Category: Technology

  • MY DAUGHTER RECENTLY UPGRADED from the I can’t-believe-you-carry-that-embarrassing-relic iPhone 4 to the new, shiny, I-am-a-respectable-member-of-modern-society iPhone 6. She touched the device and the heavens opened: Streaks of sunlight embraced her from the sky, fireworks erupted in a brilliant ballet and woodland animals gathered nearby to celebrate. Okay, not really. And by “not really” I mean…

  • Google’s mission is simple, bold, and in the annals of silicon culture, tantamount to sacred gospel: “Organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Today, however, there is a New Testament being written: “Organize Google’s information about the world and make it selectively accessible and mostly useful.” Okay, not as sexy. But…

  • There’s a little-known scene in the movie “Star Trek: First Contact,” where Lt. Commander Data, an android, observes Captain Jean-Luc Picard touching the hull of an historic spacecraft. The captain smiles and taps the ship with his bare fingers, to which Data asks, “Sir, does tactile contact alter your perception of (the ship)?” “Oh yes,”…

  • “The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.” — Tim Berners-Lee The promise of technology almost always outstrips the reality of technology. Back when War Games came out in 1983 – ten…

  • First there was order, then chaos. The universe was born in near-perfect order: small, organized and perhaps even serene. Over time, the universe expanded and became messy, diverse and beyond comprehension. Chaos reigned. This effect is called entropy, the process by which order decreases in a system over time. This is admittedly a simple description,…

  • “I do certainly see the day when more people will be buying their newspapers on portable reading panels than on crushed trees. Then we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It’s going to be great.” — Rupert Murdoch, Sept. 14, 2009 “Thanks for the trial subscription, but so far, it is…

  • The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held last week in Las Vegas, is both a birthplace and a graveyard for technology. Some devices will “make it” and even change our lives, while others will never get to market. If T.S. Eliot were alive today and a tech nerd, he would have called January the cruelest…

  • Predictions are a fickle business, but with the new year just begun and CES still days away, the writing for 2011 is already on the wall (and I don’t mean Facebook). There will be stories, tweets, posts, photos, videos, slides and all sorts of content spewing from CES about the latest technological gadgets and guesses…