Watching Old Movies

Recently I have found myself watching older movies and realize that younger generations may not understand them or be able to relate. Think about how many movies from the 1980's could be shortened to only 5 minutes with the introduction of mobile phones as a lot of the problems would immediately disappear. They have become so ubiquitous that the younger generations don't even know what a landline is anymore. My grand kids are not familiar with them at all as I discovered this weekend.

When I watch a movie depicting historical events such as World War II, I don't expect to see computers or modern technology. In fact, back then Jeeps represented the pinnacle of technological advancement. Now we see a movie from just a few years ago and things are familiar enough that nothing seems out of place. Then someone uses an old feature phone, which is one that makes calls and might have texting capabilities but is not a smartphone nor does it have a camera. It goes to show how much technology has advanced in a few short years.

While a number of modern conveniences are missing from these movies, there are a number of older technologies that people don't know how to use any more. I recently watched "Back to the Future" and Marty McFly tears a page out of the phone book. Does the rising generation even know what phone books are? He also checks the date by looking at a newspaper. I haven't seen one of those in a very long time. At least I know what they are, and quite frankly, miss them. The one scene showing how things have evolved is when Marty tries to twist a bottle cap off a soda bottle and his dad has to show him how to use a bottle opener.

I wonder how a 16-year old from 2025 would have to adjust to 1955? Would he or she immediately pull out a smartphone and try to get a signal? Would heating up food become a problem because microwave ovens didn't exist? Would everyone from 1955 laugh at the time traveler when he or she buckles a seat belt or puts on a helmet? These would all make comedic elements in a new movie. My only request is not to remake "Back to the Future" and come up with a slightly more original story.

 

 

Glad to be Done Traveling

I have spent the last 2 weeks traveling from one side of the United States to the other. Now I am back in Utah and happy to be home. My wife and I enjoyed the time together and got to see some amazing things. We also consider ourselves fortunate not to be affected by the government shutdown. I understand that is about to change in a couple of days though. My hope is that our dysfunctional government will figure it out and pass a budget that meets the needs of its tax-paying citizens.

We started our 2 week adventure flying from Salt Lake City to Columbus, Ohio. We spent a week visiting our youngest son and his family. That included a trip to our country's newest National Park in New River Gorge. It didn't become a National Park until 2022 and is well worth a visit. Fortunately the state of West Virginia sees the value of the park and covered costs to keep it open until the end of October. We experienced a fully staffed visitor's center complete with knowledge of the park and places to visit.

My wife and I then flew home long enough to do laundry and repack our bags. We had a relaxing Sunday and then headed to the airport that night for an 11pm flight to Los Angeles. Before leaving for the airport we received word of our delayed flight. That gave us a bit of time at home. The downside is it meant we would arrive in Los Angeles really late. Once at the airport we discovered the cause of the delay and couldn't blame it on air traffic control (ATC) but instead discovered a series of cascading delays caused by the airline.

The delay meant we didn't get into LAX until after 2am. We quickly walked to the Uber lot where we found a ride and got to our hotel sometime around 3am. I considered myself fortunate that I didn't have any early meetings and could sleep in relatively late before heading to the office. My wife came with me and did a walking tour of Culver City that she downloaded to her smartphone for only $9. We then met back at the hotel at the end of the day.

My wife's office closed for a week because of Fall break for our local school district. That meant she could tour the area while I spent the time working on the Sony Pictures Lot. While spending time on a movie lot is a lot of fun, my wife got the better end of the deal. She made use of the area's transit system and figured out how to get from LAX to Disneyland for only $5 round trip. The tradeoff is that it took 2 and a half hours each way. I'm glad she figured it out because Uber runs about $130 each way and still takes an hour plus. My wife also visited the fashion district and the Getty Museum. On the last day of the trip, I only had one meeting and set my wife up on a tour of the Sony Pictures Lot. When she finished the tour, I asked her where they took her and then showed her all of the interesting places the tour didn't go. We even had lunch at the commissary, which is a great place to eat.

