Tuesday, November 23, 2010
False Alarm?
So the whole, "I'm going to try to keep this blog in mind more often" thing didn't work out so well. Oh well.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Oh, There I Am!
Hmm, I seem to have dropped off the face of the planet for a while there, didn't I?
I haven't blogged anything in a while, and I'm not sure why. I've narrowed it down to the following possibilities:
I haven't blogged anything in a while, and I'm not sure why. I've narrowed it down to the following possibilities:
- I have not had any interesting thoughts to write about. I doubt this is true, and perhaps the more likely version of this possibility is that I have not had any interesting thoughts at a time when it would have occurred to me to blog about it.
- I've been too busy to blog. This is certainly true, but I don't think I was any less busy when I wrote my previous entries. It's all about priorities I guess. Writing is a nice creative outlet for me though, so perhaps blogging (which is a bit like writing's estranged cousin) it's something I should get back to doing more often.
- Life has recently been less whimsical and more personal. There's an element of this. Sometimes the thoughts buzzing around in my head are clever and funny and worth writing down. Sometimes they're not.
- It didn't occur to me. I'm kinda circling back to my first point here, but I think I just kind of forgot about my blog.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Everything Old Is New Again
Today Google announced the availability of the Nexus One smartphone, a phone built by HTC but directed and branded by Google. It is designed to take full advantage of Google's Android operating system, which has been used in a handful of other phones by other manufacturers already. However, that's not the reason I'm feeling a vague sense of de ja vu today. I believe we are actually witnessing history repeating itself.
For decades, a war has raged between Mac and Windows. The former is a a complete hardware and software solution where both parts are wholly controlled by the manufacturer. The latter is a software-only solution that is designed to work with whatever hardware is engineered to be compatible with it, regardless of the source. Does that sound at all familiar? Anyone?
Well it should, because that's exactly what's going on now with iPhone vs. Android. Apple makes the hardware and software for the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Google makes the Android operating system and allows anyone that wants to to use it to run their hardware.
This is significant. The iPhone has been slowly taking over the smartphone market over the last few years because it got a pretty good head start on some key technologies. In fact, it made headway in to the market even though the original version of the iPhone lacked several features that other phones already had, such as higher-quality cameras, built-in GPS, and MMS messaging (all of which were addressed later with updated software and new hardware). However, the user-friendly operating system, driven by a nice multi-touch display, along with features like a web browser capable of viewing pages that were not optimized for mobile devices, made it a hit with consumers.
Today, though, none of those features are revolutionary; they've been copied by several other manufacturers. What once was the industry standout has now become the industry standard, and that standard is being raised every few months. Apple's problem is that they are one company competing against an entire industry of innovation. As phone manufacturers continue to outdo each other, Apple will quickly find itself left behind - again - unless it continues to innovate as well.
This is, of course, the same challenge that Apple has always faced. They make good computers, but the rest of the industry is united under the umbrella of Microsoft's operating system, even as they compete with each other to push the hardware to new capabilities. Therefore, if a consumer decides on a Windows-based PC, they have far more choices than if they chose a Mac. This has allowed the Windows-based PC market to overshadow the Mac market for years.
Android, on the other hand, is going to inherit Microsoft's challenges. Namely, how do you keep your operating system stable when there is so much diversity in the hardware it works on? They've answered that question, at least in part, by making it open-source, but that approach hasn't helped Linux gain anything more than a foothold in the PC market. Furthermore, the Android marketplace is filled with apps that will work on one Android-based phone but not another, due to hardware differences and/or modifications to the operating system. iPhone owners, on the other hand, can log in to the App Store and know that any software they can find will work (discounting any developer-introduced bugs).
Apple's iPhone will lose relevance if it can't keep up with the technological advances of the rest of the industry. Google's Android OS will lose support if it can't maintain homogeneity across all the hardware that runs it.
Welcome to 1984.
