And We’re Not Amazed

Food For Thought


That’s Kevin Kelly sitting in the red chair on a darkened stage. He’s talking to an assembly of some of the world’s finest minds at a recent TED conference. He’s earned their attention by being, over the last 40+ plus years one of the most prescient thinkers on the globe. He not only sees real patterns — which is rare enough — but he has an ability to see the direction in which those patterns are moving. That’s a forbiddingly abstract talent and it’s always been hard for Kelly to make himself sound sensible when he first points to a pattern. It’s only later that his positions come to be taken-for-granted wisdom.

As you might surmise, Kevin Kelly has been a hero of mine for a long time; since the old Whole Earth Review through his work on chaos theory. His sort of integrative, obsessive, reportorial focus on what’s truly important is always worth listening to….and even if you are tempted to think that this time it might be a little over the top you should remember that he has pretty much always been right….

This time he’s on about the web. How amazing it really is. How amazing it is that we’re not just poleaxed by what we’ve got. How that’s only the beginning How the web is turning into an ever-more all-inclusive machine. And how that machine is evolving.

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Like the web you could just about take off anywhere in that talk and dip into some really fascinating and important stuff. For instance, Kelly mentions, in quick passing, photosynth. Long-term and retentive readers will vaguely recall that term; I posted on it back when I fell across the technology on the web. Take a look; I think you’ll see how it fits his thesis. Then consider: He considers that a throw-away line. There’s a lot of meat below that almost-glib surface.

Here in Lafayette we’ve got to start taking such stuff seriously. It’s now inevitable that we will be able to inhabit the leading edge of this brave new world when it appears. We’ll have bandwidth to burn in LUS’ 100 megs of intranet and the wireless network now abuilding and attached to that hard-wired backbone can provide ubiquity at speeds that will stun. (In my neighborhood mysterious black cylinders are being attached to LUS fiber on a pole on every block. As I walk past with my iPhone NAD a wifi network pops up….) But, frankly, having the hardware doesn’t give us the vision. We could use it to just give us “more” of the same—bigger bandwidth, better phones, more fun cable, all for less. And we should do that. But that is the LEAST we can do with our new network.

A network-centric future is upon us. The web will connect, for practical purposes, all points from hand-crafted links, to databases, to our relationships, to the bevy of things we make and use. What ties all that together; what makes it work; is how it is integrated. Right now we’re calling it “search” and Google is the god. But simple textural search and link-ranking (which is most of what Google does) is only the tip of the iceberg here.

What the world needs—and what Lafayette and a few other places are positioned to supply—is what will replace search. The new web needs big bandwidth and ubiquity—practically speaking a tightly integrated fiber-wireless network. The next web also needs the huge calculative power that Kelly mention but does not emphasize. Between LITE and ULL’s underutilized supercomputers we’ll have computational power to do the sorts of pattern recognition and integration that things like photosynth and other database integrative applications will need. Kelly notes that the new web will no be like the old web any more than our web is like television. The new way of making acessible all those things which the web will connect is the crux of the difference. I trust his insights there and can see the outlines of the patterns he points to.

What Lafayette, and other communities with the resources, should be doing is supporting and providing incentives for companies and individuals that want design for what only we can currently do: provide the next generation of integrative technologies—that which will replace search. Any x-prize, any portal, any support that does not take that into account will be missing the boat.

60 thoughts on “And We’re Not Amazed”

  1. Triger Kayışı nedir. Triger kayışı, araçlarda krank mili ile eksantrik mili arasındaki hareket iletimini sağlar. Triger kayışını iki mil arasında doğru hizada geren ise gergi bilyesidir. Kayış sistemini tamamlayan son parça da devridaim pompasıdır. Motorun güvenliği ve performansı için önemli bir parça olan kayış, kopması hâlinde ciddi sorunlara neden olabilir. Motor soğutma sıvısının sistem içinde ilerlemesini sağlayan triger kayışıdır. Devridaim pompası, gücünü kayıştan alır. Triger kayışının ömrü, kullanım süresine, kullanılan mesafeye ve son kullanım tarihine göre değişiklik gösterir. Belli aralıklarla kayışın kontrolü şarttır. Markaya ve modele göre araçların triger kayışının kullanım süresi farklılık gösterse de kayışların ömrü ortalama 3 senedir. Süre dolduğunda hasarsız dahi olsa kayış değiştirilmelidir. Değişiklik işlemi, uzmanlarca yapılır. Bir kayışın ortalama ömrü, 90.000 ile 100.000 kilometrede arasındadır. Triger kayışları; kauçuk, çelik, tel, kumaş malzemeden üretilen bir parçadır. Kompozit yapıda kevlar, aramid ve karbon fiber malzemeler de yer alabilir. Özel parça, kaymayı önleyen özelliği ile dayanıklılık vadeder. Triger kayışı yerine triger zinciri de kullanılabilir; ancak pek tercih edilmez. Zincirde uzun mesafede aşınma olabilir Zincir, zamanla uzayabileceği için motor sesine ek bir gürültüye sebep olabilir. Zinciri uzun süre gergin tutmak, raylara ve dişlilere de zarar verebilir. Yıpranma oluşabilir. Triger kayışının kopması, motorun da ciddi zararlar görmesi anlamına gelir. Motor iflas edebilir. Supap zamanlamasının bozulması, açık kalması, pistonlara çarpması, sipopların eğilmesi, tüm parçaların zorlanması ve gürültü oluşması, bu sorunun sonucudur. Kayış koptuğunda yapılabilecek en doğru hamle, aracı kenara çekip uzman yardımı almaktır. Kaputu açıp motora bakıldığında kayışın durumu görülebilir. Motordan ses gelmesi, egzozdan siyah duman çıkması da triger kayışında bir sorun olduğunun işareti olabilir.

  2. Thanks for the feedback! That’s an interesting point. I suppose there are many reasons, internal and external, why we do not accomplish all that we might. Regardless, I am thankful for the Lord’s grace in that. Thanks again!

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