We both felt exhausted at the end of the week and a 5:45am flight back to Salt Lake on Saturday morning meant we felt tired all day. I tried to watch the World Series game that night but fell asleep around 8pm. We both went to sleep early and slept late on Sunday morning. Now I am looking forward to staying home for awhile.

We used a lot of technology over the 2-week period to make the most of our travel. We continually checked into the status of the National Park to ensure we wouldn't be locked out. The airlines constantly notified us about the status of our flights which allowed us to wait comfortably instead of bored at the various airports. My wife even used her smartphone to pay for bus and train tickets in Los Angeles, saving her a few bucks. The ease of our 2-week adventure serves as an example as to how our daily lives are made easier through technology. 

Technology Improves Our Lives

This morning I woke up at 6am and ran through my usual morning routine of breakfast. Then I got ready to go skiing. It is early November which means lifts are not really running at Alta and so if you want to ski, you get to hike up the hill and earn your turns. My daughter joined me today.

Yesterday we did the same thing and had the luxury of clear skies. Today we started driving in a rainstorm that turned into snow the higher in elevation we drove. We arrived at the Wildcat lot in a full-blown blizzard. My daughter and I don't care as we live by the philosophy that there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. We got our skis ready and started climbing the hill while it snowed heavily around us. 

I felt incredibly comfortable as I hiked up the hill. We both made sure not to overdress as that would cause us to sweat too much which would freeze and make us cold. Instead the breathability of our Gortex-like shells kept the water out and allowed our perspiration to escape. I thought to myself that even though I was outside, I felt comfortable enough as if inside.

Technology constantly makes our lives better. I would not want to trade places with the wealthiest people of 200 years ago because of our many modern conveniences. Clothing is just one example. The many uses of electricity also come to mind. We can use it to keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer, not to mention run our computers, light our homes, and power our entertainment devices. Yes, I am happy living right now.

Dead-End Technology

Growing up the world seemed full of endless possibilities. I remember reading a story about how one day we would travel on supersonic aircraft regularly. I also saw promises of personal jet packs and flying cars. Those ideas seemed wonderful to a young kid and the future looked bright. Unfortunately none of that has really materialized. Why not? There are physical limitations that create what I call dead-end technology.

While we did have supersonic passenger flights for several decades, the fuel costs made it prohibitively expensive for all but the super wealthy. Friction and gravity require a lot of energy to overcome and there are physical limits to what can be achieved. The same hold true with personal jet packs. When it comes to flying cars, there are numerous safety issues but technology may catch up to where that may be possible, just not soon.

My oldest daughter asked me if I am concerned about the increasing size of hurricanes and I told her there are physical limitations that will keep them from getting much bigger. What will increase is the number of large hurricanes and that is something to worry about. The highest sustained winds ever recorded came from the Pacific hurricane Patricia in 2015 with sustained wind speeds of 215 miles per hour (345 km/h). I doubt we will get above that number by more than one or two miles per hour. We'll just see more hurricanes getting close to that number.

So what about computers? How come they continue to get smaller, faster, and less expensive? The limitations placed on them have not been based on dead-end technology. The switch from vacuum tubes to transistors allowed them to shrink and require a lot less power. Advances in photo lithography have continued to allow them to get smaller. Unfortunately we are getting to a point where it will soon be physically impossible to continue the shrinking trend. Right now, the smallest traces on computer chips are only 3 atoms wide. That is tiny.

So have we reached the limit on computers? Nope. Currently computer chips are built in a very 2-dimensional way where they are mostly, but not completely, flat. Instead of computers being built on chips, we can build them into cubes. Let's see how far that gets us but I think there are plenty of advances that can be made.

About 20 years ago I helped my brother-in-law make some decisions about buying a new computer and told him to get the biggest and highest-resolution monitor he could afford. I told him it would last a long time because monitor technology seemed very stable and his monitor would last through multiple generations of computers. Then flat-screen monitors entered the market and proved me wrong. It took an unforeseen technology advancement to enhance the art of computer and television displays.

