Earlier today, Sam Palmisano, IBM's chairman, delivered a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations called "Smart Planet". In it, he outlined IBM's vision for the future, a vision where technology helps improve people's lives all over the world by becoming "digitally aware and interconnected". But the thing that interests me is how the proof points deal almost entirely with efficiency problems: electricity losses from the grid, wasted food, petrol burned while sitting idly in traffic, and more besides.
The timing of the announcement couldn't be better. As I stated at the end of my previous post, the topic of efficiency has been on my mind for a while now and quite serendipitously, this gem gets dropped into my lap. I didn't plan to start writing about it so soon, but I got caught up in the Zeitgeist sweeping through the IBM community.
Let me start by stating the problem: humans are manifestly inefficient; the primary evidence being the amount of waste that we generate. Our limited brains and selfish nature mean that we spend most of the time doing things that are either necessary for our personal survival, or leads to our pleasure. So what a rare time in history we find ourselves in today, when humanity is starting to wake up to the fact that its collective burden on the environment is causing negative change. Scientists are even beginning to label this as a new epoch: "the Anthropocene" - the time when human activity started having a significant impact on the earth.
Like most, I worry about the future, but I tend to focus on unusual resource management issues, such as what will happen if we keep flinging our limited terrestrial resources out into space? And I think several people have heard me talk about my career aspirations as a garbage sorter (it's not enough to separate the recycling from the ordinary rubbish in my own home, I want to do it for everybody else too). It is from these thoughts that spring my visions for the future.
I dream of crazy machines that liquify garbage, with nanobots to sort the output into piles of base molecules and elements ready for resuse. I imagine computers that can keep track of every single object on earth, so nothing in good, working condition that could be reused by somebody, somwhere, is ever discarded. I've considered starting a global database of instruction manuals and spare parts, so that whatever can be fixed, will be. All of this makes perfect sense in my head - I just wish somebody, or some business, would make it a reality. And it seems IBM could very well be that business.
I often tell people how much I love my job. Now that it has become apparent that IBM's vision aligns so closely with my own, I know that I couldn't be happier anywhere else.
Cooking up some social change Posted by Caesar at 9:42 AM
The Sunday Telegraph ran an article last month on a surprising phenomenon: cookbooks are selling better than ever despite the financial crisis. The journalist, Charles Miranda, points out the wartime themes chosen by notable celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith, and offers it as evidence that the public (in the UK at least) are adopting a recession mindset. However, I think that the global downturn has resulted in more than just people rediscovering the joys of cooking; the attractiveness of a lifestyle financed through credit* has lost its glossy appeal.
I find this heartening, because it'll now be easier keeping up with the Joneses. Not that I've ever been particularly envious of others' houses, cars, share portfolios or whatever, but there are times when I just know I'm being Compared; for example: "You're still in the same job? You know you could get more if you look elsewhere/had more ambition/changed roles once in a while," or "You really should invest in shares/property/super to get ahead."
Despite the many attempts in the past, I just can't muster up enough enthusiasm or motivation to climb to the top of the heap. The pyramid view of the world never rang true for me, and now with this credit crunch, the pointy end is starting to collapse: climbing the social ladder by using credit to live beyond your means is banished, and people are learning to save instead of spend (or cooking at home instead of eating out). Now we have a much more level playing field, and I really hope that these changes in behaviour will drive a stake through the heart of our current capitalistic, consumeristic, materialistic society... said he who in the intervening hours since writing that last sentence, spent $429 on a brand new Dyson vacuum cleaner. Mwahaha!
I strongly believe that this economic rationalisation, along with the environmental issues currently being played out on the world stage, will lead to a new social order, which for now I'll simply describe as "Efficiency" and leave the elaboration for a later post. It's something that I've been thinking about for a while, and I'm looking forward to finally spending some time trying to articulate it.
* I have a slight racist tendency in my belief that the love of credit is a malady that mainly affects Western society, but a few friends have said that South Korea is also in a state of near-collapse due to a high level of consumer debt.
