Our lives are increasingly a blend of real and virtual. We do much of our communication, socializing, shopping, work and entertainment in what is essentially a virtual world. What makes what we see and hear from this virtual world meaningful and relevant is that it represents something in the real world. Sometimes those are real people or real objects, but other times it includes things that are less tangible such as experiences, emotions, or just knowledge or information. How do we define the difference between what is virtual and what Read More

The latest Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal is probably the most dramatic Ubuntu release to date, and the key to this is its new Unity default user interface. Unity marks several important shifts from Ubuntu. It is meant to serve as a single user interface for all form factors, from desktop PCs to netbooks and tablets (hence the name “Unity” for an unified experience across multiple devices). It marks a shift away from GNOME’s own desktop environment which it supported and bundled from the beginning. Finally, it marks the start of Read More

Reading about Nvidia’s VP claiming that Moore’s Law is dead got me thinking about what this means for the expected exponential growth of technological evolution. Apparently Gordon Moore himself said that his law is dead. Elsewhere then I also read an argument about the development of particular technologies following an S curve whereas the uptake of a brand new technology feeds its accelerating improvements until the saturation point at which there is no longer sufficient demand to sustain the acceleration, and the growth begins to level off until a new Read More