If you follow
your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that
has been there all the while, waiting for you, and
the life that you ought to be living is the one you
are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following
your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that
life within you, all the time.
My personal bliss is found in in the intersection between
technology and art - the mix of these disciplines excites
me and fills me with a drive to go, do, and create.
Reflecting back, I am struck by how these interests
have been with me, in one form or another, through
my life. Ironic, many of them are only now begining
to actually become possible. These
passions, interests, whatever you wish to label them
are of great interest to me. They truly are 'Why' I
do many of things that i do.
Wearables
To date, personal computers have not lived up to their name. Most machines sit on the desk and interact with their owners for only a small fraction of the day. Smaller and faster notebook computers have made mobility less of an issue, but the same staid user paradigm persists. Wearable computing hopes to shatter this myth of how a computer should be used. A person's computer should be worn, much as eyeglasses or clothing are worn, and interact with the user based on the context of the situation. With heads-up displays, unobtrusive input devices, personal wireless local area networks, and a host of other context sensing and communication tools, the wearable computer can act as an intelligent assistant, whether it be through a Remembrance Agent, augmented reality, or intellectual collectives.
Like human persuaders, persuasive interactive technologies can bring about
positive changes in many domains, including health, business, safety, and
education. With such ends in mind, many groups are creating a body of expertise
in the design, theory, and analysis of persuasive technologies, an area called "captology."
Persuasive Technology creates insight into how computing products -- from websites
to mobile phone software -- can be designed to change what people believe and
what they do.
No longer creatures of science fiction, Robotics are quickly reaching the cirtical
"tipping point" in which they will play a far more active role in our
lives. My primary interest is in how they are becoming more "human" in
apperance and, more than anything else, the merger between man and machine -
that I believe is our utlimate destiny and may very well take us to the stars.
The term ?nanotechnology? was introduced to describe physicist Richard Feynman?s vision of factories using nanomachines to build complex products, including additional nanomachines. Engineering analysis indicates that this will be an extremely powerful capability, able to make large products with atomic precision, building them with superior materials, cleanly, and at low cost. This original vision for nanotechnology is sometimes termed ?molecular manufacturing? (a term used throughout this site), or ?MNT? (for molecular or molecular-manufacturing-based nanotechnology). It is the basis for the original excitement about the field.
In recent years a group of scientists, technologists, business leaders, and bureaucrats
have exploited the excitement around nanotechnology by using the term to label
existing and near-term products which have significant features less than 100
nanometers in size. By this new, loose definition, ?nanotechnology? isn?t about
making nanoscale productive systems, but about making nanoscale products. It
can describe anything with small features, ranging from fine particles to thin
coatings to large molecules ? even big things with tiny holes. Many parts of
chemistry, materials science, microelectronics, and biotechnology are now marketed
as ?nanotechnology?. This redefinition has created confusion, raised false expectations,
and hampered progress toward the original, more powerful goal.
Behold your computer. Your computer represents the culmination of years of technological advancements beginning with the early ideas of Charles Babbage (1791-1871) and eventual creation of the first computer by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1941. Surprisingly however, the high speed modern computer sitting in front of you is fundamentally no different from its gargantuan 30 ton ancestors, which were equipped with some 18000 vacuum tubes and 500 miles of wiring! Although computers have become more compact and considerably faster in performing their task, the task remains the same: to manipulate and interpret an encoding of binary bits into a useful computational result. A bit is a fundamental unit of information, classically represented as a 0 or 1 in your digital computer. Each classical bit is physically realized through a macroscopic physical system, such as the magnetization on a hard disk or the charge on a capacitor. A document, for example, comprised of n-characters stored on the hard drive of a typical computer is accordingly described by a string of 8 zeros and ones. Herein lies a key difference between your classical computer and a quantum computer. Where a classical computer obeys the well understood laws of classical physics, a quantum computer is a device that harnesses physical phenomenon unique to quantum mechanics (especially quantum interference) to realize a fundamentally new mode of information processing.
In a quantum computer, the fundamental unit of information (called a quantum bit or qubit), is not binary but rather more quaternary in nature. This qubit property arises as a direct consequence of its adherence to the laws of quantum mechanics which differ radically from the laws of classical physics. A qubit can exist not only in a state corresponding to the logical state 0 or 1 as in a classical bit, but also in states corresponding to a blend or superposition of these classical states. In other words, a qubit can exist as a zero, a one, or simultaneously as both 0 and 1, with a numerical coefficient representing the probability for each state. This may seem counterintuitive because everyday phenomenon are governed by classical physics, not quantum mechanics -- which takes over at the atomic level.
Quantum computers will change the world in unforeseen ways. This is like electricity was in the 1830's.