Shift to the Future

I recently watched the movie Transcendence ( see trailer ).  Having read Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near a few years ago, I thought it would be cool to see a movie roughly based on similar ideas.  Note… I found the book to be interesting but disturbing, likewise the movie.  There is an internal drive within some people to pursue inventions for the sake of the science.  Unfortunately, there are consequences to new inventions that go along with the perceived benefits.  As new seemingly miraculous inventions are conceived, we should be more vigilante about asking “why”.  Why should we even try to upload a human brain or any brain, into a machine?  Why should we try to ‘live eternally’ within a machine as a digital existence?  There are scientists like Ray Kurzweil who believe it is possible and that the capability should be invented.  But should it?  Okay, back to earth… I personally don’t believe it is possible to transcend our h...

With my recent job change where I now commute 48km each way through a complex labyrinth of roads and traffic, I have lots of time (45-50 minutes in the morning, 75-105 minutes after work) to reflect on the state of our transportation system.  Along the way there are seven cities, one bridge, and approximately 40 lights to navigate.  Traffic stops, goes, slows, speeds up, weaves (no signaling), merges, people cut each other off, some talk on phones, some day dream, some get sleepy, etc.  It’s a rats nest of dangerous weapons driven by people, many who shouldn’t be driving, just waiting to have an accident!  Let’s imagine together what could be done to change this up… There are some fundamental changes required to create intelligent roadways.  Electronic nodes could be installed, perhaps as nanopaint, and applied to the sides, lanes, and center of roads, starting with the freeways, highways, and major commuting routes.  Additionally, the cell phone networks...

My first introduction to algorithms dates back to grade 11.  There was one computer, an APL machine , in the entire school district and it happened to be in my math classroom.  As budding mathematicians, we learned to write algorithms and program them into the APL machine.  I remember writing a black jack card game and that might have been the turning point for me to shift away from becoming a mechanic to go into computer science.  Actually I often credit that particular teacher (thank-you Jim Swift ) with changing my destiny as it was he that pointed me into the new direction.  Folks, math and algorithms, “ a set of rules that precisely defines a sequence of operations ”, are underlying everything in our world.  I will relate this to education later in this post so hang in there… Remember back in the early days of Internet search when there was no predictive hints provided?  You had to know how to find things online (Internet quests anyone) and tha...

I don’t know about you but I often wonder about the pace of invention and innovation in our world.  There are marvels being envisioned, designed, engineered, and produced all the time.  Many inventions are meant to improve our lives in some way.  While driving the country side of Germany in May , we say many wind farms.  These are pretty cool devices to see.  Harnessing wind power to generate electricity is a good use of invention to try to tackle the problem of less clean technologies that power our always on lives. As I get older, I’m looking forward to the results of research into personalized health care which might yield amazing improvements in how disease is detected and dealt with.  Imagine smart “drugs” that are actually super miniature computers, nanobots, programmed to be compatible with your DNA and once injected, rapidly seek out specific diseased cells.  Once found, the nanobots rearrange at a molecular level, the cell structure to corre...

I visited a grade 6 classroom this past week where every student had a personally owned laptop.  The students were learning about basic geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, and others with more sides which I forget the names for (I could Google them if I needed to).  The teacher ask them to create a program using Scratch to prompt for the number of sides, the length of a side, and to calculate the angle between any two sides, and finally to generate and display the shape.  While I was there, the kids were able to complete, to varying degrees, the pieces to prompt and calculate an angle (not necessarily correctly, but).  Some had a display “algorithm” programmed and were generating all sorts of spiral graph type shapes (not the shape intended mind you).  It was exciting to see their engagement, actually total being absorbed, in the learning activity.  For homework, they were to at least have a correctly running program that calculates and displays t...

Every so often I just have to pause to contemplate the awesomeness of our world.  Technology has certainly brought the world amazing tools and services.  I’m reading an historical fiction book “The Seekers”, book #3 in an 8 book series.  The story is set in the late 1700’s, early 1800’s in the newly formed USA.  At one point a young couple migrates west down the Ohio river, acquires 20 acres, builds a crude cabin, begins to clear land, plant corn, and own a cow.  The harsh lifestyle is astonishing.  I suspect that most of us in the developed world take for granted what we have and enjoy.  Those early settlers lived on corn mush and semi-sour milk, every day, every meal.  Their cooking, bathing, clothing, labouring, entertaining capacity was very poor.  To reach the small village near the fort to trade with others, they walked four miles through harsh terrain.  At least they had ‘central heating’ for their cabin, a fireplace!  Think...