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The most accurate
predictive letter in computing and telecommunications,
***SNS*** Making Waves
Last week was one of those really delightful weeks. Summer was coming to a lazy end, and I managed a last road trip down the Washington, Oregon, and Northern California coasts in an open roadster, down to the Mark Hopkins Hotel San Francisco, where we held our Second Annual SNS West Coast Dinner. After that came a planning meeting for the Foresight Foundation at the Top of the Mark, and then a drive down Highway 280 to a very pleasant private meeting with HPs CEO, Mark Hurd.
The next morning I drove back north, on the heels of a daylong snowstorm at Crater Lake, and then did five hours in an increasingly serious downpour with the top down. (In Seattle, we call this experience Coming Home.)
(For the mathematicians in the crowd, there is a direct relationship between rainstorm intensity, vehicle speed, and the ability of the bubble around the cockpit to keep the rain mostly out.)
My dinner talk was about large-scale technology opportunities and breakthroughs, and, in general, it seemed to go very well. If there were any subsequent complaints from the group, it might have been that I spent a bit too much time on the physics behind the technology advances. And, from my own perspective, the only difficulty came when I tried to explain entanglement, Schrodinger waves, and electromagnetic waves, all in the same paragraph. That was a goal too sublime, I am afraid --
Since then, Ive been thinking more about this subject, and I want to share some of those thoughts with you today, because it turns out that some rather huge advances are being made in this world that are bound to impact computing, communications, and materials science.
To make this more interesting, Id like to start with an Einsteinian gedanken (thought) experiment that anyone can do. As in Einsteins thinking, it will show us a surprising equivalence.
Imagine you are watching a sine wave traveling from left to right. Lets say its a vibrating string of some kind, on a long base, and you are watching it from the side, and I am standing in front of you, holding the base.
Nothing funny so far.
If this represented a light wave, we could identify its energy by the well-proven equation E=hν, where E is energy, h is (Plancks) constant, and the Greek letter ν is frequency. This tells us that, as frequency goes up, so does energy. (Blue light is of higher energy than red.)
We have, in the past, talked about the fact that waves themselves are, in a sense, artifacts; or, rather, they occur only as the result of interactions. Waves, and their characteristics (particularly frequency and wavelength), are relative.
If I were using real light, I could increase the frequency, and, if you could see fast enough, youd see the number of crests per second go up, as the light turned more blue, and so contained higher energy. With a string, I could do the same basic thing, by jerking the string up and down faster at one end.
However, there is another way to make the frequency go up, at least in the observers (your) eyes.
All I have to do is turn the base I am holding gradually in your direction, until the wave is finally traveling right toward you. Before we get to that point, you notice that the waves are compacting, because of the angle of view. If your depth perception were lousy, and all you could see were the string, and not me or the base, you would have to say that the frequency had gone up.
The angle of observation of a wave, and its energy, are equivalent, and directly related. That is something you have never heard before, I think.
Before we go on: Why am I so interested in waves right now?
Understanding waves is required for the construction of: optical computers (coming right up); quantum computers (coming next); all things nano, including levitation and the Casimir effect (see Upgrades); all modern communications; and much of biology on the level of interaction sites. (And, for those who care, nearly all of physics.)
Now that weve shown this equivalence, I need to immediately point out a constraint, which Ive housed under the term Interaction Theory. Long-term SNSers will recognize this simple but stunning idea.
Lets say that all we know in science we know from experiment. Further, that physics represents the most fundamental of sciences, insofar as it looks at matter, force, and energy at the smallest scales.
Ill now suggest that all we know in physics comes from the interaction of things as they collide (whether it be water molecules colliding in a heated beaker or, more to the point, subatomic particles shattering in a collider).
In general, we learn by hitting two things together, and recording the result. In human terms, the only way we see things is if they travel straight into our eye.
We can note the special quality of this axis of travel, and call it the Z-axis. It is, by its nature, the axis along which time is measured, and along which velocity and momentum are measured.
Ready?
This means: a) that the only knowledge we have about events is through interactions; and b) that we only experience these interactions along the Z-axis.
Hopefully, that just changed your entire world view.
After all, you cant collide (or measure) two things unless they are heading toward each other.
Now our equivalence principle is more interesting, from a real-world perspective: How, after all, can we experience anything other than the Z-axis, except in our minds?
I am not in any way suggesting that X- and Y-axis energies and characteristics are not important, or that they do not exist; just that they are more difficult to appreciate, and must be appreciated within this inherent Geometry of Experiment.