For decades, a war has raged between Mac and Windows. The former is a a complete hardware and software solution where both parts are wholly controlled by the manufacturer. The latter is a software-only solution that is designed to work with whatever hardware is engineered to be compatible with it, regardless of the source. Does that sound at all familiar? Anyone?
Well it should, because that's exactly what's going on now with iPhone vs. Android. Apple makes the hardware and software for the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Google makes the Android operating system and allows anyone that wants to to use it to run their hardware.
This is significant. The iPhone has been slowly taking over the smartphone market over the last few years because it got a pretty good head start on some key technologies. In fact, it made headway in to the market even though the original version of the iPhone lacked several features that other phones already had, such as higher-quality cameras, built-in GPS, and MMS messaging (all of which were addressed later with updated software and new hardware). However, the user-friendly operating system, driven by a nice multi-touch display, along with features like a web browser capable of viewing pages that were not optimized for mobile devices, made it a hit with consumers.
Today, though, none of those features are revolutionary; they've been copied by several other manufacturers. What once was the industry standout has now become the industry standard, and that standard is being raised every few months. Apple's problem is that they are one company competing against an entire industry of innovation. As phone manufacturers continue to outdo each other, Apple will quickly find itself left behind - again - unless it continues to innovate as well.
This is, of course, the same challenge that Apple has always faced. They make good computers, but the rest of the industry is united under the umbrella of Microsoft's operating system, even as they compete with each other to push the hardware to new capabilities. Therefore, if a consumer decides on a Windows-based PC, they have far more choices than if they chose a Mac. This has allowed the Windows-based PC market to overshadow the Mac market for years.
Android, on the other hand, is going to inherit Microsoft's challenges. Namely, how do you keep your operating system stable when there is so much diversity in the hardware it works on? They've answered that question, at least in part, by making it open-source, but that approach hasn't helped Linux gain anything more than a foothold in the PC market. Furthermore, the Android marketplace is filled with apps that will work on one Android-based phone but not another, due to hardware differences and/or modifications to the operating system. iPhone owners, on the other hand, can log in to the App Store and know that any software they can find will work (discounting any developer-introduced bugs).
Apple's iPhone will lose relevance if it can't keep up with the technological advances of the rest of the industry. Google's Android OS will lose support if it can't maintain homogeneity across all the hardware that runs it.
Welcome to 1984.
Friday, November 13, 2009
A Sensible Look at Common Sense
It seems like every year there are more and more stories about people doing increasingly stupid things that land them in increasingly stupid situations. I don't think that's because there are more people doing more stupid things; it's just the fact that the way our culture works these days, stupid people get lots of attention, and lots of attention means lots of money for the people that make it possible for you to give them the attention. That's a topic for another post, however.
As we watch these people doing these stupid things, we tend to ask ourselves, "What on earth were they thinking? Have they no common sense?" Yet I wonder what the phrase "common sense" could really mean if we looked at it more closely. I do not think it means what we think it means.
Several years ago, I was pondering this very topic - the nature of common sense. It occurred to me that while normally I'm a very sensible person, there have been, on occasion, times when people would rightly have reason to look at me and say, "What on earth were you thinking? Have you no common sense?" This intrigued me because it seemed to imply that common sense may be a little transitory. There have also been times when someone that I would definitely consider a little... shall we say, slow?... has suddenly exercised a surprising amount of rationality that seemed to come out of nowhere. Could this inconsistency simply be a random happenstance, enabled by other factors such as lack of sleep, or eating more Wheaties than normal? Or is there something else at work here?
After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the problem with common sense was not with the "sense" part, it was with the "common" part. You see, there are a lot of definitions for the word "common." The one we typically ascribe to the phrase "common sense" means that something is widespread, that it can be found easily, in abundance. Another definition we might use in this context would be that it's something that two or more people each have (i.e. common interests).