So what will it take to have supersonic air travel for the masses? Or those personal jet packs? We will have to throw away the dead-end technology like we did with cathode-ray tubes (CRT) and embrace new technologies like we did with LCD and LED screens. What that is for transportation, I don't know. It may be as simple as devising a low-energy method of defeating gravity or cheaper and denser forms of energy. All I know is I hope someone figures it out cause those personal jet packs look like a lot of fun.

Technology Can't Compete with Mother Nature

Mankind has achieved some really amazing things. Just thinking about all the technological advancements that allow me to post to this blog illustrates some of those achievements. Looking at advances in transportation, housing, food production, and many other areas leads one to believe that we can do a lot.

Tuesday we had a nice snowstorm here in Utah and so I decided to drive up to Alta Ski Area on Wednesday morning before work and see if I could make a few turns before the lifts start running in earnest. In addition to snow, Tuesday's storm ushered in colder temperatures and Alta has started making snow. Making snow is a fairly simple process where you spray tiny water droplets in front of a large-powerful fan that keeps the water in the air long enough to freeze before it hits the ground. The key to making snow is having cold enough temperatures.

I put on all my equipment and started hiking up a run called Corkscrew. It is the same run I hike at the beginning of every season and Alta is kind enough to allow people like me the chance to do so. They also have their snow makers cranking out snow so skiers don't have to worry about rocks in the middle of the run. The only problem is that you don't want to spend too much time in front of the snow makers as it can be cold and wet. During the course of my hike, I passed no fewer than 5 snow makers blowing snow 50 to 100 feet in the air.

Man-made snow has a much different consistency than natural snow. It is great for a base layer on runs that are skied frequently as it is more ice than Mother Nature's soft-fluffy flakes. The ice is more durable and does not get scraped off the mountain nearly as easily. The downside is that it is ice and not very fun to ski. I would much rather have natural snow fall from the sky and get compressed by hoards of skiers. Still the technology does allow us early skiing when Mother Nature doesn't cooperate.

As I hiked up the trail, I saw the remnants of Tuesday's storm and marveled at the uniform consistency. The snow blanketed the entire mountain without the need of strategically-placed machines. Even though Alta's snow makers cranked out a lot of fresh snow, it paled in comparison to what Mother Nature provided. Yes mankind can do some amazing things but we still have a long ways to go to catch up to naturally occurring phenomenon.

Bicycle Insights

This morning I had a bunch of early meetings and then headed out on my daily bike ride of 16 miles. I didn't mind waiting a bit as the morning started cold and I prefer to ride when the temperature is at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit. While out on my ride I remembered the story of my dad at the beginning of his cycling obsession.

For some reason my dad thought it would be good to take a bunch of boys from Sandy, Utah all the way down to Lake Powell. Naturally he came up with the idea during winter and began training on an indoor bike in his basement. Every day he would watch a little television and pedal at a leisurely pace. When the snow finally melted and he headed out on his first outdoor ride, he went 7 miles. He put two large water bottles on his bike and drank both of them on his short ride. He didn't know how he could ride more than a few miles without carrying gallons of water. Only then did he realize that his indoor training did not have the intensity required to build up conditioning for a 300 to 400-mile bike ride over several days. To make a long story short, he increased his training and made it all the way to Lake Powell with a group of Scouts and their leaders.

Yesterday I had a lazy day and opted to ride indoors instead of outside. Fortunately I usually ride outside and know the level of intensity required to benefit my training goals. Without real-world experience it is difficult to know the right level of training required.

I am currently working on a project with some new software and services. Unfortunately I don't have any of that real-world experience and all I can do is look at documentation and simple examples. I think I have things figured out but I know I need to put my knowledge into practice and test it with real-world scenarios. To do so, I reached out to my technical team and will start working with them to configure the software for our projected use cases. Only then will I know if my book knowledge is enough.

