Archive for On Technology
Poppycock and Jabberwocky: The Impending Collapse of Free Range Language Models and Just About Everything Else
Authenticity. Its value is almost inestimable. Politicians crave it. Business leaders dedicate endless hours to secure it. Every pretender to the public’s attention, clergy, street poets and TikTok influencers, hopes to possess it even while crafting prevarications that belie their very intent. That which is authentic is without posture or ulterior motive. It does not […]
The Saucerer’s Apprentice: AI Co-Pilots in the Enterprise Cockpit
There’s a story I’m fond of recounting about when I was part of a team that stood-up a computer factory in Ireland many years ago. It was one of many such initiatives that were sponsored by the Irish Development Authority (IDA) that granted ten year tax holidays to foreign-based employers so long as they met […]
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: Large Language Models Are Having a Moment But The Future of AI Is Hyperdimensional
If by now you haven’t heard about ChatGPT and all its various cousins, acquaintances and relations you might want to check some recent obituaries cause there’s a better than even chance you’re deceased. Notice just what happened? The suggestion that your very existence isn’t a fixed reality but rather a probabilistic artifact conditioned on the […]
The Quantum of Quan: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Quantum Neuromorphology
So, in my free time I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, you know the usual stuff, where I left my car keys, will the Fed destroy the economy, how will the usual group of numbskulls start World War III and, when they do, will prepping really make a difference? Then I stumbled on to […]
Metaverse Schmetaverse
Back in 2007, in the land rush to social media marketing, I was asked to explore Second Life as a potential marketing venue for a B2B value proposition. And the only way one could explore such a medium was to “immerse” oneself, travel through its landscapes, meet its denizens and interrogate the avatars that “peopled” […]
Somatosensoricity: Mastering Touch
What’s in a name? An ancestor, a zeitgeist, some whimsey and dreams? Entrepreneurs often think long and hard about names before the marketing types get involved. Because once names are set, they get sticky, and sometimes the goo won’t come off your shoe. Take Smart Dust. For years it sat on the front stoop […]
The Paltry Cost of Priceless Externalities
For the past few years, anyone who has been paying attention has come face to face with the economic phenomenon known as externalities. Popularized by causes like climate change, it is by no means something all that novel or vogue. Ronald Coase was one of the first to discuss the concept back in 1960 with […]
Stalking the Snark: Invariant Counterfactuals, Transcendental Deductions and the Future of AI
I’d like to start off by acknowledging that this is the kind of post that if it were a drug, a machine tool or a firework, the government would insist that it be accompanied by a warning. Something along the lines of… “toying with this crap while inebriated could be bad for you. Especially if […]
Beyond the Cyber-Cryptoverse, the Next Incarnation of the Internet Awaits
Over the years this blog has dealt with the nature of change and innovation as a primary feature of the high tech industry. In Hacking the Future 2.0 we suggested that the means for creating change of unimaginable magnitude have become increasingly open, accessible and ubiquitous. And you don’t have to look far to see […]
The Dawn of Agency
In case you missed it, Google’s recent Duplex demonstration left the attending techno glitterati gobsmacked and agape. Seems they were astonished by the authenticity a few “oh’s” and “um’s” and “ah’s” could produce when added to computer generated speech. I guess most of the audience wasn’t around back in 1990’s when natural language processing systems […]
