Updated: 3/27/08; 6:13:58 PM.
A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Blog
Thoughts on biotech, knowledge creation and Web 2.0
        

Wednesday, November 6, 2002


A picture named replay.gifKevin Werbach is at a meeting with lots of bigshot media execs in NY and reports that they love to talk about TiVO as a threat, or a competitive factor or something they want to sue out of business. One thing they never get about TiVO is the profoundness of the feature that skips backwards and lets you replay a snippet. I've come to want that feature in every audio and video device I own from the car radio to the walkman, my iPod (amazingly it doesn't have it), and even with people I'm talking with, both in person and on the phone. "You said that in an interesting way, now what exactly did you say?" Listen the same way I read. And would you tell them for me that I do this with their friggin commercials too -- when they're interesting or especially depraved. Maybe they'll get the clue that it's time to stop programming us with their commercials and start educating and entertaining. [Scripting News]

This is just so true. I keep reaching for the reverse button on my car radio so I can replay something I missed. It ticks me off when I can't. Replay and pausing are what makes the Tivo so great. Skipping commercials is nice too but I will stop for good ones too. And MY iPod skips backwards. You just press and hold the back button and it merrily plays backwards in 5 second chunks. Watch the counters move back to the point to you want to rehear and release the button. Works the same way with the forward button.  11:46:17 PM    



Genes, neurons, and the Internet found to have some identical organizing principles [EurekAlert!]

The emergent properties of complex systems will be as easily understood in the next 50 years a quantum mechanics is today. That is, everyone will know something unusual is happening and a priveliged few will understand the underlying properties. But, it will mean that we can make some reasonable guesses as to how cells actually work and we will model these processes in computers, that will happily mimic the cellular networks they are examining. Adpative networks seem to form in only a few useful ways. These will be the Laws of the coming Information revolution, where we will discover that Nature long ago fashioned useful ways to network that we are only now 'rediscovering.'  11:40:00 PM    



AAAS urges opposition to 'intelligent design theory' within U.S. science classes [EurekAlert!]

I really hate it when ignorant, essentially uneducated people make decisions that affect learning. Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of living things, the Cobb County District School Board notwithstanding. It deals with how life adpats and changes in response to changing environmental conditions. This has been seen and observed many times. Intelligent design has no answer to this, no real experimental rationale. It is a centuries old argument, and one that will eventually find its way to the dustbin of history.  11:35:04 PM    



No alternative to fossil fuels. Environmental Data Interactive Exchange Nov 6 2002 11:34AM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

Well, I think they are wrong. Fuel-cell technology WILL replace fossil fuels. The hydrogen will be created via novel pathways that do not release net CO2. There is intriguing work looking at converting plant material into an appropriate fuel source, effectively using solar power to create energy. The difficulty is that low oil prices, such as projected following our take-over of Iraq, will hamper and slow down this change that will occur. Personally, I wish we would sink a sizable fraction of the defense money into developing these technologies. Energy independence from the Middle East would provide us with a lot of flexibility that we do not have now. As long as the Saudis can act like racketeers, we will have problems. Just my 2 cents.  11:30:52 PM    



Morons in the News: No Child Left with Privacy. A little-noticed provision in the "No Child Left Behind" act means that children's personal information is made available to military agencies... [Morons Dot Org]

This makes it a lot easier to find recruits. I wonder when we will hear about reinstating the draft?  11:22:25 PM    



Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Redwood Dragon: And there are some that have no memorial: ...Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers in their generations. The Lord apportioned to them great glory, his majesty from the beginning. There were those who ruled in their kingdoms, and were men renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding, and proclaiming prophecies; leaders of the people in their deliberations and in understanding of learning for the people, wise in their words of instruction; those who... [Semi-Daily Journal]

Some nice, stirring words. I expect we will see some stirring words in the years to come. Conflict and change have a habit of bringing forth some awfully nice writing.  11:19:53 PM    



