making is Easy at Ranker | Ranker - A World of Lists

rfid Sensors On Broadway: Live Performances Enhanced by RFID

robotics

Boston-Power heads to the moon - Boston Business Journal
A Robot Capable of Developing Bonds and Showing Emotions
IEEE Spectrum: Iran's Humanoid Robot Surena 2 Walks, Stands on One Leg (Video)
Robot to escort on space shuttle mission: NASA - International Business Times

scifi

Kraken, China Mieville, 2010
Terminal World, Alastair Reynolds, 2010
The Dervish House, Ian McDonald, 2010

startup Never Mind the Valley: Here's Montreal

writing How to Write a Damn Good Mystery, James N Frey, 2004

Last Resort

2010-08-10T18:57:00.001-07:00

Society seems to be in the midst of another big shuffle. Part of it is seasonal, but there are major ideological shifts as previous institutions shed the characters that embodied them. Despite oft-repeated scripts, new contacts made online or in person are superficial and find it difficult to pierce the compartmentalization of previous history or biography quickly enough. Discontinuities in authority may occur. Risk mitigation strategies then need review. A tag or stereotype invites examination.

Recent links (about sixty): grouped using Bookmarks2LiveWriter which plugs into the windows live writer app and downloads delicious bookmarks for a date range, which can then be sorted by leading tag. Manually edited to skip newline for single entries.

agile: Tasktop Agile Planner

ajax: Dr Dobbs - Open Source Community Paves Way for Developers to Improve Internet Access for the Aging, Disabled

animation: the macula

answers

MathOverflow
Fluther: Tap the Collective

architecture: International Architecture Database

blog

Anthologize
Whoâ€™s in the Blogosphere? / Flowtown (@flowtown)

books

Defending the Undefendable, Walter Block, 2008
Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, Roy Peter Clark, 2006

business: rule.fm | let your work flow...

drawing: News: deviantART Muro: It's Time to Draw!

ebooks: calibre - E-book management

education: Bill Gates: Forget university, the web is the future for education â€“ Tech Products & Geek News | Geek.com

hardware: UCLA Professor Warns of Hardware Hackers - International Business Times

IT

IDS Readies Data Centers on Ships Â« Data Center Knowledge
A sneak preview of enterprise IT in 2020 - Computerworld Blogs

media: Renewed Interest in Financing Original Web Shows - NYTimes.com

mobile: Yes I am Precious

opensource

Par4All
Collaborative Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, available soon under GPL

optical

Young Engineer Uses Webcam, Laser to Build Budget 3-D Scanner | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
Technology Review: Computing at the Speed of Light
Medical Daily: Purple light means go, ultraviolet light means stop

phone: http://apps.facebook.com/vonage-talkfree/

photography: Computer Scientists Build Pedestrian Remover

publishing: B.V. Larson Official Author's site

quantum

Scientists provide a new angle on quantum cryptography
Physicists develop model that pushes limits of quantum theory

reading: The Monkey Cage: Social Highlighting

robotics

IEEE Spectrum: Engineers Turn Robot Arm into Formula 1 Simulator
The University of Utah: Mechanical Engineering:
Remote controlled, multi-tasking climbing machine
Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: A Strange New Take on Telepresence

scifi

The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross, 2010
Mech, B. V. Larson, 2010
Containment, Cantrell, 2009
Living Digitally: Fiction by Christian Cantrell

security: Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images | Privacy Inc. - CNET News

singularity: Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence | AI

space: Sharpest Image Yet of Massive Galaxy Collision | Wired Science | Wired.com

storytelling: Storytelling Part 1: Change of Storytelling on Vimeo

technology: More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, Ramez Naam, 2005

test

6 Ways Eye Tracking Is Changing the Web
Injecting Errors for Fun and Profit - ACM Queue
Dr Dobbs - Time and Testing: The Biggest Developer Headaches

translation: Translation and undo smartquotes in documents - Official Google Docs Blog

ui: Dolphin uses iPad as way to communicate with humans - Boing Boing

use-case: Advanced Use Case Modeling: Software Systems, Armour and Miller, 2000

video

LoiLo inc
Light Reading - Service Provider IT - Verizon Tailors Video to Criminal Justice - Telecom News Analysis

wave: Official Google Blog: Update on Google Wave

web: Domain Names & Web Hosting : 1&1 Internet Inc.

writing

Poynter Online - Writing Tools
The Soulmen | We Got It! Ulysses 2.0
Welcome - Ommwriter
The Organized Writer
17 Fantastic Apps Made Especially for Writers | tripwire magazine

Correction Rules

2010-07-31T06:27:00.001-07:00

Recent links (about twenty): test: Parasoft, user-interface: BlindType, internet: top 20 countries, publishing: Smashwords, web: Healthcare, Google gov apps, WolframAlpha widgets, Glass annotator, Flisti polls, games: Zynga, cognitive: fMRI conversations, science: space time exchange, art: rephotography.

Book Reviews:

Last of the Humans, Amazon, Scribd

This novella looks at some of the topics from this blog in a fictional fashion. The premise is that superintelligent machines have begun to reorganize society and a few holdouts attempt to cope in unexpected manners. There is a quest from the protagonist’s point of view which has ever-increasing stakes. A couple of characters were added for a prequel to previous short stories. These are exaggerated archetypes representative of potential groups.

As a prototypical test of ebook publishing, this took less than a month. The early posts of the newly created content to a social network were lost when it upgraded versions, so the project was moved to an online notebook which eventually had eighty-three entries. This also turned out to be a presentable form for an omniscient futurist feed which the book becomes an instance of. Thirty-seven notes were edited out and could be reused in another story. During this time, a series of ten books on writing were also reviewed. Additional notebooks are listed in Works in Progress.

Videos of interest:

Microsoft Research Street Slide View

Ex-Position

2010-07-23T20:07:00.001-07:00

Narrative allows readers to intuitively visualize how well designs may meet expected circumstances. Writers who are exercising their imaginations to develop scenarios for technical documents, nonfiction, or fiction can use the classic Google notebook or any of the online documentation services where notes form an index which can be sorted and grouped into sections or further books, and can export or download to appropriate formats. Reviews can be done collaboratively or in separate comments or messages.

Recent links (about nineteen): 3D: ZCorp printer, mobile: batphone, wireless: body area network, research: automated, graphics: Incendia fractals, cloud: OpenStack, space: DIY satellite, economics: Facebook credits.

Book Reviews:

The Art of Creative Nonfiction, Lee Gutkind, 1997

Narrative stories make nonfiction much more interesting. Fictional writing techniques can be used without sacrificing fact, e.g. using scenes as building blocks to frame the actual settings, characters, plot and drama. Examples are shown from popular books. The writer immerses him or herself in the subject and may iterate between research and writing several times. The former can involve listening to personal accounts so that the subject’s thoughts can be recreated from their own recollections. The point of view is selected as third person unless the writer is relevant to the story. Ideally, a story has local sources and general audience appeal. If the initial draft seems too fanciful, then it can be edited to ensure accuracy, e.g. to be more like a documentary. The author’s first book was in 1974. He founded the creativenonfiction.org journal. In video presentations, he recommends the style for subjects like technology and the professions.

The Fire in Fiction, Donald Maass, 2009

The title technique draws from the reader’s own experience. This assumes that they are writing a novel. The exercises convey them outside of their existing mindset and result in output that may be used in an actual manuscript. It is also enjoyable to read the author’s analysis of the new titles and excerpts since the previous 2004 workbook. There are nine chapters each having practical tools. These include extraordinary characters and heroes, turning points or setbacks and the tornado effect, setting’s relationship to character/sentiment/milieu/time, character and narrative voices, causes/motivations/believability/monsters, hyperbole/irony/parody/humor, tension in dialogue/action/exposition/sex/violence/nothing and common/uncommon/moral experience. This was available in ebook format.

Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, Donald Maass, 2004

This book is often cited by successful writers. It has three parts on character, plot and general techniques, thirty-four chapters and two appendices. Each chapter has an explanation, brief summary box, and exercises which have a more verbose summary box. There are also five-hundred and ninety-one followup tasks. There are explicit qualities which improve a novel. Put tension on every page. Delay backstory and remove unnecessary commutes, refreshments, or hygiene. Layer multiple plot lines for the same character and add texture by nodes of conjunction. Give subplots to different characters. Combine multiple roles into a single character. Show heroic qualities early. Create some memorable moments of forgiveness, sacrifice, test or change of character, or death. Polish turning points. The protagonist has personal stakes, ultimate commitment, and larger-than-life dialog, action and thoughts. Inner conflict shows desire for two mutually exclusive things. Inner changes for a character show progress and pace of a plot. Symbols are abstract and stand for something inward like a mood or idea. The psychology of place measures change in a character’s perception of a setting over time. Moments in time give the protagonist a keen awareness of the world. Good first lines have a sense of intrigue. Last lines bring wit, poetry or peace.

Writing Fiction for Dummies, Ingermanson and Economy, 2009

Ingermanson, originally a physicist, describes a snowflake method for which he offers an app. It starts a big picture and, using three acts, continually adds detailed scenes rather than synopses, and adjusts original structure as necessary. There are usually about a hundred scenes. The other author, Economy, has eleven titles in the series. There are five parts for nineteen chapters The format is dynamic using brief paragraphs, lists, boxes, cartoons, and icons for tips and points to remember. The instructions summarize examples of each technique from twenty bestsellers and deconstructs a relevant major novel in more detail. This book substantially defines terms and techniques used in writing and publishing. The secret ingredient is like a film clip, alternating points of view between private and public. There are at least three disasters to commit the main character, change direction and force the climax. The authors show how to edit the flow of these, fixing cause-effect, time-scale, unintentional head-hopping, out-of-body experiences, and mixed clips. Fiction has five pillars: world, characters, plot, theme and style. Plot has six layers: single-sentence summary, three-act structure, scene, paragraph, synopsis and scene list. Research of the story world prevents writer’s block. Beside the story’s natural world and cultural groups, the author determines what makes change possible and when. Theme, or deep meaning, is usually rediscovered and refined after the novel is written and reviewed. it will be true, important and short. The historical novel is not a niche, it is a prefix for some other category. New writers most often choose favorite subjects since a novel usually includes about a tenth of what the writer knows. The book explains publishing and the importance of the acquisitions editor.

20 Master Plots & How to Build Them, Ronald B. Tobias, 2003

Story is a chronicle of events. Plot is why; it leads to expectations. The process may ultimately exceed these guidelines, but the writer will have a way to navigate in the interim. There are twenty-six chapters. Each begins with a quote by a famous writer. Examples are given from literature. The ones defining a plot type end with a checklist. Plots have two groups of types, action or character, body or mind. Comedy is the latter. Plot types may be combined. The twenty master plots are quest, adventure, pursuit, rescue, escape, revenge, the riddle, rivalry, underdog, temptation, metamorphosis, transformation, maturation, love, forbidden love, sacrifice, discovery, wretched excess, ascension and descension. Plot is a force of cohesion, and a container. The lowest common denominators are tension, opposition, increasing stakes, change is the point, significant events, casual appearance, reason for rules, central actor climax, Unified action involves the beginning, middle and end. The beginning establishes cause, intent and motivation. The middle has effect, rising action, reversals and recognition. The end has climax, falling action and denouement.

Videos of interest:

Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves | Video on TED.com

Authors@Google: David Kirkpatrick on Facebook

Documents of interest:

Scifi draft by yours truly.

Rallapax

2010-07-17T17:20:00.001-07:00

Fact and intuition may often be invisibly superimposed. The effort to organize scenarios and to verify assumptions can separate them consciously. The resemblances may then indicate bounding characteristics of the observer.

Recent links (about 74): test: Apple wireless, JDSU, software quality, quality metric, quality basics, internet: Finland, user-interface: MS Milo, Intel touchscreen, robotics: Bina48, computation: Wolfram, socnet pattern matching, semantic web: Bestbuy, software: Android app inventor, inDinero accounting, media: Youtube Leanback, digital arts, Plato code, graphics: Kirsch’s pixels, facial camouflage, space: NASA video game, Project M, e-commerce: Google checkout, Rofo real-estate.

Book reviews:

Cognitive surplus, Clay Shirky, 2010

Cognitive surplus results from more free time and creates new social opportunities through public media. The author looks at current social movements to determine why they occur and the results that they get. This includes the free, voluntary and democratic uses of the internet. Some of these have historically long cultural roots, but the time was not right for them before. Others that have been recently tried were opposed by existing industries. Academics promote knowledgeable discussion. Publishing has never been easier. Collaboration is reflexive. Valuation is auctioned. Radicalists and traditionalists negotiate a transition. Interactive participation covers the entire media environment. This affects productivity processes. There are seven chapters and thirteen pages of notes.

No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale, Frankel and Whitesides, 2009

The nanotechnology approach of visualization and manipulation is presented as a framework of sixty topics in seven chapters. Each group has processes that range in scale but have some commonality of theme, e.g. dein photolithography to MRI, or internet to photosynthesis. Pictures provide at-a-glance analogs of the subject of discussion. The text poetically connects simple descriptions of techniques and findings to profound meanings. The reader is encouraged to further combine the pieces together imaginatively for a sense of where the applications may go. The audience is introduced to the smallness of nanotubes, quantum duality, 3D jigsaw puzzles, nanobots, the safety of microreactors, and literal fuel cells. A visual index lists the pictures and attributions, the construction of five of which is detailed in another coda about the artistically enhanced digital photographs. For example, a seeming contradiction is illustrated by a round apple which casts a rectangular shadow that has a bright reflection cast into the middle. The dialogue between the writer and photographer makes the volume unique.

Understanding Change: Theory, Implementation and Success, Holbeche, 2005

Change theory has themes about types, needs, history, leaders, philosophy, internal effects, and environment. There are checklists for managers helping people through transitions, and for generating strategic influence. Lessons from Roffey Park Institute research on M&A are presented. Cultural meaning is interactive, however it may be closed, and difficult or opposed to change. High performance organizations have known methods to get results. Communications need to be both planned and immersive. Leaders are transformational change agents for culture, behaviors and mindset. Stakeholders determine success. Change is ongoing. Longer-term sustainability is necessary. A psychological contract will set and meet the expectations of the staff. Three parts have sixteen chapters, each ending in summary conclusions. There is a seventeen page list of references.

Videos of interest:

Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals and the art of roughness

Carter Emmart demos a 3D atlas of the universe

Clay Shirky

Ellen Dunham-Jones: Retrofitting suburbia

Blogs of interest:

Paul Dirac on theory

Blind’s Eye View

2010-06-26T11:25:00.001-07:00

Society values both creativity and heritage. This may also be true in the digital dimensions. A convergent look at mathematics, computers and biology reveals clues to what may emerge. The capacity of the imagination remains unbounded so far.

Recent links (about eleven): debug: Jinx for multicore, search: LingLink, animation: Xtranormal, analytics: boomerang, space: weather prediction, Icecube telescope, medical: lung-on-a-chip.

Book reviews:

Explanation and Proof in Mathematics: Philosophical and Educational Perspectives, edited by Hanna and others, 2010

How many mathematicians does it take to prove whether a lightbulb is screwed in? These essays are from a workshop in Essen in 2006. The ways that the practice of mathematics has developed in the last three decades due to computerized visualization and experimentation may hint at its future. This book has three parts for seventeen chapters by eighteen contributors on proofs including their nature, aspects of teaching, cognitive development, experiments and diagrams. Proofs of the correctness by writing texts of algorithms were what ancient mathematicians used. Solutions are often based on common intuitions which can be further explored. Proofs are often discovered by mathematical experimentation, rather than deduction, which involves intuitive, inductive, or analogical reasoning through conjecture, verification, global or heuristic refutation, and understanding. Tools may be a proof of a mathematical form, or a way to explore a domain, via the notion of the semiotic potential of an artifact. Three different worlds of mathematics can be distinguished, the conceptual-embodied such as gears, perceptual-symbolic such as conics, and axiomatic-formal such as deductions. Individuals have warrants for truth that compensate for uncertainties in their mathematical proofs and that become more sophisticated over time. Situations that reinforce theoretical proofs over pragmatic are required for this type of research to result. Methods of proof can be used in other mathematical contexts. Though the history of mathematics encourages perseverance, each step of a proof stands without historical context since changes in language use may become a source of fallibility. The philosophy of mathematics shows the evolution of proofs and how they support empirical science and other symbolic endeavors. Much mathematical theorizing also occurs prior to the formulation of the axioms used as contextual definitions. The types of thesis as to why the Greeks invented proof include the socio-political, the internalist and the philosophical influence. Descartes’ arithmetization of geometry and the calculation of magnitudes was refined by Arnauld and Lamy. Can compare Frege and Russell, Peirce and Dewey, or Wittgenstein on how proof as picture shows what was proved and should get the same result, while proof as experiment shows procedure which can remain static and get different results. Lakoff and Núñez considered mathematics to be a cognitive system of conceptual metaphors based upon the sensory motor system.

