Technology – Page 28 – artdiamondblog.com

The Huge Value of Exposing Ourselves to Unexpected Evidence

Bill Bryson tells how much we learned from the remains of a man from the neolithic age, who has been called Ötzi:

(p. 377) His equipment employed eighteen different types of wood – a remarkable variety. The most surprising of all his tools was the axe. It was copper-bladed and of a type known as a Remedello axe, after a site in Italy where they were first found. But Ötzi’s axe was hundreds of years older than the oldest Remedello axe. ‘It was,’ in the words of one observer, ‘as if the tomb of a medieval warrior had yielded a modern rifle.’ The axe changed the timeframe for the copper age in Europe by no less than a thousand years.

But the real revelation and excitement were the clothes. Before Ötzi we had no idea – or, to be more precise, nothing but ideas – of how stone age people dressed. Such materials as survived existed only as fragments. Here was a complete outfit and it was full of surprises. His clothes were made from the skins and furs of an impressive range of animals – red deer, bear, chamois, goat and cattle. He also had with him a woven grass rectangle that was three feet long. This might have been a kind of rain cape, but it might equally have been a sleeping mat. Again, nothing like it had ever been seen or imagined.
Ötzi wore fur leggings held up with leather strips attached to a waist strap that made them look uncannily – almost comically – like the kind of nylon stockings and garter sets that Hollywood pin-ups wore in the Second World War. Nobody had remotely foreseen such a get-up. He wore a loincloth of goatskin and a hat made from the fur of a brown bear – probably a kind of hunting trophy. It would have been very warm and covetably stylish. The rest of his outfit was mostly made from the skin and fur of red deer. Hardly any came from domesticated animals, the opposite of what was expected.

Source:
Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. New York: Doubleday, 2010.

Larry Page’s Wonderful Crusade to Save Us Time

Source of book image: http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/intheplex.jpg

On C-SPAN’s book TV I saw the last part of an interesting and entertaining interview with Steven Levy that was originally recorded at the Computer History Museum on April 6, 2011. Levy is the author of of In the Plex which I have not read, but which is now on my to-read list.
At the end of the interview, Levy read a passage from his book about how Larry Page is obsessed with reducing latency, which is a technical term for how long we have to wait for something to happen on a computer.
Isn’t it wonderful that Larry Page is on a crusade to save us from wasted time?

Book discussed above:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: “latency” appears on the following pages of Steven Levy’s book: 93, 184, 185, 186, 187, 207, 262, and 398.)

“Insanely Great” Entrepreneur Steve Jobs Wanted “a Chance to Change the World”

Steve Jobs died yesterday (Weds., October 5, 2011).
Jobs was an innovator of my favorite kind, what I call a “project entrepreneur.” He showed us what excitement and progress is possible if we preserve the institutions that allow entrepreneurial capitalism to exist.
When he was recruiting John Sculley to leave Pepsi and join Apple, Jobs asked him: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” (p. 90).
Steve Jobs wanted to change the world. He got the job done.

Source of quote of Jobs’ question to Sculley:
Sculley, John, and John A. Byrne. Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple. paperback ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1988.

Lunar Entrepreneurs

(p. A1) Now that the last space shuttle has landed back on Earth, a new generation of space entrepreneurs would like to whip up excitement about the prospect of returning to the Moon.
. . .
(p. A3) “It’s probably the biggest wealth creation opportunity in modern history,” said Barney Pell, a former NASA computer scientist turned entrepreneur and now a co-founder of Moon Express. While Moon Express might initially make money by sending small payloads, the big fortune would come from bringing back platinum and other rare metals, Dr. Pell said.
“Long term, the market is massive, no doubt,” he said. “This is not a question of if. It’s a question of who and when. We hope it’s us and soon.”
Like the aviation prizes that jump-started airplane technology a century ago, the Google Lunar X Prize is meant to rally technologists and entrepreneurs. It is administered by the X Prize Foundation, which handed out $10 million in 2004 to the first private team to build a spacecraft that could carry people 60 miles above the Earth’s surface. (The winner, SpaceShipOne, was built by the aerospace designer Burt Rutan with backing from Paul Allen, the software magnate.)

For the full story, see:
KENNETH CHANG. “In a Private Race to the Moon, Flights of Fancy Are in the Air.” The New York Times (Fri., July 22, 2011): A1 & A3.
(Note: the online version of the story is dated July 21, 2011 and has the title “Race to the Moon Heats Up for Private Firms.”)

Deregulation Revived Railroads

“ALL ABOARD: The Wasp magazine in 1881 lampooned railroad moguls as having regulators in the palms of their hands.” Source of caricature: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. C8) Mr. Klein has written thoroughly researched and scrupulously objective biographies of the previously much maligned Jay Gould and E.H. Harriman, remaking their public images by presenting them in full. Now he has published the third and final volume of his magisterial history of the Union Pacific railroad, taking the company from 1969 to the present day.

Union Pacific–the only one of the transcontinentals to remain in business under its original name–is now a flourishing business. Thanks to a series of mergers, it is one of the largest railroads in the world, with more than 37,000 miles of track across most of the American West. Thanks to its investment in new technology, it is also among the most efficient.
In 1969, though, the future of American railroading was in doubt as the industry struggled against competition from airplanes, automobiles and trucks–all of which were in effect heavily subsidized through the government’s support for airports and the Interstate Highway System.
Another major factor in the decline of the railroads had been the stultifying hand of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The ICC had come into existence in the late 19th century to limit the often high-handed ways of the railroads as they wrestled with the difficult economics of an industry that has very high fixed costs. ( . . . .) But the ICC soon evolved into a cartel mechanism that discouraged innovation and wrapped the railroad industry in a cocoon of stultifying rules.
Mr. Klein notes that in 1975 he wrote a gloomy article about the sad state of an industry with a colorful past: “Unlike many other historical romances,” he wrote back then, “the ending did not promise to be a happy one.”
Fortunately, a deregulation movement that began under the Carter administration–yes, the Carter administration–limited the power of the ICC and then abolished it altogether. As Mr. Klein shows in the well-written “Union Pacific,” the reduction of government interference left capitalism to work its magic and produce–with the help of dedicated and skillful management–the modern, efficient and profitable railroad that is the Union Pacific.

