"etech" entries
Baseball Simulations
How likely are the world records we hold dear? Should they have happened? Should they been set by the people who did them? There's an New York Times Opinion piece written by some researchers who examined Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak to determine how likely it was to happen again. Turns out it's very likely. In the 10, 000…
How Technology Almost Lost the War, but Should Do Better
Technology almost lost the war, but can't we make it better?
Radar Roundup: Brains
Today's topic is: our brains, understanding how they work, and living with the consequences of that knowledge. Brain Enhancement: Right or Wrong? (NYT): amazing gray areas we're getting into. Is it okay for a scientist to take brain-enhancing drugs? Compare with Wired News's write-up of Quinn Norton's ETech talk on the subject of how new bio technology will make us…
From ETech to Where 2.0: Disaster Tech and Activist Mapping
At ETech last week, Ethan Zuckerman spoke about the use of web technologies in repressive regimes. It was great — one person even told that it was the best session he'd ever seen. I recommend reading Ethan's write-up of his talk. He began with the hypothesis: Sufficiently usable read/write platforms will attract porn and activists. If there's no porn, the…
@ETech: Matt Webb's Tour of a Fictional Solar System
We began ETech with a series of Ignite talks. As usual Matt Webb weaved together beautiful images, kinetic energy and keen insights. Enjoy the talk….
Why I Love Hackers
TechWeb TV posted a short video from my opening keynote at ETech. Nominally this year's version of my O'Reilly Radar talk, which focuses on emerging trends that we're watching, the talk was wrapped in a larger theme, namely, why I love hackers, the edges they explore, and why hackers and alpha geeks, not entrepreneurs, are the first step in technology…
Neuroscience and Epistemology at ETech
At ETech, I had a fascinating conversation with Marie Bjerede, VP and General Manager of Qualcomm's Portland Design Center. She was telling me how the threads we'd brought together at ETech had validated her own thinking and helped her bring together her private passions and her professional life. I asked her to write up our conversation, and she agreed. Here's…
ETech 2008 Coverage Roundup
Here's some of the coverage of our Emerging Technology Conference that's come across my desk since I got home and have had a chance to catch up on what people had to say. Ryan Singel at Wired News gets a shout-out for consistently excellent coverage: Lessig Calls on Geeks to Code the Money Out of Politics Wired News Thu, 06…
@ETech: Wednesday Morning Keynotes
Another day, another set of expansive keynotes. John McCarthy, father of LISP, a giant in artificial intelligence, gave a sit-down high-level talk about Elephant 2000, a proposed programming language intended for transaction processing and electronic data interchange. He described Elephant in terms of its ability to capture "speech acts," which I'll define roughly as words that lead to actions. (One…
@ETech: fire eagle Launches
Most of the Yahoo news these days is about its possible absorption by Microsoft, but there are still new projects coming out of the company. Right now Tom Coates is onstage at ETech, launching fire eagle, an open location information-brokering service. You can share your location online with sundry sites and services. It's liberal with what it takes in, but…