Technology
From a young age, I have been keenly interested in technology. This has mainly, while not exclusively, been focused on computer technology. Technology in all its various forms, from the earliest stone tools to the fastest supercomputers and intelligent networks, enables man to make ideas manifest in the physical world. A humble screw manifests the mathematical concept of the inclined plane. This, along with supporting principles, allows a simple metal artifact to hold together great and complicated structures. Meanwhile the ideas manifested through the personal computer are too numerous to mention.
That technology and tool-making is a, if not the, defining characteristic of human activity has been oft-said and well-studied. The more interesting trait about the time in which we now live is the creation of tools that themselves create tools. We create computer systems with the ability to produce a better hammer, a better engine, new materials, and on along the accoutrements of civilization. But beyond even this revolution, the imminent creation of systems possessing intelligence and self-awareness brings what might be termed third-order tools into our ken. We are now able to imagine (and not only in science fiction) computer systems designing better computer systems. No other intelligence we are currently aware of has created tools that can design and improve tools that themselves create tools for the original creator's use.
The 20th century served to birth the foundations of the many revolutions of computer science, especially the Internet and personal computers. Our present century is strongly on the path to developing on this groundwork, blossoming into more ubiquitous and natural interactions with technology such as touch interfaces, speech recognition, widespread access to the Internet and mobile technologies, as well as the vast numbers of social networking services. Such creations and their descendants have molded and shaped human thought and development, just as the social and intellectual needs of society fostered the birth and maturation of the first networks and mainframes. The only indication is that this trend will intensify. It's not as hard to imagine the vast wonders described in works such as Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines, even works of fiction such as Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
It is in the spirit of participating in, and contributing to, this global community of creation and study that I am interested in technology, and why I perform the work I do. While other goals are also present (namely paying the rent), I endeavor to keep an eye toward observing and understanding the growth and use of technology in this transformative time. We live in an exciting age!
Is it a fact, or have I dreamt it -- that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
A few of my favorite things:
