This Technology Review piece about the inventor of backpropagation in neural networks crystallises some important issues about the current AI boom. Advances (or supposed advances) in AI are often held to put our view of ourselves in question. Its failures are held, by anyone who pays attention to them, to put our view of intelligence…
Read More It was called a perceptron for a reason, damn itThe Book Red Plenty is a fictionalised history, or possibly a work of hard historical science fiction, which covers what it describes as the “fifties’ Soviet dream” but which might be better termed the Soviet sixties – the period from Khrushchev’s consolidation of power to the first crackdown on the dissidents and the intervention in…
Read More Review: Francis Spufford’s Red PlentyThe Book Red Plenty is a fictionalised history, or possibly a work of hard historical science fiction, which covers what it describes as the “fifties’ Soviet dream” but which might be better termed the Soviet sixties – the period from Khrushchev’s consolidation of power to the first crackdown on the dissidents and the intervention in…
Read More Review: Francis Spufford’s Red PlentySo we’ve discussed GCHQ and broad politics and GCHQ and technology. Now, what about a case study? Following a link from Richard Aldrich’s Warwick University homepage, here’s a nice article on FISH, the project to break the German high-grade cypher network codenamed TUNNY. You may not be surprised to know that key links in the…
Read More GCHQ Review, Part 3 – FISH, a case studyA thought; it’s surprising how much you can learn about computer science from cooking, and cooking from computer science. The von Neumann architecture – when you’re cooking, there is a central processing unit, which is the top of the stove, there is mass storage, which is the fridge and the cupboard, there is a user…
Read More cooking with John von NeumannFurther, after the last post, BT futurologist says we’re living in science fiction. And what particular works does she mention? Blade Runner, Judge Dredd and Solyent Green. Well. In the world of Halting State, meanwhile, the Germans have had a wee probby with their electronic health cards. Partly it’s due to a reasonably sensible design;…
Read More i’ve got the key, i’ve got the secret…whoopsSomething else that came up at OpenTech; is there any way of getting continuing information out of the government? This is especially interesting in the light of things like Who’s Lobbying? and Richard Pope and Rob McKinnon’s work in the same direction; it seems to me that the key element in this is getting information…
Read More why is there no enduring FOIA request?Am I daft, or was the Apple iBook G4, 12″ screen, the least annoying computer of my experience?
Read More obsoleteMinor triumph. Hacker News dropped 2,095 hits on this post yesterday, which just shows you what a bit of well-directed whining can achieve; the fleeting attention of one million social-network Skinner-box pigeons. But yes. Anyway, Reggie makes a very good point in comments – why can’t I subscribe to somebody’s contact details and have them…
Read More contacts, againThinking about contacts, and also reading this, it struck me that if there is anything in computing that needs a manifesto it’s Polite Software. As in: it behaves helpfully towards others, by exporting and importing data in standard formats correctly (and if there is a common incorrect way of doing something, it should provide the…
Read More polite computers