All of the above turns out to be true for waves such as electromagnetic waves, which are transverse waves; i.e., all their electric and magnetic field fluxes occur at 90-degree angles to the Z-axis, the axis of travel and of interaction.
And, finally, we know that e-m waves obtain all of their characteristics from space itself (a la Resonance Theory), which is not really empty, but has innate characteristics, like the permittivity and permeability constants that describe the electrical and magnetic field forces in space, and the basic transverse geometry that e-m waves assume.
Space, by its own nature, tends to restrict our view to a single axis. For light, moreover, this is the axis of constant velocity, and not the axes (X and Y) where all the action (electric and magnetic field changes) is.
It looks, then, as though changes in time or position (ΔT or ΔX), are along the Z-axis, whereas real (not perceived) changes in energy or momentum (ΔE or ΔP) occur along the X,Y axes.
Id like to now suggest something that will give headaches to (or inspire shouts of delight among) physics mavens. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, in my opinion, was completely misunderstood: it is not primarily a prescription on the limits of knowing through experiment, but is an actual description of the size of an interaction, using all the axes.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle describes an interaction envelope, no different than a regular space. If we (or any high school algebra student) wanted to define an interaction as taking up a certain volume along the Z-axis, we would get this volume by multiplying Z values times X,Y values to create a three-dimensional volume.
Here is the Heisenberg equation set; perhaps you will now see it with new eyes. It starts with a constant, and ends with the two complementary volume calculations:
h/2Π ≤ ΔE x ΔT
h/2Π ≤ ΔP x ΔX
You decide which parameters you care about, and the equation gives you the volume of the interaction envelope during the measurement. Rather than measuring uncertainty, this now looks like a certainty equation, since it describes absolute volumes.
I had wanted to attack entanglement and quantum wave collapse in this discussion, but well have to put it off for our next physics discussion.
Why should you care about any of this? Because, increasingly, everything we do in the world of computing and communications will depend on our understanding of quantum-level behavior. It is a failing of both our science establishments and our schools that adults today have the same fear and awe when they hear the term quantum mechanics as their grandparents did 80 years ago.
Weve reached a time when our technologies have outstripped our science. The science establishment still isnt settled on a definition of the Schrodinger wave, or the meaning and mechanism of its collapse (and please, no more poor cats in shoeboxes!), which represent the most basic ideas in the field. What is a particle? It just gets worse.
But today we are faced with a plethora of commercial applications for particle entanglement, and for the tunneling and other counter-intuitive attributes of quantum wave collapse.
If we learn that waves per se involve an observer, or an interaction, we get closer to a new level of understanding how things work (together) on a very small scale.
Every nano engineer has to fight Casimir effects (see Upgrades) causing stickiness and friction, for reasons obvious only if you know that space itself has potential resonant wave characteristics. Reversing these may be one key to moving forward in nano design.
Every chip designer is now coming to grips with all of the quantum wave effects that dominate small channels and particles at the next scale down. Were leaving the world of thousands of bowling-ball-like electrons rumbling down wide channels, and entering the world in which a single photon may be carrying the signal down a path smaller than an electron, and where a single electron is represented by a wave bigger than its physical containment.
At the least, I hope Ive given our members some great fodder for next weekends cocktail party circuit. At best, I hope youve now also gotten some deeper appreciation for the potential inventions and reward available to those who understand what waves are, and how we will use them.
Yes, thats the Heisenberg Certainty Principle.
Your comments are always welcome.
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» This Weeks SNS Media Features
mms://www.tapsns.com/firefive/neweurope_384K.wmv
Video: The Future of Personal Computers: A conversation with Toshio Morohoshi, Corporate Vice President and Executive Officer, Fujitsu Ltd.; hosted by Mark Anderson. The streaming link is: mms://www.tapsns.com/firefive/futureofpcs_384K.wmv
Audio: The Future of Energy on a Nano Scale: A panel discussion with Josh Wolfe, Managing Partner, Lux Capital; Dave Vieau, CEO, A123 Systems; and Keith Blakely, CEO, Nanodynamics; hosted by Steve Waite, Managing Director, Consilient Partners. The streaming link is: https://www.stratnews.com/media/fire2007/audio/02-futureofenergy.MP3
View all SNS media content released to date: https://www.futureinreview.com/fire2007-media.php
» Links to More
For years (over a decade? Yegads) I have been warning members that cellphone radiation can likely affect cell chemistry, since almost every chemical acts like a small antenna. Longtime readers know that this is different from the industry red herring re: whether cellphone radiation directly causes cancer through thermal heating.
