technology (50)

Stewart Brand’s Summary of Mariana Mazzucato’s Recent Seminar at Long Now Foundation

March 26, 2014 at 7:01 pm

Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014

Subject: [SALT] Government as radical, patient VC (Mariana Mazzucato talk)

“The iPhone, Mazzucato pointed out, is held up as a classic example of world-changing innovation coming from business.

   Yet every feature of the iPhone was created, originally, by multi-decade government-funded research.  From DARPA came the microchip, the Internet, the micro hard drive, the DRAM cache, and Siri.  From the Department of Defense came GPS, cellular technology, signal compression, and parts of the liquid crystal display and multi-touch screen (joining funding from the CIA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy, which, by the way, developed the lithium-ion battery.)  CERN in Europe created the Web.  Steve Jobs’ contribution was to integrate all of them beautifully.

   Venture Capitalists (VCs) in business expect a return in 3 to 5 years, and they count on no more than one in ten companies to succeed.  The time frame for government research and investment embraces a whole innovation cycle of 15 to 20 years, supporting the full chain from basic research through to viable companies. That means they can develop entire new fields such as space technology, aviation technology, nanotechnology, and, hopefully, Green technology.

   But compare the reward structure.  Government takes the greater risk with no prospect of great reward, while VCs and businesses take less risk and can reap enormous rewards.  ‘We socialize the risks and privatize the rewards.’

Read More …

Tags: , ,
Post a comment (3 comments)

Robot That Builds Metal Sculptures

February 27, 2014 at 1:51 pm

“Although the world of 3D printing is hurtling through milestones at the moment, to a large extent the technology still remains in its infancy. If you thought it was all Etsy jewellery and plastic toys, though, think again. Joris Laarman has created a free-standing 3D printing robot that creates beautiful metal sculptures with the graceful brush strokes of an artist.”

Click on Gizmodo here.

From Ed Styles

Tags: , ,
Post a comment (1 comment)

Compost Heated Shower

June 2, 2013 at 3:57 pm

From Mike W this morning:

“I thought this was pretty ingenious.. several others on the same YT page…skip the ad in 3..2..1…”   “This is an example of a compost heated shower, built by Geoff Lawton for the students of the Permaculture Research Institute’s 10 week internship. The shower itself is a temporary setup while the student centre is being built but the water temperature is excellent and is almost too hot. It’s been going for 3 weeks now without any sign of giving up and all completely free!”

In all these years of composting, why didn’t I think of this? -LK

Tags: , , ,
Post a comment (6 comments)

Leverageing My Content

May 12, 2013 at 8:17 pm

I first heard the phrase from a friend who went to work for a hot new company during the tech boom. Well, uh, OK. But in spite of its dorky sound, it has real meaning for someone like me.

I’m all over the place. Can’t help it. Always have been. Everything in this world is just so daggone interesting. Especially now. I think I appreciate the computer more than younger people because of where I come from. It’s such a breath-taking span from hot lead type to InDesign, from bulky dictionaries to Google, from rotary phones to the iPhone 5. (Part of my excuse for being so eclectic.)

Back to leveraging: I’d like to sell more books, I’d like to get us more income so we can get out of the 40-year-old scrambling for $$ to pay the printers. I had an idea: to take targeted sections of this blog and turn them into eBooks. Say homesteading. For people interested in homesteading, but not necessarily in Muddy Waters or skateboarding.

You homesteaders and gardeners out there: would you pay $2.99 or $3.99 for an ebook based on a selection from my homesteading posts?  Go down on the far right column and under “Topics,” click on “homesteading.”

I don’t know about a print book. It could be done but might cost too much.

I’ve put up over 3500 posts now. Does it make sense to separate this mass into subjects and reach “targeted” audiences?

Tags: , , , , , ,
Post a comment (27 comments)

Blogger Problem — No Response from Support

April 8, 2013 at 3:00 pm

Rick, who handles tech maintenance for this blog has been unable make changes on the blog’s template for the last several months. He’s tried repeatedly to get in touch with Blogger support, with no success. (Blogger no longer offers any direct support — just a forum where users can commiserate and try to answer each other’s questions).

The problem in detail is here. The quick summary is that every time he tries to get to the Edit Template page, it redirects immediately to a blank page, so that no edits can be made, and the template can’t even be replaced with an older backup.

This has been going on since Blogger stopped access through the old interface several months ago.

No support email gets any response, and repeated posts on the forum don’t either. Many other reports can be found in the forums concerning people who can’t get any help from Support.

If any of you have any suggestions, or especially if you have an inside track to some human being at Google who might help, we would really appreciate it. It’s time to change the masthead and update the listings for our books.

Tags: , ,
Post a comment (12 comments)

Apple’s Magic Trackpad & Application Grab

March 30, 2013 at 12:30 pm

I suspect most people know about these two tools, since I’m not exactly on the forefront of technology out here in the semi-country, but if not:

Apple’s Magic Trackpad works beautifully. I’m using it more and more instead of a mouse due to mouse/wrist problems. Here is Apple’s hype, which is pretty much true:

“The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer. It uses the same Multi-Touch technology you love on the MacBook Pro. And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen. Swiping through pages online feels just like flipping through pages in a book or magazine. And inertial scrolling makes moving up and down a page more natural than ever. Magic Trackpad connects to your Mac via Bluetooth wireless technology. Use it in place of a mouse or in conjunction with one on any Mac computer — even a notebook.”

https://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/

The other thing, and I guess all Mac users utilize this, is Apple’s application, Grab, used to take screenshots. I use it daily, when I can’t download something, and I want an image. It creates only TIFFs, which must be converted to JPEGs, at least for my blog postings.

Tags:
Post a comment (9 comments)

T. L; D. R.

March 29, 2013 at 6:07 pm

Meaning “Too long; didn’t read.”

This really caught my eye. It was in a NYTimes article a few days ago about a 17-year-old who sold his company to Yahoo for 30 million dollars. What was way more interesting than his youth and all the money was his idea: “…his algorithmic invention…takes long-form stories and shortens them for readers using smartphones, in its own mobile apps…”

“…he started coding at age 12. Eventually he decided to develop an app with what he calls an “automatic summarization algorithm,” one that “can take pre-existing long-form content and summarize it.” In other words, it tries to solve a problem that is often summed up with the abbreviation tl;dr: “too long; didn’t read.”

   I’ve now got a sign, TL; DR posted by the computer. Like keeping videos under 2 minutes. And it’s a new world coming, with pocket sized screens the norm for young people. Keep it short & sweet, I keep reminding myself…

Tags: ,
Post a comment (6 comments)