Old religions and the priestly hierarchies who largely administer them still propagate the notion that religion is somehow otherworldly. A new crop of theorists and art, though, begins to get at the miraculous of the now, none the least of which is Lee Smolin from Canada’s Perim
In the past few months I have been setting up a new online forum for nurses using the amazing Jeff Atwood created Discourse. Discourse is a thoroughly modern open source online forum software on steroids. Everything about it screams five minutes from now – easy social networking
Imagine you had control of a million computer servers. You could install complex enterprise, creative, other kinds of software on each. Quickly reconfigure thousands of machines at a time. Automate hooks into all kinds of web services – everything from e-commerce, to trading sto
Having had a significant stint doing technical writing at Genetec—who develop security software for such places as Starbucks, the New York Giants Stadium, and the most heavily trafficked airport in the World at Dubai—I guess it comes as no surprise that I landed a couple of job interv
Despite a recognition that there is a fair share of hype, science fiction is quickly becoming science fact ever so swiftly. Just this week it was announced that a computer has finally passed the Turing Test 64 years after it was proposed. This test is designed to gauge whether a compu
I find myself conflicted. As a long time technical writer living through many software start-ups and several larger established and successful companies such as Autodesk and Moment Factory, I was almost forced de facto to buy into the hype of the future. That is, to believe in the pre
The debate over communications rages on much according to Tim Wu’s argument in The Master Switch, and more narrowly made in technically oriented books like Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier and one I just recently read called Dogfight by Fred Vogelstein about the Apple
A couple of times in the last week I have heard the phrase “permanent innovation” or a close variation thereof. The intro to the new J.J. Abrams produced show ‘Almost Human’ talks about runaway technological advancement, and a podcast of BBC’s HARDTalk fe
Today I had to take a bus and metro in Montreal to a semi-unknown destination so of course I consulted Google Maps. Its suggested route was not bad, but because I do know Montreal quite well, I was able to use my ‘human’ common sense to take its suggestion and improve upon