![[JHG]](JHGlogo.png "Howard Gibson")
History Discussion 2021 11
History Discussion 2021 11
I belong to some history groups on Meetup. The following is a list of discussion topics I was asked to look into. I have added a couple. I need to create simple slide shows for discussion.
I am a mechanical designer, using 3D parametric CAD. I like to hack around with computers. I have been formally trained in UNIX administration. I do hobbyist level programming in C, C++, Perl, JavaScript, and Octave. I am a serious history buff. I understand all of this anywhere from fairly well to extremely well. As we move away from these topics, my comprehension and understanding goes down.
A lot of these technologies need to be viewed as tools. Tools are neither good or evil. Ethics are attached to the jobs we do with the tools.
I have added question lists to the topics I believe can produce meaningful discussions. These will convert nicely to discussion slides. Some of this stuff, including topics I have added, are just jargon.
A blockchain is a database distributed, mostly on the cloud. The blockchain is copied out to multiple users. Each block is a package of data with a cryptographic "hash", a timestamp, and a link to the previous block. It is extremely difficult to modify the data blocks. For a given application, this may or may not be desirable.
Let's discuss applications.
nonproductive asset. Tulips and gold are nonproductive assets. Farms and factories are productive assets, in that in addition to having face value, they produce something useful.
A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol which is intended to automatically execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement.A Smart Contract program can automatically generate payments on the completion of some contract item. Because of the security of your blockchain, you can trust the smart contract, as well as your currency tool.
According to Reason, many banks have expressed interest in implementing distributed ledgers for use in banking and are cooperating with companies creating private blockchains, and according to a September 2016 IBM study, this is occurring faster than expected.
An NFT is a Non-Fungible Token.
According to my Oxford English Dictionary,
Fungible means that something can serve for or be replaced by
another answering to the same definiition.
These can be goods contracted for.
According to Investopedia,
Non Fungible Tokens
are cryptographic assets on a blockchain
with unique identification codes and metadata
that distinguish them from each other.
They cannot be traded.
Cryptocurrency is fungible.
Howard Gibson's handy dandy definition of fiat currency — I claim it is currency. You believe me.
Blockchain is nothing more than a distributed database. It is a tool. I don't see historical or ethical issues with it directly. Some of the individual topics above are interesting.
Edge computing is defined by Wikipedia as a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of the data. There is a lot of stuff about how this is not IoT. The concept seems to be that if computers and drives are placed physically closer to the source of the data, everything will run faster. This is not much of an issue to someone doing email, word processing and web development. It is an issue for someone processing data generated in real time, such as with a scanning LiDAR.
With edge computing, some of our stuff will run faster.
Read the The Story of Mel, and Wikipedia's write‑up on it. This is how they made computers fast back in the day. I wrote BASIC programs for my Commodore 64, and I moved my important subroutines to the front of the program so that the interpreter would find them more quickly. Today, the processors are fast, and computer languages are optimized for understanding by humans, particularly people other than the original developer. Read up on structured and object oriented programming.
Computers now use insignificant time to perform most tasks. If a task is distributed between several computers, the bottleneck very likely is the network. Wires and fibre optics send bits through the network at the speed of light, but for an intense real‑time application, there can be an awful lot of bits. Most networking tools send a packet through with a checksum or hash. The receiving tool reads the packet, and generates its own checksum or hash for comparison. It then reports back to the originating tool to indicate whether or not the transmission was successful. If not, the originating tool tries again. Long network cables will have other users on them, there will be more line noise, and it will take more time for each bit to travel back and forth. If I need extreme processing speed across a network, I need a short network with just me on it.
Computer people use the term latency to describe network speed. Low latency means that the network is fast.
Understanding the concept of latency will help us not make stupid decisions. For example, a robot automobile almost certainly should be controlled by an on-board computer. If the controller is located somewhere on the cloud and working through WiFi, a network disruption will cause a car accident. Somebody consuming a lot of network bandwidth will slow themselves down, and they will slow down other people on the network. Putting these people behind a router on a sub-network makes everyone's life easier. Most of this stuff is common sense.
I think "edge computing" is jargon.
I posted a question about this on an engineering forum, and the term is being defended. I have a bunch of sensors. Computers very close by receive data from them and they process it. Perhaps they record a batch of readings, and work out the average, and send that out every two seconds. Lots of data goes from the sensor to the control computer, very much less goes from the control computer out to the cloud. I still don't think this is a good non-technical discussion topic.
Biometrics are being used to authenticate people for access to facilities and to computer networks, or just to track them. There are concerns about invasion of privacy. Wikipedia has an interesting list of "See also" topics.
