Wolfram/Alpha: Nerd-Powered Web Tool of the Future
[Scott Thill, AlterNet]
After personal-computer technology took off in the 1980s, visions of artificial intelligence danced in pop culture’s head. Some brat in his bedroom pranked NORAD into War Games. The gamer reality of Tron booted up, while Hackers, Sneakers and other digital archetypes fought for advantage in The Matrix.
In the so-called real world, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google fought for primacy in the search game, where smart and dull surfers punched questions into their computers and waited for a response. Until now, the computer has only been able to communicate back using links, text, videos and ads.
But with the recent unveiling of Wolfram/Alpha, a computational knowledge engine powered up by physics, math and computer genius Stephen Wolfram, that communication and computational evolution has just accelerated. However, slowly. Read More »
[Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation]
I’d like to know what Barack Obama thinks he’s doing with the fiasco we call the US economy. He can’t pump it back into the credit-fueled freak show it used to be, of course, but he could steer it in a practical new direction. Even people who have lost a lot, and stand to lose more, can be motivated to behave more self-beneficially. The president doesn’t have very long before his economic problems become really awful political problems.
The current mass delusion that will go down in history as the “green shoots fugue” can’t possibly bring the credit freak show back because the credit — i.e. money borrowed from the American future — was swindled away. Something like $14 trillion worth of nominal dollars is being sucked into a cosmic vortex never to be seen again. It was last seen in the spectral forms of so many collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, so-called structured investment vehicles and other now-obvious frauds. That giant sucking sound we hear means the process is still underway, and the “money” disappearing into yawning oblivion will out-pace any effort orchestrated by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury to replace it with new “money” (or credit).
Therefore there is no chance between heaven and hell that the pre-2008 suburban homesteading and shopping fiesta can ever come back. The American polity is tapped out in all sectors, personal, corporate, and public. Read More »
Talk about surprises.
Wired asks me to write a story about the suicide of George Reeves, the actor who played — and was typecast in the role of — Superman throughout the 1950s. Figuring it’s about his death, rather than his birth, I set forth to chronicle his strange fate and the murky elements of his life and suicide that are still contested to this day. I give it a suitably interesting title in my opinion. Crowd goes wild — with anger.
Over the title? I don’t get it.
This is after all a world where Fox gets to call its garish entertainment “news,” torture and porn (and torture porn) rules the mallrats, sports exists to sell dick medicine and rednecks are assassinating doctors in the interest of life. And I’m the bad guy?
Go figure. No really, read my Wired piece and figure it out for me. I’m stumped. Read More »
Wow, it’s been a strange, alienating, dizzying few weeks. Camp Morphizm has been moved, I’ve laid out a slate of work for the next six months, and life is getting hectic indeed. But I think you will like the new Morphizm much better than the old one. More video, more original work, more mobile, more of everything cool, and less of everything that is not. Stay tuned for continuing updates starting tomorrow.
Things are heating here up in Los Angeles. So I’ll be out and about for several days. Changes are afoot. And a foot is at the end of your leg. Tune in soon for updates and upgrades. Yours truly.
[Amy Bass, Morphizm
I am not, in general, a germ-a-phobic kind of girl. I do, yes, carry some hand sanitizer with me in my briefcase, as I quite often find the need to eat my breakfast on the commuter rails of the metropolitan New York area. And I do, yes, try to sit as far into the “well” section of the pediatrician’s office as I can when bringing my kid in for a check-up. But I touch elevator buttons. I touch the pen the cashier gives me to sign my credit card receipt. I touch doorknobs. And – oh yes – I even use the television remote control in hotel rooms.
Until recently, I didn’t consider my professional occupation – history – to be a hazardous one requiring gloves. Until now. Now, it seems, with the onslaught of swine flu into our lives, being a professor is a dangerous practice. Just last week, the announcement came: there will be no touching – handshaking, hugging, hooding, etc. – at graduation this year. Read More »
My mind is wiped after a frenetic week spend on the content treadmill. On Friday alone, I tackled the fine programs in the subject line above. So I’ve decided to start a daily feature called the Wired Dump, wherein I offload part of my workday onto you, fine reader. Thank you for being so strong, so steady, so there. You will find your reward in the afterlife, and hopefully my content. Read More »
I put together a retrospective of The White Stripes frontman’s various sonic disguises for Metromix last week, which was a hoot. As much as I love White’s musical talent, I love his obsession with the Tesla coil in Jim Jarmusch’s somber hoot Coffee and Cigarettes (pictured above) even more. But there are plenty more where that came from, if you’re looking for alternative Whites. Read More »
Someday I want to move to gorgeous Vancouver, home of Stephen McBean. It’s the kind of place that inspires beautiful music, whether that is McBean’s crushing metal band Black Mountain or his surrealist pillow-poppers Pink Mountaintops. After listening to Pink’s latest effort Outside Love for Metromix, I might move there tomorrow. Read More »
[Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation]
Euphoria managed to out-run swine flu last week as the epidemic-du-jour, with “consumer” confidence jumping and the big bank stocks nudging up. The H1N1 virus fizzled for now, at least in terms of kill ratio, though we’re warned it might boomerang in the fall with a vengeance. No one was surprised to see Chrysler roll over like a possum on a county highway, but the memory of their muscle cars will linger on like a California surfing song. Here in the northeast, where Sundays are not spent at the Nascar oval, the spring foliage reached the tenderly explosive stage and it was hard to feel bad about anything.
For now, the “bottom” is in — that is, the bottom of this society’s ability to process reality. It may continue for a month of so, even after the “stress test” for banks is finally let out of the massage parlor with a “happy ending.” But events are underway that are beyond the command of personalities. We’re done “doing business” in all the ways that we’ve been used to, but we just can’t get with the new program. Let’s count the ways: Read More »