Thankful for Technology

I have had a nearly perfect Thanksgiving today and so I thought I would post some thoughts about the technology I am thankful for right now. After all, I do try to focus that in this blog on technology.

My oldest daughter and my youngest son are both in Ohio celebrating this special holiday. We would have liked them to join us in Utah but that just is not possible because of work schedules and the cost of travel. While my middle two children joined us with family and friends, my oldest and youngest joined in on the celebration with a video call. Furthermore it didn't cost any money for the call. Think back 30 years ago when you counted minutes for long-distance phone calls because every one cost money. The ability to make video calls is one thing I am very thankful for.

This morning I got to head up to Alta and go skiing with my family here in Utah. We had the luxury of riding on high-speed detachable quad chairlifts. When I first started skiing, everything was slow-fixed-grip chairlifts. The new lifts whisk you to the top of the mountain in about a quarter of the time of the old ones. On cold days I would turn into a popsicle long before reaching the top. Now I hardly spend any time at all and that is perfect for when I am skiing with my grandchildren who hate riding the lifts but love skiing.

In thinking about this post, I thought about some of the bad things associated with technology. There are computer viruses, identity theft, and other woes we did not have to worry about 20 years ago. Fortunately the conveniences technology provides greatly outweighs the problems. If it was the other way around, we would stop using it. So life moves on and while it may not necessarily get easier, technology at least makes it more efficient and for that I am thankful.

New Product Hype

I spent some time skiing with my daughter on her day off this weekend and we saw someone skiing on a pair of skis that were supposed to revolutionize the ski industry several years ago. With the advantage of passing time we can look back and say that the prediction turned out to be quite false. I remember thinking that I didn't see what all the fuss was about when the ski came on the market. So what went wrong.

I am a firm believer that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it. There are a lot of products that we are told will revolutionize our lives. Sometimes the hype is warranted and other times it is not. With the case of this new ski design, it leveraged boat building technology to create a ski that floated better than other skis of the time. Skis and boats share a lot of manufacturing methods in that they both use fiberglass and sandwich construction for strength and to help save weight. Therefore it makes sense that a ski manufacturer would look to the boating industry when trying to come up with new design ideas. Sometimes the ideas work and other times they don't.

I have a pair of skis from the same era as this hyped ski but manufactured by another ski company. At the time, wide powder skis started gaining popularity. My pair of skis tend to sink in powder and so a design change would have helped it ski significantly better. One manufacturer came up with the very hyped design while all other manufacturers made a much more subtle change to achieve the same result. This subtle change is now used by all ski companies.

So what is the dead giveaway that a new technology is being over-hyped? For this ski, it came from non-skiing media sources. Ski magazine does a ski test every year and they gave this new ski some favorable marks. When I saw more general-purpose magazines and newspapers such as Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of this new ski, I began to wonder if it could live up to the hype. I learned from this experience that the source of the glowing recommendation should always be considered. I will never trust a ski recommendation from a general-purpose news magazine ever again unless there is significant support from ski industry trade journals as well. The same holds true for computer and technology announcements.

We Learned A Lot in 2020

A lot of people are really down on the year 2020 because of COVID-19 and all of the problems that it created for the world. I'd like to take a different point of view and say that it is a year we learned a lot. Furthermore we also progressed significantly in our technology and ability to work from home. Instead of complaining about 2020, I'd like to point out what we learned.

Most importantly we learned that global pandemics happen and we need to be prepared for them. Nobody complained when the Obama administration depleted our nation's pandemic supplies because we didn't think there was even a remote possibility it would be something we needed to be concerned about. Now we all know that while our healthcare system is significantly better than 100 years ago, it is not foolproof and we do need to worry about overloading it.

We learned that we don't need to be in the office to work. This one is my favorites as I have not had to go into my office since March. I find that I am actually more productive working from home. I also discovered that I don't get nearly as much done around the home as I thought I would when I traveled between Utah and California each week. I do appreciate the extra 6 hours a week I am not commuting by plane though. We have seen video conferencing technology rise to the occasion and get significantly better over the past year. I am thankful for that as I believe that we won't have to spend as much time in the office as we used to.

