Category: history

medical imaging

communication history internet technology

So glad I found this great introduction and overview of medical imaging.

I liked the article since it gives a great overview of different techniques together with their genesis. Stuff like a PET scanner does not rain down on humanity. Lots of people needed to work hard to realize it. Ideas, Patents and -as it turns out- the Beatles were needed and involved.

I personally found it fascinating how much ample computation power has enabled. Nothing that mattered in the last 40 years would have been conceivable without massive numerical processing. Even 99.999% of computing power is wasted on Facebook and games it is just awesome that we people deviced instruments to compute so cheaply.

It is probably impossible to estimate the impact that technologies like DfMRI will have on our knowledge and picture of ourselves. The microscope changed the world and each of our lives in the most radical ways. Which might only have dawned on people in the 17th century.

Of course the link was found in Wikipedia. After having set up a monthly donation to them and knowing how good it feels now and will do in the future I wonder why I did not do so earlier. Specially learning new things most Wikipedia pages allow a quick overview about the topic. What I personally really love is how detailed yet concise even very specialized topics are being documented. Quiet brilliant.

confusion as a political tool

history politics

For some people is bendable. Sadly they will pay the price for their ignorance.

Seeding confusion is one tool deliberately being used to keep peoples away from certain facts.

Another one is ‘astroturf trolling’ – as in the comments for this article.

For me the forces and practices of Fox News & Co are just 1 level up from spammers & scammers.

So far society and people just endure those issues. Hope that changes.

It changed for other ailments like slavery or witch hunts before.

interfaces

history media

During childhood we build an idea of our surroundings. Kids figure stuff out quiet naturally. It’s what we are wired to do. When are young. Or when we like to learn.

I don’t think that this is a big deal – since people always did adopt to new ways of communicating. Reading and Writing are similar techniques that are ‘no natural’.

I think that it is a big deal – since more and more of our world is made up by glowing rectangles. We are what we watch. And what we watch could be controlled by some few corporations. No need to put people in pods like in ‘the matrix’ and maintaining them. They can do that themselves AND be under tight super vision.

I guess we will find out which one it will be.

David Simon (“The Wire”)

history politics

A recent lecture by David Simon

Very much worth seeing. He has his own perceptive that is coherent and thoughtful and based on his first hand experience. For me was able to shed some light on why the USA is the country with the biggest jail population. According to him 7% of inmates are there for violent crimes. Prisons are a profitable and growing business in the US. I don’t agree on his views in terms of labor. Would maybe be nice if the world would still be like he sees it. Small countries like Germany can still work under those premises. But only since they supply the rest of the world with their products. You don’t see many US made cars in Germany. Robots don’t need unions. Things have changed so dramatically in the last 10, 20 years. But the political system and peoples minds and perceptions are stuck in some fairy tale land of the 50s.

Science PR – good luck getting the Manhattan Project going today

history politics technology

Yesterday two ‘science stories’ ‘broke’: “Neutrinos traveling faster than light” and “Computers can read images out of the brain”. I am borderline clueless on matters of physics, so I leave that one alone. The fMRI mashup by Nishimoto et al is borderline in my view. The presentation of their findings makes it way to easy to drum up headlines like “Brain Imaging Reveals What You’re Watching” or “Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video ”

Only spending little time with the setup it seems that the experiement pretty much reveals that 5,000 hours of youtube video are so stereotypical that even a fMRI of the v1 can match some patterns back. For a given individual, after hours of learning. To suggest that the video shown on the right as ‘coming out’ of the brain is extremely misleading.

Having two of those studies in one day means nothing of course. But one can go off on a tangent and wonder why – I am sure wonderful – people and scientists drop science in exchange for head lines and eyeball. Maybe it is time to decide over the 2012 budget? And I am sure that given realities of today it is much to get money for “we can go back in time” or “we can film your dreams”.

I have doubts that the Manhattan Project would have a chance today. Rewind to 1940: Some professors had drawn some numbers on chalk board. Up this day only very few
people understood what they were talking about. I certainly have no clue. They had no computer simulated films. They had no precedence. The bomb they were talking about
was by multiple magnitudes bigger than anything that had done before. There was nothing in reality to show for. Just scribblings on a chalkboard. And some common consensus among a few people. One could see this happening if they would have asked to disappear into the desert to do a bit of thinking. But they needed a bit more: Factories bigger than anything else that had been built. And 10% of all electricity in the entire US to run them. To make a handful of matter that -according to science- might make one big boom.
All based on science. And politicians and military people did go with it. And they built different models that both worked after five years.

surprisingly insightful

history marketing media

Adweek ventures into cultural history. And – in my opinion – they actually do succeed.

The invisble hand of working stuff.

daily life history technology

Switching machines I realized that I had to re-install webmailer. This wonderful preference plane lets you launch any web based mail program whenever your default mail application would be launched.

I have used it for years. Thousands of times. And it always worked.

And I failed to appreciate that. Going through our lives our attention is where we need to act or avoid. The broken and annoying stuff is what we notice.

All the well working things that surround us go naturally under appreciated. And, since people have piled up allot of technology and culture in the last couple of generations there is actually a huge amount of that.

If a thousand items worked and one does not, that one will be all we think about.

747-8 Intercontinental

history politics

So, you think you are super cool, since you ordered a gulfstream private jet?

Well, unfortunately there are still a couple of people that 1-up you. By a long shot.

Boeing builts 747s since the late sixties. What meant to be used for cargo, since all long passenger flight would go super sonic soon anyway, became the largest passenger plane. Until recently: Airbus finally trumped those huge 747 jumbos with their dead ugly A380 a few years ago.

One of those 43 sold A380s will actually be converted into a flying palace.

Boeing revealed their new 747-8i yesterday:

Turns out that 7 out of the 28 ordered 787-8i will be sold to “VIP clients” as well. The super rich certainly got allot richer in the last years.

Usually that kind of wealth can afford to remain invisible. Having the worlds largest passenger jet converted to your liking gives a glimpse how a billionaire rolls in 2011.

The end of Nokia

history marketing technology

A good summary of what happened to Nokia. Point is that engineers can not run the show. But -of course- all the prettiest design in the world can not safe a project / company if the underlying technology is not up to the task.

past wasted fears

history media

“Strange Maps” is a wonderful read for me. It shows that on the Internet even strange or obscure content will find an audience.

In the recent post pages from Life Magazine in the forties are the subject. I find them highly entertaining. What Life wrote is utter rubbish. Complete fiction. As probable as you having 5 legs.

In 1942 many people in the US took those maps for a likely scenario. What an amount of wasted fear. I personally don’t like to jump to the conclusion that such non sense got produced to manipulate people into a certain direction. For me it is more likely to see the motivation in the fabrication of fictional war global war maps in that Life hoped to increase the circulation.

I think that today’s articles and ‘news items’ often don’t do much better in the area of plausibility. How is that swine flu pandemic going?