This week, following on excellent work done at the University of Washington, the Weizmann Institute in Israel announced new findings suggesting non-thermal cellphone radiation could pose a health risk.
The work was done by Rony Seger: The significance lies in showing cells do react to cellphone radiation in a non-thermal way. (New Scientist)
Seger exposed human and rat cells to low-level radiation at 875MHz (used by many cellphones). Although the radiation was much weaker than in phones, it began to switch a chemical signal within 10 minutes; this signal was involved in cell division.
The work, published in Biochemical Journal, suggested mobile phones could damage health.
For all those years when critics wrote in to SNS claiming thermal effects were not causing problems, we now have this quote from Graham Philips of Powerwatch: Guidance based purely on thermal effects is clearly out of date.
Amen. Boy, this is taking a long time.
» Something in the St. Andrews Water?
Our friends in Britain are increasingly often coming out with rather amazing scientific findings. One could posit that it all began with Dolly, the cloned sheep, but that would leave out a few small things such as the discovery of DNA (in Cambridge) and the invention of radar (in Germany, the U.S., and France but - primarily - in Britain).
Not long ago, I wrote about the teams in Britain and the U.S. working on invisibility cloaks. Now, from among these, the same (Univ. of St. Andrews) team in Britain has come up with a new source of incredible levitation effects.
A recent item by the London Telegraphs science editor describes the work of Prof. Ulf Leonhardt and Dr. Thomas Philbin, whose work was published in the New Journal of Physics.
The team started with the Casimir force, which is often explained as the pressure differential of quantum (zero point) energy fluctuations tending to push together any conductors closer than the fluctuation wavelengths. In other words, if you put two plates very, very close together, the inherent resonant vibrations of otherwise-empty space jostles them from the outside, but, because they are so close, cannot do the same from within, resulting in a net pressure pushing them together.
We still OK?
Now comes the hard part, for which I can't vouch. In fact, delving a bit turns up the fact that the researchers have only theorized this next bit - it hasn't been experimentally proven yet.
The idea is that the insertion of a perfect lens (one with no performance relation to wavelength) with a negative refractive index (think concave instead of convex) between these conductor sheets would reverse the Casimir force, from one of attraction (plates pushed together) to one of repulsion (plates pushed apart).
Since all of this activity happens on a nano level, the authors propose that this technique might be useful in various forms of nano design, generally for the reduction of friction (and for overcoming problems with the normal Casimir forces).
If this were true, it would be a kind of anti-gravity effect, something people have been discussing for a long time.
I thought St. Andrews was where they played golf in wild sea winds with homemade sticks.
SNSers know that Video Replaces Photos is the theme of how the next generation uses technology.
If you think about this a bit, it has some interesting meanings. What do I mean by that? Obviously, what I dont mean is that taking photos is a dying business; with all cellphones now digital cameras, and the installed base breaking one billion, digital stills have a great future.
On the other hand, with many cameras today, it is as easy to shoot a short video as it is to take a picture. And short videos are, especially in groups (did I say tribes?), MUCH more interesting than stills.
But first, lets do a double check: is it really true?
Here is some quick data from WatchMojo.com:
What are the uses? Stills remain the currency of the realm for bandwidth-constrained sending from camera to camera. SMS attachments and straight-on file transfers use a lot of bandwidth, and carriers are happy to charge up the wazoo (thats a French term for derriere) for this - something this pool of users exactly cant afford.
So videos travel via the notebook, up into places like YouTube and MySpace, with MANY more to come.
How many video sites are there? Well, if you imagined that each grain of sand on the beach were a site, and then took all the stars in the cosmos --- ok, there are a lot. Google hits on video sites gives 87 MM results. If we turn to Alexa, we get the Top 25:
These do not include subsites of larger sites such as Yahoo Video, Google Video, MySpace, and AOL Uncut, most or all of which would also be on this list; and one notes that all of these figures are a year old, even though they are still at the top of Alexa.
All told, Alexa came up with 48 MM sites.
So, what we have here are a combination of bandwidth, billing, and technology cost constraints, that have replaced the photo with the 2.5-minute video. This is pretty interesting.
And what can you say about 2.5-minute videos? They take no direction, require no script, fit any occasion, and are long enough to include cameos of every tribe member in the room. Who watches? Other tribe members and their friends, and those doing video search.
Generally these are just long enough for one funny prank, like mooning the camera (or the boss). Today, its all fun and basically innocuous, but it isnt hard to understand that it will be only a year or two before video search will have face-recognition capabilities that will be the end of politics as we know it.
What will happen when you can search for Britneys (or your boyfriends, or senators) face across the video Web? What will we learn about Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton in their formative years? Who will protect them? How about, No One for President?
For companies that understand the power of Video, this New Photo will make bargeloads of money.
A New Film on SNS Member Sidney Rittenberg
Many
of you have heard Sidney Rittenberg speak at our FiRe conferences
concerning business in China, so you know his ability to hold an
audiences attention. But perhaps many of you dont know Sidneys
extraordinary life story, which he documented in his
autobiography, The
Man Who Stayed Behind.
The future of energy is biology. Juan Enriquez, quoted in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday.
Blodget is a bit of a one-trick pony, and he likes to stay in the headlines. So he continues to build cases for big valuations of Internet companies. The only difference is he publishes these thoughts on his blogs. And people still listen to what he has to say. TechCrunchs Michael Arrington, in a post suggesting that someone should muzzle Henry Blodget.
Henrys been pumping Google stock prices.
It does suggest that if there were an
evolutionary arms race between a small, hot animal and a cold,
big animal, its going to be awfully hard for the cold, big
animal to keep up. But really, what we are showing is that
neutral processes, processes that do not depend on natural
selection, are important in governing its evolution. James
F. Gillooly, an assistant professor of Zoology at the University
of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a member of
the UF Genetics Institute. Quoted in Physorg.com.
Generally, there are two schools of thought about what affects evolution. One says the environment dictates changes that occur in the genome and phenotype of a species, and the other says the DNA mutation rate drives these changes. Our findings suggest physiological processes that drive mutation rates are important. Andrew P. Allen, Ph.D., a researcher with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif. Ibid.
Another suggestion that MIGHTE (Multiple Input Genetic Heritability Theory of Evolution) is Righty.
Nokia will be able to bring context and geographical information to a number of our Internet services with accelerated time to market. CEO Ollie-Pekka Kallasvuo, as the company acquired Navteq.
For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops - one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home. Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chair of OLPC, on the projects website.
Not a chance in a million. Or not enough chances in a million to save the project.
***SNS*** Defining Thin, and ***SNS*** Special Letter: Keys to the Virtualization Market: Security and the Battle Over the Next Data OS
Mark,
Im the board treasurer of a community health clinic that does about $8 million a year. 50,000 client visits. So it is real. I see the underbelly of the health care system in this country and it aint pretty. Now that health care is high on the voters agenda, the screaming is going to get louder and louder. The fundamental reality is that health care is too expensive. People want perfection and that costs a lot...
There are many players in the health care system and they all want to get paid or get serviced. And in the USA the costs are climbing to the moon. And our demographics are going to make this a battle royal in the next few decades. I dont know how this might get on your agenda, but it will become the social fairness problem bar none pretty soon and there is no clean description of the problem that allows for clearheaded discussion amongst the participants. So the screaming will just get louder and the bills get bigger and various subgroups will get screwed more than others as the blame shifts around.
Face it: we all want a
million dollar medical intervention when it is our fanny on the
gurney, but almost no one has that kind of money. And the great
new medical discoveries that are around the corner are not
going to come for free. Etc., etc... [Founder, InterOp Napa Valley]
Dan,
The out-of-control escalation costs of healthcare have been on my agenda for a while now; I've written about it, and we run a thread at FiRe every year on this issue, titled Fixing Healthcare.
There are some obvious problems beyond the fact that things cost too much, or that high expectations leads to high bills. In fact, this years FiRe will include a talk with William Haseltine, who is using his foundation to understand why open-heart surgeries in the U.S. cost 10x what they cost in some foreign (i.e., Indian) hospitals, with identical patient outcomes. I believe he thinks we need to import our healthcare from other countries, for this reason.
I know from my own experience that, in the U.S., expensive and unnecessary tests are given without thought, and often. Reasons for the tests seem to include: a) doctor test fee cuts; b) hospital pressure to pay for new equipment; and c) the practice of defensive medicine, doing tests as a legal rather than medical procedure. All of it is bad for the patient, and her wallet.
