Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog

Xeroxing the brain

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:05:26 -0500

Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom, of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, have published an in-depth roadmap for "whole brain emulation" - in other words, the replication of a fully functional human brain inside a computer. "The basic idea" for whole brain emulation (WBE), they write, "is to take a particular brain, scan its structure in detail, and construct a software model of it that is so faithful to the original that, when run on appropriate hardware, it...

Thank you, Ron Rosenbaum

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:43:54 -0500

Our Resident Philistine receives his due. UPDATE: Writing in the most recent issue of the American Journalism Review, Paul Farhi provided a thoughtful assessment of what's killing the newspaper trade. After reviewing the broad economic trends that are undermining the fortunes of the news business (both in print and online), he asks: Could smarter reporting, editing and photojournalism have made a difference? Can a spiffy new Web site or paper redesign win the hearts of...

Your new BFF

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:44:14 -0500

"Scientists have created the first 'humanoid' robot that can mimic the facial expressions and lip movements of a human being," reports today's Daily Mail. The robot, named Jules, is, as the paper delicately puts it, "a disembodied androgynous robotic head." (Which, come to think of it, is kind of what all of us become when we go online.) Here's how it works: Human face movements are picked up by a video camera and mapped onto...

No problem

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:45:49 -0500

"Google is the answer to the problem we didn’t have," says bookstar Malcolm Gladwell. "It doesn’t tell you what’s interesting or what’s important." Ah, but it does give you a snapshot of the consensus view of what's important. Isn't that good enough?...

Tom Lord on ritual, knowledge and the web

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:38:06 -0500

Earlier today on this blog, Tom Lord offered what I found to be an especially illuminating comment on my post about Beau Friedlander's article on the differences between the book and the web as conduits of information and ideas. For those who didn't see Tom's comment, I reprint it here in full. The first sentence refers to an earlier comment that had cited Jacob Bronowski's "assert[ion] that Man is the only animal with 'social evolution'...

Cosmic implosion

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 05:10:44 -0500

A postscript to my Who killed the blogosphere? post: starting Monday, Cosmic Variance will be bidding adieu to its life as a plucky independent blog, and huddle into the warm embrace of Discover Magazine ... Now, we know what you’re thinking: you knew us back when we were indie rock, keeping it real, and now we’re going all corporate? Yes, yes we are. If for no other reason than the thankless task of keeping the...

Between a book and a web search

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:28:12 -0500

In a well-turned essay to be published in tomorrow's Los Angeles Times, available immediately thanks to the miracle of digital type, Beau Friedlander, the editor-in-chief of Air America, looks into the "chasm between virtual texts and their printed counterparts." He quotes Diane Ackerman on the blessings of the World Wide Web, which can make research a breeze: While planning her most recent book, "The Zookeeper's Wife," author Diane Ackerman used the Internet "to know what...

Zuckerberg's Second Law

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:29:35 -0500

There's something about the crisp autumn air that brings out the philosopher in Mark Zuckerberg. At this week's Web 2.0 Summit, the Facebook founder mused, according to Saul Hansell of the New York Times, "I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and [the] next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before." Hansell dubs this Zuckerberg's Law. But...

Who killed the blogosphere?

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:51:13 -0500

Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there's good reason for the teeth-gnashing. While there continue to be many blogs, including a lot of very good ones, it seems to me that one would be hard pressed to make the case that there's still a "blogosphere." That vast,...

The new economics of computing

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:09:11 -0500

Are we missing the point about cloud computing? That question has been rattling around in my mind for the last few days, as the chatter about the role of the cloud in business IT has intensified. The discussion to date has largely had a retrospective cast, focusing on the costs and benefits of shifting existing IT functions and operations from in-house data centers into the cloud. How can the cloud absorb what we're already doing?...

Openness is not enough

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:18:29 -0500

In the crowd at Microsoft's cloud-computing coming out party earlier this week sat at least one Googler, and, as the Guardian's Jack Schofield notes today, his observations about the event and its implications are worth reading. The guy in question, Dion Almaer, who works on Google Gears, among other things, writes on his personal blog: "I have had the pleasure to be at PDC this week and Microsoft put on a great show. As they...

A typology of network strategies

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:12:34 -0500

This week's pissing match - I mean, spirited conversation - between Tim O'Reilly and me regarding the influence of the network effect on online businesses may have at times seemed like a full-of-sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing academic to-and-fro. (Next topic: How many avatars can dance on the head of a pin?) But, beyond the semantics, I think the discussion has substantial practical importance. O'Reilly is absolutely right to push entrepreneurs, managers, and investors to think clearly about the...

Microsoft to offer Office-in-the-cloud

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:36:36 -0500

Microsoft's long awaited push into cloud computing continues today, as the company announces plans to offer fully functional, if "lightweight," versions of its popular Office applications as web services that will run in people's browsers. The move signals Microsoft's intention to defend its massive Office business against incursions from Google Apps, Zoho, and other online competitors. Versions of the apps will be available in both ad-supported and subscription models, according to Microsoft's Chris Capossela: We...

Further musings on the network effect and the cloud

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:37:40 -0500

Tim O'Reilly, in a comment on my earlier post about how he overstates the importance of the network effect, writes: "... you failed to address my main point, namely that cloud computing is likely to be a low-margin business, with the high margin applications found elsewhere." Let me try to correct that oversight. O'Reilly is here using "cloud computing" in the narrow sense of offering for-fee access to utility data centers for basic computing "infrastructure"...

Microsoft launches Windows Azure, its "cloud OS"

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:08:08 -0500

Having spent billions constructing a data center network over the last couple of years, Microsoft this morning launched, in limited "preview" form, Windows Azure, its platform for cloud computing. The announcement was made by Microsoft's top software executive, Ray Ozzie, in a speech at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Microsoft will use the Azure platform to run its own web applications and will also open the platform to outside developers for building...