Creative Environments: Issues of Creativity Support for the Knowledge Civilization, edited by Wierzbicki and Nakamori, 2007

Ba, Japanese for place or environment, is also the notion of computerized creativity support. Heidegger described technology as a quest for truth through creativity. Social science needs to better understand knowledge creation in science and tech. A constructive evolutionary objectivism episteme has ten postulates based on several principles. The evolutionary falsification principle measures fitness by number of tests passed. The emergence principle states that qualitatively different properties emerge from complexity, e.g. as software is different from hardware. The multimedia principle holds that historical records of knowledge will stimulate creativity by including complex visual and preverbal elements in addition to words. New concepts in science will be based on horizontal changes in mathematics. Technology and basic science form a feedback loop. The intellectual environment is a heritage of humanity worth preserving. Creative holism has a systemic approach to organization. Academic knowledge creation involves social, technical and mathematical approaches. Interdisciplinary approaches to mathematical modeling attempt to provide qualitative improvements. The book develops a testable creative environment (CE) to support scientific research. Roadmapping is a kind of knowledge creation process which can use various types of IT principles and tools for academic research. Software and tools for brainstorming and group debate are biased towards commercially goal-oriented organizations and need significant changes for academic use. Knowledge discovery requires interactions between AI and human reviewers, e.g. inclusion of user preferences in data mining. Seven creative spirals are proposed as tools for prescriptive synthesis in the process of learning. Survey results are presented for questions related to knowledge creation support. The book has twenty-one authors. There are four parts for eighteen chapters on models of creative processes, tools, diverse tools, and philosophical issues. It has many figures and tables including the spiral representations of processes, the triple helix model and JAIST Nanatsudaki model. The major text points are emphasized in box outlines. The content also has the hierarchical summaries of introduction and conclusion for each chapter and as a whole. Other topics include machine learning, statistics, virtual labs, gaming, criteria, and distance and e-learning, This is a followup to the editors’ previous publication on Creative Space, 2005. This book may also be of interest to inventors and innovators outside of entirely academic domains since learning advantages are key to most other pursuits. .

Radical Evolution, Joel Garreau, 2005

The scenario planner’s philosophy involves stories, patterns in uncertainties, common solutions, and simulation. This age was formed between 800 and 200BC by ideas which arose simultaneously in the East and West. The rate of change is quickening. According to the author’s Law of unintended consequences, human nature will likely be changed. The book tries to look ahead by defining scenarios which conform to facts and identify the predetermineds, critical uncertainties, wild cards, embedded assumptions and early warnings. These are based on progress in the areas of genetics, robotics, info, and nano (GRIN). Each of them may have its own philosophy, e.g. connecting living and nonliving things, open-source, unlimited creativity or skepticism. There are eight chapters, suggested readings, and notes. Seven major scenarios, some of which have celebrities, include the LUC above, Curve of exponential increase, Singularity/Vinge, Heaven/Kurzweil, Hell/Joy, Prevail/Lanier, and Transcend/Bostrom. This topic was inspired by work at Darpa, e.g. meals which last for days of exertion, or treatments for muscular dystrophy. This title was recommended for its discussion of risks by scifi & philosophy editor Schneider 2009.
The reader may wonder what set of rules are actually developed for each case. Also, there may be situations where science exceeds tech, in which case the artifacts are less evident and, though intelligence may expand wisdom, paradox seems to increase due to censorship.

Write Good or Die, edited by Scott Nicholson, 2010

According to Ray Bradbury, it takes a million words to become proficient at writing. If average is 200-250 words per page in a novel, that becomes 4000 to 5000 pages. The average novel is 100k words or 300-400 pages. Therefore, it would take 10 novels to become good. One of the Kindle authors, in contrast, sold over 29k ebooks at about 2 dollars each in a year and expects Amazon to double royalties soon. This is a tutorial for fiction novelists written by published and award-winning writers. It has three parts on art, craft, and business for thirty-three chapters by eighteen contributors. It might be classified as self-help since it assumes that the reader has finished, or is working on, a novel that needs to be published. The book contains a series of blog-like entries and links on why and how the authors write. In most cases, the rules were personally discovered through trial and error. So, while one debunks the agent career planning myth and says to be an artist, another shows what customers want and includes a pitch letter and instructions on how to get an agent. The Writers Market also has such lists. The anecdotes are absorbing and evoked various emotions, e.g. suspense or laughter. The reader is reminded that fame ups the odds for a bestseller, and recommendations improve sales e.g. through social networking. Other tips include: know what the book is about in a premise sentence or story line; include protagonist, antagonist, setting, conflict, stakes, atmosphere and genre; and write from research once immersed or overwhelmed. It shows the advantages and disadvantages of each POV and how to choose. The anatomy of the three-act story structure is described along with the use of imagery and dialogue. This book is not about the internet, except to say that editors may notice a web page and readers appreciate newsletters. It has a glossary of terms for writing professionals. This title wasn’t included in google books yet. Had originally found it on the Kindle directory, and it can also be downloaded free from its companion website.

Blogs of interest:

Wolfram on Turing

Grain of And

2010-06-22T09:35:00.001-07:00

The computational paradigm has several facets including network, social, artificial, biological, and spiritual. How it arises, and where it is leading to, are popular topics. In some futures, the grand elements of identity include better personalization and representation amid the complexity, so the group dynamics that approach or avoid these can be studied.

Recent Links (about twenty links): AI: IBM Watson, semantics: News patterns, science: Sun music, metrics, art: Sci-fi urban illustration, history: Turing archive, digital libraries: SpringerLink, telecom: Iridium satellite, dark pulses, search: Google commerce, user interface: GoogleCL, entertainment: Rdio, OnLive games.

Book reviews:

Science & technology in China: a roadmap to 2050 : strategic general report of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, edited by Yongxiang Lu and others, 2010

The Chinese Academy of Sciences reports how the country is modernizing science and technology and social changes for a developed world expected to triple in population and economic size over the next five decades. Revolutions in S&T require changing from imitation to innovation, independence, and institutions. Breakthroughs are expected in information science that will outpace technology. Computational thinking combines man-cyber-physical in a ternary universe. The plan is to absorb global innovations and intellectual resources. The format is like a brochure that defines structure, characteristics, steps and research support.The text is supported by data formatted in tables, charts, and highlighted boxes which detail characteristic indicators. There are five chapters by a committee of five writers and forty reviewers representing over three-hundred members. It is written at the level of principles and categories rather than specifics like the design of a new plane, and compares the rate of modernization of twenty-four countries. The major topics are economics, emerging areas, security, basic science, sustainability, and strategic efforts. This will be followed up by actual research, publications, workshops, peer review and priorities. It refers to relevant past plans, the immediately previous of which lasted for four years. It adds integration between demonstration and application, e.g. the topic of social computing and how it goes from electronic to ubiquitous. By 2050, China sees itself as an open society, advanced in culture, ethics, politics, materials, and conservation. Eight basic and strategic systems for economic development include energy, materials and manufacturing, networking, agriculture and biology, health, ecological and environmental, space and ocean, and security. Three emerging cross-disciplinary areas are nanotech, space, and complex systems. Security recognizes open-source intelligence and has two areas, space situational awareness, and social computing and parallel management systems. Four basic science areas are dark matter and energy, controlling structure of matter, synthetic biology, and photosynthesis. Seven sustainability efforts are comprised by 4k meter transparence underground to see ore deposits, renewable energy, deep geothermal, nuclear, marine, stem cells and regenerative medicine, and early diagnosis and intervention of chronic diseases. Six strategic efforts are post-IP networking, green manufacturing, process engineering, ubiquitous sensing, exa supercomputing, and molecular design. The primary milestones are shown for the years 2020, 2030 and 2050.

