Author Archives: Scott C. Lemon

About Scott C. Lemon

I'm a techno futurist, interested in all aspects of humanity, sociology, community, identity, and technology. While we are all approaching the Singularity, I'm just having fun effecting the outcomes of the future!

If it’s not one thing …

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Well … I kept playing around with Radio prior to the Internet Identity Workshop 2005 and
all of the sudden it began to work!  No idea why … maybe it knew
that I had my first two Drupal sites up and running … 🙂

Of course, it did me NO good at IIW, since the wireless network
completely sucked and was unusable.  Now that the workshop is
over, I’m on my own network where connectivity exists.

For all of the people who think that “bandwidth and connectivity will
be everywhere”, I’d like to believe the story, but this workshop was
the second example in the last month where a “high-tech” conference was
unable to live up to the promise.

Ok … sorry for the complaining … now I’ll get to my blog posts!

Problems with Radio

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I am now committed to locate a new blogging tool … although I know
that the search is going to be tough. For years I have used Radio
from userland Software, however it keeps giving me fits and I have now
been unable to get a blog post to “post” for weeks.

Radio has some incredible features that I exploit, and I have grown so
used to how to get things done I really like it. If only it would
work consistently.

I’m doing this as a test to see if threatening to leave this piece of software might cause it to work again …

Who knows …

Carver Mead @ Telecosm

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Carver Mead is an amazing speaker … I always love to hear him
speak. Here at Telecosm he is the after dinner speaker, and the
title of his talk is Science and Society: timing the crests and troughs of opportunity in life and science.

His talk started with a conversation about the vacuum tube, and how
Edison created the foundation. He elaborated and explained the
next series of experiments with vacuum tubes, and how they progressed,
and eventually how this research led to the creation of the
transistor. From there he progressed into a discussion about the
discovery of the first superconductor. What makes his story
telling so amazing is his presentation of the subject, his in-depth
knowledge of the subject, and his ability to communicate so clearly.

It’s funny to hear his mild disdain for Bohr and others who, in his
words, discouraged alternative views of quantum physics. He jokes
about how students today are not taught collective quantum systems, but instead a strange model of photons. He refers to his “little green book” as the source of learning about collective quantum effects. His little green book is titled: Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of
Electromagnetism … I’m going to have a buy a copy.

He closed his presentation by referring to the few people, from his
perspective, that are truly thinking again about physics at a different
level … from a different perspective … instead of just blindly
following the directions that were laid out decades ago.

Crappy Wireless @ Telecosm

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I haven’t been blogging … since it was just too much of a pain. 
The wireless network here at Telecosm – of all places – was a
complete joke this year!  I’ve taken lots of notes, and will post
when I get someplace that there is decent bandwidth … like back in my
room.

The guys from Tropos Networks were supposed
to be providing wireless, however what they provided was crap.  I
had to argue with them on Tuesday to get them to even get it working
… and then it has been up and down for the last two days.  When
it was working, the bandwidth sucked.

It’s amazing in this day and age, to be at a high-end conference that
is talking about the Internet, and not be able to get high-speed
wireless Internet access.

If I come next year, I’ll be bringing all of my own equipment to provide wireless for the attendees!

Chris Anderson @ Telecosm

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Chris Anderson was up next … I saw him speak at eTech a while
back.  I actually sat next to him at eTech before he spoke …
although I didn’t know it until he got up to speak.

He gave his Long Tail presentation, and there were some updated
details.  It’s a insightful presentation that talks about one way
that the Internet is allowing more companies to exploit the “long tail”
… the vast market that exists outside of the high-volume markets.

As he progressed through his thoughts, he brought up his Set of Three Forces … something that I had forgotten:

  • Force 1: Democratize the production
  • Force 2: Lower the cost of consumption
  • Force 3: Connect consumers

As he talked about the first force, I got sidetracked as I explored the companies that he brought up – Flickr, Typepad, GarageBand, Movie Maker, Lulu.  I had heard of the first three, couldn’t find the fourth, and started to read about the last one – Lulu.

