What do primordial bacteria, medieval alchemists, and the World Wide Web have to do with each other? This fascinating exploration of how information systems emerge takes readers on a provocative journey through the history of the information age.

Today's "information explosion" may seem like an acutely modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation nor even the first species to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing information: from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Dark Age monasteries.

Today, we stand at a precipice, as our old systems struggle to cope with what designer Richard Saul Wurman called a "tsunami of data." With some historical perspective, however, we can begin to understand our predicament not just as the result of technological change, but as the latest chapter in an ancient story that we are only beginning to understand.

Spanning disciplines from evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology to the history of books, libraries, and computer science, writer and information architect Alex Wright weaves an intriguing narrative that connects such seemingly far-flung topics as insect colonies, Stone Age jewelry, medieval monasteries, Renaissance encyclopedias, early computer networks, and the World Wide Web. Finally, he pulls these threads together to reach a surprising conclusion, suggesting that the future of the information age may lie deep in our cultural past.

See also this brief interview with the author.

Update: see also this review in LA Times.

Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages

Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources and lets you share the results of your research.

A Firefox extension, Zotero includes the best parts of reference managers ... and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways.

Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and — on many major research and library sites — find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields.

Since it lives in the web browser, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications; since it runs on one’s personal computer, it can also communicate with software running there (such as Microsoft Word).

Zotero

Lifelogging is the name of the activity that Bell is practicing.

...

“Do you ever think you’ll be done?” I asked.

“Reach an end point, you mean?”

“Get bored. Grow interested in something else.”

“Your aspirations go up with every new tool,” he said. “You’ve got all this content there and you want to use it, but there’s always this problem of wanting more.”

Remember This? | The New Yorker

Take a look at any college catalog.

The computer science departments all advertise the field in the same way: developing the skills of programming, working with abstractions, and covering a range of computing technologies.

Take a look at the body of knowledge in the ACM/IEEE curriculum recommendations: they portray the field as 14 main headings, mostly technologies, covering about 130 subheadings. The consensus view of our field emphasizes programming, abstraction, and technologies.

So you're saying that our failure to communicate comes from a habit of mind rather than a defective story?

Exactly.

I'm not saying that this way of expressing our body of knowledge is wrong. It communicates well when our primary audience is technology-minded people like ourselves.

But today computing affects many people in all walks of life. Our primary audiences listen for principles deeper than technologies.

We can't sell our field to others simply by hiring good journalists to tell our technology stories. We have to be willing to tell our stories in a different way.

We have to find ways to discuss computing so that our listeners can see their own struggles in the stories and then see how computing can help them.

The Great Principles of Computing | Peter Denning

Decius wrote:

Need feedback from nerds...

Here are some pointers:

A good place to start is with the MIT press release, which describes the work of Marin Soljačić.

On his web site, he points to a paper describing the theory of Wireless Power Transfer; a simplified explanation is also provided in an accompanying press release.

The MIT team has also conducted successful experiments in wireless power transfer, reported today in Science:

Using self-resonant coils in a strongly coupled regime, we experimentally demonstrate efficient non-radiative power transfer over distances of up to eight times the radius of the coils. We demonstrate the ability to transfer 60W with approximately 40% efficiency over distances in excess of two meters. We present a quantitative model describing the power transfer which matches the experimental results to within 5%. We discuss practical applicability and suggest directions for further studies.

The Science article requires a subscription for full text.

However, the free pre-print is available (this is the theory paper cited above):

Efficient wireless non-radiative mid-range energy transfer

We investigate whether, and to what extent, the physical phenomenon of long-lifetime resonant electromagnetic states with localized slowly-evanescent field patterns can be used to transfer energy efficiently over non-negligible distances, even in the presence of extraneous environmental objects. Via detailed theoretical and numerical analyses of typical real-world model-situations and realistic material parameters, we establish that such a non-radiative scheme could indeed be practical for medium-range wireless energy transfer.

His talk at the 2006 AIP Physics Forum was entitled, "Wireless Non-Radiative Energy Transfer", so presumably the method is not the one that Decius remembers from school lessons.

The figures are freely available as a PDF, including a photo: "Figure 3: 60W light-bulb being lit from 2m away."

