The Context is an ongoing weekly Patreon series that gives a deeper understanding of the implications of current events, and technologies shaping the world.
The ecosystems of islands, whether biological or economical, allow for unprecedented experimentation, supported by their natural isolation. I’m in Malta, where Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain technologies are being actively supported by the local regulator, giving a clear platform, and sandboxes to try to see what works. Malta has a history of resilience, a small nation […]
Something amazing is happening: we are in the process of designing and deploying the tools that enable us to completely change how we define reality. We are augmenting what we used to call reality and extending the limits of the possible. The physical reality around you used to be your village, maybe 20 kilometers in
Originally very close to the machine, now computer programming languages take advantage of multiple layers of abstraction and make developers very productive. Various approaches that reflect the needs of the time are developed and adopted. Object oriented programming, integrated development environments, testing and deployment suits. With time, through the decades, we’ve become able to produce
Computer Languages Read More »
We must be alert to each other, and make sure human relationships, augmented by technology, allow us to nurture our mental health. Talking about mental health must become as natural and widespread as talking about. Mental health is a delicate subject that we are not accustomed to address. There are a lot of biases around the
The rate of technology adoption changes based on individual preferences and social norms. Accelerating and jolting technologies force an increasing rate of adoption, that put a pressure on individuals and societies to confront the limits that they imposed on themselves. But technology is so useful, that even those who hate it, use it. The precautionary
Technology Adoption Read More »
Quantum computers have been under development for decades. Are they about to start delivering on their promise? Jolting technologies, where the acceleration is increasing, can burst onto the scene very suddenly. The quantum phenomena, on which the new architectures are based, needed a long time to be understood and applied. We are still in the
We have many skills, many senses, many ways of coping with the world, absorbing the information, changing it, structuring it, and then acting on it. As our civilization evolves, the technologies that we invent and deploy complement our biological skills, with nonhuman or even superhuman abilities. There is an interesting interpretation of our fairly recent
Spectrum of Abilities Read More »
We are convinced, through the collective narrative leveraging our scientific understanding, that we think with our brains. While that is true, there is much more: some of us think with our stomach, an sculptor will think with her hands, a ballet dancer with her entire body. Our proprioception extends feedback loops outside of the body,
With modern technology platforms, the networks of connections that we can leverage go way beyond the limits of our biological and social evolution, the original circle of contacts in a village. The Dunbar Number of 150 meaningful connections may increase, augmented by the power of social networks and both synchronous and asynchronous channels of communication.
There is a paradigm shift moving from accelerating technological change to jolting technological change. What is a jolt? The jolt is the measure of the rate of change of acceleration. Imagine a rocket. The engines are at full power, and the rocket brings on board both its propellant and its oxidant. As they chemically combine
Jolting Technologies Read More »
