, 5 min read
Every time I travel, I try to pay attention to how the experience has evolved thanks to technology. Here are my notes about a recent trip: Only fifteen years ago, I would travel with a dedicated camera. It was relatively bulky and it only had a small screen. Sharing the pictures over the Internet…
, 1 min read
It is hot today in Montreal, so let me play my favorite game: (mis)predicting the future (2025). If the past is any guide, we shall still program using Java, JavaScript, C, SQL, and so forth. Linux will still be everywhere. Using libraries or web services, almost anyone will be able to build a…
, 2 min read
It is popular to fear that climate change will turn the Earth into a water world or that genetically-modified food is going to kill all of us. These fears are probably unwarranted. Instead, I view the future as follows: You will be hiking in a beautiful mountain with your latest exoskeleton. It is…
, 5 min read
When looking at the resolution of computer chips over time, we see that it takes roughly 5 years to cut the transistor size in half. However, this is costly. The second Moore’s law says that the cost of building a modern chip fabrication plant will double every 18 months. In software, with voice…
, 8 min read
In the second “Back to the future” movie (1989), the protagonists are sent 25 years in the future… October 2015. I watched this movie as a young adult and I was in awe at this version of the future. What did the authors get wrong and right? Wrong: We have no flying car. We do have neat…
, 4 min read
Today, the life expectancy of a corporation is about 15 years. Though corporations die for many reasons, technology and innovation are often the driving force underneath the death of a previously powerful company. Amazon.com, a silly web site, has recently surpassed in value the largest private…
, 7 min read
Over ten years ago, XML was all the rage in information technology. XML was what the cool kids used to store, exchange and process data. By 2005, all the major computer science conferences featured papers on XML technology. Today, XML might safely be considered a legacy technology… In any case,…
, 8 min read
Ceglowski, a web designer, wrote a beautiful essay called “Web Design: The First 100 Years“. His essay starts with a review of the aerospace industry… Back in 1965, it looked like aerospace was the future. Each successive plane went faster than the previous one. At that rate, by the early…
, 5 min read
The nerds online are (slightly) panicking: it looks like Moore’s law is coming to an end. Moore’s law is the observation that microprocessors roughly double in power every two years. The actual statement of the law, decades ago, had to do with the number of transistors… and there are endless…
, 8 min read
We do not have nanobots yet to repair our arteries and neurons. This will come, but we might have to wait to 2050 or later. We do have stem cells, the next best thing, and they are commonly used to fight cancer and improve your skin… but it will be a long time before they can used generally to…
, 10 min read
Old software tends to fail. If you upgrade to the last version of Windows, your old applications may fail to run. This is typically caused by a lack of update and commonly called bit rot. That is, if you stop maintaining software, it loses its usefulness because it is no longer in sync with current…
, 3 min read
I define techno-optimism as the belief that technology makes us healthier, richer and smarter at an accelerated rate. Anyone working in information technology cannot help but to be a bit techno-optimist. My wife’s latest Samsung phone is a technological marvel that can replace dozens of expensive…
, 19 min read
In my review of the movie Tomorrowland, I alluded to the fact that in the alternate world, people could stay young by drinking orange juice every morning. I conjectured that this was probably caused by nanotechnology. I do not expect to ever drink some orange juice that keeps me young… but…
, 5 min read
Walt Disney released Tomorrowland. I brought my little family to see it and we had a blast. (Warning: mild spoilers ahead.) The movie has one message: let us be techno-optimists. Instead of being driven by fear, let us embrace new challenges. Let us go to Mars or beyond. Let us cure cancer. Let us…
, 3 min read
Academic publishing is a bit of a perverted business. Let us recap what should be well known: professors write papers for free while publishers take the papers and resell them to universities for a large profit. I do hope to live one day in a world where everyone can have free access to all the…
, 4 min read
Depression, obesity, stress, sleep deprivation and age affect negatively your brain. However, as I have previously argued, the commonly reported decline in intellectual productivity with age is not so simple as it was once thought. Of course, we know that our brains incur some damage over time, so…
, 4 min read
Everything else being equal, you would expect short and simple papers to get a wider readership. Long sentences, complicated terms, should all discourage readers from reading further. So you would think that researchers and academics would outcompete each other, producing ever more accessible…
, 2 min read
If there is one skill that is needed in a modern office is email. By email, I do not refer to the specific Internet protocol. I refer to the general process of exchanging electronic text online. We have had thousands of years to learn how to talk to each other. We know how to read each other. Our…
, 15 min read
In his excellent book How to Fly a Horse, Ashton makes a case for working alone. He quotes Apple’s co-founder and technical genius Steven Wozniak: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on…
, 4 min read
People from my generation often complain that their parents were better off. They are often quick to dismiss the Internet and smart phones as irrelevant to their well-being. Were they better off? Though it has recently peaked, the number of cars per person is higher than it was in the seventies.…