Ged Carroll

Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

  • 3 & Wind merger + more things

    Consolidation in Italy as Wind, 3 ink €21.8bn merger | TotalTelecom – I I hope that it won’t affect 3 UK roaming? I wouldn’t be surprised if 3 did similar deals in other mature European markets like the UK. Li Ka Shing is no one’s fool and wireless is mature and capital intensive. More wireless related posts here.

    Fancy 10 Gbps home broadband? Broadcom’s built the guts of it | The Register – fibre dreams?

    Less Money, Mo’ Music & Lots of Problems: A Look at the Music Biz | REDEF – interesting business analysis of the music industry

    Apple denies plan to sell mobile services directly to consumers | Reuters – interesting that they went to the trouble of denying it. It might make sense for them to have a corporate MVNO for their staff

    Nikkei report paints a disturbing picture of Konami | SiliconAngle – PR trainwreck

    The Unemployable Programmer – a nice counterpoint to the ‘get everyone programming’ meme

    Walt Disney Animation Studios | Hyperion technology – interesting write-up of their Hyperion render engine

    Apple is testing a Siri voicemail transcription service – Business Insider – will it work any better than SpinVox?

    brandchannel: Every Product Placement in ‘Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation’ – love the early press release quoted and remember getting to site in college

    FBI Struggling With Cybersecurity Because of Shit Pay and Drug Tests – both of which says a lot about the war on drugs and government getting tech

    Official Google Blog: Everything in its right place – downsizing of Google+. The move to break it up is viewed by many as a defeat, it also makes sense when one thinks of app constellations, though I cannot help think of Brad Garlinghouse’s famous ‘peanut butter manifesto’ at Yahoo! nine years earlier. Though that was a blatant grab for political power, it resonates with some of what seems to be happening at Google in terms of retrenchment

    Why the fear over ubiquitous data encryption is overblown – The Washington Post – interesting op ed by a former head of the NSA, a former secretary of homeland security and a former US defence secretary challenging the intelligence industrial complex demands for weaker encryption and more surveillance legislation

  • Invisible cloaks + other things

    Invisible cloaks

    The possibility of invisible cloaks straight out of a Marvel comic hero’s tool kit or a wizarding wardrobe a la Harry Potter. The underlying technology involves some science that sounds more like science fiction. Could ‘Harry Potter’-like invisible cloaks really exist? – CNET

    On a more serious note invisibility cloaks have applications in the military, law enforcement and even urban design through the power of cutting edge science.

    Foxes on the moon

    Foxes and science fiction what could be more awesome? This reminded me of TinTin for some reason that I can’t put my finger on at the moment. Have a watch and let me know what you think.

    SIN R1

    The SIN R1 looks like the kind of car I would have had as a poster on my wall as a kid, but now it looks too outlandish to be on the road.

    The driver doing doughnuts on the public road reminded me of the young lads who would take their hot hatches down to Blackpool for the lights . Revving their engines and pulling similar stunts. Which makes me wonder, what do they think their customer is going to be like? A yob, the stereotypical young footballer?