“Man can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their [...]
Sexual reproduction creates new individuals that are all slightly different from each other allowing for the adaptation and resilience of the species to changing circumstances. Imperative to sexual reproduction is [...]
People video-ing with the smartphone held vertically? To me that was just plain stupid! It was just wrong to do it like that: “You are holding it wrong!” How could my own preference, my believe, have been so strong that I assumed all the others were doing it wrong?
I have been very quiet as of late on my pet subject “collaborability”, unfortunately. The subject asks for a serious amount of prolonged and heightened concentration to get back into [...]
(Part IV in a series on biometrics) We can recognize human faces and voices tremendously well. Even then, we regularly are making mistakes or are being deceived by our own [...]
(Part I in a series on behavioral biometrics) The various types of biometrics have been lingering above our networked societies as its continuous technological development promises secure, easy and cost [...]
I have always wondered when the moment would come that I could pick up a phone and speak in my mother-tongue that would instantly translate into Mandarin Chinese while emulating my own voice and vice versa! Microsoft demoed a Skype call translating a conversation form German to English and back in real time.
Reiterating on a current theme here at Red Planet Dust about our human abilities have a look at interview with Cass Sunstein, Professor at Harvard.
Since Moore minted his law on the doubling of processor speed in a given time interval people have been wondering when a computer would equal the power of the human brain. This moment is often referred to as “singularity”. The idea computers will surpass us at moment t= “singularity” is a fallacy.
A guy is driving his Rolls Royce (!) down a nice lightly bending lane with cars parked on his side of the road somewhere in England. He notices a car parked a little further ahead preparing to drive away. To warn the other driver he flashes his big lights several times and to his terror he sees the car pulling up to the driving lane were he hits the car midway.
Human nature and our abilities are intertwined with collaborability. My statements about them are scattered all over Red Planet Dust. I wondered if a consistent image would arise when I would collect my statements.
Very read worthy article by VOX's Ezra Klein about Yale Law professor Dan Kahan c.s. doing research to answer "Why isn’t good evidence more effective in resolving political debates?"
Search is basic to the Internet and to be considered a utility function. Without „search” no find. "Degraded links" are hurting society as a whole and should be banned.
What if companies like Google, or banks, start throttling their services and pricing dependent on if you are positive or negative about them or if you accept their latest offering?
By clicking a link in a interesting article by Techcrunch I stumbled upon "Our Comrade The Electron" - Webstock Conference Talk by Maciej Ceglowski. Excellent presentation, intriguing narrative and great observations on our relation with technology.
Walking to the office this morning it struck me that the evolution of (physical) currency in relation to payments could show us the long term development of digital money as well: step by step the currency has been developing until at a certain moment in time the transaction will be done directly between the payer and the payee.
„Is our political system capable of managing rapid technological change?” When pressed I would be tempted to answer the question with a resounding YES! for I see abundant evidence around me we have done so very successfully. Actually it is one of the core abilities we humans have to adapt to changing conditions.
Whether you think in terms of “ the creation of a world of plenty” or “the disappearance of the middle class” in both scenarios the distribution of the wealth available will have to be dealt with politically.
We, as individuals, are seldomly aware of the fact that we have difficulties in seeing the world around us neutrally. We are loaded with concepts and ideas that when looked [...]
The acceptance of Bitcoin protocol currencies and Ripple like networks is dependent on trust even if trust is said not to be necessary for the value to be transferred between two actors. Neglecting this will hamper adoption of the Bitcoin protocol by the masses.
The inquiry into “Collaborability” is about creating a theory on human collaboration. Humans predominantly collaborate with tools involved. We are not the only species to use tools but we have [...]
One of the things that has always intrigued me immensely is how companies can operate while not a single person in that particular company has a full apprehension of what [...]
Please find below one of the sections of the document “Collaborability: a theory on Human Collaborability” I am working on. Consider it a sneak peak opportunity for all those visitors [...]
(translation 4 march 2014; "Terug naar excessen van vroeg-industriële tijd of naar geleide welvaartsverdeling?") One of the consequences of technological innovation is, not as you might think, the simple service [...]
Weer rake analyse van uber-linkblogger John Gruber @ Daring Fireball : "Open and Shut" The dogmatic assumption that openness correlates to success, evidence to the contrary be damned, overcomplicates the [...]
