Archive for the ‘Computers’ Category
The Serendipity Machine: A Voyage Of Discovery Through The Unexpected World of Computers
Computers, we love them and we curse them. No matter what we think about them, we know they have changed the world irrevocably. They have allowed us to make surprising, fantastic and unexpected discoveries. They are serendipity machines. However, computers have also made our world and our lives more complex. From mobile phones to the Internet, we use them to cope with rapid change and global crises. But what of their social impacts, especially when it comes to personal privacy and the role of the Internet in the globalisation of terror? The Serendipity Machine helps us make sense of recent developments in information technology. It explains how innovations such as data mining and evolutionary computing deal with the complexity by exploiting serendipity. It looks at possibilities raised by new technologies of personal agents and virtual communities. And it examines the growing influence of computers in new fields including biotechnology, environmental management and electronic commerce. It also reveals surprising connections between computing and everyday life. What do handbags, platypuses and traffic congestion have to do with computing? Why is computing becoming more and more like electricity supply? And why do computer scientists increasingly look to nature for inspiration? The Serendipity Machine is an engaging and insightful trek through the new worlds of information technology with plenty of chance discovery on the way.
A Computer-Controlled Future?
Computers dominate how we live, work and think. For some, the technology is a boon and promises even better things to come. But others warn that there could be bizarre consequences and that humans may be on the losing end of progress.
According to a recent study, a person who knows that he or she can readily look up a piece of information online doesn’t remember it as well as someone without Internet access. The study finds that the human brain treats the Internet as an extension of itself, as a kind of external memory. Ideally, this means that trivial knowledge can be stored in this external memory, freeing up brain space for creativity. But, in the worst case, the computer becomes a prosthetic brain.
Frontiers in Computer Education
This book is the proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Frontiers in Computer Education (ICFCE 2011) in Sanya, China, December 1-2, 2011. The contributions can be useful for researchers, software engineers, and programmers, all interested in promoting the computer and education development.
Topics covered are computing and communication technology, network management, wireless networks, telecommunication, Signal and Image Processing, Machine Learning, educational management, educational psychology, educational system, education engineering, education technology and training. The emphasis is on methods and calculi for computer science and education technology development, verification and verification tools support, experiences from doing developments, and the associated theoretical problems.
New Tools for New Computing Challenges
The world has moved to a data-centric paradigm, the era of “Big Data,” in which hundreds of millions of computers and mobile devices are continuously creating staggering amounts of information about people and everything else. This can only accelerate.
The change is so great that the computing tools we’ve used for the past decade are no longer capable of meeting these new challenges. Instead, radically different approaches to databases, storage and other computing problems have arisen, mainly from the consumer Internet, as demonstrated by Web giants like Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Amazon, along with the start-ups in their orbits.
A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute
The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.
But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.
Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.
Chromebook From Samsung Has Its Head in the Cloud
You can say all kinds of nice things about Google’s Chromebook laptop concept. You can say it’s ahead of its time. Or that it’s thinking way, way outside the box. Or that, as failures go, at least this one swung for the fences.
Why HP’s figures point to a post-PC era of tablets and wearable computing
Hewlett-Packard’s financial results showed falls in PC sales – but tablet owners are more likely to have bought a computer in the past two years. But Forrester says change is coming, and fast.
When students are in charge of maintaining the computers in schools
One approach that is not well known, but which perhaps should be, is to have students assume primary responsibility for the technical maintenance of a school’s computer-related infrastructure.A recent presentation and discussion at the World Bank by AED’s Eric Rusten and Josh Woodard explored lessons from schools in Macedonia and Indonesia Sumatra that have been doing just this. With support from Cisco and Qualcomm’s Wireless reach program, AED recently published a very useful Computer System Sustainability Toolkit, which Eric and Josh described in depth.
