Night falls


At the San Francisco Exploratorium.

Wed 12/26/2007 18:39 12262007549
A friend in Germany sent this-- a chocolate sleigh with two little passengers.
The kids report that their beards were made from mint-flavored white chocolate.
I'm definitely going on a serious diet in 2008.

Tue 12/25/2007 10:53 12252007453
Lots of flat gifts this year!
Just in time for Christmas-- my long lost cell phone arrived today, good as new. Now i need a titanium shell, a case made with carbon nanotubes woven into the fiber, or something. I don't want another thing dangling from my belt, but I want to send it back to the repair center even less.
After this most recent mishap, I wonder how long it will be before cell phones are made like watches. How long before designs and especially interfaces are standardized enough so phones can be built for durability

Mon 12/24/2007 15:15 12242007390
My phone is back!

Thu 11/29/2007 16:18 11292007334

I spent the day with my son, who has had a bad cough and needed a day off. But tonight I had dinner with a colleague, and an topping the night off with a drink at the uber cool Doge. A little time to be a grown up.
I decided to try out the predictive spelling feature on my Nokia genius phone. Its pretty interesting. Normally, to spell, say, the word interesting, you have to push a total of 24 keys (i.e., 4 three times to type the letter i, 2 twice to type the letter n, etc.). Instead, you tap the following keys:
46837378464
The phone starts guessing with the first number:
i
in
got
inte
inter
And so on. It does a rather good job, too. Though it feels odd: you almost HAVE to not look at the screen as you type, and he you make a mistake the result is not a misspelled word but the wrong word spelled right. Definitely requires ignoring some familiar habits.
I'm a research director at the Institute for the Future, a think tank in Silicon Valley, where I conduct research on the future of science and technology. I'm also an Associate Fellow at Oxford University's Saïd Business School, where I work with students on projects related to the future technology and strategy. I'm also a visiting scholar in Stanford's HPST program. More professional details are available in my c.v.
In my free time I'm working on a book on the end of cyberspace, tentatively titled The End of Cyberspace. My first book, Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions, was published by Stanford University Press in 2002.
The banner is from a picture taken at Hidden Villa, a farm and conference center in the hills above Silicon Valley, March 2009.

Recent Comments