Archive for the ‘Science & technology’ Category
Can science secure our future?
June 17th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
American futurist Raymond Kurzweil certainly thinks so – as explained in this article from the “New York Times”. Key to understanding his optimism is appreciating that science grows not linearly but exponentially and acknowledging what Kurzweil calls the Law of Accelerating Returns: “Scientists imagine they’ll keep working at the present pace. They make linear extrapolations […]
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Be afraid, be very afraid, of the grim Reaper
June 9th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
If I was an al-Qaeda leader, my worst nightmare would be something called the MQ-9 Reaper. The U.S. Air Force proposed the MQ-9 system in response to the Department of Defense request for global war on terrorism initiatives. It is larger and more powerful than the MQ-1 Predator and is designed to go after time-sensitive […]
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From ‘brick’ to (my) iPhone
May 24th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
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Negroponte’s new $75 e-book
May 21st, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I blogged earlier about my encounter with the original green version of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) computer at a House of Lords event addressed by Nicholas Negroponte. Initially Negroponte set a target of selling 100 million machines by 2008, but so far OLPC has only sold about 600,000 machines. In an announcement today, […]
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Making the most of my iPhone
April 12th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I’ve had an iPhone since a few days after the mobile was launched in the UK and I’ve blogged about how much I love it. But one of the few problems with the iPhone is that the guidebook is on-line and I don’t find that a very user-friendly format. So I’ve just bought “iPhone UK: […]
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Will we find the Higgs boson particle?
April 8th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
The Higgs boson is a sub-atomic particle whose existence is theorised but not yet proven. A boson is a particular type of particle and Higgs is Peter Higgs, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Edinburgh, who first postulated the existence of this particle in 1964. Why is the particle important? It is the […]
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When will Earth end?
February 29th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
There’s a new estimate here.
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I’ve seen the future – and it’s Dutch (2)
January 26th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I mentioned in an earlier posting that I’ve just returned from a two day visit to a small town called Nuenen in the south of The Netherlands which is outstanding for having wired up all its 8,000 households with optical fibre providing up to 100Mbit/s. I’ve now produced a report on the Nuenen scheme which […]
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I have seen the future – and it’s Dutch (1)
January 23rd, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just returned from a two day visit to a small town called Nuenen in the south of The Netherlands which is outstanding for having wired up all its 8,000 households with optical fibre providing up to 100 Mbit/s. The workshop was organised by Close The Gap which facilitated the building of Ons Net (Our […]
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How does it work?
January 12th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Marvel at this set of chemical reactions: In 1973, the spectacular demonstration was perfected by Thomas Briggs and Warren Rauscher, two amazing high school science teachers. Some thirty-five years later, chemists are still trying to fully understand how it works. You’ll find an explanation of sorts here.
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