Then there are the outcomes. No one is watching. In fact, the U.S. medical community has arranged for a series of shields between any doctor and his outcomes. How else can you explain a national system in which more than half of those who die in U.S. hospitals turn out to have died from an ailment for which they were not even being treated at the time? How else to explain the advent of the new practice of evidence-based medicine, i.e., treatments that prove effective in practice?
And here you thought that all medicine was evidence-based. It isnt.
Finally, the whole system is broken, because there is no business feedback loop between the customer and the vendor. In fact, the patient isnt even the customer (thats how broken things are) - the insurance company is!!
All of this could be fixed, but it isnt a simple problem, and there are WAY too many palms involved in stripping the patient of his cash.
I seriously consider the U.S. system to be a threat to ones health, from many perspectives (including the one of not dying), and recommend to anyone who absolutely MUST experience it, that they bring along a trained Advocate to fight for their rights (and lives) while they are being treated.
Thanks for giving me yet one more chance to vent on this.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14853918
The mainstream media is finally getting around to the story.
Russ Daggatt [General Partner, Highside Capital, and past CEO, Teledesic Seattle and Sun Valley]
Russ,
For those reading this on the airplane, the URL above refers to a story of the continuing form, Vista, the Pig. Here is a quick quote from a Vista supporter, so, go figure:
Denny Arar, a senior editor at PC World magazine, gives Vista a qualified thumbs up.
She has been using the new operating system for almost a year, but she sees little reason for consumers to rush out and buy it.
She says the most popular version is expensive - two or three times the price of XP - and is probably not worth the trouble until all the kinks are worked out.
There is weirdness, I have to say, here and there. Sometimes the screen will go black and the cursers will twirl around, and it comes back. You kind of get used to it, but its bizarre, says Arar.
She says cursers twirl around, and this could easily describe you or other users, Russ, on occasion.
I would say that yes, the story of Vista the Pig is getting a lot of airtime. What is surprising is that there are many (including SNSer and tech journalist extraordinaire Mary Branscombe) who really like the product.
In related news, I noticed what looks like a new MS marketing effort today: under-pitching ServicePak 1. Since MS now looks like its slipped ship date on SP1 will put it into next calendar year, I assume the company is doing what it can to avoid this Christmas quarter being like the last one. Who wants to be a Grinch?
So, with PC demand generally strong (humming right along with calls made here last year), and, suddenly, no SP1 shipping in November, what can be done? Anti-market it, so that buyers wont wait for its release before getting that next (Vista) computer.
Good luck, Redmondians. Its a noble activity you have in mind, but I doubt it will stick.
Mark Anderson
The following includes a back-and-forth between last weeks Special Letter author, Greg Ness, and a colleague who gave permission to have his comments included here. This starts with Gregs chance to ride in the new Tesla Roadster last week at our annual West Coast Dinner. – mra
Mark and Mike,
https://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/19787
I was "blown away" by my recent ride in the very fast Tesla electric sports car....
Gregory L. Ness Vice President - Marketing Blue Lane Technologies Inc. Cupertino, CA
Greg,
Excellent! I think that this is definitely your most inspired work. The tone is noticeably more impassioned with this piece. Was it that the subject matter lent itself to an inherently less technical prose? I dont know. What really comes through here is your sense of wonder about both the experience/vehicle and the fundamental cultural and economic changes Tesla would seem to portend.
By the way, having grown up in Detroit, worked in its factories, [and] lived within its archaic institutional/union mindset, I can say that you hit the nail right on the head when you said that the Detroit Establishment is pre-occupied with the preservation of the comforts of dying status quos. Only they are too arrogant and too stupid to see that it is actually dying.
Some of us could see long ago in Detroit a dying empire with its culture slowly rotting from the inside out. We anticipated the day when the heart of American manufacturing power would begin to hemorrhage opportunity, only to replace it with despair. We were students, we were entrepreneurs and we were young people seeking a future. We were also the people who left by the tens of thousands in the mid 80s.
You know what would be really interesting as a follow up? I would love to take you around Detroit and show you vast sections of the city where you can see actual ruins of once prosperous neighborhoods where the buildings stand as burnt-out and boarded-up reminders of a way of life that has slowly disintegrated. What remains is a bizarre post-industrial kind of ghost town bereft of any life other [than] packs of wild dogs patrolling vacant neighborhoods. Seriously, unless you have seen this you cannot imagine what its like.
