Algorithmic efficiency in the face of inelegance

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

Seed magazine published a wonderful crossover article between the worlds of biology and engineering "Algorithmic Inelegance" The complexity of developmental regulation isn't a product of design at all, and it's the antithesis of what human designers would consider good planning or an elegant algorithm. It is, however, exactly what you'd expect ...

Can code be bad for the planet?

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Alistair has an interesting post on Earth2Tech, the thesis of which is that inefficient coding practices can lead to environmental harm. I almost misled myself into thinking AC is blaming virtualization and SaaS/IaaS (infrastructure as a service) on creating such inefficiencies. Rather, he skipped past the obvious environmental benefits of server ...

Welcome to the jungle: finding quality in the internet content ecosystem and why editors are so important

Thursday, November 9th, 2006

I agree vehemently with Alistair that folks who spent time decrying the lack of general quality in the blogosphere or on Flickr or the internet in general are missing the point. Average quality doesn't matter. Who cares if my free stock photo site has mostly crap on it, the question ...

Emerging from the Chaos…

Sunday, July 2nd, 2006

Adam over at Emergent Chaos clarifies some Network Neutrality concepts for his readers in his post Innovation, Emerging From Chaos. He points out that "the regulatory apparatus has fairly clearly been captured by the regulated". Basically the big telecom corporations have learned how to thrive on regulation, and this has implications ...

The Internet Wants to Be Free

Sunday, June 4th, 2006

In my previous post I argue that internet neutrality legislation could help ease the transition to an internet society and economy. On further thought and debate I'm not really sure that regulation would be the most constructive response to the threat of network discrimination. The internet has a long history ...

Fair use and network neutrality – is there a stable solution?

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006

In his post "Fair Use and Network Neutrality" Lessig draws a connection which did not seem to previously exist but appeals to me as I have been looking for an excuse to talk about both in the same breath. He says: "...in a fundamental sense, fair use (FU) and network neutrality ...

Infreemation and The Evolution of Memes – Rip, Mix and Burn

Tuesday, October 26th, 2004

Why does "information want to be free"? I think the phrase is a good way of explaining to most people that information is really hard to treat like property. The cost of reproduction and transportation is absurdly low, thus it is trivial to distribute freely, in the sense of "free as ...