However, "common" can also refer to something that is shared by an entire community. This use of the word can be found in terms like, "common hall" or "common bathroom". Think of a common bathroom in a dorm for instance - everyone can use it, and no matter who uses it it's always the same, but they can't use it at the same time. Hmm, maybe now we're on to something.
So my theory is that there is one global common sense, shared by all human beings, but there's only so much that can go around. While you concentrate really hard on the proper way to change that light bulb without getting hurt, some poor sap in China just stuck his finger in a power outlet. Think about it. It makes sense.
So the next time you find yourself about to yell at someone for being completely absent-minded, just stop and ask yourself, "Was I hogging all the common sense for myself?" and if the answer is yes, go and apologize to them as they ride away in the ambulance. They'll thank you for it later.
As we watch these people doing these stupid things, we tend to ask ourselves, "What on earth were they thinking? Have they no common sense?" Yet I wonder what the phrase "common sense" could really mean if we looked at it more closely. I do not think it means what we think it means.
Several years ago, I was pondering this very topic - the nature of common sense. It occurred to me that while normally I'm a very sensible person, there have been, on occasion, times when people would rightly have reason to look at me and say, "What on earth were you thinking? Have you no common sense?" This intrigued me because it seemed to imply that common sense may be a little transitory. There have also been times when someone that I would definitely consider a little... shall we say, slow?... has suddenly exercised a surprising amount of rationality that seemed to come out of nowhere. Could this inconsistency simply be a random happenstance, enabled by other factors such as lack of sleep, or eating more Wheaties than normal? Or is there something else at work here?
After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the problem with common sense was not with the "sense" part, it was with the "common" part. You see, there are a lot of definitions for the word "common." The one we typically ascribe to the phrase "common sense" means that something is widespread, that it can be found easily, in abundance. Another definition we might use in this context would be that it's something that two or more people each have (i.e. common interests).
However, "common" can also refer to something that is shared by an entire community. This use of the word can be found in terms like, "common hall" or "common bathroom". Think of a common bathroom in a dorm for instance - everyone can use it, and no matter who uses it it's always the same, but they can't use it at the same time. Hmm, maybe now we're on to something.
So my theory is that there is one global common sense, shared by all human beings, but there's only so much that can go around. While you concentrate really hard on the proper way to change that light bulb without getting hurt, some poor sap in China just stuck his finger in a power outlet. Think about it. It makes sense.
So the next time you find yourself about to yell at someone for being completely absent-minded, just stop and ask yourself, "Was I hogging all the common sense for myself?" and if the answer is yes, go and apologize to them as they ride away in the ambulance. They'll thank you for it later.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Oh no, a logo
Welp, I spent all evening creating the nice little logo that you see at the top right of my blog. I've been going as OrionsByte for a long time now, and I've always wanted to make some sort of logo or image that would kind of follow that handle around, so I finally did it.
You can click the image to see a bigger version. Hopefully you've noticed that the constellation represented is, in fact, Orion. Orion has 81 "official" stars in it, which is represented in binary on the computer screen. Classical images of Orion typically show him with a shield on his right and a club on the left, but since I was giving him a laptop instead of a shield, the idea of him swinging a mouse around as a weapon tickled me.
Ah, the things we do for no reason...
You can click the image to see a bigger version. Hopefully you've noticed that the constellation represented is, in fact, Orion. Orion has 81 "official" stars in it, which is represented in binary on the computer screen. Classical images of Orion typically show him with a shield on his right and a club on the left, but since I was giving him a laptop instead of a shield, the idea of him swinging a mouse around as a weapon tickled me.
Ah, the things we do for no reason...
Friday, October 2, 2009
A Perspective on Context
Imagine yourself walking through the wilderness. Deep wilderness. There is not the faintest sign of civilization for miles and miles around, and no sign that humans had even set foot in this part of the wilderness before.