Thanks for sharing
Mike Leflar
Mike,
Would love that. The ride was incredible. Would love to pass your email onto the SNS people who put the ride together. With your permission of course.
Greg
Greg,
Please feel free to do so.
After I read your column, I was wondering what it might have been like to point the Tesla up the big hill on California street and feel the kind of raw 0 -75 acceleration you mentioned. I was guessing that it might have been a real mind-blower to do so, yet to have none of the loud engine noise we have become accustomed to. It must have been kind of like riding in a rocket ship, pulling silent Gs and all.
Also, Detroit could actually become a metaphor for other over-entitled American manufacturing sectors who shun innovation and free thinking. If you wanted to scare the crap out of mayors whose cities lack industrial diversification and which employ large percentages of union labor, you could take them around Detroit on some kind of a Ruins Tour to show them what the future looks like unless significant emphasis is placed on creative development.
In Silicon Valley we value R&D and creative thought. We call that Standard Operating Procedure and it comes from various sectors of successful companies working together within the context of the broader business goals of those companies. In Detroit, there is no similar concept. Each part of Detroit-style manufacturing companies are more concerned about jealously guarding what % of profit is perceived to theirs. The complete lack of cooperation among departments and high level of mistrust would make even Larry Ellison cringe
You think we have information silos here in the valley? In Detroit, those silos are more like worm holes in the space-time continuum where business segments are so averse to working cooperatively its as though they exist separately on wildly disjointed planes doomed never to intersect for the common good of the effort/project.
In Japan, businesses and industry leaders practice kaizen which roughly is the concept of continuous change for the better. In Detroit, the mind-set is one of fear. Fear of innovation, fear of change and fear of losing ones hard fought piece of the shrinking pie.
Back in the 80s those of us who were forward thinking saw that the rats were beginning to fight over the few remaining crumbs on the ship. And when that happens, its time to jump off the boat. SoDetroit lost its vision, its energy and then its ability to compete on a global basis. Then it lost its people and so its soul. Now it's economically dead.
You know, a blog about the differences in business practices between Silicon Valley (for example) and Detroit done in kind of a Rich Dad, Poor Dad way might be kind of interesting to read occasionally.
Mike Leflar
Mike and Greg,
What a great series of letters. Tesla vs. GM, the Valley vs. Detroit.
I had dinner with a bright fellow who tried to bring operations research to U.S. Steel. At one point, one of his colleagues took him aside and said, "I'd be careful, if I were you. Don't use that word, "model," any more; it makes people uncomfortable."
The great value of the Valley is the intentional decision to live way outside what, for most folks, is the comfort zone. Of course, it is also an IQ test, and, in my mind, the players in the Valley are pretty high on the Geography IQ list. Way ahead of Detroit, Gary (Ind.), and Houston - even with $80 oil.
If there ever is such a tour as Mike suggests, I hope some reference is made to the trade-off of smart risk-taking, in exchange for the comfort of no real change - until it's too late.
The Tesla Roadster is the coolest car in the world, IMHO.
Mark Anderson
Mark, Indianapolis
Rollie,
This is essentially a CarryAlongPC. There are quite a few of them out there now, almost all made in Taiwan, Japan, or S. Korea. If you like this unit, you should also take a look at the Samsung Q1.
While I, too, think that a size that fits into a sports coat pocket is great, I think of the CAPC format as being defined more by hand and body ergonomics, just like the hardbound book whose size it mimics.
It seems to me that we need just slightly larger pockets.
But this looks like a very cool machine, and I think my friends at Fujitsu should send me one right away to try with my own wardrobe.
Thanks for asking about this. We are quietly moving right into the sweet spot for these machines.
Mark Anderson
Mark, Vice President Waggener Edstrom Worldwide San Francisco, CA
So far, this is all I've got. Of course, if we are going to save the world (or the country, at least), one has to keep it simple.
The title of our proposal: I want my country back!
Details: a law change so that only citizens are allowed to give money to representatives.
Simple, simple, simple. It would bring a sense of hope back to America.
Maybe our 15- to 30-year-olds would even consider voting?
