Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Category: Random Musings
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Presentations, Humor and Memes
I have been reflecting on the nature of technical presentations. The motivations are manifold, the potential audiences are diverse, the expected outcomes varied, and there are so many ways to sink irretrievably into the quicksand of somnambulant soliloquy.When done well, however, public speaking is a form of performance art. Enjoy it, and help your listeners…
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Paucity to Plethora: Jevon’s Paradox
Those of us of a certain age (i.e., once able to use a slide rule) remember when the university computer (note the singular) was a scientific and engineering shrine, protected by computer operators and secure doors. We acolytes extended offerings of FORTRAN, ALGOL or COBOL via punched card decks, hoping for the blessings that accrued…
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Computing Invisibility
Like superheroes, successful technologies also become invisible. As technologies mature, market penetration rises, cultural expectations shift and consumer knowledge of the underlying theory and practice generally decline.Today, most computer users know nothing of the halting problem, superscalar pipeline design or object oriented programming. This is success.
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Don’t Be A WIMP!
It is time move beyond graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and embrace the brave new world of natural user interfaces (NUIs). As the name suggests, a NUI relies on and exploits the kinds of interactions humans use to interact with their peers, including speech, vision and gesture, as well as mood and social context.
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The Ghosts of Holiday Shopping: Past, Present and Future
In many parts of the western world, the frenzy of holiday shopping has reached its crescendo. In the U.S., it began with Black Friday, the day immediately after U.S. Thanksgiving. Not only is holiday shopping a major component of retail profits, financial analysts also use such consumer spending as a barometer of possible economic recovery.…
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I Could Smell the Smoke
Why didn’t we leave a high value target area, you might ask? The Washington Metro was closed, taxis were non-existent, there was a security cordon around the area, and it was too far to walk.