A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, edited by Olsen and others, 2009

Technical literacy and individual and social decision-making are among challenges that philosophy attempts to address. It is useful to get a high-level summary. This book includes many technology-related issues in a single volume. There are ninety-eight chapters by about seventy-nine contributors under the seven themes of history, science, philosophy, environment, politics, ethics, and the future. The authors are Western, i.e. European and American, though there are discussions of Eastern references. The chapters are like the intros to books on each separate topic. The notion of convergence appears in the Future section, written by Bainbridge, who is one of the writers having multiple entries. There would probably be value in further integration, perhaps through discussions among various subsets. This might or might not improve prediction market accuracy depending upon how participants actually influenced eachother. This text compares well to previous philosophy books which were more in-depth and are likely included in the reading lists. It presents questions, terminology and some handy visualizations, and would be a good place to begin.

New Computational Paradigms: Changing Conceptions of What is Computable, edited by Cooper and others, 2008

This book is comprised of proofs of neo-Turing theories of logic and mathematics in technically advanced publications from the Computability in Europe (CiE) conference in 2005. It advocates the dynamic turn of interactions between observers and systems, and eachother socially. Conversation is computation. Turing’s boss in 1948, Darwin’s grandson, dismissed his paper on “intelligent machines” as merely “a schoolboy essay” so it was not published for two decades. It turned out to be a manifesto for at least AI, connectionism, and neural computing and was accompanied by another discussing evolutionary computing. Turing machines, the basis for modern computers, were derived as a model of computation. The computable analysis problem was to decide what was computable and how long to expect it to take. Applications include wireless mobile nets, neural nets, analog computers, topological spaces, graphics and hardware. There are machines that do not fall into these classes, e.g. algebraic calculations done by planar mechanisms such as rigid bars joined by rotatable rivets, or viewing an eternity in finite time using relativity equations. Information processing is emphasized, e.g. regulatory genomes. Biological computing has new operations such as splicing, crossover and point mutations and annealing, which demonstrate parallelism, reversibility, nondeterminism, energy efficiency, self-healing and evolution. Membrane computing structures have local reaction rules for evolving objects in multisets, e.g. DNA software. Computational models can be classified by space and time, discrete and continuous in each case. The authors look at how nature, or what the universe, computes. Additional directions are pursued including continuous time computations, derivatives of continuous functions and infinite time computation. There are about thirty international contributors beside the three editors. The format combines twenty papers in four parts. New paradigms were expected to follow.

Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality, Robert M. Geraci, 2010

Apocalypticism consists of dualism, alienation, transcendence, and bodily purification, all of which are present in AI. A2I is a social strategy for research funding, as well as an ideology for online life. It is argued philosophically, legally and theologically. It is about commitment to actions and attitudes. This book approaches the technology and philosophy from the perspective of divinity, and has five chapters, a pair of appendices, notes and references. There are descriptions of the work of many researchers in AI and robotics, e.g. Turing, Minsky, Kurzweil, de Garis, and Warwick. Newell observed that Prometheus denotes tragedy, where technology actually leads to magic. Moravec wrote an essay in 1978 about converting nonlife to immortal mind, and in 1988 predicted that humans would eventually be capable of uploading their mind into a robot “bush” body which is fractal-like. A “mind fire” transforms the cosmos at lightspeed. Nationalism and war are obsolete. We are living in a simulation created by a god. Identity is a pattern and process within the brain and body which is possible in other materials. The Order of Cosmic Engineers believe that they will become the new creators. This may result in a virtualization of identity, available anywhere. It also has intermediate separate personalities of Transhumanists, e.g. Second Life’s Stenvaag. Games and digital worlds are precursors of digital paradise. These are primarily forms of social contact. Bainbridge’s sociology work for NSF is discussed. Actor-Network Throery, e.g. Latour’s trials of strength, observes that understanding scientific advance requires both natural and social actors. Transmutation is also a topic of religious history. There are methodologies common to science and religion, though the two are distinct. Religion affects how robots are integrated into society in the US, Europe and Asia. Japanese karakuri may descend from daVinci’s automata through missionaries. Relationships between humans and robots are worth study since the two may become indistinguishable. The major funding of robotics in the US is from defense, which may also provide the ethics. The robots may be more objective and humane.

Blogs of interest:

MSDN cashto on unit testing

Barnett reviews Natural Computing

Videos of interest:

Philip Low at TEDMED 2009 on cell phone brain cognition display

Imprinters

2010-06-17T06:09:00.001-07:00

Nanotech is a computer-aided approach which is transforming many fields and stimulating new industries. Expectations are that it is a next-big-thing equivalent to what personal computers, the internet and web were when they began. The ethics, engineering, effects on medicine and exciting scifi are reviewed below. If all goes well, perhaps this civilization’s legacy will be more than just space junk.

Recent links (about 23): computer: quantum, semantic web: Kingsley Idehen, finance: startups in Boston, minerals in Afghanistan, nanotech: architecture, FDA, futurist: singularity, space: lunar water, NSWP, Kepler exoplanets, presentation: glogster, virtualization: skype, energy: urban, disaster recovery: gulf oil spill, historical chart, photography: photoshop.

Book reviews:

What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter: From Science to Ethics‎, by Fitz Allhoff and others, 2010

After a basic introduction, e.g. recalling Drexler’s molecular assemblers from 1987, this book delves into the social concerns about nanotechnology. The authors are a scientist and a pair of philosophers. Scale reduces energy consumption. Tools include the electron microscope, scanning transmission (STEM), scanning probe microscopy (SPM), and atomic force microscope (AFM). The engineering challenge is to industrialize scientific development in terms of specification, monitoring and mass production. Among major philosophical topics is the risk in terms of conditions, probability and expected impact. Though the state of the field incrementally improves existing products, present laws do not account for the downsides to humans and animals. Better testing processes are necessary. There is a detailed analysis of the objections to stricter laws. Enhancement integrates tools into anatomy, always on, and is expected to revolutionize engineering. Sleep may become more of a bimonthly rather than nightly requirement. Nanomedicine ethics are discussed, e.g. Bawa and Johnson. The developing world may not be seen as profitable. In this book, in the context of distributed justice, nanotechnology is not unique in unfairness of accessibility to cognitive advances, e.g. similar to university costs. Privacy has been demonstrated as an issue, e.g. related to RFID tags. Potential uses to impose biases for individual control by bureaucracy, e.g. patriotism, may themselves be hard to limit. Defense probably develops war robots and the arms race turns to miniaturization.
This does not cover longevity, space or molecular manufacturing, laws or regulations, or economic impacts

Handbook of Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology, William A. Goddard, 2007

This textbook presents a set of themes describing the current state of nanotech. There are five sections containing twenty-four chapters on potential, concepts, processes, assembly, and functions. About a couple of dozen organizations contributed from US, Russia and Venezuela. Most are academic, e.g. universities of Illinois, North Carolina or Northwestern, and there are some US government space and defense researchers. Feynman introduces the subject. Most chapters have multiple authors, some have a single, and a couple of authors wrote or participated in a pair of chapters, e.g. Karl Hess for U of Illinois or Sergey Lyshevski of RIT. The contents are technical, including equations and graphs, and there is some Matlab source code. Chapters have intros and conclusions, acknowledgements and many references. There is no glossary, though there is an index and digital versions would have search. As an example, the final section has eight chapters on functional structures and mechanics. Nanomechanics links science and engineering, e.g. multiscale multiphysics schemes. Figure 20.1 shows the history of the tech from Mayan age ceramics after 10k BC to synthetic control of macromolecular structure now, and discusses biomimicry through dendrimer assembly. Atomic simulation resolution doubles every 19 months. Strength and fracture properties are outlined. A challenge is to control carbon nanotube growth chirality and diameter for computing-related applications. The optical properties of materials are engineered in photonic crystals. Preparation techniques are being developed for bulk production of nanostructured materials. Modeling and CAD are used in multidisciplinary confluent engineering, e.g. for nanoarchitectronics. In summary, there is a lot of general interest in convergence of nano, bio, info quantum and cognitive tech and this book has supporting examples.

