1 October 2000

1 Oct. 2000

Tomorrow I leave for the Sun Technology Days 2000-2001 tour, which officially kicks off in London on October 5, 2000. I'm sure it's going to be a whole lot of fun -- and if I can continue learning as much as I do from developers around the world, it should prove to be quite enlightening as well. I'm quite looking forward to it.
I thought I'd share a few thoughts here along with links, which I plan to share with at least the London audience as a bit of experiment. Instead of working entirely from a canned presentation, I think I'm going to experiment with using a web browser to visit specific links and speak to those ideas -- I'll report back on the relative success of that approach. But in any event, I plan to share at least the following:
Wow! A record huge ozone hole! Who gets the trophy?
EARTHFILES - Environment
Hawking: No more mankind?
Oooops. (In German - Go to babelfish for translation)
Fuel cells?
GE MicroGen
But can I wash it?
Electric Fabric
The problem with data on the edges...
CEO Loses Laptop
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Quantum memory
Tiny Devices
Jini Surrogate Architecture
My plan is to speak to each of the pages, and the implications therein. We have big environmental problems, to be sure. Much of it -- nay, most of it -- can be attributed to the unintended (read "living unconsciously") consequences of human activities. "Technology is to blame," scream the Luddites. "Destroy the machines!" And maybe they have a point....but the fact remains that unless we're all willing to significantly reduce our living standards, give up automobiles altogether and subsist on meatless grain and legume fare (forget even fruits and vegetables), we must face forward -- and heal in the process. Facing forward means acceptance of the inevitable when it comes to technology. Moore's Law is the result of complex human activities which seem to be leading us toward what is arguably the next step in (big 'E') Evolution. We're in the age of moving fast because, folks, we gotta move fast! Those holes in the ozone layer are the best barometer of doom we have.
Fuel cells. Not particularly software, but then again, there must be a connection. Fuel cells on the tiniest of devices provide micro-volt capabilities, which have interesting properties in terms of Information Theory....and thus, software.
Pushing intelligence to the edges is part of the transition to the Networked World. Especially as bandwidth explodes, it makes sense to deploy intelligence at the very fringes, meaning we're gonna be wearing networked systems, made of wildly innovative fabrics, in quantity, soon. But what about the data? What about proprietary data? Does that too belong on the edges. When the Qualcomm CEO loses his laptop, we need to rethink things...
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Conversely, how many electrons are required to store the Library of Congress? In the case of angels, some folks say, "An infinite number." In the case of electrons, some folks say, "Just one." Talk about ephemeralization!

And finally, a few words on the Jini Surrogate Architecture -- the world's best platform for connecting all those little devices that are springing up even now...