Recent Event Highlights: NIST Colloquium Series: The Quest to Measure Longitude, NIST Colloquium Series: Secrets in the Ancient Goatskin, Google I/O 2010 - Ignite Google I/O, James Burke : Connections, Episode 8, "Eat, Drink and be Merry", 3 of 5 (CC), James Burke : Connections, Episode 5, "Wheel Of Fortune", 1 of 5 (CC), Babbage's Calculating Engine, and 13 more...
Created by dipity on Jan 31, 2011
Last updated: 09/05/11 at 06:25 PM
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What Technology Wants Kevin Kelly will be speaking about his latest book, "What Technology Wants." This provocative book introduces a brand-new view of technology. It suggests that technology as a whole is not just a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. Kelly looks out through the eyes of this global technological system to discover "what it wants." Kelly uses vivid examples from the past to trace technology's long course, and then follows a dozen trajectories of technology into the near future to project where technology is headed. This new theory of technology offers three practical lessons: By listening to what technology wants we can better prepare ourselves and our children for the inevitable technologies to come. By adopting the principles of pro-action and engagement, we can steer technologies into their best roles. And by aligning ourselves with the long-term imperatives of this near-living system, we can capture its full gifts. Speaker Info: Kevin Kelly (www.kk.org Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 1999. He has just finished a book for Viking/Penguin called "What Technology Wants," published October 18, 2010. He is also editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website (www.kk.org which gets half a million unique visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole ...
Computer Science Teachers Association Computer Science & Information Technology Symposium 2010 July 13, 2010 Computing for Everyone Presented by Richard Ladner We start with an introduction to successful computer scientists with disabilities. Then we review various access technologies that permit students with disabilities to participate in the classroom and lab. We summarize the trends in accessibility research which will open up even more avenues for students to fully participate in class. We review some strategies for universal design of curriculum and activities that allow all students to participate regardless of disability. We introduce the Access Computing Alliance that has the goal of increasing the participation and success of students with disabilities in computing fields. For more information, please see csta.acm.org
Google Tech Talk August 3, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ How does religion work in a culture shaped by science and technology? How do scientists and engineers practice their religions? How in particular does a Jesuitbrother, and an MIT graduate with a PhD in planetary science, make sense of his Catholicism? God's Mechanics examines the personal religious life and theology of scientists and engineers — "Techies" — based on conversations with nearly a hundred techies in Silicon Valley (interviewed during the spring of 2007 during a six-week stay at Santa Clara University) and a first-person confession from a Jesuit scientist and astronomer at the Vatican Observatory. Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ was born in Detroit, Michigan. He earned undergraduate and masters' degrees from MIT, and a Ph. D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona, was a researcher at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, before entering the Jesuits in 1989. At the Vatican Observatory since 1993, his research explores connections between meteorites, asteroids, and the evolution of small solar system bodies. He observes asteroids, moons, and Kuiper Belt comets with the Vatican's 1.8 meter telescope in Arizona, and curates the Vatican meteorite collection in Castel Gandolfo. Along with more than 100 scientific publications, he is the author of a number of popular books including Turn Left at ...
Dava Sobel, a writer of popular expositions on scientific topics, has published works such as Longitude: The True Story of a Long Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time; Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love; ,and The Planets. Her work has also been dramatized for television on the A&E Network. In this program from the NIST Colloquium series, she discusses how navigators and scientist like Galileo and Newton had difficulty keeping track of longitude until an unknown self-educated clockmaker offered timekeeping as the unlikely solution.
Dr. Uwe Bergmann, a staff scientist in physics at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, discusses the fascinating journey of a 1000-year-old parchment from its origin in Constantinople to an X-ray line in California. This NIST Colloquium Series presentation also explains how X-rays have been used to make other discoveries about artifacts from the 12th through the 20th centuries.
On June 3, 2010, the Computer History Museum hosted a 6-session conference on the PLATO learning system. Session 1 was entitled "A Culture of Innovation: What Don Bitzer Wrought." Session 1 Description: The Computer-based Education Research Lab, where the PLATO system was invented, was a caldron of innovation. Out of that environment, new technologies grew and lives were changed. What was it about the environment that stimulated innovation? Bob Sutton, management guru and scholar of innovation, leads a conversation focusing on the characteristics of a culture of innovation. What was special about the PLATO environment? What applicable lessons might be gleaned? Are there insights to be gained from CDC's efforts to commercialize an enormous project from an academic research laboratory, in an unproven market? Sutton conducts a discussion with Dr. Don Bitzer, the director of the PLATO lab and lead innovator, David Frankel and CK Gunsalus: two CERL alumni whose career paths have gone in quite different directions, and Bob Price, who led Control Data to the licensing and further development of the PLATO system. PLATO Overview: PLATO was a centralized, mainframe-based system, with very sophisticated terminals connected to it. Its mission was to deliver education electronically at low cost. But it became much, much more than that. It quickly became home to a diverse online community that represented a microcosm of today's online world. Much of what we take for granted in today's ...