Some people have been very negatively effected by COVID-19 as they have lost their form of income. With every loss, there has also been a gain. A large number of people have learned how to cook instead of going out every night. Other people have turned to the great outdoors and exercise instead of sedentary forms of recreation. There have also been a number of new job opportunities created because of COVID-19. My neighbor that works in the movie industry has a job monitoring COVID-19 protocols on the movie sets, a job that didn't exist in 2019. Amazon cannot keep pace with the hiring they need to do for all of the online shopping being done. While some think that would be a lousy job, I have a neighbor who is thriving at Amazon and loves working there. Let's also not forget the huge number of people entering the healthcare field because it is now front and center in all of our lives. Always remember that when one door closes, another opens.

Yes, this has been a tough year for us all, but it is something we all have in common. On my way up to the ski hill this morning I heard the radio announcer say that normally a person will suffer through a trial alone. Perhaps family and friends may be there with the person. In 2020, we all suffered together. The entire world did and that has brought us all closer together . . . figuratively of course as we still need to social distance.

30 Years of Marriage

This week marks my wife and my 30th year of marriage. That is a significant milestone. No it doesn't have anything to do with technology or computers but I figured it is worth noting. In honor of my wife I figure it is only fair to share some of the comments she has made about technology and my career choice in the past.

When my wife and I first got married, she would tell people that, "While nerd may be a 4-letter word in high-school, it is an excellent career choice for a husband." Technology has generally done fairly well in keeping our bills paid and she recognized that early on. That being said, there have been several years in our married life where that wasn't the case. That can be said of quite a few career choices though.

My brothers also chose computers for their careers and we used to talk a lot about technologies when we would get together at family events. Often we would talk about the latest advances or our latest toys. My older brother's wife would make some comment about boring shop talk and my wife would quickly respond, "It's fine to talk about as it pays our bills." Yes, computers and technology can be a bit of a conversation bore for those not in the industry but I appreciate my wife putting up with and seeming interested in countless discussions we have had. 

Now for those thinking that Christmas is a great time to get married, I would say that it is. The only downside is that it is an awful time for your anniversary. We always wait until February to celebrate because trying to take a trip at Christmas is expensive and interferes with a lot of other things. Should you be considering a Christmas wedding, I suggest waiting until at least January. What a great way to start the new year.

Outdated Instructions and Why Dates Matter

Recently I have experienced several problem with software updates on my various computers. It is easy to search the Internet and look for solutions. Unfortunately I find myself reading outdated instructions and it is only after going through the first several lines that I discover the solution is for a previous version of the software I am trying to fix. It makes me wish that every post on the Internet is required to have a date associated with it.

One would think that the problem could be solved by including software versions in the search string but that doesn't help. Search engines are amazing but they don't know the difference between version 6.1 and 6.1.3. At least with a posting date you have some idea of how recent the solution appeared online. If it is a new piece of software that released the day before, seeing a date of last year indicates you might want to keep looking.

I appreciate this blog and how it assigns a date to every post. If I give advice, you know when it was given. This is really helpful when you see two posts that disagree with each other. I may favor a particular laptop one year and a completely different one the next. This is because of constant change and in the evolution of products. My only hope is that products continue to get better and technology continues to advance.

Simple Comforts

Every Thursday the cafeteria in my office has cookies and milk available at 2:30pm. It is a simple snack but oh so comforting. Comfort can be a great thing especially during trying times like right now with people worrying about COVID-19. Unfortunately it also hinders progress and learning. If we always stay in our comfort zone, we never progress. This week that point got driven home more than once on my current work project.

My project requires that I use a tool that I have been using for the past decade. I thought I knew it inside and out but discovered there is still plenty to learn. I put together a demo last week and showed it off at the beginning of this one. My boss thought I did a great job but had some minor tweaks with some very simple things like colors. The tool does a pretty good job of hiding color choices from you and selects them automatically. I had no idea how to change them as they didn't look too bad but could be better. When my boss asked me to do so, I said, "I'm not sure how but it is probably possible." Playing around a bit, I figured it out. In fact I managed to implement all of the minor changes rather quickly.