I like to think about this in the context of Agilix Labs and what we can
offfer to students.  Force 1 and Force 3 seem to be the easiest to
pursue.

George Gilder and Telecosm 2005

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I haven’t been to Telecosm in years … the last year that I
registered was 2001 when 9/11 occurred and caused a lot of 
conferences to change their schedules.  I’m here this year to
catch up on the capitalist view of the world … Forbes conferences are
always impressive to me.

George Gilder did a brief introduction and kicked things off. 
He immediately went into a short story of how he met Ray Kurzweil …
and then invited him to the stage.

Ray told the story of his Telecosm introduction of The Age of Spiritual Machines. 
For anyone who has not read this book, I highly recommend it.  Ray
went on to explain how this led to his indepth research and study of
the trends that he outlined, and how he is now using this as a
foundation to forecast future trends … 3, 5, and even 10 years out.

He spoke about how his research is getting very good at predicting
longer range trends with surprising accuracy … even being very
conservative.  His new book – being released today – is called The Singularity is Near.  I got my copy here at the conference, and even had it signed by Ray after the evening session at the fireside chat.  He indicated that information is becoming the most important aspect of computing.

It’s funny seeing Ray just weeks after Accelerating Change 2005
… he’s giving (of
course) almost the exact same presentation.  It’s always cool to
hear though … the constant reminder of exponential growth.  His
graphs including showing the Mass Use of Inventions – the World Wide Web being adopted far faster than the cell phone.  

He had a great chart that showed the growth in supercomputing –
measured by calculations per second (CPS) – and said that the estimates
of the power of the human brain range from 10^14 to 10^16 CPS. 
His estimates on when we would reach that point were confirmed as being
sooner when a group in Japan just annouced last week that they will
attain 10^16 Calculations per second by 2010!

He next went to The Biotechnology revolution:  the intersection of biology with information technology.  He talked about the research into biology and what is now possible with new technolgies.  RNA interference
is a newer technique to turn-on and turn-off individual genes, and is
now being widely tested and moving towards human trials. United
Theraputics (Nasdaq: UTHR) is one company that Ray is involved with doing research in this area.

As Ray wrapped up, George and Ray went into a brief chat on
stage.  It was interesting to hear the difference in questions
here at Telecosm.  They were more economic based, and global
society based – Where are the profits going to be made?  Will
America keep up?  Will this solve global war issues?  How
will people deal with this radical growth?  How will this be
regulated?  A great opening night!

Garage Blogging

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I had to do it.  Garage Blogging.

I was waiting for lunch to finish cooking, and so I was playing with my
son, Sam, in the garage.  While we were playing I was loading my
truck with my tools for my after-lunch project … I’m heading into
Salt Lake City to work on installing a wireless set-up at an Internet
Cafe.  I had some stuff I had to check on-line, but Sam was having
too much fun playing with his Spiderman Car.  Wireless rules!

I grabbed my laptop from inside, and sat down out in the garage and got
to work . .. what a nice day.  I headed out to the front porch and
thought about the amazing progress … I’m no longer stuck to a desk to
get some quick “global” work done … I can work from my garage. 
Even though I live with technology ever day, some times it still hits
me as truly amazing.  Wild to think where we will be in the next
10 years.

I’ll be at George Gilder’s Telecosm
conference this week … I’ll be blogging there.  I haven’t been
to one of his conferences since 2000.  In 2001 the events of 9/11
caused the conference to be cancelled.  Since then, I’ve been too
busy working on things.  I’m really looking forward to this years
conference.

Blogging Barrage

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Sorry about the barrage of blogging this weekend … I know that some
of the posts might not have been completely applicable to the topic of
this blog, however in my mind it all relates.  I got some feedback
from some folks that wanted to know what the heck I was thinking …
and others that really liked the diverse set of posts that I wrote.

I’ll do my best to see if I can sort better in the future.