Your Brain on Computers

The New York Times has had a series over the last year looking at how computers affect our brains. The premise of the series is that technology is changing who we are as people. The latest installment is looking at our tendency to be plugged in almost all the time, even when we are doing things like exercising. Some researchers believe that the brain works best and absorbs new material best when it has down time:

"Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

Do you have real down time away from all technology, or do you relax with a Wii, an XBox or your IPod? One of the most famous creative moments in the history of technology came one Sunday in 1765, when James Watt went for a walk on the Glasgow Green. Here he came up with the key insight that made his version of the steam engine much more efficient than previous steam engines. Would he have had that moment if he had had an IPod?

Now if you do have some time you want to fill up digitally, the Computer History Museum has just posted on YouTube, two videos of programs that I participated in this summer, one on Indians and their role in computing, the other on the history of semiconductor technology.

Bill Gates and the End of the University

Bill Gates recently predicted that "place-based colleges" would become less important, saying they were good for parties, but were becoming less important for learning. We all know that the costs of college education have risen lately. We also all know about the Internet! MIT has put many of its courses on-line, and some of them have attracted students around the world, most notably a course in introductory physics.

Do we still need place-based universities? Do they provide something that the web cannot? Do you think NCSU will still be around 40 years from now? 90 years from now? As we look at the combination of rising costs, with states financial troubles, it seems like something will have to give.

A Violin Made 300 Years Ago --Republished from Jan 18, 2010

Last Thursday I went to a concert featuring the violinist Joshua Bell--here is his story and the story of his violin. He plays a Stradivarius violin that was made almost 300 years ago (it was made in 1713). It is amazing to think of a technology made 300 years ago and still being best in its class. In the United States, and in Raleigh, it is hard to see anything much older than 50 years. Do you think any technology of our day will still be in use 300 years from now? Will there be any buildings from our day still standing in 300 years? I am always impressed when I go to Europe or India at the old buildings (Taj Mahal 350 years old, Westminster Abbey 1000 years old). What do you think it means for a society where everything has been made in recent history and there is no expectation that something will last for hundreds/thousands of years?

PS Here is a fascinating story about an experiment that Joshua Bell was involved in . Here is the YouTube clip.

Sputnik, Terrorism and China (Republished from Jan 17, 2010)

Sputnik, Terrorism and China

In History 341, we will be reading over the next few weeks about how Sputnik galvanized America to take the challenge of trying to get a person on the moon before the Soviets did. In today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes from China asking "What's Our Sputnik?" He argues that we are spending a lot of time, money, energy, and blood focusing on terrorism, while China is quickly coming on track to supercede us as the world's leading economic power. I remember talking about 6 years ago to a professor in our department who specializes in China and goes to China often. He said that in 2004 he heard from people in China that they wanted Bush to win that year's presidential election because they thought Bush would keep the US bogged down focusing on terrorism and make the US a less effective economic competitor to them. Friedman quotes a Johns Hopkins professor speaking about Sputnik and the contrast with our "war on terrorism,":

“Our response to Sputnik made us better educated, more productive, more technologically advanced and more ingenious,” said the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum. “Our investments in science and education spread throughout American society, producing the Internet, more students studying math and people genuinely wanting to build the nation.”

And what does the war on terror give us? Better drones, body scanners and a lot of desultory T.S.A. security jobs at airports. “Sputnik spurred us to build a highway to the future,” added Mandelbaum. “The war on terror is prompting us to build bridges to nowhere.”

China and Google--Republished from Jan 15, 2010

China and Google are both often in the news, and but last week they were in the news together. Google accused China of launching a cyberattack against it and threatened to pull out of China. Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times writer who has a great deal of experience living in China and his column highlights a number of important themes in the history of technology (some which are a little scary). We talked in class about paradigms. Kristof mentions that the Chinese are putting a lot of effort into cyberwarfare. If China wanted to become a military power that could challenge the US in a traditional way it would take trillions of dollars and many years to develop the various weapons systems and train their military forces. (For example here and here are a post on recent Chinese work in aircraft carriers and how far they are behind the US.) Instead cyberwarfare doesn't require you to build any expensive hardware--just acquire computer skills that you can use in a variety of ways. If Chinese hackers could mess with aspects of the American infrastructure--power-grids, dams, air traffic control systems, etc., they would have a powerful weapon that in any conflict (in some ways more powerful than aircraft carriers and a lot cheaper).

Kristof's column also shows some aspects of the "social construction of technology." Different groups value different things. We in the US value openness. The Chinese value the ability to censor things and keep controversial issues out of the public. There is a tug of war now going on in the Chinese internet about which will win. The Chinese have created "the Great Firewall of China" to control the internet in their country. Kristof shows how innovative Chinese are coming up with ways to get around that Firewall, such as faking out censors by referring to June 4 (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre) by the name "May 35." (Well that probably won't work any more.) Anyhow the question is does the Internet require freedom or can the Chinese customize the Internet to their own values. We will see.

Paradigms in Aviation--Republished from Sept. 6, 2009

We have talked a lot about paradigms. One current example of the difficulties in changing a paradigm is Boeing's new airplane, the 787. Of course Boeing has been building jet aircraft for over 50 years, but in this model, it has done two things dramatically different. First of all, it has subcontracted out much more of the plane than it had done previously and secondly it has built much of the plane out of new materials, composites. This combination has been disastrous so far for Boeing, with their plane being several years behind schedule. Two interesting articles have recently appeared on the 787, Dreamliner, one in the New York Times and one in Portfolio. Why would such an experienced company screw up so badly? Designing a new model commercial airliner is an extremely expensive enterprise (it cost Boeing $10 billion to develop the 777). Boeing managers thought they could save a lot of money (and follow broad trends in business in general), by handing over the development of major sections of the plane to other companies. One can see how this made sense to Boeing managers at the time, but the problems of being at the mercy of other companies to develop Boeing's core product are now clear. I would encourage you to look at these articles, they are very interesting and give a sense of what goes on in the aviation business, with some of the flavor of Angle of Attack, where sometimes technology is not only about technology.

Rings Tones and the Social Construction of Technology--Republished from Aug 26, 2009

In class we are talking about the social construction of technology-how different groups shape a technology in different ways. One interesting example of this is the story of the high frequency ringtone as reported in the New York Times.

This technology takes advantage of the fact that young people's ears are capable of hearing frequencies that older people can't. However high frequency sounds can be painful to hear. The first step in this technology was an "ultra sonic-teen repellent" developed in the UK to drive teens away from places where they might be loitering. So if adults saw this technology as a "teen repellent," teens saw this as a "teen stealth" technology, which would allow them to communicate without adults knowing about it. They developed this high frequency tone into a ringtone, which they could then use to signal each other at school without the adults (teachers) knowing about it. Here we have two different social groups (adults and teens) interepreting a technology in different ways and finding different uses for it.

Globalization and the Iceland Volcano [Republished Post]

We have been talking a lot about globalization in this course and sometimes disruptions to globalization are the things that remind us how much the world has been globalized. This week's Iceland volcano was one such event. Flights from cities throughout Europe have been canceled. Here is an article and a map on the story. While this story covers the business effects. Its affects have also been felt in the US and even in our department. The Boston Marathon, scheduled for Monday, was to have about 600 European runners compete, and many of them will be unlikely to get to this side of the pond now. Our own history department had a conference scheduled this weekend and several of the speakers were coming over from the UK and couldn't make it. It is humbling to imagine what this could mean if the volcano were to continue to erupt over a long period of time, such as year, which was the time over which the volcano erupted last.