For the full review, see:
JOHN STEELE GORDON. “Tracks Across America.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., JUNE 11, 2011): C8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Book reviewed in the part of the review quoted above:
Klein, Maury. Union Pacific: The Reconfiguration: America’s Greatest Railroad from 1969 to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2011.

Study Finds No Link Between Cellphones and Cancer

(p. A3) A European study involving nearly 1,000 participants has found no link between cellular-phone use and brain tumors in children and adolescents, a group that may be particularly sensitive to phone emissions.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was prompted by concerns that the brains of younger users may be more vulnerable to adverse health effects–such as cancer–from cellphones.

For the full story, see:
GAUTAM NAIK. “Study Sees No Cellphone-Cancer Ties.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., July 28, 2011): A3.

Arthur Murray “America’s First Space Pilot,” RIP

“Maj. Arthur Murray in 1954.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A18) “I begin to feel weightless, and I’m flying so fast my instruments can’t keep up — they show what happened two miles ago. I’m climbing so steeply I can’t see the ground, and I feel confused. I have a sense of falling and I want to grab something for support.”

It was May 28, 1954, and Maj. Arthur Murray, test pilot, would wrestle for the next 15 terrifying seconds with a rocket plane racing over 1,400 miles an hour and spinning wildly, supersonically out of control. In the turmoil, he would fly higher than any human being had ever been, 90,440 feet over the earth.
Finally, Major Murray’s plane, a Bell X-1A, sank back into heavier air, and he had time to look at the dark blue sky and dazzling sunlight. He became the first human to see the curvature of the earth. At the time, he was called America’s first space pilot.
Arthur Murray, known as Kit, died on July 25, in a nursing home in the town of West in Texas, his family said. He was 92. He requested that his ashes be scattered over the Mojave Desert, where some of his fellow test pilots crashed and died.
Tom Wolfe marveled at the test pilots of Edwards Air Force Base in his 1979 book “The Right Stuff” exclaiming, “My God — to be part of Edwards in the late forties and early fifties!”

For the full obituary, see:
DOUGLAS MARTIN. “Arthur Murray, Test Pilot, Is Dead at 92.” The New York Times (Fri., August 5, 2011): A18.
(Note: the online version of the story is dated August 4, 2011.)

The wonderful Tom Wolfe book mentioned is:
Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 1979.

At First, Some Feared Electricity

(p. 133) Something of the prevailing ambivalence was demonstrated by Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, who went to a costume ball dressed as an electric light to celebrate the installation of electricity in her Fifth Avenue home in New York, but then had the whole system taken out when it was suspected of being the source of a small fire. Others detected more insidious threats. One authority named S. F. Murphy identified a whole host of electrically induced maladies – eyestrain, headaches, general unhealthiness and possibly even ‘the premature exhaustion of life’. One architect was certain electric light caused freckles.

Source:
Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. New York: Doubleday, 2010.

The Movie Auteur as a Model for Technology Entrepreneurship

Source of image: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 3) Two years ago, the technology blogger John Gruber presented a talk, “The Auteur Theory of Design,” at the Macworld Expo. Mr. Gruber suggested how filmmaking could be a helpful model in guiding creative collaboration in other realms, like software.

The auteur, a film director who both has a distinctive vision for a work and exercises creative control, works with many other creative people. “What the director is doing, nonstop, from the beginning of signing on until the movie is done, is making decisions,” Mr. Gruber said. “And just simply making decisions, one after another, can be a form of art.”
“The quality of any collaborative creative endeavor tends to approach the level of taste of whoever is in charge,” Mr. Gruber pointed out.
Two years after he outlined his theory, it is still a touchstone in design circles for discussing Apple and its rivals.
Garry Tan, designer in residence and a venture partner at Y Combinator, an investor in start-ups, says: “Steve Jobs is not always right–MobileMe would be an example. But we do know that all major design decisions have to pass his muster. That is what an auteur does.”
Mr. Jobs has acquired a reputation as a great designer, Mr. Tan says, not because he personally makes the designs but because “he’s got the eye.” He has also hired classically trained designers like Jonathan Ive. “Design excellence also attracts design talent,” Mr. Tan explains.

For the full story, see:
RANDALL STROSS. “DIGITAL DOMAIN; The Auteur vs. the Committee.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., July 24, 2011): 3.
(Note: the online version of the story is dated July 23, 2011.)

Edison Excelled as an Organizer of Systems

(p. 131) Where Edison truly excelled was as an organizer of systems. The invention of the light bulb was a wondrous thing but of not much practical use when no one had a socket to plug it into. Edison and his tireless workers had to design and build the entire system from scratch, from power stations to cheap and reliable wiring, to lampstands and switches. Within months Edison had set up no fewer than 334 small electrical plants all over the world; (p. 132) within a year or so his plants were powering thirteen thousand light bulbs. Cannily he put them in places where they would be sure to make maximum impact: on the New York Stock Exchange, in the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, La Scala opera house in Milan, the dining room of the House of Commons in London. Swan, meanwhile, was still doing much of his manufacturing in his own home. He didn’t, in short, have a lot of vision. Indeed, he didn’t even file for a patent. Edison took out patents everywhere, including in Britain in November 1879, and so secured his preeminence.

Source:
Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. New York: Doubleday, 2010.