There is a WIPO patent on the method:

The electromagnetic energy transfer device includes a first resonator structure receiving energy from an external power supply. The first resonator structure has a first Q-factor. A second resonator structure is positioned distal from the first resonator structure, and supplies useful working power to an external load. The second resonator structure has a second Q-factor. The distance between the two resonators can be larger than the characteristic size of each resonator. Non-radiative energy transfer between the first resonator structure and the second resonator structure is mediated through coupling of their resonant-field evanescent tails.

Wireless Non-Radiative Energy Transfer

In days past, engineers answered the call to invent gizmos, gadgets and complicated devices, but in our time, they must increasingly respond to challenges involving complex systems. “Process design is where many of tomorrows’ challenges lie,” says Sheffi. How to fashion a global supply chain, for instance, that consistently ensures items are available on time, on the shelf, at a low cost, a chain that is responsive to external demand and shocks –this is difficult, he says. But it is this kind of know-how that provides a competitive advantage. Walmart, says Sheffi, “didn’t come up with new exciting stuff but they dominate the market…through process, not product innovation.”

The kind of engineer who can succeed and lead in this global market -- one that is increasingly fed by graduates of schools in China and India, notes Sheffi – may no longer be the type educated at MIT. The Institute is top-rated, but is mired in an approach “fit for mid-20th century manufacturing-based society,” and is now “resting on past laurels.” Yet, why change, Sheffi ponders. “We are #1. Rah rah.” But look at MIT’s School of Engineering “among friends,” he suggests, and you must admit there’s “significant calcification, duplication and conservatism.” He finds multiple fluid mechanics and thermodynamics courses among the various departments. “How many courses have ‘control’ in their name? 228!” Students are a key barometer of this stodginess, says Sheffi. There’s been a 20% decline in engineering graduates in the last eight years.

So MIT must shift gears, and embrace two basic missions: continuing to produce world-class experts (geeks) – practicing engineers who design complicated systems – and generating world-class leaders (chiefs), who will deploy their technological expertise in the real-world. “My hypothesis is that the great leaders of the next century will have to have a technological background, because we’re going toward a technologically innovative society.” These leaders will be problem definers as much as problem solvers, and, says Sheffi, “either we or China will educate them.”

Sheffi suggests a School of Engineering-wide undergraduate program, where all the fundamentals courses are rethought and taught differently. This means sacrificing problem sets for case studies, and “learning how a subject fits into the grand scheme of things.” MIT should integrate humanities with engineering subjects, ensuring undergraduates understand business, ethics, legal language, environmental concerns, organization and process design. There should also be a formal leadership workshop, required time in a foreign culture and along the lines of the European Union, a five-year educational model. If MIT builds it, others will follow, assures Sheffi.

Geeks and Chiefs: Engineering Education at MIT

In the aftermath of the recent distributed denial of service (DDoS) targeting Estonia, information has emerged that suggests this was not a concerted attack orchestrated by some single agency, but rather the spontaneous product of a loose federation of separate attackers.

Estonian DDoS - a final analysis

Compendium is a software tool providing a flexible visual interface for managing the connections between information and ideas.

It places few constraints on how you organise material, though many have found that it provides support for structured working for instance, following a methodology or modelling technique. Our own particular interest is in visualizing the connections between people, ideas and information at multiple levels, in mapping discussions and debates, and what skills are needed to do so in a participatory manner that engages all stakeholders.

Compendium

Collective intelligence is a natural property of socially shared cognition, a natural enabler of collaboration. But there are also natural forces that challenge collective intelligence, forces that doom projects and make collaboration difficult or impossible. These are forces of fragmentation.

The antidote to fragmentation is shared understanding and shared commitment. This book is about a new way to create shared understanding, and this chapter sets the stage by exploring specific ways that the forces of fragmentation work in organizations and projects.

This is the first chapter of Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems.

Wicked Problems & Social Complexity

OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for creating zero-install web applications with the user interface capabilities of desktop client software.

OpenLaszlo programs are written in XML and JavaScript and transparently compiled to Flash and, with OpenLaszlo 4, DHTML. The OpenLaszlo APIs provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication, and declarative UI. An OpenLaszlo application can be as short as a single source file, or factored into multiple files that define reusable classes and libraries.

OpenLaszlo is "write once, run everywhere." An OpenLaszlo application developed on one machine will run on all leading Web browsers on all leading desktop operating systems.

OpenLaszlo | the premier open-source platform for rich internet applications