As you are walking, you suddenly come to a large stone statue, perfectly sculpted in to the shape of a human being. You are immediately struck by it's beauty and craftsmanship, even as you are completely perplexed as to how it got here. Upon coming home to your friends and family, you tell them about this wonderful thing you discovered; you might even subject them to a slide show of the photos you took of it.
Now we human beings are an inquisitive bunch, so inevitably as word got out, this statue would come under heavy scrutiny. Some people would be interested in who made the statue and brought it there. They would admire the artistry and wonder what it told us about it's maker. Why did they create this statue? What message or emotion were they trying to convey? What can we learn from their creation?
Other people would be interested in what the statue was made of. How long it had been there? How did it get there? Where did the stone come from? They would take samples and examine the area around the statue to look for evidence. They would come up with theories, and then test their theories.
If these two groups of people were to have a conversation, they may disagree about what the most important topics to cover were, but in the end, they're still talking about the same statue. The first group would suffer no backlash if they were to say that a skilled craftsman had obviously shaped the stone, but they would be foolish to suggest that someone created the stone itself. Likewise, the second group could tell us a lot about the composition of the stone, and likely how stone of that type ended up in the area where the statue was found, but it would be ridiculous for them to presume that there was no sculptor, and that natural processes had coincidentally conspired to create this perfect human likeness.
Now you probably see where I'm going here, and quite possibly you're frustrated at how I've used an over-simplified metaphor. However, I still think it serves my point well enough, and my point is this:
Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive.
Have you ever thought about why we use a base-10 number system? By that I mean, why do we count to nine, and then suddenly start using 2 digits instead of 1? What is the significance of that quantity? For that matter, when the Romans created their number system, why did they choose characters to represent multiples of 1, 5, and 10, and not other numbers? The answer is fairly simple: people have 10 fingers, 5 on each hand. If people had 8 fingers on each hand, the number system we use would be very different (i.e. hexadecimal).
So the only reason that counting to 10 makes sense to us is because we have a context of 10 fingers. If someone gave you a dozen roses, there would still be a dozen of them whether you had ten fingers or sixteen, but you would represent the number differently.
It is my opinion that science is the context of Creation. To put it differently, as we continue to try and understand the world around us, we are creating a context by which we can continue to learn and study things deeper and more fully. Imagine if all scientific endeavors just stopped where they were because everyone decided, "Welp, that's just how God made it." We need science. But science has to exist within its own context.
Skeptics and atheists would argue that science describes the real world, not some theoretical sub-context of it. However, my point is simply that all the science we perform today is dependent on the science that came before it, and thus all science is relative to itself. That doesn't invalidate anything, it just puts it in context.
As a Christian, I believe that there is a God, and I believe that He created the universe and everything in it. As a person with a healthy dose of curiosity and a love for science, I also believe that in order to understand something from a scientific perspective, you have to adhere to that context. The big bang, evolution, all those "anti-religious" theories - they're all the context in which science is performed.
However, I don't see those beliefs as being at odds; I simply see them as two different perspectives of the same universe, each with its own context, but not exclusive of each other. I don't attempt to - nor do I feel obliged to - bridge the gap between those viewpoints. For example, I would never say, "God created the big bang," or, "God created evolution." That's not what I believe. If I had to put words to it, I would probably say, "God created the universe and all living things through processes that we cannot understand, but which left behind artifacts that are left to our interpretation, and which in the context of humanity's current scientific knowledge can be described as the big bang and evolution." (Contrived much?)
I also don't attempt to talk to someone about God from a scientific perspective, or have a scientific debate from a religious perspective. I think that's the reason so many people think that religion and science are polar opposites - proponents on both sides tend to try to win arguments from their own context, and the other side refuses to acknowledge that context. I really wish that everyone could, for just one shining moment, see the world from a perspective they've never considered. There's no reason to feel threatened by a different viewpoint unless you're really not that sure of your own.
