Tag: engineering
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The Emperor’s New AI
“It looks like you’re trying to have a conversation with a computer – can I help? In the early 1970s, no science show was complete without predictions of HAL-like intelligent autonomous computers by the turn of the century. The Japanese, fearing their industrial base would collapse without a response to this omniscient technology, poured hundreds…
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Are Google’s glory days behind it? – Colly Myers
Colly’s prognosis was sound. In December 2008, Google announced its intention to make “social search” a significant factor in its search results – the end of the hegemony of the algorithm. “It’s a well known aspect of man and machine systems. Complex systems with no control fall over. Every example of it you can think…
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Junk science – the oil of the new web
There’s a case to made that James Surowecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds is the most influential book of the decade – The Selfish Gene for the noughties. Both have something else in common: the title of each book is profoundly misleading. Crowds aren’t wise, nor can genes be selfish – as one critic famously wrote,…
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Justice Dept slams ‘Machiavellian’ Microsoft
Vista’s fate foretold… by Machiavelli. A prophetic quote. trust settlement, and quoted Machiavelli to support its case for an extension to the monitoring program. As of 1 February, over 700 issues remained outstanding out of over 1,000 submitted to the monitoring committee, which was set up to ensure Microsoft keeps to its word in the…
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The worse Google gets, the more money it makes?
Microsoft today is barely acquainted with how its software is produced. Now Google’s search results look similarly out of whack. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the mainstream press was barely acquainted with the genius and foresight of today’s technology leaders. Fifteen years ago Bill Gates appeared on the BBC’s…
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‘Lightweight, high-velocity and very connected’
At ZDNet, it’s Microsoft’s “Pearl Harbor”! Forbes screams, “Google’s office invasion is on!” Only it isn’t – and we have the founder’s word for it. As we reported yesterday, Google has paid an undisclosed sum for a web-based document editor, Writely. It’s a product that seems as mature as the company which produced it, Upstartle.…