Author: Stearns

Howard Stearns works at High Fidelity, Inc., creating the metaverse. Mr. Stearns has a quarter century experience in systems engineering, applications consulting, and management of advanced software technologies. He was the technical lead of University of Wisconsin's Croquet project, an ambitious project convened by computing pioneer Alan Kay to transform collaboration through 3D graphics and real-time, persistent shared spaces. The CAD integration products Mr. Stearns created for expert system pioneer ICAD set the market standard through IPO and acquisition by Oracle. The embedded systems he wrote helped transform the industrial diamond market. In the early 2000s, Mr. Stearns was named Technology Strategist for Curl, the only startup founded by WWW pioneer Tim Berners-Lee. An expert on programming languages and operating systems, Mr. Stearns created the Eclipse commercial Common Lisp programming implementation. Mr. Stearns has two degrees from M.I.T., and has directed family businesses in early childhood education and publishing.

Who Let the President Have a Cell Phone?

,

This is so Sundman that I’m not sure I didn’t already read about it in one of John’s novels are this here Wetmachine.

MIT researchers have shown that a magnetic field applied to a very specific part of the surface of the brain can suppress moral reasoning, influencing the person to coldly judge other people’s means based only on non-moral “facts” such as a description of the ends achieved (or to be achieved?).

The specific area of the brain is right behind the right ear. Gee, do I recall that they gave Mr. Obama a specially modified Blackberry?

Tech Changes Our Understanding of Ourselves

,

While genetics mapping changes how we define ourselves, common everyday technology is changing how we recognize what we are thinking. Change the tech, change the results. Telephone polls are now (recognized as) invalid. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127937110&sc=ipad&f=1019

I imagine that with web polling being so much cheaper, and more expensive options not valid anyway, we’re going to see a lot more completely meaningless American-idol polling. At what point does that become micro-elections? Will polling evolve from something that influences democracy, into a new structurally changed form of democracy?

Sent from my iPad

This I Believe

,

The relaunch of Wetmachine on newer blogging and serving platforms is a good opportunity to re-introduce myself. I’ve been working on this project — this atttempt to make on-line places where real people can really work together — since October 29, 2004 (and bloging about it since the next day). I write this blog for my children, to read in the future, to show them why I’ve loved going to work each morning.

I want them to know that I believe that right now, we are transitioning from the information age to the imagination age.

Continue reading

In the End

There’s a lot of thunder about Apple’s new developer licensing, in which programmers are required to use one of three members of the “C” family of programming languages. iPhones (and soon iPads) really do matter, so people are sensitive to anyone controlling or wrecking the process by which apps get created. The prevention of developers from using their languages of choice is inflaming an “Apple hates its developers” conception.

I think people are confusing implementation with design.

Continue reading