The Handbook of Nanomedicine, Kewal K. Jain, 2008

The title of this book denotes types of tools and approaches rather than a medical specialty. It is derived from biotech and nanotech. The initial applications are expected to be for personalized medicine, e.g. cancer therapies. New tools include 3D nanomaps and the scanning mass spectrometer probe (SMS) used for drug design at cellular level. Nanoparticles can be coated or chemically altered so as to be nontoxic, though they can also be effective for nanoviricide. There are many types of applications, e.g. sunscreens or donor-derived exosomes for organ transplant acceptance. A lab-on-a-chip has chemical experiments for use in battlefield exposure testing. It allows platforms for precise imaging, diagnosis, targeting, drug delivery, destruction, treatment, and therapy. Nanomedicine can also be used in combination with other approaches, e.g. radiotherapy or physical modalities of therapy. There are public misconceptions and fears, so education is warranted, and there will probably be FDA regulation. The detailed table of contents hints at the depth of coverage in the eighteen chapters. There are many new structures and techniques, e.g. devices, machines, chips, robotics, materials, implants, barcodes, needles, tweezers, motors, shells, tubes, fibers, scaffolds, valves, pores, filters, coatings, crystals, emulsions, filaments, lasers, fluidic channels and wire. The nano prefix can be applied to several new fields including biotech, systems biology, bacteria, antibodies, genomics, proteomics, pharma, encapsulation, diagnostics, surgery, therapeutics, dermatology, dentistry, immunology, geriatrics, pulmonology, neurology, and regenerative medicine. The author also lists vendors and academic research centers.

Small Miracles, Edward M. Lerner, 2009

“Speech was so old species” says one of the emergent characters who considers humans to be Neanderthals in this transhuman techno adventure. Where Daniel Suarez had a parasitic AI influencing a group of people, and Robert J Sawyer had one further connected cybernetically through an eye implant, Lerner adds nanobots. This doesn’t go as far as Paolo Bacigalupi in genetically engineering creatures, but it does have a lot of detail about how humans might be medically enhanced. Initially intended to support first aid for government security equipped with new nanosuits, the temptation for a hybrid augmented reality awareness captures human nature. Without further spoilers, it is clear that the author researched the topic. His characters and dialogue are vivid. Italics are used occasionally for thoughts. The backgrounds of at least three of the main characters are fleshed out in separate parts well into the story. Settings are briefly sketched except, for example, to indicate heightened visual acuity in places or where necessary for action such as weather conditions. There are eight sections for about four dozen brief chapters. It is told in the third person omnisciently, including emotions, and an occasional machine perspective. Medical terms and R&D equipment get added detail. The plot may be more convincing since it is near future and there are not a lot of other inventions. The year is 2015 and the pacing opens dramatically with a threat to the main character’s survival. The total duration is about two years. Each chapter is titled by a date, a few have times if a couple are on the same day, and the Reaping has nine times before the epilogue. Success of the authors' series above may hint at a sequel.

Documents of interest:

Communicating Nanotechnology, European Commission, 2010 (16.4MB ZIP PDF)

Human Enhancement Ethics: The State of the Debate, Bostrom and Sarulescu, 2008 (PDF)

Blogs of interest:

Nick Bostrom home page

Videos of interest:

David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve

Reducing Existential Risks [UKH+] (1/3)

John Underkoffler points to the future of UI

Superintent

2010-06-12T19:31:00.001-07:00

Seeming contradictions are grist for the engineering mill. While hints of future issues raise the value of cooperation, vested domains attempt to defend their turf, especially the big budget items. Drama is usually followed by system reorganization, at lesser durations between phases. There are various models for the dynamics, including networking, and these are being shaken out by new entrants. Artifacts tell the story of their environment and culture.
Recent links (about 15): test: usability, cross-browser, debug: lldb, internet of things: Cape Cod, computation: astronomy, education: computers and data mining, sustainability: contest, population and consumption, art: Sculptris, cognitive: Pinker on mass media.
Book reviews:

How It Ends: From You To the Universe, Chris Impey, 2010

Science doesn't end in this one, rather it evolves to handle complexity. It is assumed that a general theory of intelligence will be forthcoming. In the meantime, the author seeks to debunk myths, but observes that endings create meaning, and that stories, in addition to facts, are important. Practical limits are respected where known, but measurement of the end depends upon the tool; and adjusting the threshold changes results. The view is systemic. The set of twelve chapters begin from individual perspective and scale up. Each has an introduction that encapsulates the general idea in a scene or person. There are plenty of diagrams and photographs which illustrate the instances, terms, relationships or conclusion. Many of the human fears of impact result in fractional loss of numbers and regression of civilization, but not extinction. This book covers a lot of current thought, e.g. transhumanism, and names or quotes the signature personalities. Much of life is shown as part of a web. Bacteria can survive space and entry to the atmosphere. It is likely that there are other forms of life in the universe or the multiverse. An extensive glossary, notes and reading list are appended.
Incidentally, this does not cover Aubrey de Grey's theory of regenerative medicine and longevity.

Holistic Engineering Education: Beyond Technology, editors Domenico Grasso and Melody Brown Burkins, 2010

Design is a common topic across nineteen papers by thirty authors in three countries (US, China, Peru) including thirteen states (mostly CA, MA and VA). This is due to the attribute of creativity as part of technology. (It may also overlap educational rivalries between scientific evolution and intelligent design.) The projected shortage of engineers has sharpened interest in improving education, from early through undergrad to faculty. There is an established history that can be improved upon as practice and standards become global. An emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration has several elements such as changes in segmentation from, for example, electrical/mechanical/industrial, proposed curriculums, ethical values, and study abroad. A set of recommended personal values includes analysis, translation and perception. Skills of interest include asking, labeling, modeling, decomposing, gathering, visualizing, and communicating. A case study is shown for the global positioning system highlighting systems design, and technical and business leadership. Holistic contexts include system, strategic, implementation and stakeholder. Cultural approaches reinforce unity of effort. Engineering is eligible to become a guild, like the learned professions for medical, legal, and accounting. Most chapters have conclusions and suggested readings. Sustainability issues are often reported in the news.
Experienced engineers probably have many stories about what could be changed in education and practice and professional societies attempt to be a conduit for this. Some of the skills are innate and show up in play or the use and innovation of tools and artifacts. Many fields are becoming more sophisticated in the use of instrumentation for measurement, visualization, computation and control. Most of these can be scaled to educational versions that include the newest areas of R&D. If not supplied institutionally, they probably will have some free or affordable public or web versions. Where there are few people to handle the tasks, expert automation would be required.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr, 2010

The question is whether people are losing their minds or society is constructing a new type of one. Tools have sticky cognitive effects on their users and the internet, while figuratively turning on the light for many, may also tend to make it harder to look as deeply as before. In order to write the book, the author attempted to disconnect and find seclusion for a while. He cites how changes of this magnitude have been perceived in the past, e.g. Socrates' lament that writing destroyed the capacity for individual memory, or how the typewriter changed authors' styles since they could not dwell on the feeling of writing in longhand. Information is meted out in lots of brief interlinked pieces. Email has become streams. Ads are pervasive. The ten chapters review the mind, book, maps, clocks, tech, computers, and AI, amid the dimension of networking. Rather than point to URLs, the story is told in flashbacks, e.g. how Weizenbaum's ELIZA could earn the empathic confidence of people even though it was mindless. There are ten chapters and four digressions, the last of which looks at the irony of a book on the disappearance of long-term concentration. Notes and further reading are appended. Much of these are valid issues and worth further study. Whether the realtime flow and exponential increase in data to analyze can be paused often or enough is unknown. More direct types of mind links may not be too far off in the future.
For the attention-challenged, a way to get through this book might be to survey it quickly, then skim a few times to make raw impressions, not word for word, rather similar to becoming familiar with a song or painting, then read it backwards for the verbal reassurance. The reader can increase the pass-throughs to pick up more detail where necessary and as time allows, thereby rendering textual memory as well as consideration and opinion. It may turn out that reading is more of a creative process than previously thought, or that there are better tools for the task, as there are for other kinds of digital composition, e.g. like sculpting 3D art. It may then still be possible to frequently parse titles in dedicated slices while otherwise attending to the network. Eventually a learning process may be discovered, akin to development of Gladwell's outlier mastery status, And, of course, each of the chapters can become a book or digital museum or web-service in the interim, so none of the 3R's may remain sacrosanct for much longer. There may be a video about this floating around somewhere.

