Technology – Page 41 – artdiamondblog.com

If the Uncredentialed Succeed, It Must Be Luck

(p. 33) Newcomen and Calley had, in broad strokes, the design for a working engine. They had enjoyed some luck, though it was anything but dumb luck. This didn’t seem to convince the self-named (p. 34) experimental philosopher J. T. Desaguliers, a Huguenot refugee Like Papin, who became one of Isaac Newton’s assistants and (later) a priest in the Church of England. Desaguliers wrote, just before his death in 1744, that the two men had made their engine work, but “not being either philosophers to understand the reason, or mathematicians enough to calculate the powers and to proportion the parts, very luckily by accident found what they sought for.”

The notion of’ Newcomen’s scientific ignorance persists to this day. One of its expressions is the legend that the original engine was made to cycle automatically by the insight of a boy named Humphrey Potter, who built a mazelike network of catches and strings from the plug rod to open the valves and close them. It is almost as if a Dartmouth ironmonger simply had to have an inordinate amount of luck to succeed where so many had failed.
The discovery of the power of injected water was luck; understanding and exploiting it was anything but. Newcomen and CalIey replaced the accidental hole in the cylinder with an injection valve, and, ingeniously, attached it to the piston itself. When the piston reached the bottom of the cylinder, it automatically closed the injection valve and opened another valve, permitting the water to flow out.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: italics in original.)

Toricelli Experiment Dispoved Aristotlelian Theory that a Vacuum Was Impossible

(p. 8) Florence, in the year 1641, had been essentially the private fief of the Medici family for two centuries. The city, ground zero for both the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, was also where Galileo Galilei had chosen to live out the sentence imposed by the Inquisition for his heretical writings that argued that the earth revolved around the sun. Galileo was seventy years old and living in a villa in Arcetri, in the hills above the city, (p. 9) when he read a book on the physics of movement titled De motu (sometimes Trattato del Moto) and summoned its author, Evangelista Torricelli, a mathematician then living in Rome. Torricelli, whose admiration for Galileo was practically without limit, decamped in time not only to spend the last three months of the great man’s life at his side, but to succeed him as professor of mathematics at the Florentine Academy.
. . .
(p. 9) . . . , Torricelli used a tool even more powerful than his well–cultivated talent for mathematical logic: He did experiments. At the behest of one of his patrons, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose engineers were unable to build a sufficiently powerful pump, Torricelli designed a series of apparatuses to test the limits of the action of contemporary water pumps. In spring of 1644, Torricelli filled a narrow, four-foot-long glass tube with mercury–a far heavier fluid than water–inverted it in a basin of mercury, sealing the tube’s top. and documented that while the mercury did not pour out, it did leave a space at the closed top of the tube. He reasoned that since nothing could have slipped past the mercury in the tube, what occupied the top of the tube must, therefore, be nothing: a vacuum.
. . .
(p. 10) Torricelli was not, even by the standards of his day, a terribly ambitious inventor. When faced with hostility from religious authorities and other traditionalists who believed, correctly, that his discovery was a direct shot at the Aristotelian world, he happily returned to his beloved cycloids, the latest traveler to find himself on the wrong side of the boundary line between science and technology
But by then it no longer mattered if Torricelli was willing to leave the messiness of physics for the perfection of mathematics: vacuum would keep mercury in the bottle, hut the genie was already out. Nature might have found vacuum repugnant for two thousand years, but Europe was about to embrace it.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: italics in original; ellipses added.)

