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What happens when the simultaneous subsumes the sequential?

Moore’s Law has given us cheap,fast, and readily available storage and communication.
The Network Effect has provided a means of sharing what has been stored.

So, if a simultaneous global information infrastructure makes filtering and reacting skills and tools of greater value than planning and implementation strategies, what happens then?

Will our functional concept of the future be eclipsed by the presence of the present?

My bet is that it will. Likely within the next decade.

Organizations with centralized, hierarchic management relying on review, ratification, and head office approval will lose ground. Agile, decentralized networks of smaller firms/groups/movemements will not necessarily take over, but will simply not need the laborious 20th century methodologies and infrastructures to exist and succeed. Understanding a situation or event will be more valuable than managing it.

There are hurdles. The ubiquity of the cell phone as a powerful platform for change holds great promise. The existing network speed, range, lack of inter-operability and expensive data rates are a drawback.

I’m optimistic. I’m patient. We’ll get there.

Technorati Tags: Moore’s Law, Network Effect, Future, Time

Google Launches iPhone App - Is Google Phone Far Away? | Mactropolis.com - The Global Mac Community

I would be a happy camper if/when this happens.

Talking on the phone - meh. Maybe 10% of what I would use it for. Killing time on the commute surfing Wikipedia 90%. Now, let’s talk bandwidth charges before I sign anything….

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Google, iPhone, mobile computing,

So, after 11 intense weeks of class, I hang up the coding goggles for a bit, and check out my old haunts on the web. Lo and behold, there’s buzz about Flock again/still. I checked it out last year, but wasn’t quite sold. This time around, it makes sense

Visually and functionally, it reminds me of  Konqueror, which I like. What Konqueror does for files, Flock does for WEb 2.whatever content. FYI, Konqueror could be described as the Swiss Army knife of Linux apps. It’s not for for everybody, and it’s not what I’m raving about  at the moment, so I’ll shut up about it.

I’m thinking of Flock as a social web management application, rather than a generic browser. I’ve set up my fave feeds, enabled blogging, Facebooking, and Flickring.

So far, I like what I see.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Flock, Facebook, Flickr, Konqueror, Web Tools, Blogging, Web Browser

With Quicktime release 7.2, my flash video support in Firefox became an on again - off again affair.
Vista is….well, everybody knows what’s what with that beast.

so often, new software seems like a marketing hook for a hardware upgrade, and that bugs me. My G4 lappie is just fine for what I need it for and until it starts belching smoke, I’m keeping it.

The long and short of it is that I figured it is time to hunt for an alternative OS.

I’m running a dual boot Osx 10.3.9/Ubuntu7.04 at the moment, but figured why stop there? From The Live Cd List, I link hopped into the outer realms of the open source solar system and found this ftp site: ftp.belnet.be

It is an absolute motherlode of open source distros.

If you can’t find an intriguing distro here, your name must be Bill….

Technorati Tags: Distro, Linux, Open Source, Operating Systems

Maybe Doctorow/Rollins….I’m not that fussy.

It would be one hell of a Convention, doncha think?

Click the links for more info. It’s a long weekend in my corner of the world, and I have to start doing nothing RIGHT NOW in order to accomplish all the doing nothing I have planned for the weekend.

Technorati Tags: CBC, Henry Rollins, Politics, Cory Doctorow, Net Nuetrality

The thing about robots, is that we anthropomorphize them.

Think about it. We want a machine to do things we don’t want to do, or that are dangerous or unpleasant for us to do. So we build a machine that looks like a human? If a human arm can’t reach all the way under the couch to the back to get the cat’s favourite toy, how is a robot modeled on a human, with our limbs and joints going to be any better?

I think we do this because we are at best, hesitant when it comes to new technology. More to the point, we are hesitant of the impact it has on our lifestyles and societies. This is what keeps us from embracing the really cool shit.

Picture if you will, robots the size of rain drops. Programmable, self organizing (recognizing and avoiding obstacles such as pets or humans kind of self organizing, not toga party kind of organizing) mesh networks of robots that zip around your house at night sweeping up the pet hair, cleaning the vents, washing the windows, and watering the plants. Just think of all the extra time you’d have for,oh I dunno - reading comics and playin’ poker and such things. When it comes right down to it, can we afford not to have legions of nano-bots do our dirty work? When they are done, they could arrange themselves on the wall in pretty patterns and pretend to be art work.

Stop thinking about work in terms of how we do it, and think in terms of how to get it done. And give up this silly human conceit that all good, purposeful things must look like us.

Full props to Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan) and Neal Stephenson ( Diamond Age). This nano-bot meme cropped in recent readings from both gentlemen, and has considerably amped up my inner geek.

Technorati Tags: nanotech, neal stephenson, Warren Ellis, robots, science fiction

So, lacking anything resembling a social life, I installed a dual boot OSX/Ubuntu on my laptop this past long weekend.

Turns out there are some things (Flash, wireless) that are not well supported on power pc, but for the most part, Ubuntu has proven to be fast,reliable, and visually familiar enough to windoze to not induce panic

Tons of open source software available, some more user friendly than others. I have to admit, the Mac has made me a bit lazy in this respect. I am becoming friendlier with the command line, and look forward to being comfortable, or maybe even proficient some day soon.