Reverse Engineering: An Industrial Perspective, Raja and Fernandes, 2008

This textbook details how reverse engineering is used for copy, design abstraction and reengineering. This is based on high-resolution digitization and 3D CAD. Results have included reduced inspection time and improved workflow. Quality assurance benefits were standardization and interchangeable parts and reduced manufacturing cost. There are actual examples from automotive, aerospace, and medical device industries, and tables refer to more. Eleven papers discuss definitions, methodologies, system selection and rapid prototyping. The authors diagram a generic process and show how it is customized in each case. The product development cycles includes test. Taxonomies are given for measuring and positioning systems. Legal concerns arise from fair use and patents, and may be handled by a recommended sui generis system. Organizational considerations are listed including a champion, management support, resource coordination, competition, and user participation, e.g. "tribal knowledge" in an aerospace firm. This does get technical and there are some equations. Terms include computer-aided reverse engineering (CARE), coordinate measuring machine (CMM), nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS), NC machine, multijet modeling (MJM), and computer-aided inspection (CAI).
Merging data and semantic web approaches is outside the scope of this book.

Netropic

2010-06-09T23:16:00.001-07:00

Where there’s a bit, there’s a bot may become an aphorism of digital consciousness, at least until something is picked as the universal standard. There may be some new principles of order, somewhere between anthropic and entropy, introduced by the impending Singularity. Approximations of these turn up in the literature of fiction as well as technology. This may also be an engineering topic for successive approximation by neural nets or intermediate computational agents which can parse relevant external worlds.

Recent links (about 22):semantic-web: RDB2RDF, computer: future of BIOS, flexible OLEDs, internet: trends, documentation: office live docs, location: Flook browser, Bing map SDK, social-networks: Facebook video, networks: IBM Mote Runner SDK, search: ReputationDefender, alerts: SproutRobot, business: eToro investing, IBM ecurrency tokens.

Book reviews:

Philosophy and Engineering: An Emerging Agenda, by Ibo van de Poel and David Goldberg, 2009

This book details a variety of claims which, together, do not appear consistent, but may provide methods for further study. Engineering applies science and produces technology. The effects on society can be ethically evaluated through cooperation of philosophers. The recognized set of philosophical problems is still being determined including epistemological, methodological, metaphysical and ontological. It may also address other existing philosophical problems. The book has contributions by thirty-two authors in three parts for twenty-eight papers.
Engineering as a discipline is historically distinct from architecture.A well-defined philosophy does not exist, though efforts date from the start of the 21st century having arisen independently in the East and West, and following, yet distinct from, the philosophies of science and technology. A pluralistic approach can be linguistic, phenomenological, post-modern, analytic, pragmatic, and Thomist. It is within the field of philosophy of technology. Science and engineering are often treated as simplified notions based on politics of funding rather than examination of what people actually do in particular. Generalization differs in engineering from natural sciences, including artifact type, function and structure, which combine causes and concepts. The models used to represent reality are idealized, tested, and compared to eachother. Sociotechnical system boundaries include the behaviors and relations of elements impacted by it. Integrity is uniquely complex for engineers, the profession and its education. The engineering priority of technical ingenuity over helping people needs to be rebalanced to avoid becoming lost in the labyrinth of technology. Engineering ethics needs a global foundation based on principles of public safety, human rights, environmental and animal preservation, engineering competence, scientifically founded judgment, openness and honesty. Research in engineering ethics has spread to Asia and Europe from North American origins. The scale extends through individual, group, company, profession and planet. Imagination of the engineering world is a way to deal with conditions of epistemic opacity. Responsibility for artifacts eventually transfer from engineer to user through knowledge of their workings. Ethics concerns the amount of harm from artifacts produced by solutions to engineering problems Ethicists have observed an actual design project where participants were characterized as actors in a network, and intermediate results were presented which affected the outcome of the project. This is helpful in mapping risks, responsibilities and ethical issues. Future comparisons may be made between engineering and medical science. Role-playing games can be used to teach ethics if they are felt and articulated, have a lengthy process, use case studies, and realistically up-to-date. The Norms Evolving in Response to Dilemmas (NERD) platform was used for experimentation in the ethics of technology as a form of stress testing. There is a crisis of a creative era which.is resulting in the philosophical interest similar to what Kuhn showed had occurred in science, and which leads to dialectics, data mining, and reliance upon either brute or social facts or institutional artifacts, it may be short-lived. Wittgenstein had engineering training and his philosophy was based on the realworld of things rather than ideology. Design methodologies include top-down, layered, platform-based or network-based and are related to human organizational structures and national cultural emphases. Computer science builds abstractions from bits, engineering configures solutions, and stigmergic design in nature is bottom up. The settings of engineering are ad hoc realworld or systematic hyperrealworld. Technology is ubiquitous; engineering is either denial or determinacy; Where survival of the human species is the goal, all is heuristic; A quantitative measure of ethics is defined.
Issues concerning posthumanist theories would require other sources.

Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time to Superintelligence, edited by Susan Schneider, 2009

This book is an advanced treatment of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and scifi which can be considered narrative of thought experiments about puzzling scenarios. The editor is especially interested in neural enhancements, AI and the problems of disparity between Humans 2.0, whose flaws can only be judged by their own, and those who have not been upgraded. The book prevents a variety of views and methods rather than a concluding thesis. Authors range from classic philosophers, such as Plato and Descartes, through scifi writers such as Asimov and Bradbury. Others of each type are discussed in the contents. There are a couple of entries each from the modern literature of Dennett, Kurzweil and Andy Clark. There are five parts for twenty-seven papers, some of which have additional references. Each part lists related works of scifi, mostly from movies. There are diagrams for some of the mathematical and scientific concepts. Rather than commenting on each entry, there is a lengthy introduction by the editor about the themes and philosophical questions including reality as simulation, free will, mind and ethics and politics, and spacetime. A few recommendations that provide more depth in technology and risks are listed. Superintelligence is expected to arise due to the computational theory of mind, and identity based on information patternism. The philosophies of the reader’s favorite authors may yield to the kinds of approaches here, but there would probably be interest in more of such comparative volumes, also for the newest engineering fields, at least until a cyborg editor can do this in realtime for anyone as hinted by the iRobot-style cover picture.

The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, edited by Steven M. Sanders, 2008

The editor lists three types of analysis: context, film, and topics. Classic films were selected for philosophical treatment, e.g. the Matrix is likened to Plato’s Cave. Other popular philosophers are Descartes, Heidegger, Hobbes, Hume and Nietzsche. There are three parts having four papers each, by a total of thirteen contributors. Films often quote influential predecessors and seek either general or improved solutions, e.g. Metropolis’ machine woman is like Wizard of Oz’ tin woodsman later echoed in C3PO. Settings are often case studies for logic problems that may introduce new assumptions, e.g. previously hidden forces or actors. Paradoxes are highlighted and heuristics proposed. The look and feel may have unique aesthetic texture, e.g. tech noir. Ethical questions often form themes and may be treated mythically, displaced by alien culture or time travel, for a different perspective that changes the intellectual and political constraints, e.g. involving power, laws, sex or war. Metaphysical questions around death are pursued, e.g. resurrection. The future may be seen as utopian or dystopian, or time may be flexible so that future or past can be changed. Reviewers are sometimes aware of their own cognitive processes so that interpretation is an art.