William Rosen’s “The Most Powerful Idea in the World”

Source of book image: http://ffbsccn.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/the-most-powerful-idea-in-the-world.jpg

The range of William Rosen’s fascinating and useful book is very broad indeed. He is interested in THE question: why did the singular improvement in living standards known as the industrial revolution happen where and when it did?
The question is not just of historical interest—if we can figure out what caused the improvement then and there, we have a better shot at continuing to improve in the here and now.
I especially enjoyed and learned from William Rosen’s discussion, examples and quotations on the difficult issue of whether patents are on balance a good or bad institution.
Deirdre McCloskey taught me that the most important part of a sentence is the last word, and the most important part of a paragraph is the last sentence, and the most important part of a chapter is the last paragraph.
Here are the last couple of sentences of Rosen’s book:

(p. 324) Incised in the stone over the Herbert C. Hoover Building’s north entrance is the legend that, with Lincoln’s characteristic brevity, sums up the single most important idea in the world:

THE PATENT SYSTEM ADDED

THE FUEL OF INTEREST

TO THE FIRE OF GENIUS

In the next few weeks I will occasionally quote a few of the more illuminating passages from Rosen’s well-written account.

Book discussed:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.

Twitter CEO Returned to Nebraska to Found First Company

Evan Williams, Twitter CEO. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 9) I GREW up on a farm in Nebraska, where we grew mostly corn and soybeans. During the summers I was responsible for making sure the crops were irrigated.

After high school, I enrolled at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but I stayed only a year and a half. I felt college was a waste of time; I wanted to start working. I moved to Florida, where I did some freelance copywriting. After that I moved to Texas and stayed with my older sister while I figured out what to do next. In 1994, I returned to Nebraska and started my first company with my dad.
We didn’t know anything about the Internet, but I thought it was going to be a big deal. We produced CD-ROMs and a video on how to use the Internet, and we did some Web hosting. I recruited some friends and we tossed around some ideas, but none of us knew how to write software and we didn’t have much money. We watched what entrepreneurs in California were doing and tried to play along.
. . .
My life has been a series of well-orchestrated accidents; I’ve always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism. I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee. I’ve been able to pay my father back, which is nice, and my mother doesn’t worry about me as much since I got married a year and a half ago.

For the full story, see:
EVAN WILLIAMS. “The Boss; For Twitter C.E.O., Well-Orchestrated Accidents.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., March 8, 2009): 9.
(Note: the online version of the story is dated March 7, 2009.)

Air Conditioning as “the Antithesis of Passive Resignation”

In the passage quoted below, Severgnini captures something of the truth. Americans, at their best, have sought to control nature in order to make life longer and happier.
But Severgnini does not see that there is a difference between seeking to control nature and seeking to control other people. At its best, America excels at the former, and refrains from the latter.

(p. W9) A few years ago, Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini recounted his adventures in the U.S. in the book “Ciao, America!” in which he offered up humorous musings on many of the standard European complaints about the American way of living. Mr. Severgnini allows that he rather admires the Yankee “urge to control the outside world,” whether that means sending planes off an aircraft carrier or sending out technicians from Carrier.

He notes that the refusal to suffer the sweaty indignity of equatorial heat is “the antithesis of passive resignation,” and thus a perfect expression of the can-do American character. “In America, air-conditioning is not simply a way of cooling down a room,” Mr. Severgnini writes. “It is an affirmation of supremacy.”

For the full commentary, see:
ERIC FELTEN. “DE GUSTIBUS; The Big Chill: Giving AC the Cold Shoulder.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 23, 2010): W9.

Wozniak “Lucky” to Be Young “Just as a Revolution Is About to Take Off”

(p. 299) If you’re as lucky as I’ve been, then you’ll get to live in a time when you’re young just as a revolution is about to take off. Just like Henry Ford was there for the automotive industry, I was there to see and build the first personal computers.

Back in the mid-1990s when I was teaching school, I thought one time to myself, Wow, I wish I could be twelve now, look at the things I could do with what’s out there now.
(p. 300) But then I realized I was lucky. I got to see the before, the during, and the after of some of those changes in life. I got to be one of those few people who could effect some of those changes.
Excellence came to me from not having much money, and also from having good building skills but not having done these products before.
I hope you’ll be as lucky as I am. The world needs inventors–great ones. You can be one. If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within your reach. And it’ll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

Source:
Wozniak, Steve, and Gina Smith. iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006.