Google I/O 2010 - Ignite Google I/O Tech Talks Brady Forrest, Krissy Clark, Ben Huh, Matt Harding, Clay Johnson, Bradley Vickers, Aaron Koblin, Michael Van Riper, Anne Veling, James Young Ignite captures the best of geek culture in a series of five-minute speed presentations. Each speaker gets 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. Check out last year's Ignite Google I/O. For all I/O 2010 sessions, please go to code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions.html
Google Tech Talk April 14, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by Erich W. Gunther. The smart grid is a big topic these days, but before there was a smart grid newspaper headline, the utilities have been experimenting with TCP/IP in the backend networks for a while now. Erich Gunther of enernex (www.enernex.com) will present a reference model and concept of network operations for the power industry including how Internet Protocols fit in that space. Along the way he will touch on what has worked, what hasn't and some of the security issues along the way. Erich W. Gunther is the co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer for EnerNex Corporation - an electric power research, engineering, and consulting firm - located in Knoxville Tennessee. With 30 years of experience in the electric power industry, Erich is no stranger to smart grid - he has been involved in defining what smart grid is before the term itself was coined.
Hi Friends I visited Bletchley Park on Tuesday 6th April and what an experience! I did rather think it night be for geeks but not a bit. I would recommend a visit and if you like electronics from the very first real real computers this is the place to visit. Churchill my hero and voted the greatest Englishman said " The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing field of Eaton, the battle of the Atlantic was won at Bletchley Park" The book I mention: Bletchley Park People - Marion Hill and published by Sutton Publishing Ltd (2008) ISBN 978-0-7509-3362-9 A very good insight into the workings of Bletchley Park. The guild was Peter Jarvis who worked at Bletchley and is married to a Code Breaker. This man brought the place alive for me and such a character. A man who is very much part of BP. Tony Sale is a man who's project reproduced the Colossus Machine from nothing with others as the plans were destroyed after the war and who signed my book. The Computing Museum is well worth a visit. If you like trains, cars and other things of Wartime interest BP is worth a visit. From the BP Website: The Enigma cypher was the backbone of German military and intelligence communications. Invented in 1918, it was initially designed to secure banking communications, but achieved little success in that sphere. The German military, however, were quick to see its potential. They thought it to be unbreakable, and not without good reason. Enigma's complexity was bewildering. Typing in a letter of ...
From the new album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky" available at www.okgo.net OK Go on Tour www.okgo.net Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of "This Too Shall Pass" off of the album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky". The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The "machine" was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs ( syynlabs.com ) over the course of several months. There is an in-depth behind-the-scenes look at the warehouse here: www.okgo.net OK Go thanks State Farm for making this video possible.
Google Tech Talk January 21, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by John McCann. We tend to think of digital imaging and the tools of Photoshop(TM) as a new phenomenon in imaging. We are also familiar with multiple-exposure HDR techniques intended to capture a wider range of scene information, than conventional film photography. We know about tone-scale adjustments to make better pictures. We tend to think of everyday, consumer, silver-halide photography as a fixed window of scene capture with a limited, standard range of response. This description of photography is certainly true, between 1950 and 2000, for instant films and negatives processed at the drugstore. These systems had fixed dynamic range and fixed tone-scale response to light. All pixels in the film have the same response to light, so the same light exposure from different pixels was rendered as the same film density. Ansel Adams, along with Fred Archer, formulated the Zone System, starting in 1940. It was earlier than the trillions of consumer photos in the second half of the 20th century, yet it was much more sophisticated than today's digital techniques. This talk will describe the chemical mechanisms of the zone system in the parlance of digital image processing. It will describe the Zone System's chemical techniques for image synthesis. It also discusses dodging and burning techniques to fit the HDR scene into the LDR print. These techniques introduced spatial changes in the print causing dynamic range compression ...
Eric Schmidt speaks at a forum jointly hosted by Google and the Pittsburgh Technology Council on September 23, 2009 in Pittsburgh, PA.
Dr. Mohd Hegazi invented a device that is used to treat Cerebral palsy which is a head trauma in immature brain and ususally it is done before a full maturation of the brain (ie before 2 years). The Project name of this invention is called Mechanical therapy and evaluation Machine for pediatric patient with physial diabilities. Dr. Mohd competing against other group of inventors on a reality TV show that is aired on Local TV and also aired via Satellite on Future TV from Lebanon.
Watch Entire Show: www.youtube.com More Shows: www.youtube.com Episode 8 of James Burke's most well-known series "Connections" which explores the surprising and unexpected ways that our modern technological world came into existence. Each episode investigates the background of usually one particular modern invention and how it came into being. These explorations are an attempt to locate the "connections" between various historical figures who seemingly had nothing to do with each other in their own times, however once connected, these same figures combined to produce some of the most profound impacts on our modern day world; in a "1+1=3" type of way. It is this type of investigation that is the core idea behind the Knowledge Web project, whereby sophisticated software is being developed to attempt to discover these subtle interconnections automatically. See k-web.org. See channel page for purchase options.
