Removing technology shifts the … [read full article]
Posts tagged with 'engineering'
why am i fascinated by typewri
why am i fascinated … [read full article]
That’s part of it, yeah. But a lot of work was done in Universities as well, some through DARPA grant and some through university experiments. The one I got to witness as I got on in 1989 was the tail end of the merging of the University Unix systems experiments which utilized bang path (!’s where every computer in a chain was listed), vs IP system). The two networks were incompatible and efforts to make them talk to each other was tricky, as was merging a LOT of the various networks together. But they used the ARPA (military) and NSFNet (Science) as well as the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force, still around) to standardize the various networks into the internet we ended up with.
That’s part of it, … [read full article]
as the internet was finishing up in the early 1990s, prior to the Clinton’s 1993 “National Information Infrastructure” agenda, which explicitly promoted private-sector involvement, the connection of one network to another was still a little hinky. Commercial use was still PROHIBITED until 1995 by which time they got all the kinks out and it was ready to the onslaught of commercialization. So in this email I got in 1992, the mailing list I was on was on BITNET which had to go through a gateway to go through the Internet (under construction still) to get to me where my email was. These networks all existed but they couldn’t all communicate with each other. It was through the creation of interoperable protocols, steered by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) which still exists and was as public as stodgy committees can get (anybody can join in) that standardized communications protocols and gave DIRECTIONS any corporations that wanted to “follow along” to join the internet to use if they wanted their hardware and software to also participate in the internet.
as the internet was … [read full article]
as a kid, I read “Chariots of the Gods” from cover to cover. My grandmother sorta/not really believed in UFOs, that Atlantis was real, etc, so I had to check the stuff out. Did ancient aliens build the pyramids? No, humans have always been clever and capable of engineering. But it was fun to imagine then.
as a kid, I … [read full article]
How do you get from an individual to collective behaviors?
In our “realism vs … [read full article]
How do you get from an individual to collective behaviors?
I really like your … [read full article]
I’m a fan of the sciences and believe they are currently our best available ways to describe reality in a pragmatic way that is functional for humanity to use in order to explain and manipulate our realities. However, I also hold the paradox in my head at the same time that I don’t believe any of the theories are actually describing reality’s entities and processes. I don’t think humans will necessarily know the differences; for our intents and purposes, the processes we name and the entities we name are “real enough” for our pedagogy and our use, applicable to our engineering methods. I fully advocate full-steam-ahead at behaving “as-if” realism was factual. If people are dying of an epidemic, naval-gazing about whether or not two virii can actually “be” identical is a waste of time. Yet, in a quiet safe environment, where discussions of “what’s really true and what do we talk about ‘as if it’s true’, I might bring that kind of thought up.
I’m a fan of … [read full article]