Wozniak on Borrowing Xerox Parc’s Graphical User Interface (GUI)

(p. 293) But there was one exception. Right around 1980, Steve and a bunch of us from Apple got to tour the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) facility, which is one of Xerox’s research and development labs.

Inside, for the first time ever, we saw real video displays–computer monitors–and they were showing something entirely new They were showing the first graphical user interface (GUI)–art interface that lets you interact with icons and menus to control a program.
(p. 294) Up to this point, everything had been text-based. That’s going to sound odd to all the people who don’t remember it, but that’s how everything worked back then. A computer user had to actually type in text commands–long, complicated ones–to make something happen.
But this experimental Xerox computer had windows popping up all over the place. And they were using this funny-looking device everyone now knows as a mouse, clicking on words and small pictures, the icons, to make things happen.
The minute I saw this interface, I knew it was the future. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. It was like a one-way door to the future–and once you went through it, you could never turn back. It was such a huge improvement in using computers. The GUI meant you could get a computer to do the same things it could normally do, but with much less physical and mental effort. It meant that nontechnical people could do some pretty powerful things with computers without having to sit there and learn how to type in long commands. Also, it let several different programs run in separate windows at the same time. That was powerful!
A few years later, Apple designed the Lisa computer, and later the Macintosh, around this concept. And Microsoft did it a couple years after that with Microsoft Windows. And now, more than twenty-five years after we saw that experimental computer in the Xerox PARC lab, all computers work like this.
It’s so rare to be able to see the future like that. I can’t promise it’ll happen to you. But when you see it, you know it. If this ever happens to you, leap at the chance to get involved. Trust your instincts. It isn’t often that the future lets you in like that.

Source:
Wozniak, Steve, and Gina Smith. iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006.

Driving Blind: Exploring the Unexplorable

“The National Federation of the Blind operates a science camp to inspire young blind students, such as the girl above [Addison Hugen]. The organization is working with Virginia Tech on a vehicle equipped with sensors for blind drivers.” Source of photo: online version of the article quoted and cited below. Source of caption: print version of the article quoted and cited below. [Bracketed name from online version of caption.]

(p. 3A) WASHINGTON (AP) – Could a blind person drive a car? Researchers are trying to make that far-fetched notion a reality.

The National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech plan to demonstrate a prototype vehicle next year equipped with technology that helps a blind person drive a car independently.
The technology, called “nonvisual interfaces,” uses sensors to let a blind driver maneuver a car based on information transmitted to him about his surroundings: whether another car or object is nearby, in front of him or in a neighboring lane.
Advocates for the blind consider it a “moon shot,” a goal similar to President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to land a man on the moon. For many blind people, driving a car long has been considered impossible. But researchers hope the project could revolutionize mobility and challenge long-held assumptions about limitations.
“We’re exploring areas that have previously been regarded as unexplorable,” said Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind.

For the full story, see:
KEN THOMAS . “Blind Drivers Goal of High-Tech Car Project.” Omaha World-Herald (Saturday, July 3, 2010): 3A.
(Note: the online version of the article has the title: “Driving while blind? Maybe, with new high-tech car.”)

The British Museum Collaborating with Wikipedia

“Two visitors from Wikipedia, Liam Wyatt, left, and Joseph Seddon, at the British Museum.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) The British Museum has begun an unusual collaboration with Wikipedia, the online, volunteer-written encyclopedia, to help ensure that the museum’s expertise and notable artifacts are reflected in that digital reference’s pages.