After the Fall of Harvey Pitt: We Are Still in Bigger Trouble Than We Realize. After the Fall of Harvey Pitt: We Are Still in Bigger Trouble than We Realize J. Bradford DeLong A First Draft Harvey Pitt was in bigger trouble than he realized. He is now gone: he submitted his resignation as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] on the evening of 2002's election day. But his resignation does nothing to get the rest of us out of big trouble. There is drastic, urgent need for significant and immediate reforms in... [Semi-Daily Journal]

Well, as long as people are distracted by the talk of war, as long as we are going to enter deficit spending once again to pay for war, no one will really care about Pitt and the SEC. At least until the historians examine how we could do so many things wrong to ruin the best economy ever created, how we could ignore all the warning signs.These are the same sorts of lies that that caused the collapse of the market in the 30s. It took 25 years for the market to regain its highs of the late 20s. If not corrected, it may be a generation before the markets get the kind of capital infusions that they saw the last decade, particularly if the capital that is available goes to fund worldwide garrisons of troops and new wars.  11:14:09 PM    



For every election, there is an equal and opposite erection.

For some reason that headline comes to mind when I see this.

It's good to see folks getting pissed off, but the problem isn't just leadership. It's lack of sex appeal for the Democrats' old issues, and a nearly complete absence of new ones.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

Wow. What a site. I hope all that anger gets put into productive use rather than simply fuel resentment. I think that the changes the world is going through are derived from the shift in economics. From a manufacturing, industrial age way of doing things, we are embarking on one where intangibles such as knowledge and creativity will be very important drivers. Knowledge, its creation and dispersion, will be an increasing part of the competitive landscape. While this has always been the case, things are moving so much faster now. As networks get larger and more powerful, new and pwoerful emergent properties start rearing their head. Being able to adapt will be critical. Media companies are unable to make this shift and are busily destroying their customer base. One of the things about paradigm shifts - those on either side are COMPLETeLY unable to understand the other's viewpoint.

When I was in graduate school, there was a useful profession whose job was to type up the theses that students wrote. These would have to be typed by hand, using carbon paper to make copies. After the student's defense, any changes would have to be incorporated, but, since this cost more money, all sorts of tricks would be used to prevent a lot of pages from being retyped. These tended to keep the number of pages used in a thesis very low.

I was the first in my department to forego this pleasure. I used a TRS-80 to compose my thesis and a daisy wheel printer to type it up. Copies were made on a Xerox on cotton rag. I could easily make chnges in the computer and, consequently, my thesis was almost twice as long as others, costing me money only for supplies.

The profession of typist is gone. Everyone uses computers to write their thesis. I can not conceive how it was really done and I know people who used typists. How much greater is the gulf between those who grew up in a heirarchical world, with command and control structures, in order to control the complicated processes of an industrial world, and the free-wheeling, adaptive network that routes around problems in a world of knowledge? This is the basis for much of the discord seen today in many parts of the world, in politics and in economics.

I happened to catch 'The History of Britain' on the History Channel the other day. It was looking at the English Civil War, a battle of paradigms between the Royalists, who felt that a divinely chosen King was the way to run a government, and the supported of Parliament, who favored a more democratic form of government, at least one answerable to the wishes of men. It was the first real battle in Western Culture between these two forces, ones that saw further warfare in the next century in America and France. These were sides that had no middle; you were on one side or the other. Families, brothers, friends were divided. And some awfully bloody battles were fought, a King was beheaded, and the military ended up pretty much running things. Cromwell eventually tired of Parliament and ended up ruling England as a King in all but name. But it was a critical first step in moving Westen culture towards democracy. It would take centuries to complete the shift.

The Industrial revolution took roughly a century to complete its changes. The trusts of the late 1800s created great wealth and emphasized the great nequities in the system that required massive upheavels by the workers before relative equality asserted itself. I hope the new revolution we are entering will be much shorter. But I expect it to be no less distressful and discomforting to both sides as the changes move through the system.

Well, I can tell it is after 11 when my thoughts turn to weighty matters ;-)  11:04:09 PM    



Well, my son made his 7th grade basketball team. Not bad for someone who has not picked up a basketball at hoeme in 2 years. Now if he would just growth a few feet, we would really have something ;-)  10:28:34 PM    


 
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Last update: 3/27/08; 6:13:58 PM.