confused of calcutta

A few decades ago, I read a book called AI: The Tumultous History of The Search for Artificial Intelligence, by Daniel Crevier. In it, the late and brilliant Donald Michie is quoted as saying something like this:

AI is about making machines more fathomable and more under the control of human beings, not less. Conventional technology [...]

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I read a lot of books. For decades I used to average ten books a week, but nowadays it’s probably closer to two or three. Nevertheless, I read a lot. And I’ve been reading a lot for over forty years.
When it comes to choosing what I read, I have a variety of techniques:
1. Past-predicts-future: This [...]

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Just finished watching/reading David Gelernter being interviewed by John Markoff and Clay Shirky. Spellbinding.
You can find the entire interview here in Edge. Thank you everyone at Edge.

Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to run across a good deal of Gelernter’s works; Mirror Worlds was probably my favourite, though Muse in the Machine sometimes ran [...]

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…you got to make the morning last
just kicking down the cobblestones
looking for fun and feelin’ groovy
Hello lamppost,
What cha knowing?
I’ve come to watch your flowers growing.
Ain’t cha got no rhymes for me?
Doot-in’ doo-doo,
Feelin’ groovy.
Got no deeds to do,
No promises to keep.
I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.
Let the morning time drop all its petals on [...]

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I love food. I love eating it, cooking it, preparing it, buying the ingredients. I love watching people cook. I love researching food culture and habit and folklore and history.
Yes, I love food. I love everything about food.
One of my all-time favourite dishes is made from ilish maach (a particular type of fish popular in [...]

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I’ve been fascinated by the space where communications meets computing for quite some time now, ever since the early 1980s. When I started working for Burroughs Corporation in 1981, I hadn’t really seen a “proper” computer before; my experience of computers was limited to playing hours and hours of the text-based Star Trek on a [...]

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Today, at a time when Facebook announced passing 200 million members, there are still people who think that social networking sites and tools are a fad, an irritation, a waste of time. It doesn’t matter what you tell them: you can mention the role of such sites and tools in the Obama campaign, in the [...]

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I like reading Andrew McAfee’s blog. I’ve known him for some years now, and count him as one of my friends. Reading his blog is a bit like chewing on good chillies or drinking decent sancerre, there’s a lot of value in the aftertaste. It lingers, pleasurably, and makes you think.
A few days ago he [...]

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This past month or so, I’ve been absolutely delighted with the sheer splendour of the web, the incredible richness and diversity of stuff out there. And all so easy to get to. Here are a few of the sites I’ve really enjoyed, mainly arrived at via Twitter or StumbleUpon. Some I’ve come across before, some [...]

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Do you ever look at a bird or a tree and wonder “I wish I knew more about it”? I’m useless with birds. Probably even more useless with trees. In some ways it is strange: I could close my eyes and name more trees and more birds than many other people, I have an excellent [...]

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