Watch Entire Show: www.youtube.com More Shows: www.youtube.com Episode 5 of James Burke's most well-known series "Connections" which explores the surprising and unexpected ways that our modern technological world came into existence. Each episode investigates the background of usually one particular modern invention and how it came into being. These explorations are an attempt to locate the "connections" between various historical figures who seemingly had nothing to do with each other in their own times, however once connected, these same figures combined to produce some of the most profound impacts on our modern day world; in a "1+1=3" type of way. It is this type of investigation that is the main idea behind the Knowledge Web project; whereby sophisticated software is used to attempt to discover these subtle interconnections automatically. See k-web.org. See channel page for purchase options.
Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла) (10 July 1856 7 January 1943) was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. Born in Smiljan, Croatian Krajina, Austrian Empire, he was an ethnic Serb subject of the Austrian Empire and later became an American citizen.[2] Tesla is often described as the most important scientist and inventor of the modern age, a man who "shed light over the face of Earth".[3] He is best known for many revolutionary contributions in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Contemporary biographers of Tesla have regarded him as "The Father of Physics", "The man who invented the twentieth century"[4] and "the patron saint of modern electricity."[5] After his demonstration of wireless communication (radio) in 1894 and after being the victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America.[6] Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture,[7] but due to his eccentric personality ...
Click "watch in hi-quality" in blue text! I invented this mechanical "Ping Pong Robot" because I'm a mechanical engineering student at Georgia Tech and I love Table Tennis. It is a purely mechanical alternative to the electro-mechanical robots currently available. Ben Beck, Jay Johnson, Ryder Winck, and I chose this device for our Modeling and Simulation project Spring 2008. The results were put into practice when I built it later in the semester. In Spring 2008 the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets competed for their first time in the NCTTA National Championships. The men came in at 16th in the Nation. The women, 4th. This machine is dedicated to the 2008 Nationally Ranked Georgia Tech team. For more information about: Georgia Tech Table Tennis the Modeling and Simulation Project and other Table Tennis Projects visit www.cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/tta
[Recorded March 3, 1999] Charles Babbage is widely celebrated as the first pioneer of the computer. The designs for his vast mechanical calculating engines are one of the startling intellectual achievements of the nineteenth century. Babbage is equally famous for two things: he invented computers, and he failed to build them. The reasons for his failures are still hotly debated today and his story has become a modern parable. But in the absence of a demonstrably working machine, doubt had clouded his reputation. Was Babbage an impractical dreamer, or a designer of the highest caliber? Could his engines have been built in the previous century, and if so, would they have worked? The Science Museum in London built a complete Babbage engine from original designs in time for the bicentenary in 1991 of Babbage's birth. This presentation by Doron Swade will describe the project and how it has revised historical perceptions of the great inventor.Doron Swade is an engineer, historian, and museum professional. He is the leading authority on the life and work of Charles Babbage and Swade masterminded the construction of the first Babbage Calculating Engine built to original 19th-century designs. Swade was Assistant Director and Head of Collections at the Science Museum in London and before that Senior Curator of Computing for fourteen years. He directed and managed the national computing and electronics collections. He researched, lectured, published, and publicized his field ...
[Recorded: April 2008] Charles Babbage (1791-1871), computer pioneer, designed the first automatic computing engines. He invented computers but failed to build them. The first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in 2002, 153 years after it was designed. Difference Engine No. 2, built faithfully to the original drawings, consists of 8000 parts, weighs five tons, and measures 11 feet long. OVERVIEW - In London, during the summer of 1821, Charles Babbage, inventor and mathematician, is poring over a set of astronomical tables calculated by hand. Finding error after error he finally exclaims 'I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam'. His appeal to machinery, in one of the most resonant utterances of the 19th century, was the start of a new era of automatic computation. It was not only the grindingly tedious labor of verifying a sea of figures that exasperated Babbage, but their daunting unreliability. Engineering, astronomy, construction, finance, banking and insurance depended on printed tables for calculation. Ships navigating by the stars relied on printed tables to find their position at sea. The stakes were high. Capital and life were thought to be at risk. Babbage embarked on an ambitious venture to design and build mechanical calculating engines to eliminate the risk of human error in the production of printed tables. The 'unerring certainty of machinery' would solve the problem of human fallibility. His work on the engines led him from ...
This is a project that me and my friends built for school (UC Berkeley). Its made of lego mindstorms, scissors, and some scrap metal. With all things considered, I think it turned out alright. Not only does it fold your paper for you, it also cuts it. It would be the perfect accessory for a fancy, high-tech, Japanese bathroom! This video shows two test runs; the first run works well, while the second one could have gone a little smoother...
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