Minds and Computers: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence By Matt Carter 2007

This book is a basic introduction to AI as a philosophical theory of mind. It covers cognitive science topics on the human mind, computation, reasoning, language and philosophical considerations. For example, humans recognize repetitive sensory patterns and dedicate response structures to them; embodied experience is a basis for semantics. Each chapter indicates theory and objections. The style is mildly technical and philosophical. History of the field is broadly sketched and problems are not really delved into, e.g. consciousness, identity and emotions are briefly summarized in a chapter at the end. It does get into some detail about functional neuroanatomy and neural networks. There are twenty chapters, occasional exercises, some of which are labeled “challenge”, further readings, glossary, and index.
Further advanced conclusions are out of the scope of this text, e.g. by Minsky, Kurzweil, Hawkins or Wolfram on computation,.or Noë on consciousness. It does not discuss biological reuse for robotics, e.g. as has been demonstrated using animal brains, or cloning for this purpose. Trends such as functional brain emulation models from scopes and visualization, quantum mechanics and computation, or synthetic life would need additional sources.

Documents of interest:

An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto, Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols, 2008 (PDF)

Blogs of interest:

The New Atlantis - A Journal of Technology & Society

Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual: Illustrated Interactive Fiction from Retropolis and Beyond

Videos of interest:

Authors@Google: Paolo Bacigalupi

Deep Destiny

2010-06-05T07:35:00.001-07:00

Responses to complexity include modeling and innovative technology. Networks provide computational and social leverage. Tools are adaptive to realtime, combinatorial, fractal, and quantum considerations. There are various opinions about where all this may be leading, with respect to order or limits for example, and what degrees of freedom can be exercised.

Recent Links: (of about 23): 3D: car wrap; semantic web: RDFa checker; robotics: transportation; mobile: local ads; security: civilian net lockdown; surveillance: text stream, electrical network frequency analysis; tracking: eye movement, sleep monitor; quantum: simulation; complexity: matrix decomposition; business: internet of things, travel guide; finance: investing dashboard.

Book Reviews:

Complexity: A Guided Tour, Melanie Mitchell, 2009

The author covers the field in a readable narrative, rather than mathematical, fashion. There is no common measure of complexity since theory and science are still undefined. Research involves interdisciplinary collaboration. It is compared to cybernetics which had more extent than content, though this is more mainstream. There are both adaptive and nonadaptive complex systems. A proposed definition is “a system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex collective behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation via learning or evolution”.or briefly “a system that exhibits nontrivial emergent and self-organizing behaviors”. Measures include entropy, algorithmic information content, logical depth, thermodynamic depth, computational capacity, statistical or effective measure complexity, fractal dimension, degree of hierarchy and near-decomposability. Some new areas of research are listed, e.g. self-organized criticality and computational mechanics. These fall into two groups, either more specific applications, or higher level mathematical theories. Historically, emergence arose as a reply to reductionism. Computers mimic evolution and nature mimics computation. Network thinking is more concerned about relationships than entities. The web is a scale-free network. This also occurs in physiology since cells do not scale with body size; space is filled using a fourth dimension of fractal circulatory networks. Ecology extends the food chain to food web. The book has five parts for nineteen chapters, a bibliography of several hundred authors, and extensive notes and index. It is dedicated to Douglas Hofstadter, her doctoral adviser for analogy making programs, and John Holland for genetic algorithms.

Network Science: Theory and Practice, Ted G. Lewis, 2009

The author is a pioneer of network science as a modeling activity that combines complex adaptive systems, chaos, and mean-field theory. This text is dense mathematically and includes Java code. There are thirteen chapters with exercises, a bibliography, and index. The history of significant events is outlined from Euler’s Bridges of Konigsberg in 1736 to Gabbay in 2007. Topics include structure, emergence, dynamism, autonomy, bottom-up evolution, topology, power, and stability. Graph theory describes properties, matrix representation, classes, modeling and simulation. Regular networks are constructed by a generative procedure. Network-centric organizations reduce links and path lengths to lower costs and latency. A new metric, link efficiency, compares network types. Entropy initially increases as nodes are added, flattens, then diminishes to zero as structure predominates. Networks have topological phase transitions as rewiring probability increases. Network emergence describes macroscale properties resulting from microscale rules. Hub emergence is not scale-free. Cluster emergence is not small world. Feedback-loop, adaptive or environmental ermergence connects the next state to input microrules on goal-oriented networks. A network epidemic, characterized by spectral radius, propagates state or condition via links, as do antigen countermeasures which use superspreaders to decrease time and peak incidences. The classic is the Kermack-McKendrick model from 1927. Networks which follow Kirchhoff’s first law are shown where commodity flow in and out is equal. Influence networks are great models of social networks where nodes are actors. Network vulnerability is the probability that an attempted attack will succeed. Strategies such as linear are good defender and exponential for attacker. Risk is reduction of vulnerability or consequence. Resilience is defined for links, where small-world has highest followed by random then scale-free, as well as for stability, and flows where expected flow is availability times actual flow. Percolation adds links, depercolation removes them. Game theory assumes independent success probabilities. The attacker-defender problem is asymmetric. Netgain is a property where nodes compete for value proposition such as preferential attachment. Multiproduct emergence shows how shakeouts and monopolies can occur. Other market emergence types include nascent, creative destructive, or merger and acquisition. Network science can be used to model metabolism. Biology includes protein expression using Boolean networks. Chemistry uses bounded mass kinetic networks. Readers interested in quantum mechanics would seek additional sources.

Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems: A Primer, Claudius Gros, 2008

A theme of this book is that scientific common-sense shows that a long-term perspective is essential and that particular quantitative, technical formulations reveal behaviors which apply to many areas. Rather than verbosity, illustrations from network theory are used, such as graph statistics and probability generating functions. There are seven chapters, each having exercises and further readings. Ideas are linked across fields and demonstrated by examples, e.g. oscillators, neural nets or epidemics. The brain is the most complex adaptive system and life is an adaptive network. Complexity theory is a tool for modeling and scenarios, and is used for futurology, e.g. universal prediction tasks. The origin of life involved molecular cooperation in autocatalytic networks. Fitness landscapes are a function of chances of survival for species. Coevolution involves effects across multiple species within time and space scales, resulting in a red queen phenomenon of running in place. Kauffman gene regulation is an example of a random Boolean network. Critical variables dominate the dynamic at point of phase transition, e.g. temperature. This results in punctuated equilibrium and synchronization phenomena exhibited by evolving realworld networks. An order parameter measures degree of asymmetry. There is a small world effect where distance between nodes is a small fraction of the number of nodes. In social networks, diffusion has a role in transport, reported in the 1960s by Milgram. Game theory looks at survival strategies. Adaptive systems alternate between absorbing energy and dissipation.

The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos, James N. Gardner, 2007

This book’s thesis is that the universe is becoming alive according to a Selfish Biocosm hypothesis which is consilient, falsifiable and retrodictable. Emergence is the controller and intelligence the copier. Some of it is related to the Singularity as outlined in the forward by Kurzweil, or to a “deep DNA” universal genetic code. It looks at many types of artificial life research, and various alternatives to singularity theory such as Virtual Cambrian or Omega point. Humanity becomes the missing link, but its track record of maintaining lesser species is hopefully not repeated up the chain. The future of religion may include cosmotheology, becoming a subject of scientific study, or a “biocosm aborning”. There is a chart of NASA’s mission telescopes to observe black holes, dark matter and the big bang. Rather than “the long hello” of direct communications, SETI would look for computational meaning of seemingly natural noise, prediction markets, artificial exo-society modeling, or artifacts of cosmic macroengineering. An Intelligence Principle results in a post-biological universe.
The style is narrative. There are three parts, nine chapters, an afterword, three appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. It quotes from other scientists’ publications at length. Shaded boxes highlight key concept definitions and explanations, e.g. a notion of quantum evolution.