As you are walking, you suddenly come to a large stone statue, perfectly sculpted in to the shape of a human being. You are immediately struck by it's beauty and craftsmanship, even as you are completely perplexed as to how it got here. Upon coming home to your friends and family, you tell them about this wonderful thing you discovered; you might even subject them to a slide show of the photos you took of it.
Now we human beings are an inquisitive bunch, so inevitably as word got out, this statue would come under heavy scrutiny. Some people would be interested in who made the statue and brought it there. They would admire the artistry and wonder what it told us about it's maker. Why did they create this statue? What message or emotion were they trying to convey? What can we learn from their creation?
Other people would be interested in what the statue was made of. How long it had been there? How did it get there? Where did the stone come from? They would take samples and examine the area around the statue to look for evidence. They would come up with theories, and then test their theories.
If these two groups of people were to have a conversation, they may disagree about what the most important topics to cover were, but in the end, they're still talking about the same statue. The first group would suffer no backlash if they were to say that a skilled craftsman had obviously shaped the stone, but they would be foolish to suggest that someone created the stone itself. Likewise, the second group could tell us a lot about the composition of the stone, and likely how stone of that type ended up in the area where the statue was found, but it would be ridiculous for them to presume that there was no sculptor, and that natural processes had coincidentally conspired to create this perfect human likeness.
Now you probably see where I'm going here, and quite possibly you're frustrated at how I've used an over-simplified metaphor. However, I still think it serves my point well enough, and my point is this:
Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive.
Have you ever thought about why we use a base-10 number system? By that I mean, why do we count to nine, and then suddenly start using 2 digits instead of 1? What is the significance of that quantity? For that matter, when the Romans created their number system, why did they choose characters to represent multiples of 1, 5, and 10, and not other numbers? The answer is fairly simple: people have 10 fingers, 5 on each hand. If people had 8 fingers on each hand, the number system we use would be very different (i.e. hexadecimal).
So the only reason that counting to 10 makes sense to us is because we have a context of 10 fingers. If someone gave you a dozen roses, there would still be a dozen of them whether you had ten fingers or sixteen, but you would represent the number differently.
It is my opinion that science is the context of Creation. To put it differently, as we continue to try and understand the world around us, we are creating a context by which we can continue to learn and study things deeper and more fully. Imagine if all scientific endeavors just stopped where they were because everyone decided, "Welp, that's just how God made it." We need science. But science has to exist within its own context.
Skeptics and atheists would argue that science describes the real world, not some theoretical sub-context of it. However, my point is simply that all the science we perform today is dependent on the science that came before it, and thus all science is relative to itself. That doesn't invalidate anything, it just puts it in context.
As a Christian, I believe that there is a God, and I believe that He created the universe and everything in it. As a person with a healthy dose of curiosity and a love for science, I also believe that in order to understand something from a scientific perspective, you have to adhere to that context. The big bang, evolution, all those "anti-religious" theories - they're all the context in which science is performed.
However, I don't see those beliefs as being at odds; I simply see them as two different perspectives of the same universe, each with its own context, but not exclusive of each other. I don't attempt to - nor do I feel obliged to - bridge the gap between those viewpoints. For example, I would never say, "God created the big bang," or, "God created evolution." That's not what I believe. If I had to put words to it, I would probably say, "God created the universe and all living things through processes that we cannot understand, but which left behind artifacts that are left to our interpretation, and which in the context of humanity's current scientific knowledge can be described as the big bang and evolution." (Contrived much?)
I also don't attempt to talk to someone about God from a scientific perspective, or have a scientific debate from a religious perspective. I think that's the reason so many people think that religion and science are polar opposites - proponents on both sides tend to try to win arguments from their own context, and the other side refuses to acknowledge that context. I really wish that everyone could, for just one shining moment, see the world from a perspective they've never considered. There's no reason to feel threatened by a different viewpoint unless you're really not that sure of your own.