When the software you use automatically takes care of mundane tasks, it is easy to accept the defaults and say the project is done. My reality is that I settled. I could tell that things didn't look perfect but would rather work on other parts of the project than fix important little details for my demo. I'll have to remember that before my next demo so I take the time to show my vision of the project.

AI: The Next Big Tech Trend

About 30 years ago everyone thought that artificial intelligence (AI) would be the next big thing. Companies invested in expert systems only to discover they didn't have much power and we had a long ways to go before we could do anything really spectacular. Now it seems like you can't click through a website without hearing about AI, machine learning (ML), or deep learning (DL). This leads one to ask if AI really is the next big thing.

This morning I came across 2 articles on AI that I felt merited reading. The first talked about a new form of machine learning where the program or agent is given the freedom to explore new ideas randomly instead of being rewarded for achieving some goal. Should a goal be reached, the agent stores the steps necessary to repeat the process. If a more efficient way of achieving that goal is found, the memory is overwritten with the better steps. The reason this is of interest to me is that is has been used to play several computer games successfully when other AI agents based on reinforcement learning have failed. Interestingly this is how some of our most successful innovations have emerged: thinking about novel ways of solving an existing problem.

The second article I read today came from a consulting organization talking about how AI is going to revolutionize our economy. While they admit that a number of jobs will be replaced by AI, they also point out that a higher number of jobs are being created to implement it than those being lost. The article then went on to estimate the amount of money being spent developing and using AI. It is not a small number.

My takeaway from both articles is that the field of artificial intelligence is getting a lot of interest and is showing the same promise that the personal computer industry had 30 years ago. There are also a lot of new ideas in AI and it will be an area of tremendous innovation. If I had a son or daughter headed off to college and wondering where the money is, I would definitely steer him or her towards AI.

It's A Girl!

Yesterday we had all of my children and grandchildren (all 2 of them) at the house for Sunday dinner. We had a good party and then things wound down. My oldest son and his wife stuck around a bit while I entertained my oldest grandchild. Eventually it came time to put him to bed and so we put him in my wife's sewing room. Once he fell asleep, his parents headed home for one last night of good rest. This morning my son took his wife to the hospital and this evening my 3rd grandchild was born.

At about 3:30 this morning my grandson woke up and realized he was not at his own home. He called for my wife and worried where his mother might be. My wife calmed him down and then we got a few minutes of sleep before I had to get up at 5:15 to catch my plane to the Bay Area. My wife and I thought our grandson was asleep as we got ready to go to the airport. Sure enough, the little man came down the stairs before we could get out the door. He wanted to play. We took him with us to the airport where he helped "Nana" drop "Bampa" to catch a plane.

I knew my latest granddaughter would be born while I am away but I got on the plane anyways. Grandpas are not really needed at this stage of the child's life and I would just get in the way. I will fly back on Thursday and probably get to see the newborn on Friday. In the meantime I am relying on copious group-text messages and pictures to share in the experience. I sincerely appreciate technology and the ability to instantly send photographs for these very important life moments.

Friday Night Air Travel

In my last post, I talked about how my dad is resisting new guitar music notation. This evening I am resisting a usual change in my schedule. Normally I fly from the Bay Area home on Thursday evenings. This week I am flying home tonight (a Friday) because of meetings during the week. I needed to stick around until today and take the last possible flight home. My work obligations went well and I am glad I stuck around for today.

When I first started flying every week between Salt Lake and the Bay Area, I used to come out on Monday mornings and fly home on Friday nights. I also used to take this late Friday night flight. I did not like it but that was a choice I made for my career. After proving myself as a reliable employee, my company gave me the chance to work from home one day a week. I loved that change as it gave me more time at home with my family. I guess that means I don't always resist change.