Blogs:

Barnett on India telecom

Robb on US censorship Commented: A general risk is revealed. May be reminded of notion of ecotechnology in Steward Brand's "Whole Earth Discipline". If they are going to treat the planet like a gas station, then a spill side-effect suppression system would be nice, e.g. by a genetic engineering solution capable of changing crude to something friendlier. Of course, this becomes a controlled substance to avoid a Vonnegut Ice 9 scenario where green refinery is used to vanish all the reserves.

Shirky on complex business models

Documents:

Measures of Complexity a non-exhaustive list, Seth Lloyd (PDF)

Videos:

The Secret Life of Chaos (Part 1/6), Jim Al-Khalili, 2010 on Turing morphogenesis, Belousov nonlinear chemical oscillator, Lorenz chaos theory, Mandelbrot fractal geometry.

Irreducible Complexity 01/04, The Cassiopeia Project, 2010 adds quantum mechanics to organic chemistry and biology, and amino acids from interstellar gas clouds.

Authors@Google: Christos Papadimitriou, 2010 wrote Logicomix and researches algorithms and complexity.

An Evening with Dr. Atul Gawande, 2010 wrote The Checklist Manifesto to handle complexity.

The Most Exhilarating Ode to the Future You'll See All Day (Batteries Not Included) | Motherboard on Singularity

Who Goes There

2010-05-29T22:37:00.001-07:00

When comparing models, measurement and ranking may involve complexity. There are various types, e.g. software, computational and process. Conceptually, user may consider the number of models necessary to cover phenomenon, length of time required to explain the system, or whether the latter can be captured in an intuitive diagram. During design or build, factors might be dimensionality, manufacturing difficulty, amount of software, fixing difficulty, price, sensitivity to environmental conditions or time to configure. Usage has amount of calculation, time for calculation or halting, difficulty of operation, and stability or failure rates. Scaling adds number of components and connections and types thereof. Automation may have tradeoffs between factors. There can be a composite derived from multiple methods. See computational complexity for discussion of metrics.

Recent Links (of about 27): visualization: latency heatmaps, semantic web: Saplo, crowdsource: Fluidinfo, local events, robotics: mind over machine, security: CERT fuzzing, marketplace: Facebook AppBistro, art.sy, disaster recovery: oil reporter, finance: bonds, technology: NanoProfessor, STS OCW, future cities, synthetic cell, space: duality of gravity, WISE star formation, tilted orbit, photography: Stock Photos, music: UJAM.

Book Reviews:

The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business, David Siegel, 2009

The author has addressed a book to an audience of business customers to acquaint them with who’s doing what in semantic web applications. The transition is expected to complete in a decade. Trends in digitization, availability, managing metadata, synchronization, syndication, and scalability lead to online data lockers which replace silos. Users specify a want which filters semantic queries. The data, products and services are then available anywhere, e.g. via cellphone screen login and browser. This lead to a conversion from current advertising. Realtime pricing is based on metadata. The fair tax legislation is recommended to eliminate income tax and simplify sales tax structures within transactions. Autonomy is expected to automate processes and increase efficiency. Collaborative design spaces replace data repositories, e.g. building information management (BIM) for 3D models, or science commons for protein designs.
The style is optimistic, visionary and direct with short paragraphs and lots of bold emphasis. There are three parts for seventeen chapters. A book ontology concept map shows how the pieces fit together. It has plenty of url’s to demonstrate existing businesses. Evri has acquired Twine since. It may be so wide-ranging that it could use a filter to find stuff that’s fits reader requirements. Other issues would require additional sources, e.g. dominant vendors or monopolies compared to opensource, closed data (Newscorp blocking Google), closed ecosystem (Apple), sustainability, security, curated data (Wolframalpha), or privacy (Facebook).

The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies, Steve Fuller, 2006

Science’s place in society is not as well understood by the public as other subjects. The author is a social constructivist; humanity is a goal. STS applies theories of humanities and social sciences to science and technology. This book covers the European and American history. It is descended from positivism and has field methods of research. Actor-network theory is the main one, e.g. Isabelle Stengers or Bruno Latour. This is a cross-disciplinary academic field sometimes likened to a scaffold for specialties. Technology studies is a subfield added in the mid-80s. The public is taught citizen science and ways to consider technical issues of consequence. Technoscience is an undifferentiated combination of science and technology. Scientific authorities are respected for extreme rationality and have their own interpretations of STS and its research. The Science Wars of the 90s pitted realists and critics of scientific theory against eachother. Science has social organization, politics, and control over public relations. Quality is affected by who it is that researchers are accountable to. Institutional science followed a strategy of colonization. Thought collectives were recognized in the 1930s. Kuhn described paradigms in 70s; philosophy of rational or irrational became normal or revolutionary phases of science. There is a Heraclitean dualism between constructivism and relativism. Ideological framework presuppositions can be disintegrated and reconsidered in newer context.
As far as style, there are thirty-three chapters in six parts; Technology follows science models here; utilitarianism is not distinguished. The term artifact is used as an effect rather than in a design sense. The latter is used for theoretical policy and institutions, rather than engineering. Internet and web are sources and not subjects, though there is a recommendation for an online futures market for science-based proposals. The computation trend is not discussed. Where the frameworks are tabular in two-dimensions, Eastern formulations might add spirals or helices, e.g. to show processes, scale of abstraction or detail, and relations, e.g. counterclockwise between actor-network theory in constructivism on left and theory in relativism on right. Exception cases for each category could be expanded upon. Scifi is not considered a factor, currently subsumed in techno-adventure. There is an extensive bibliography.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, volume four, ed. Jonathan Strahan, 2010

Scifi anthologies are still published because editors have favorites. Editors still exist because publishers do marketing. In this book, an intro describes the status of the industry. There are twenty-nine stories. Each has its own intro. A section for recommended readings closes the volume. Kij Johnson has two entries. Some of the authors are in other anthologies, such as Dozois 2009, including Stephen Baxter, Michael Swanwick, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. In terms of perspectives, the ratio is about 2:1 third person and first. Cover art is by John Berkey. Specialized e-readers have changed things a bit, though they may be peaking since tablets are becoming popular. There are other references. Wikipedia has author info. Author’s often have own websites. There is no last.fm for scifi stories yet in addition to soundtracks. Some sites have rankings over all time and there are lots of separate blog reviews. There might be a demand for a personalized recommendation system as an improvement over Amazon. Readers can stream actual science reporting and real summaries. Writers can complement metadata with imaginary data which may also find its way into art or other media, e.g. on youtube or spacecollective. DIY Symphonic soundtracks may be around the corner, e.g. ujam. Studies or creation of space and matte painting are ways to develop sensitivity for these types of images, e.g. deviantart. It is hard to do something outlandish enough, yet true to the collective unconscious, that a real discovery won’t soon be reported in the news.

The year’s Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual, ed. Gardner Dozois, 2009

Scifi is being used more to get ideas across, science or futurist, where nonfiction may not reach the audience. Short stories are less of a stretch for twitter-types than novels. These readers are accustomed to extreme conditions or moods. Education and energy are an invention away. The editor of this book was originally from Massachusetts and the genre was a way to escape the local confines. This text includes a general summation of publishing for the previous year. There are thirty short stories, each having an intro. These are followed by honorable mentions. Paul McAuley and Ian MacDonald each have a couple of entries. Perspective is about even, 1st having thirteen and 3rd seventeen. Cover art is by Chad Beatty.
Scifi is the fantasy side of technology where scenarios can be explored that can sometimes turn into real movies or games. Of course, haven’t yet seen a blade writer, but animations are very realistic and it may incrementally develop from remixing and adapting existing content to originality from the likes of the machinima sphere, simplified for human enjoyment. Faulty industrial designs that almost made it to production may be the equivalent of cliff hangers or detective yarns in worlds of ruthless environments, corporations and governments. Globalized sources may reflect the local engineering mythos.

Blogs of interest:

Haque on institutional innovation

Videos:

Marcus de Sautoy on mathematics of symmetry

Lee Rainie on internet usage changes

Documents of interest:

Measuring Test Execution Complexity (PDF)

Measuring model complexity with the prior predictive, Vanpaemel (PDF)

Seerability scifi by yours truly