Im going to write a piece on this for SNSer Art Kleiner at Business+Strategy Magazine, but anyone else who is reading this who would like to get the word out, all help is much appreciated.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
https://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/08/what_happened_on_august_16.html
If the same thing had been triggered by a power outage on the east coast taking out west coast servers, who would we be blaming? When RIM had an outage, which was also to do with routine maintenance ("We ran our tests, it looked innocuous. All the tests we ran and the vendor ran made it look very routine. It turns out that there is a rare occurrence and under the kind of load we run our systems at that it can rear its ugly head. - Mike Lazaridis https://www.itpro.co.uk/wireless/features/115382/qa-rim-cofounder-mike-lazaridis.html
), it was RIM everyone blamed - and they owned up to their bug. [Technology freelance writer London] Mary,
Great to see you and Simon at the dinner, and to hear your thoughts on spectrum and WiMAX.
I certainly agree with you about the drivers; in fact, I believe Im on record as suggesting that, today, drivers ARE the OS, at least on a consumer value level. As you know, Microsoft stopped writing drivers a long time ago, because there are so many: now vendors write them, and Microsoft certifies to Windows.
I dont see any reason Apple couldnt also do this. But the real problem would be on the vendor side: not enough would participate.
I had to laugh when I read your drivers-late comment, since Apple was the worst offender, with its accidentally late (??) iPod drivers for Vista.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
I was wondering whether technology in itself is a force good or evil. The answer is different. It is a double edged sword.
It gives about twenty men the power to harm the collective consciousness of the west. It also offers the chance to master complexity, one of the larger human challenges. On the other hand it makes things more fragile, as we are well aware. It separates men by distraction and makes it easier for like minds to connect.
Let me know your thoughts.
Gre von Herzen, Marco Spinner [Founder and President, Sigillium Munchen]
Marco,
First, let me thank you for your very kind gift of the book Mans Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankel. While I dont have the psychiatric training to judge the value of his Logo theory, his humanity and value of the importance of our dreams, and belief in a better future, made perfect sense to me.
And I found his description of the entire experience of the death camps to be shockingly honest, and therefore more useful, in some ways, than other accounts I have read.
To answer your question: I, too, do not think that a technology, or a science, has a particular ethical quality attached to it. Rather, we each bring our own ethics to the tool.
For that reason, invention of the tools themselves is not good or evil. And we must constantly be working to make sure our children share our ethos and dreams, and our belief in a better future.
Mark Anderson
I would like to welcome, among others, these new members to the SNS family: Donnell Brown, Corporate Managing Editor, Amdocs, London, U.K.; Ryan Singel, Staff Writer, WIRED Magazine, New York, NY; Swain Porter, CEO, Catalytic Software Inc., Kirkland, WA; Mark Turrell, CEO, Imaginatik, Boston, MA; Jack Abbott, CEO, Interactivate Inc., San Diego, CA; and many more.
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» About the Strategic News Service
SNS
is the most accurate predictive letter covering the computer and
telecom industries. It is personally read by the top managers at
companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Cisco, Sun, Google,
Yahoo!, Ericsson, Telstra, and China Mobile, as well as by leading
financial analysts at the worlds top investment banks and
venture capital funds, including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch,
Kleiner Perkins, Venrock, Warburg Pincus, and 3i. It is regularly
quoted in top industry publications such as BusinessWeek, WIRED,
Barrons, Fortune, PC Magazine, ZDNet, Business 2.0, the
Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall St. Journal, and
elsewhere.
Mark
Anderson is CEO of the Strategic News Service. He is the
founder of two software companies and of the Washington Software
Alliance Investors Forum, Washingtons premier software
investment conference; and has participated in the launch of many
software startups. He regularly appears on the CNN World
News, CNBC and CNBC Europe, Reuters TV, the BBC, Wall Street
Review/KSDO, and National Public Radio programs. He is a member
of the Merrill Lynch Technology Advisory Board, and is an advisor
and/or investor in Ignition Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures,
Voyager Capital, and others.
For
additional predictions and information, please visit:
SNS Media Page: www.tapsns.com/media.php
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Future in Review (FiRe) Conference website: www.futureinreview.com
On October 4th, Mark will be hosting David Skinner of ShadowCatcher Entertainment and his new film, Outsourced, for an Orca Relief (www.orcarelief.org) benefit in Friday Harbor, Washington, at the Palace Theater. (These seats are now sold out.) Call 360-378-1023 for tickets, and a chance to Meet the Producer. On December 12th, Mark will be hosting the fourth annual SNS New York Dinner, at the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel.
Copyright 2007, Strategic News Service LLC.
Strategic News Service, SNS, Future in Review, FiRe, SNS Ahead of the Curve, and SNS Project Inkwell are all registered service marks of Strategic News Service LLC.
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