This is the first Tomb Raider game I've played since the very first one way back when. The consensus from a few internet reviews that I read is that I haven't missed much. Legend is the first Tomb Raider game produced by Crystal Dynamics, who were given the franchise to resurrect after the supposedly abysmal Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. They took the pre-existing Lara Croft, with her aristocracy and disinterest in anything other than archaeology, and added a new back-story, which is fed to the player a piece at a time by the game's narrative structure. As one who appreciates game stories as much as the regular variety, I liked the extra depth that this brought to both the character and the game.
While I readily admit that the developers did no disservice to the character design of Lara, I wonder if my wife should be more worried that I'm even more appreciative of the quality and variety of level design, and the attention to detail shown in ways such as the change in Lara's character animation during the cocktail party scene. I've had several "wow, look at that" moments... and not all of them for Lara! I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the game so far, but the experience has been the closest that I've felt to being immersed in environments that are believable, and participating in a story that is as exciting and compelling as a movie. The recent Prince of Persia games, which I also greatly enjoyed, had great level design and presented an exquisite fantasy world, but it always felt very dry and sparse to me, and not just because it's set in a desert, and the Prince is a self-absorbed, narcissistic loner. I can't think of any better way to describe it, except maybe that the environments lacked soul? Crystal Dynamics have done an excellent job of creating a vibrant, lively world. (I'd also like to give a quick mention to Deux Ex, which features an awesome futuristic Hong Kong.)
The quality of the game is also apparent in the way that I'm choosing to suffer intense nausea just to play it. One of the problems with Tomb Raider: Legend is that the camera often swings around wildly and uncontrollably, making my eyes and inner ear have arguments in my brain about the gymnastics that are(n't) supposedly happening. On a side note, the Wikipedia article on motion sickness mentions that drinking soft drink helps. Maybe that's why the stereotype of gaming geeks usually involves a bottle of fizzy somewhere, because apparently, motion sickness is quite common.
Now I just have to try and get through the rest of the game without throwing up. Pace myself, that's all I have to do. It's supposed to be a pretty short game anyway. I'll do a follow-up post if there's anything worth writing about that I haven't mentioned already, but I think I've already gushed enough!
The lego figurines (or "minifigs" in the vernacular) are the creations of Justin R. Stebbins. You can find more pictures at his Website, Saber-Scorpion's Lair.
It just occurred to me that we have a lot of bookshelves around the house. It's not only because we have a lot of books (we do), but because bookshelves seem to have become the de facto storage type for everything.
We have a tall, skinny one which has all of our shoes and shoeboxes, a few Ikea jobs for DVD's, CD's and games, and a half-height one that a previous landlord kindly gave me acting as a chest of drawers for my clothes.
Then there's the big looming black things in the dining area that we're borrowing from the owners of our current place, which are supposed to be display cabinet-type things, but they're really nothing more than bookshelves with glass doors (and it's where I keep our cookbooks anyway).
Good news everybody, it's bad news! Posted by Caesar at 10:08 PM
There's a saying: "no news is good news" which, in the days before telephones and e-mail, was used when a lack of information ("no news") indicated that nothing bad had happened ("is good news").
One respondent was unconvinced, saying "you do realise that most articles in the news aren't positive, right?" As much as I don't like it, he's probably correct. The saying from the top of this post could, in today's world, be more accurately parsed as: none of the information presented ("no news") is an agreeable report ("is good news"). In other words "all news is bad news."
The News industry wouldn't survive if they weren't able to supply a constant stream of compelling information, and it seems the topics people find most interesting are stories of miserable things happening to other people. Is it possibly because it makes our own miserable lives seem less so? (Why am I talking so much about miserable things lately?) We live in an age of cheap, instant communications, but this only seems to help propagate more bad news (and bad jokes).
I think that's why my online reading list doesn't contain any news feeds. For me, no news is good news.
There's a saying: "no news is good news" which, in the days before telephones and e-mail, was used when a lack of information ("no news") indicated that nothing bad had happened ("is good news").