About 40 Wikipedia contributors in the London area spent Friday with a “backstage pass” to the museum, meeting with curators and taking photographs of the collection. And in a curious reversal in status, curators were invited to review Wikipedia’s treatment of the museum’s collection and make a case that important pieces were missing or given short shrift.
Among those wandering the galleries was the museum’s first Wikipedian in residence, Liam Wyatt, who will spend five weeks in the museum’s offices to build a relationship between the two organizations, one founded in 1753, the other in 2001.
“I looked at how many Rosetta Stone page views there were at Wikipedia,” said Matthew Cock, who is in charge of the museum’s Web site and is supervising the collaboration with Wikipedia. “That is perhaps our iconic object, and five times as many people go to the Wikipedia article as to ours.”
In other words, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Once criticized as amateurism run amok, Wikipedia has become ingrained in the online world: it is consulted by millions of users when there is breaking news; its articles are frequently the first result when a search engine is used.
. . .
(p. C6) Getting permission to work with Wikipedia was not as hard a sell as he expected, Mr. Cock said. “Everyone assumed everyone else hated it and that I shouldn’t recommend it to the directorate,” he said. “I laid it out, put a paper together. I won’t say I was surprised, but I was very pleased it was very well received.”
He said he had enthusiastic support from four departments, including Greek and Roman antiquity and prints and drawings. “I don’t think it is just the young curators,” he added.

For the full story, see:
NOAM COHEN. “Venerable British Museum Enlists in the Wikipedia Revolution.” The New York Times (Sat., June 5, 2010): C1 & C6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated June 4, 2010.)

Android App Phones Play “One Seriously Crazy Game of Leapfrog”

“The Droid X is the latest “best Android phone on the market.”” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) You think technology moves too fast now? You think your camera, camcorder and computer become obsolete quickly?

Try buying an app phone. In this business, the state of the art changes as often as Lady Gaga changes outfits.
Suppose, for example, that you want one of the increasingly popular phones that run Google’s Android software.
Last November, you might have been tempted by the Motorola Droid, “the best Android phone on the market.” A month later, the HTC Hero was “the best Android phone on the market.” By January, “the best Android phone yet” was the Nexus One. In April, “the best Android device that you can purchase” was the HTC Incredible. In May, “the best Android phone on the market” was the Sprint Evo.
Either “the best Android phone on the market” is a tech critic’s tic, or we’re witnessing one seriously crazy game of leapfrog.
The latest buzz is about the Motorola Droid X, which Verizon will offer in mid-July for $200.
. . .
(p. B8) . . . , it’s thrilling to see the array of excellent app phones that the original iPhone begat. If you who crave power, speed, flexibility, dropless calls an almost-Imax screen and Verizon’s network (as opposed to Sprint and its similar Evo), the Droid X is a big, beautiful contender for the “best Android phone on the market” crown.
This month’s crown, anyway.

For the full story, see:

DAVID POGUE. “State of the Art; Big Phone, Big Screen, Big Pleasure.” The New York Times (Thurs., July 1, 2010): B1 & B8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated June 30, 2010.)

Smarter Info Technology Frees Workers from Routine and Creates Jobs

(p. A22) Smarter computing technology, experts say, ought to make the most skilled workers — in science, the arts and business — even more productive and prosperous by freeing them from routine tasks. Their prosperity translates to spending that creates jobs in stores, schools, gyms, construction and elsewhere.

Artificial intelligence, experts say, should also generate new jobs even as it displaces others. The smart machines of the future will need programming, servicing and upgrading — work done, perhaps, by a new class of digital technicians. The intelligent machines, experts add, will be specialists in a field, like the medical assistant project at Microsoft. They must be tailored with specialized software, perhaps igniting a new industry for artificial intelligence applications.
Of course, no one really knows just what artificial intelligence will mean for jobs and the economy, but the technology is marching ahead. “Its potential is far greater than simply substituting technology for human labor,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at the M.I.T Sloan School of Management.

For the full story, see:
STEVE LOHR. “Jobs Created and Displaced.” The New York Times (Fri., June 25, 2010): A22.
(Note: the date of the online version of the article was June 24, 2010.)