For the last few years we’ve been hearing that cloud computing is the future. Last year I’ve argued that it is already the present, and Apple just further cemented that fact with its iCloud announcement. Apple is making iCloud services available across all of their devices so data created with and stored on one device can immediately become accessible on all the others. This is precisely what represents the biggest draw of cloud computing and where all of its benefits come from, namely effective automatization of data management and access, Read More

The ByteGuide Manifesto 1.1 The Basic Principles of a Transhumanist Individualist We love technology. We embrace it as part of who we are or aspire to be. We recognize human history as that of constantly increasing co-dependence and co-evolution with technology, perpetually replacing the old paradigms with the new ones. We see a universe of possibilities unfolding as a result of that process. We are the universe turned to bits of conscious thought, and nothing but the universe itself should be our limit. To aspire towards transcendence of current limitations Read More

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

In an incredibly thought provoking article in the National Post, the future – that could be – of computers was revealed, as envisioned in a conference at Toronto, on the third wave of computing. And that future is where everything will be a computer. Computers, in the future, will be “pervasive”, used for all sorts of things. For example, you are comfortably in the bed upstairs and forgot to turn the dish washer on downstairs. That’s fine. Using your cell phone, you can turn the dish washer on. Or, while Read More

We may be coming to a point when Internet may be considered a “public good” and a “natural monopoly” for government to regulate and administer. This comes from what appears to be a long established mentality which already treats certain goods and services as things that can only be provided and cared for by a government (public roads, provision of law, courts and defense etc.). We therefore have the privilege of witnessing just how does a particular good or service undergo this amazing transformation from something that previously operated in Read More

In a world of technology openness is often treated as an imperative, something that has to be preserved or promoted as something inherently good. I’ve been a long time believer in this idea myself, but as I watch the evolution of technology I’m beginning to question its value and underpinnings. What exactly is it that makes openness worthy of a pedestal it’s often being put on? I see two main reasons commonly being put forth: 1. The moral argument assumes a moral imperative to openness, or more precisely to the Read More

Anyone who has ever looked for alternatives to Microsoft Office probably knows about OpenOffice.org, a full featured competitor that is completely free. It started out as a proprietary StarOffice suite developed by a German StarDivision company until it was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2000 which opened up the code to community oriented development that resulted in many improvements and two new major releases (OpenOffice.org 2 and 3). Last year Sun Microsystems, and by that the OpenOffice.org project as well, was acquired by Oracle causing many to wonder what they Read More

In my previous article I pointed out how technology could take over all jobs which involve reproduction of what was already invented, all tasks that follow a particular predictable and programmable process, eventually leaving humans only job of discovering or creating new things to improve existing systems, invent new ones and conquer new challenges. This basically makes all manual labor obsolete. The process is indeed well under way, and pretty significant parts of human economy already depend entirely on machines and information technology (programs) that run them. The more this Read More