So what is it about a change in technology that has us resisting it? I have to admit that I didn't immediately jump on the bandwagon when the original iPhone came out even though that change had the potential to make my life better. I think we would all have a tough time getting rid of our smartphones and going back to simple mobile phones. When I think about it, the increase in mobile phone costs could have been the reason. Perhaps that is a valid reason, perhaps not.

One change I am resisting right now relating to my mobile phone is getting a new one. Yes it is a pain to transfer all of my information from one phone to another, but realistically it shouldn't take that long. No, I actually have a number of problems with the new iPhone and it has me holding onto my old one even though it is memory constrained and should be upgraded. First is that I miss having a headphone jack. I have a set of wireless earphones that I love. I also carry a set of wired earbuds and I use them all the time. Wireless earphones don't have unlimited battery power and so the wired ones come in handy while batteries recharge.

I also don't like the form factor of the new phones. They are too large. My current iPhone is an SE and what I deem to be the perfect size. I have compared it with some of new choices from Apple and the smallest of the latest models are still much larger than my current one. I don't want a bigger one.

Finally I don't want to spend a lot of money on a new phone. It used to be that an expensive phone came in at around $300. Now that price has skyrocketed to around $1000. I once took my entire family to Disneyland for that price. I'd rather have the trip to Disneyland.

Perhaps I should look at a smartphone from another manufacturer. But then there is a technology change I have to deal with. Oh well.

OptOutside

This morning I find myself at the Salt Lake airport waiting to catch a flight to Tokyo, Japan. I take this trip every year and have to fly out on a Saturday so I can be there on Monday for a conference I host. The thing that makes the trip difficult is that I have to cut my Thanksgiving break short by 2 days. I wish I could schedule this for a different weekend but it coincides with another company-wide event and so I don't get to dictate the dates of the conference.

Every year before Thanksgiving we are bombarded with ads for "Black Friday Sales." Several years ago, a number of outdoor suppliers and retailers like Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI) created a movement to give up a day of fighting shopping lines and spend the day outside. They call the event #OptOutside. REI even went so far as to keep their stores closed on Black Friday. As someone with a daughter that used to work in retail, I can support that. This year it helped that Alta's opening day happened yesterday and so I had something fun to do outside. I got to spend it with my daughter, wife, and son. We had a great time.

While it may be too late to buck the usual shopping trend and spend the day after Thanksgiving outside, it is not too late to think about how you can spend part of this Christmas season enjoying the outdoors. While computers and technology are great, sometimes it takes a walk outside on a crisp December morning to realized how wonderful the outdoors can be. I highly encourage it.

Children And Technology

Have you ever noticed how the previous generation always seems to be more knowledgeable when it comes to technology. In the 1980's, VCR's always seemed to be blinking 12:00 and the joke was to have your kid set the clock so it would show the correct time. Then the joke changed into having your kid help you with your computer. Now it is having your kid help you with your smartphone. Yesterday I got a call from my son that emphasizes just how true that is.

My grandson has always enjoyed mimicking my son typing on the computer. He also enjoys stealing his parents' smartphones and playing with them. Recently he figured out how to press the "Home" button on his Mom's (my daughter-in-law) iPhone. When Siri asks how she can help, he instructs, "Call Dad." Siri dutifully obeys and call's my daughter-in-law's father. To give perspective, my grandson is not quite 18-months old and has just started creating 2-word sentences.

I think my grandson has a ways to go to pass my son when it comes to understanding technology. So far he is on the right track though and I don't think it will take that long.

Future Technology

One of my work colleagues and I shared a ride from downtown San Francisco back to our office and we had a nice discussion about the future of technology. We started with the discussion about how certain high-tech celebrities happened to be in the right place at the right time. That coupled with a bit of luck propelled them into technological lore. My colleague is trying to help his sons figure out how they can be in the right place at the right time when it comes to future technology and how to increase their chances of becoming technological leaders.