AssureSign is an electronic signature software that can be deployed as a Software as a Service (SaaS) application or installed on customer premises. Documents are signed using a computer that has an Internet connection.There are biometric ways to do this.
Fuzzy extractors are a method that allows biometric data to be used as inputs to standard cryptographic techniques for security. "Fuzzy", in this context, refers to the fact that the fixed values required for cryptography will be extracted from values close to but not identical to the original key, without compromising the security required.
Improve performance of face and iris recognition technology on both still and video imagery with a series of challenge problems and evaluation.
A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods, voice activation methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data are used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in return, that data is used to improve the operations across the city.Great Britain has all sorts of security cameras all over the place. This relatively low level of technology is widely regarded as a civil rights hazard.
From the mid-nineteenth century on, there has been much research into human intelligence. Researchers measured the sizes and shapes of skulls. They constructed theories and tests about biologically programmed intelligence. They identified groups of people as inferiour, and encouraged their sterilization. Most of this work has been discredited and repudiated, but they did plenty of damage, and there are vestiges of belief. A lot of scientific ethics and practise is based on experience with intelligence testing. We should not be overconfident with biometrics.
Suggested reading: The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould.
Fun YouTube links...
Fullerene Nanogears — Wikipedia
From Wikipedia — nanotechnology
is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale
for industrial purposes
.
There is a
National Nanotechnology Initiative
and they have defined nanotechnology as the manipulation matter
where at least dimension is between 1 to 100 nanometres.
100 nanometres is 0.0001 millimetres.
Under applications, Wikipedia lists only nanoelectronics. Electronics travel at the speed of light, about a foot per nanosecond. Truly high speed circuits and devices must be tiny.
There are concerns about the effect of nanotechnogy on people's health and on the environment. There is such a thing as nanotoxicology. There are no known problems, primarily because there are no known nanotechnology products out there. We don't want surprises.
All sorts of appliances in factories or in your house are connecting to the internet. Your devices can be monitored remotely and controlled remotely, hopefully by you! I attended an online seminar on IoT, and they had a cute line...
Don't worry. Be crappy!
I posted this on an engineering forum, and somebody replied that the "S" in "IoT" stands for security. Remote access to your thermostat and refrigerator may be useful to you, or perhaps not. Security is not well implemented on as-manufactured devices. Some manufacturers don't know. Some of them don't care. Some of them are doing data mining. I am skeptical as all hell about IoT.
I did organize a plant tour for my professional chapter, of a local brewery, and the owner mentioned that he can remotely monitor his brewing vats. He has no remote control. If he needs something done, he must call an available employee. This probably is a good idea anyway.
This is a term that has come up recently in the 3D CAD world. You have product that you manufacture and that people use. You have model data of the product on your computer, which you use for design, manufacturing, continued development and computer simulation.
Back in my drafting board days, I systematically created assembly/arrangement drawings showing the assembled product. I used a sharp 5H pencil and I drew very carefully to scale. There are people out there who will try to manage a stack of fabrication drawings, but I find the practise to be absolutely futile. You have to understand the complete assembly. A scale drawing on a drafting board is not digital. It is still a "twin", sort of.
Is digital twin a cool, new technology, or is it jargon that we have applied to something we have been doing for at least the last thirty years, and a heck of a lot longer than that if we ignore the term "digital"?
I have written up separate notes on 3D printing. I have nearly forty years experience as a mechanical designer. To me, 3D printing is just another fabrication resource. While I am not an expert on it, I am an expert at designing things to be fabricated, and then going out and getting them fabricated. I thoroughly understand the context in which 3D printing operates, and I consider myself qualified to write a moderately long article about it.
I am curious about some of the above subjects, and I have read up on some of them. I do not consider myself an expert. If I present on anything above, I expect to be surprised by an expert.
The picture below is a desk, chair, and wall mounted bookshelf that I designed, and built in my carpentry shop in my back yard shed. The wardrobe in the foreground is from IKEA. I used all sorts of sharp tools, some of them powered, and I managed to not hurt myself. There few ethical or social issues attached to home carpentry. I suppose I could sit at my desk and work out an evil plan for world domination. Benito Mussolini's Evil Overlord Desk was much larger than this, and it had chairs at the front that were lower than the chair Mussolini sat in, so that he could look down on his guests. I will try to remember this next time I build a desk.
My guest room work hutch and chair
Howard Gibson —
Email
hgibson@eol.ca
—
Last updated:
2022/05/22