All in History
Studying the Dawn of the Social Age
Listening to Melvyn Bragg’s recent BBC podcast Dawn of the Iron Age got me thinking about what future historians and digital archeologists might conclude about us from examining what’s left of our fledgling online social experiences.
The folks at Software Advice recently sent me a link to their ERP and manufacturing timeline that I thought was interesting and worth passing along.
A Fire Upon the Web
In A Fire Upon the Deep, Vinge created a universe where different physical laws exist in different locations corresponding to different levels of communications and travel speed. This got me to thinking about the different levels of computing and networking that have existed and are evolving as arguments about what constitutes Web 2.0 continue.
The Appeal of Steam Punk
Command Line’s podcast rant about Steam Punk is a fun listen. He refers to William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s 1990 novel The Difference Engine as the seminal work of “steam punk” literature where technology and 19th Century history are re-imagined. If you’ve never read that novel, I recommend it.
I Bought a Magazine Today!
I know, I’ve criticized magazines before as vestiges of an old fashioned past, but I confess: I bought one today.
Reports are coming out of MIT of successful experiments to transmit electricity wirelessly over a distance to power a lightbulb.
Next time you are frustrated enough with your computer to toss it out the window, remember that these are the types of computers that helped us land humans on the moon (courtesy NASA archives):
Mr. Lincoln's Telegraphy Practices and Modern Email
A while back I published an announcement about a new book by Tom Wheeler called Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War. Tom sent me a note suggesting I also check out the book’s web site, which is here.
One of the things listed on the web site is a discussion of how Abraham Lincoln used telegraphy and how this might relate to modern usage of email.
Abraham Lincoln and the Telegraph
If you are a fan of the history of technology, this new book might interest you. Bob Willard has been kind enough to forward to me information about Tom Wheeler's book Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.
Web 2.0 and the Manhattan Project
While listening to a podcast of a recent interview with Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, I was struck by the question, “What if the Manhattan Project had been conducted using the collaborative and social networking tools we now have?”
Ed Felten in the Freedom to Tinker blog has an interesting post called Why do Innovation Clusters Form? where he comments on a recent conference he attended devoted to high tech innovation and public policy.
Comparing Eras of Innovation: 1950's Aerospace Advances and Today's Web
We are now in the midst of a very innovative period of social and technological change that is being partly driven by the increasing availability of web based tools that support the development of relationships, the sharing of information and experiences of all kinds, and the manipulation of information on a scale that was difficult to contemplate just a few years ago. The experiences we have online are taking on increasingly important roles in terms of individual emotions, financial consequences, and personal relationships.
There have been other periods of intense social and technological innovation. One of my favorite ones for study is the post Word War II aerospace industry.