A Wave of Frustration
A while ago I posted about Google Wave, a project I'm very excited about. Wave has the potential to augment (if not replace) nearly every single form of electronic web-based communication we use today. It encapsulates all of them without depreciating any of them. Email, IM, wikis, blogs, collaborative office documents, social networks - it does it all, and transitions seamlessly from one to the other, such that the boundaries between all these different forms of communication start to break down.
On Wednesday, Google started handing out "preview release" invitations to the general public. They were only giving out 100,000, but people that receive those invitations can invite 8 more people to try it out. Google said the first invites were going to the people who'd already been involved in testing, some were going to Google Docs customers, and the rest were going to "the first users who signed up and offered to give feedback on wave.google.com."
Now I fall squarely in to that last category, but since I heard about Wave a little later than other people, it's very possible that I didn't sign up early enough to be counted among the "first." I'm okay with that.
However, as these invitations have been going out, I've been scouring the web to see what people's impressions are, and some of the results have really frustrated me. A lot of these people just don't seem to "get" it. There are too many bloggers that have met Wave with a yawn and said, "so what's the big deal?" - which is fine, everyone's entitled to their opinion - yet when you read what they have to say about it, it's apparent that they either misunderstood what Wave is intended to do, or they incorrectly assumed that the interface was the product, which is not the case - the product is the technology.
The reason this frustrates me is that I get the sense from many of these people that they kind of went, "Meh," and have no intention of continuing to try it out. These people likely signed up for invites not because they thought the technology was impressive, but because they'd heard it was the "next big thing" and they wanted to check it out even though they didn't know what it was. So if they've already decided it's not worth their time, then Google wasted an invitation as far as I'm concerned. How many of these invites have reached their lucky recipient only to be cast aside because said recipient never intended to actually do anything with it (other than write a scathing review, which people like to do just because it makes them look tough).
So I'm not bitter or frustrated that I didn't get an invite, but I am bitter and frustrated that the invitation I could have had went to someone who squandered it. Many times over.
On the other hand, this could be indicative of the kind of hurdle this technology faces in the mainstream. If you're old enough to remember the time when you got your first email address, but most of your friends still hadn't gotten theirs, then you probably can see how a technology like Wave needs widespread adoption in order to really, well, make waves. If these first preview users give up on it so quickly, that could mean trouble, and that makes me really sad.
Here are a couple things I would do with Wave at work if I got the chance to play with it:
- Refine the proofing cycle. Currently, one of my customers emails me with a change they'd like to make to a document, I delegate that task to an employee by forwarding them the email, and they email the PDF proof back to me. I review the PDF and if it looks acceptable, I forward that to the customer, who may send back some additional changes. Rinse. Repeat. Wave could improve this process because, even if it was just being used internally, the back-and-forth nature of the revision process could be reduced to a single document that had a complete history of changes made during that proofing cycle. It would be easier to review, easier to discuss changes, and easier to keep a record of everything that happened.
- Refine the process for resolving production problems. If we have a data-related problem with a customer's file, there could be many reasons. It could be a customer-side issue, which means our CSR would need to contact them and resolve it. It could be a common internal issue, which can be delegated to our junior programmer. It could be an internal issue that's never come up before, which would probably require my attention. Sometimes, it's a combination of those. The problem is, the production team doesn't know the difference, so it can take a while to figure out who should be dealing with it. However, if the production team was able to create a wave and add all the people who might be able to help, we could collaborate on the issue, delegate specific tasks, and keep tabs on the resolution, all from the same place, without a half-dozen emails flying around.
I know that eventually I'll get to try out Wave; it just may not be as soon as I'd like. I really, really hope that most of the people getting their hands on it today are testing it and giving quality feedback, the way my staff and I would.
A Twitter post says they're still working on getting invitations out, so there could still be hope, but they could also just be referring to the additional invites that can be handed out by each if the initial 100,000. I don't know. I'll try not to hold my breath.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
