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I had the pleasure of attending a panel at the Commonwealth Club of SF last Tuesday entitled "Nanotech: Hype or Reality?" The participants were Joe Stetter of SRI, Mark Abumeri of Knobbe Martens, Paolo Gargini of Intel, Ron Mosso of NanoGram, and Warren Packard of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

For a gathering of lawyers, scientists, and a VC, it was a very lively discussion, with topics ranging from implantable nanobatteries for internal defibrillators to the future of Moore's Law.

Despite the title of the panel, there was no question that nanotech is reality (with a healthy dose of hype mixed in, of course). The safety of nanotech materials was a topic of discussion, however, with the consensus being that the biggest concern is at the point of manufacture, for nanomaterials are easier to keep an eye on once incorporated into larger structures (e.g., nanopants).

An audience member asked what it would take for Silicon Valley to become Nanotech Valley. The panel's response was that nanotech isn't an industry but rather a group of technologies and materials involving very, very, very small things. Silicon Valley is named for the electronics industry that is based on the silicon of the transistor and the microprocessor. In contrast, nanotech is a technology that transcends many industries: biomedical, transportation, energy, communication, and even the silicon industry itself.

Posted by complexify at 05:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While flipping through cable channels last night, I happened to come upon VH1's When Jerry Springer Ruled The World. What caught my eye was some very familiar footage. In fact, one of the shots was nearly identical to the photo I took above.

In the spring of 1999, I was a student at Oxford, where I was involved with the Oxford Union, a debating society with a storied past and an impressive roster of guests. The most controversial of which was Jerry Springer, whose show was under attack for at the time for inciting violence and being an overall disgraceful display of humanity.

I was never a Jerry Springer fan, and I hadn't even watched more than a few minutes of his show. However, I came away from his talk at Oxford with an appreciation for his particular type of genius (which no doubt helped him during his tenure as mayor of Cincinnati).

Harper's Index has pointed out that the ratio of attendees at Jerry Springer's talk to those at Mother Teresa's was 1:1. This is a rather sobering statistic, until one realizes that it's almost meaningless since both events drew a standing room only crowd of about 1,500 to the Oxford Union's auditorium.

In the six years since this event, if nothing else, I have managed to abide Jerry's Final Thought of the evening: "My wish for all of you is that you never appear on my show."

[Apologies for the poor quality of the photo, but this was taken with my mid-90s 0.3 megapixel Sony DSC-F1]

Posted by complexify at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In theory, it's easier to organize digital data than paper files. Digital is certainly more space efficient, for a 3.5" hard drive can hold millions of pages filed in thousands of folders. However, finding and retrieving data has been much more challenging. One approach is to methodically systematically name and organize files in folders and subfolders, but this requires both self-discipline and adherence to a rigid hierarchy.

Alas, Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics seems to apply here, for entropy increases over time. Despite the best intentions, the steady influx of new data often leads to a proliferation of unfiled items. To locate an important document, the only option may be a full text search. Windows has a built-in search feature, but its full-text search can be timed in minutes, not seconds.

AltaVista gets no respect these days, but it was a pioneer both in full-text web searching and, perhaps more importantly, nearly instantaneous searches of one's own PC (remember AltaVista Personal eXtension 97?). Aside from the funky capitalization, Personal eXtension was a direct precursor to Yahoo Desktop Search, Google Desktop, and the Lookout plugin. While these are extremely useful products, the biggest question the latest crop of utilities raises in my mind is why it took us eight years to get here from AltaVista PX.

The next big change in local search will likely come at the operating system level. Microsoft's long-awaiting Longhorn OS was supposed to include WinFS, an object-based file system that would dramatically enhance search capabilities. However, we now have the following disclaimer from Microsoft:

UPDATE: In spite of what may be stated in this content, WinFS is not a feature that will come with the Longhorn Operating System. However, WinFS will be available on the Windows platform at some future date, which is why this content continues to be provided for your information.

Nonetheless, Longhorn will still offer advanced search features to rival Yahoo and Google's offerings (Microsoft acquired Lookout back in 2004). These incremental improvements make it ever easier to search gigabytes of data to find particular words. What they won't provide, however, is a new way to organize the ever-growing complexity of modern data. For that, a new paradigm is needed.

Coming soon: metadata and tagging to the rescue

Posted by complexify at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not normally afflicted by writer's block. There's something about the first post on a new blog, however, that is far more imposing than a blank sheet of paper. This resistance in writing for an online audience, I now realize, is not writer's block but rather stage fright.

Such a fear is irrational, of course, for a new blog's audience can generally be counted on one's hand. Despite the impermanence of web content, however, terms such as "trackbacks" and "permalinks" remind bloggers that dormant posts may one day spring to life when BoingBoing-ed, Slashdotted, or del.icio.us-ly discovered.

As the modern equivalent of the unedited, unvarnished vanity press, blogging places squarely on the author all the blame for bad writing (or, more optimistically, the praise for brilliant turns of phrase).

In a future post, I'll lay out my modest plans for this small patch of Internet real estate. In the meantime, after a month of procrastinating, I'll simply press post, hop onto the stage, and have a blank blog no more.

Posted by complexify at 03:59 PM | Permalink