phyllostachys 50: Minute Tech 35 show notes

35 - What is civilization? Quants and Quanta

Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

We take a few minutes to talk about technology
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This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 35 - What is civilization?

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

Also by:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.

show notes before I get into the usual three sections:

I didn't get this show out yesterday, Tuesday the 19th, due to timing and the fact that my "civilization" topic was way too broad to pull together something in less than an hour. I was overwhelmed, and perhaps suffering a biorhythmic trough...who knows. Suffice it to say that by the time I had to help the family get organized, and then head out the door for my commute, only the show notes had been posted...and I'll be altering those a bit with these new items.

I'm my own boss on this podcast, so I won't come down too hard on myself for missing a show...just get it out the next time around. I suspect that I have an ongoing audience...and that doesn't really matter, cause I'm in part doing this for myself, as a way to institute creativity, success and capability with scheduling.

You may have noticed the advertisements? I'm playing with that formula to see how it works - the tai chi and Ravelings advertisements are essentially classified ads - free advertising I'm providing for my friends don't have the access or facility with internet communications that I have. How do they work? Any thoughts?

Tech items:

Amazon's Kindle is ...ah...starting the fires of digital book advocates everywhere. Chris Brogan, that magnate of new media, gives a video overview of kindle on his advantageUPGRADE video blog, stating that he doesn't feel that the home for digital books has yet been found. Blackberry's too small, Amazon's Kindle's too, well, new, Sony's Reader is too Sony, Audio books, such as those on tape, CD or downloadable from Audible or Gutenberg.org are good until your ears give out.

What's the solution? How about the Apple iSlate? this is a mystical, hypothetical, maybe future product which could be many things...but if you could match the New York Times front page with Apple's iTouch interface, wouldn't you feel right at home reading the paper or listening to your newest novel or viewing your newest logos.blip.tv videocast on your new iWhatever?

Quants - another example not throwing the baby out with the bath water:

google the phrase ["Quant" is an elastic word] and click the cache link to the first article.
In the Technology Review, Part I: The Blow-Up...In Wall Street's summer of scary numbers, all eyes were on the mathematically trained financial engineers known as "quants." Bryant Urstad
Quants are the mathematicians & physicists turned financial wunderkind who've driven Hedge Funds and specialized investments field since the '80's, when easy access to newer forms of calculus could be married with computing power. Please remember, as with any technology, taking multiple approaches to investing your time and your money will help to level out the hills and valleys of typically chaotic life.

Tech Question:

what is civilization? Where did it begin? What defines it? ....

Now wait a gol' durned minute -- this is way too broad a topic....what're you trying to do, trip yourself up before even getting started. you know you can't just wax philosophic on the podcast about such an amorphous subject as "civilization"!

Let's take look at two things that define a civilization...and suffice it to say that either of these two things mark a collection of individuals as a civilization: that's recorded records of something, whether that's grain stores or labels for amphora or written histories of events; and, that's technology. Now, granted, chipped arrowheads don't necessarily denote a civilization...but large smoothed limestone slabs put together to form walls of many houses, such as you see in the British Isles some 5000 years ago, may.

Let me just throw out two words from our civilization which are in a sense related, and yet not. Quants I mentioned before: the people using quantitative, or mathematical analysis for finance and other business goals - every other truck I see on I-70 seems to be from some logistics delivery company - just in time delivery based on mathematical calculations; and quanta, which are the original ideas Albert Einstein used to describe the wave/particle dual nature of the emanations of light.

Two enormously different ideas - Quants and Quanta...yet both intertwined with the use of mathematics to describe the apparently increasingly complex world around us.

The correlation to Quanta comes from this: I'm currently listening in the car to Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein, read by actor Edward Herrman. This book was written after the opening of letter archives following the death of Einstein's first wife (I think that's how it was described). Edward Herrman does a wonderful job reading - very expressive - and a history about such a man and the new world which he created for us (for better or for worse) always bears re-telling and an attempt to understand.


podcasting/blogging tidbit:

I asked on twitter and I'll ask you: send me examples of women who've mattered in your life &/or women who've mattered to civilization in general. Women of all races and levels in social strata are both our most precious resource and our most squandered resource - how can we rectify this situation? For both our sons, our daughters, our families and our friends: encourage equal treatment, encourage maximum learning, encourage maturity, but also encourage the right and ability to play, to express themselves and to live lives full of dignity and fulfillment.

I suggested to my wife, Jennifer, that she come up with names of local (Pittsburgh region) historical women, and this is the first of that series:

Rachel Carson: A biologist and writer on nature and science, Rachel
Carson is best known for her 1962 book "Silent Spring," which touched
off a major controversy on the effects of pesticides. She was born in
Springdale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- Kindle and Quants;
- What is civilization? Quants and Quanta;
- Encourage; Rachel Carson.

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