innovation

Four principles of modernity

commonplace book, science / /

From “Relativity, Uncertainty, Incompleteness and Undecidability“:

In this article four fundamental principles are presented: relativity, uncertainty, incompleteness and undecidability. They were studied by, respectively, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. …

Relativity says that there is no privileged, “objective” viewpoint for certain observations. … Now, if things move relative to each other, then obviously their positions at a given time are also measured relative to each other. …

Werner Heisenberg showed that if we built a machine to tell us with high precision were an electron is, this machine could not also tell us the speed of the electron. If we want to measure its speed without altering it we can use a different light but then we wouldn’t know where it is. At atomic scale, no instrument can tell us at the same time exactly where a particle is and exactly at what speed it is moving. …

If this system is complete, then anything that is true is provable. Similarly, anything false is provable false. Kurt Gödel got the intuition that traditional mathematical logic was not complete, and devoted several years to try to find one thing, a single thing that was inside the mathematics but outside the reach of logic. … Gödel’s incompleteness means that the classical mathematical logic deductive system, and actually any logical system consistent and expressive enough, is not complete, has “holes” full of expressions that are not logically true nor false. …

Turing’s halting problem is one of the problems that fall in to the category of undecidable problems. It says that it is not possible to write a program to decide if other program is correctly written, in the sense that it will never hang. This creates a limit to the verification of all programs, as all the attempts of building actual computers, usable in practice and different from Turing machines have been proved to be equivalent in power and limitations to the basic Turing machine.

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New communication, new art forms

on writing, social software, tech in changing society / /

From Jim Hanas’ “The Story Doesn’t Care: An Interview with Sean Stewart“:

I think that every means of communication carries within itself the potential for a form of art. Once the printing press was built, novels were going to happen. It took the novel a little while to figure out exactly what it was going to be, but once the press was there, something was going to occur. Once motion picture cameras were around, the movies—in some format or another—were going to happen.

I modestly or immodestly think that [developers of alternate reality games] got some things fundamentally right about the way the web and the internet want to tell stories in a way that not everyone had gotten quite when we lucked into it. What people do on the web is they look for things and they gossip. We found a way of storytelling that has a lot to do with looking for things and gossiping about them. …

Suspension of disbelief is a much more fragile creation in the kinds of campaigns we’re doing right now than it is in novels, where everyone has taken the last two hundred years to agree on a set of rules about how you understand what’s happening in a book. That hasn’t happened here. Right now, this is at an unbelievably fluid and dynamic stage—a whole bunch of things that have been figured out in other art forms, we’re working them out on the fly.

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My new book – Hacking Knoppix – available now

business, personal, science, technology / /

Knoppix is one of the great innovations in open source software in the last few years. Everyone that sees it wants to use it, since it is that rarest of software tools: the true Swiss Army Knife, capable of use by unsophisticated, experienced, and wizardly users, able to perform any of several hundred (if not thousand) tasks in an efficient and powerful way. Best of all, it’s super easy to employ, ultra-portable, and platform- and hardware-agnostic.

Knoppix camps on your system without canceling out your regular installation or messing with your files. And it’s really fun to play with. Hacking Knoppix provides all kinds of ways to customize Knoppix for your particular needs, plus the scoop on various Knoppix distros. Learn to build a Knoppix first-aid kit for repairing cranky Windows and rescuing precious data, or create your own Live CD. In short, Hacking Knoppix will transform your ordinary powerless Knoppix-curious individual into a fearsome Knoppix ninja, able to right wrongs, recover data, and vanquish the forces of ignorance and Windows usage once and for all.

Our approach in Hacking Knoppix is smart, detailed, and fun. We know our stuff, and we want our readers to understand and enjoy all the outrageously cool things that Knoppix makes possible. If a topic is kind of hard to understand, we’ll explain it so that lesser experienced readers get it and more experienced readers still learn something new; if a point needs in-depth explanation, we’ll give it in an interesting fashion; and if it needs a splash of humor to relieve the tedium, we’ll slip in something humorous, like a banana peel in front of Bill Gates.

  • Knoppix is an innovative Linux distribution that does not require installation, making it ideal to use for a rescue system, demonstration purposes, or many other applications
  • Shows hack-hungry fans how to fully customize Knoppix and Knoppix-based distributions
  • Readers will learn to create two different Knoppix-based live CDs, one for children and one for Windows recovery
  • Teaches readers to use Knoppix to work from a strange computer, rescue a Windows computer that won’t boot, repair and recover data from other machines, and more
  • Includes Knoppix Light 4.0 on a ready-to-use, bootable live CD

Read sample excerpts, including Unraveling the Knoppix Toolkit Maze (1.7 MB PDF), the complete Table of Contents (135 kb PDF) & the Index (254 kb PDF).

Buy Hacking Knoppix from Amazon!

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The innovation of the margin

commonplace book, history, language & literature, on writing, technology / /

From InfoWorld:

In chapter 4 of Klaus Kaasgaard’s Software Design and Usability, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) alumnus Austin Henderson says that “one of the most brilliant inventions of the paper bureaucracy was the idea of the margin.” There was always space for unofficial data, which traveled with the official data, and everybody knew about the relationship between the two.

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One of my favorite ideas: flow

commonplace book, cool stuff / /

From BrainChannels:

Mr. Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee) is chiefly renowned as the architect of the notion of flow in creativity; people enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. Mr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

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CNN’s innovations & insights

business, commonplace book, technology / /

From Joel Kurtzman, Interview with Gary Hamel, Strategy & Business (4th Qtr 1997):

One of the most interesting cases of all is CNN, which “saw at least three things that had already changed in our world that others had not yet put together”: technology changes produced small satellite uplinks that made it possible to report from virtually anywhere; lifestyle changes meant we don’t all get home in time for the six o’clock network news; and regulatory changes allowed cable operators to undermine the monopoly of regional broadcasters.

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My first book – Don’t Click on the Blue E! – is out!

business, personal, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

For all those surfers who have slowly grown disenchanted with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser, Don’t Click on the Blue E! from O’Reilly is here to help. It offers non-technical users a convenient roadmap for switching to a better web browser – Firefox.

The only book that covers the switch to Firefox, Don’t Click on the Blue E! is a must for anyone who wants to browse faster, more securely, and more efficiently. It takes readers through the process step-by-step, so it’s easy to understand. Schools, non-profits, businesses, and individuals can all benefit from this how-to guide.

Firefox includes most of the features that browser users are familiar with, along with several new features other browsers don’t have, such as a bookmarks toolbar and window tabs that allow users to quickly switch among several web sites. There is also the likelihood of better security with Firefox.

All indications say that Firefox is more than just a passing fad. With USA Today and Forbes Magazine hailing it as superior to Internet Explorer, Firefox is clearly the web browser of the future. In fact, as it stands today, already 22% of the market currently employs Firefox for their browsing purposes.

Don’t Click on the Blue E! has been written exclusively for this growing audience. With its straightforward approach, it helps people harness this emerging technology so they can enjoy a superior – and safer – browsing experience.

Read two sample excerpts: Counteracting Web Annoyances (651 kb PDF) & Safety and Security (252 kb PDF).

Translated into Japanese!

Buy Don’t Click on the Blue E! from Amazon!

My first book – Don’t Click on the Blue E! – is out! Read More »