I think if it was easy to predict where technology will be in five to ten years then everyone would be doing it. That didn't stop us from trying to figure it out for ourselves though. During my somewhat lengthy career in computers and high-tech, I have learned that people don't by technology, they buy solutions to problems. One of those problems is figuring out a way to streamline daily tasks. If you look at something as simple as cooking, think how the microwave has reduced the preparation effort of food. While not all food can be microwaved, a lot can and that has dramatically reduced the time it takes to cook a snack or meal.

As my friend and I drove, we applied the streamlining principle to our drive. We kept having to slow down for certain areas of traffic congestion. If all of the cars on the road could talk to each other and had the smarts to coordinate lane changes, we would have made it back to the office in half the time it took us. Based on that part of our discussion, my friend's boys should focus on self-driving cars. Then I threw out the idea of creating a virtual work environment that could eliminate the need to travel from your home to an office. It would immediately wipe out a significant portion of the traffic on the road. Following that logic, my friend's boys should look at virtual technologies and how to improve them.

As I mentioned, predicting the future of technology is incredibly difficult. This is because there are so many variables and unknowns. You could start moving towards one technology only to have it become irrelevant because of a significant shift caused by another. That is why it is important to always look at trends and constantly be updating your technical skills. Unfortunately that takes a lot of effort.

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence

One of the nice things about my job is that I get to play with some of the latest technology. Right now I am doing a lot with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). I remember back in the 1980's and how AI had the potential to be something great. Then it stagnated for 2 decades. Due to the low cost of computer processing power and memory, AI is making a comeback. Hopefully it has a bit more staying power this time around.

As I research new technologies it is important not to buy into the hype. I read one article today claiming that those that don't make the effort understand AI and ML will begin to look at computers as magical machines that they understand less and less. That can be true of any technology and so if you find yourself thinking of a new product as magic, that is what the marketing people want you to believe.

The more I work with the current state of artificial intelligence, the more I realize it is just really good at guessing the right answer. Most AI engines get fed a bunch of numbers (characters and words can be represented by numbers) and what those numbers mean. The engines then try to figure out what a different set of numbers mean. It then becomes very important to train the AI engine with a lot of data as well as the correct data.

What happens if you train your engine with the favorite breakfast cereals of children between the ages of 5 and 7? When you ask it what an adult would like for breakfast, you will most likely get the wrong answer. While I do like Fruit Loops, I don't eat them for breakfast anymore. What happens when you recognize the age mistake but only train the engine with data from Americans? If you ask what someone from Japan eats for breakfast, once again, you will get the wrong answer.

Currently artificial intelligence is at an interesting point. We are creating useful applications for it that can greatly help us in our daily lives. It is also important to remember that it isn't magic and is only as smart as the data with which it has been trained.

Technology Innovation

This morning I met with the head of development for a large technology organization and we talked about some of the latest trends in software development. I work in a research and development group and so my team constantly looks at emerging products and how they can best be used to solve problems. The person I met with came with questions about how his organization can leverage some of these new tools to increase efficiencies and streamline software development.

I find it interesting that I found myself championing technology innovation. I am one of those people that resists change and that is one of the problems with the staff of the organization I met with. Software developers get comfortable with the tools and languages they know. The longer someone uses a technology, the more they resist moving to something else. While Java is a great software programming language, there are problems that can be solved quicker and with less effort simply by choosing Python or Erlang.

I have had to force myself to constantly ask if there is a better way of doing something. A simple example is when I had to cut up some old rags this past weekend. I had a dull pair of scissors and a large pile of rags to cut into smaller sizes. At first I tried to make a quick snip with the scissors and then rip the fabric. Things sped up when I simply just got another pair of sharp scissors. Taking 30 seconds to change my tool cut my project time in half.

Looking for a better way to do a task is not something I developed on my own. I have surrounded myself with people who are always looking for a better way of accomplishing things. I have tried to remember to ask for help but often times my coworkers volunteer better ideas for me. That takes a bit of humility but I find it also saves a lot of time. Sometimes if it wasn't for them, I would still be retyping everything instead of cutting and pasting.