Singularity..

Many of you might have heard of the term "Singularity". Wikipedia defines it as "The technological singularity is a hypothesized point in the future variously characterized by the technological creation of self-improving intelligence, unprecedentedly rapid technological progress, or some combination of the two."

The concept originates from Good's very popular speculation:
"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make."

Today, I came across something that's similar to this notion, but totally baffling and awe-inspiring.. The hypothesis from Michael Pollen on how we are headed to a world dominated by CORN and GRASS and not by machines..!!! Baffled..?? Check this video:

Crazy ideas..

1. Every single car owner shells out a good amount of money to get those 15K, 30K, 40K (and so on..) miles maintenance cycles.. Every cycle reveals things which need attention.. I wonder if this money can be saved..

Why can’t my car do a 140-point (or whatever) self diagnostic and present me with a report highlighting things which need attention at 15K, 30K, 40K..?? Every car owner will save so much money..

2.

Woohoo.. Wireless Electricity..!!

It seems my last blog has created quite a sensetion around this topic..!! :D :D

MIT nerds have come up with a way to safely transmit electricity over 7 ft. Check this out..

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gee-whiz/mit-dudes-develop-mind+boggling-wireless-electricity-267238.php

Wireless Power Transmission

A few days back, when I moved houses.. I had this discussion with Saurin..

I want to put up my 5.1 system in the new house, but the sheer tangle of wires that thing has turned into, is stopping me from doing it.. I was telling Saurin that its surprising that we still deal with a fundamental problem... wires and the mess they create..!!

The idea of cleaning the back of my computer desk or my TV/Home Theater unit disgusts me.. I ll never do it, unless I have to (one advantage of moving houses..!!).. How about getting rid of all those power cables.. I'd love that..!!

Imagine.. every house has one power outlet. There is a device in the market which needs to be plugged into that socket and then it transmits power to all the electrical devices in the house wirelessly.. We can have exactly the same model as wireless internet, admin can secure his power connection so that he's neighbours dont steal power..!! Each electrical device can communicate wirelessly with this device and let it know its power requirements etc...

Its fun to visualize something like this.. is this scientifically possible? Certainly passing electrons through air seems unlikely given the high resistance of air, but i faintly remember Electromagnetic Induction and induction current concepts from Physics II.. that can possibly be a way..

Out there, scientists are thinking about this problem.. something that I came across today:
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070423/full/070423-11.html

Not to bad for a start..!!! :)

The Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Intelligence is a manifestation of high mental capacity. Intelligence is defined as an individual's aptitude for learning, reasoning, understanding, and grasping truths, facts, relationships, meanings, and the like. Intelligent people are often admired by their peers who aspire to be like them.

I'm a huge fan of intelligence and have often wondered on how best to identify and classify it. Common sense, wit, math, music, GRE, GMAT, education, degrees, etc., are often used as yardsticks to measure intelligence. In most sections of the society, intelligence is far too often compared with pedantic learning. Multiple degrees and bookishness are popularly used as exclusive tools to measure mental capacity.

Contradictory to this traditional belief is Howard Gardner's "Theory of Multiple Intelligences". Gardner's theory argues that intelligence, as it is traditionally defined, does not adequately encompass the wide variety of abilities that humans display. For example, a child who excels in science is not necessarily more intelligent than a child who struggles with Newton's Laws. The latter may be gifted in another kind of intelligence and may excel in other fields like music.

So, rather than blindly pursuing degrees and higher education that channel brain development in one direction, individuals should work to develop their mental faculties in some core areas like linguistics, logical-mathematical ability, spatial sense, music, kineseology, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, and naturalistic intelligence.

This theory has recently gained the favor of many educators. There are several schools that now espouse Gartner's Multiple Intelligence as a pedagogy, with many books and materials that explain how it may be applied to the classroom. Is this a Revolution in Education? Will this pioneer all-round growth in future generations of students? Will this help the children of tomorrow in easily identifying and excelling in their chosen fields?Definitely some food for thought. For more on this, read on at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_intelligence.

Search as a "Session" thing..

This one's small.. not a groundbreaking, game-changing idea as such. But for once, its my own idea and not something that I came across while randomely browsing..

So, all of us use search as our gateway to the web. We fire, on an average, 10-15 queries per day.. if you think of your own search behavior, you will find an interesting pattern. Generally, your searches per day are broken into 3-4 "search sessions". That is, when you visit a search engine, you fire a query on the top of your mind, and then you realize you also wanted to search for something else, so you fir those queries too (like grocery shopping, you go to a grocery shop to buy a bread, and you realize that you also need milk...). Another scenario is, you fire multiple queries to find relevant information on the same topic by toying with the search string..

The second scenario is very interesting to me. Let me give you an example from today. I was researching on "best practices for intranet design". My behavior was as follows:

1. I type in the query string "Best practices for intranet design". I get some results, I click on a few and I find some information useful. But I am not done yet.. I want more relevant results

2. I type in the query string "Intranet portals best practices". Some of the results I get are different from the previous set of results. I click on a few and find some more useful info. But I am not satisfied yet..

3. Now I try "Study of intranet portals".. Get some results, click through, and read some article..

4. While reading, I suddenly feel the urge to go back and see some result that I found in step 1. So I type in again "Best practices for intranet design" and look for that link which I had read..

Doesnt this happen with you..??? It happens with me everyday..whenever I am researching on whatever..

Thinking of it, the solution is simple. Treat search as a session activity, and somehow provide easy access to previously tried query strings in that particular session. Something as simple as a dropdown on search box can help. Every time I load the search engine page, a new session starts. As long as I am on the search page, the session is on, and every search query that I try, gets added to the search box dropdown. The problem solved..?? I dont have to recollect and type the same querystring again.. A small benefit, but definitely a benefit..!!!

We dont want users to login to search engines, that drives more than half users away.. but we can still achieve this session like behavior by using good old "session variables". Obviously, there are perf and memory issues on the search server..what if one user tries million search strings back to back....?? Its an implementation question, and I am sure someone better at coding than me, will have an answer..

So, if we think of search as a session activity, what are the other things that we can provide the user with? How about a "session search box" where you can drag and drop every link you found interesting while you were trying different search strings..?? Imagine on the right top corner of the search results page, a notepad like something. You can sinmply drag and drop links that you like in there in a session, and at the end os session, just save that thing as a notepad file or something.. That will be a great utility for all researchers...

Any other ideas..???

Rewind...

"In order to influence the Future, we must understand and appreciate the Past."

Here are some people who defined the way technology influences investments, businesses and the way the world thinks today.



















Tim Bernes Lee - Founder of the WWW

Larry Page(L) and Sergey Brin(R), founders of Google.Google was originally named 'Googol'. After founders the presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google' . So it Google it remained!

Linus Torvalds of Linux Operating System Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which he replaced by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). He thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax (free + freak + x). His friend Ari Lemmk encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name Freax. Linus like that directory name and he kept the name of his new OS to LINUX.

The Steves of APPLE Computers.