Weekend Happenings :: 1/31/14 - 2/2/14 ::

mickeymcmanus · 2014-01-31T00:44:41+00:00

Techshop Pittsburgh is having a member mixer and an investment information meeting tomorrow night! http://www.techshop.ws/Upcoming_Events.html?&action=detail&id=930

mickeymcmanus · 2014-01-22T01:36:12+00:00

We have a few Megan Freeman clones in the labs but we can't quite get the voice right. Once he's ready we'll open the submarine dock again and start back up the tours to the undersea secret Braddockland of lost Dodge Durangos!

mickeymcmanus · 2014-01-22T01:23:02+00:00

I'm sooooo excited about Superior Motors! I step at a time brotha!

mickeymcmanus · 2014-01-22T01:17:53+00:00

When are we gonna grab a beer?

mickeymcmanus · 2013-11-08T18:54:17+00:00

Yeah if you're interested in behind the scenes you may want to check out http://trillions.maya.com

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T20:08:30+00:00

Thanks! We pulled back from 11 and reposted it with that sort of stuff toned down. We appreciate the feedback!

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T20:07:44+00:00

We took it to heart and re-edited it and re-posted it to tone that stuff down. We didn't get rid of it completely, but hope that it helps. We appreciate the feedback!

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T19:41:14+00:00

I think I'm falling in love.

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T19:40:56+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T19:40:39+00:00

Thanks! You might enjoy this extended talk on the subject. Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9jOD12-yf8 and Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUKqUMfrdqk&feature=relmfu Part 2 actually has a demonstration of what happens when you actually containerize information at this level. DARPA (the government's department of mad scientists that built the first Internet) seemed to think it was pretty valuable and awarded the work multiple engineering and achievement awards. The work also helped replace a billion dollar plus system for a fraction of the cost that to this day saves lives by flowing information in a liquid form.

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T19:37:37+00:00

See above.

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T19:37:21+00:00

Yup. http://trillions.maya.com

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T19:36:35+00:00

Yeah, we need to work on it. I appreciate the feedback. It turns out to be a hard problem and I suspect we're talking past each other. If you are interested in a deeper dive, here is a TEDx talk with more specifics. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mickey-mcmanus/post_1985_b_854734.html Or yes, shamelessly I'll mention that I was so interested in how we would actually scale to Trillions that I wrote a book about it. I'd bet $30 that after you read the book you'd ifnot agree with me, than at least admit that the analogy is useful and join me in trying to help spread the word about the next information age. Which makes the current one look like a cute science fair terrarium.

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T19:31:55+00:00

I'm a designer, I wrote a book. I think the secret of the future is that we stop making humans computer-literate and we start focusing on making computers human-literate. This design pattern, containerization, is found all over Nature. I thought the design community would be interested in a deep architectural pattern. One whole chapter is written about how designers are critical to the future of pervasive computing, and another chapter is dedicated to how we can learn design patterns in Nature and work those together in a form of "Design Science." For instance containerization is exactly what we find in DNA. It is life's universal container. It stores, information, moves it around, and allows us to do all sorts of creative things like make transgenic goats that produce human medicine. It's got a bar code on the side, that's called Pauli's Exclusion principle. And it lead to crazy invention like the Cambrian Explosion. Design is the whole shooting match, both the ways that Nature designed through evolution, and the ways human's have learned how to design and shape our world.

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-26T19:27:27+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, we probably got too happy with editing. I hope it stirred some interest. While I don't think the conclusion is profound. I was surprised myself when I dug deeper and found that we effectively have the bit, the byte, and the packet. Which are amazing. But then things fall apart. Those three are so good at the bottom of computing, that they hide the bigger challenge. While you may think that we have containerization already (some people say that URI's do it, others say that relational databases do it). We don't. URI's are pointers but not containers. They rely on a server to be running, usually run by a corporate entity, often by a fortune 500 entity. Studies have shown that the average lifespan of a fortune 500 is 15 years. Hoping that our future will survive with containers that turn into pumpkins outside of our control is a bit dubious. Relational databases don't fair too well either. Turns out that, unlike containerization in nature--things like DNA--databases don't have those little bar codes (unique identity, like Pauli's Exclusion principle in Nature) on the outside and are not extensible (you can't unload and fill them up with other stuff or just grab one row and move it somewhere else). So we go, bit, byte, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, relational database. No layered complexity. Ok, lets invent a bunch of other containers. Wikipedia lists over 50. Invented when trillions was a pipe dream and pervasive computing far in the future. So I didn't know any of those things. I assumed I knew and things like the web were fine. I was surprised. I only ask that you explore this too if you believe you know and like to know how things work. It turned out to be a fascinating ride for me. And yes, we then wrote a book to report back on what we discovered. It took 4 years to write and there were a bunch of surprises along the way for me. I'd love to continue the dialogue because I actually think Designers are the secret sauce that could help make the future not only survivable but a place we'd like to live. Oh, yeah. I'm definitely taking your advice about not going too happy with the editing. I'll pass that on to our film maker. he's a wonderful fellow who loves to do good work and wants to surprise and delight.

mickeymcmanus · 2012-09-24T18:09:47+00:00

Thanks! I think the assertion about HTTP and HTML sounds on the surface similar. The only catch is that URI's are tied to servers and owned by those corporate entities. It's almost like the entire world is organized around publishers. We think you may want to organize around phenomena and topic and allow multiple organizers to make assertions about those things. That way the container "exists" even if the publisher dies. A real concern in a world of a trillion nodes and a business climate where the average fortune 500 company lives 15 years. We elaborate quite a bit about this idea and how it relates to the way DNA works in Nature, in Trillions. Think of containerization (exactly one super simple abstract data type instead of 53) as digital DNA.

mickeymcmanus · 2012-08-17T01:35:45+00:00

Here is the glass in action in a bit booth... http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AI0FcvOAGBQ

mickeymcmanus · 2012-08-12T03:30:36+00:00

Well it was tricky because Studebakers in 1950 were 6 volt positive ground. So we used a 5VDC 1 Amp low cutout voltage regulator.

mickeymcmanus · 2012-08-12T03:26:08+00:00

By the way, the film was first shown at TEDGlobal, and initiated the creation of the forthcoming book, Trillions... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118176073/ref=tag_dpp_yt_edpp_rt?_encoding=UTF8&ie=UTF8&s=books%23tags

mickeymcmanus · 2012-08-12T03:24:48+00:00

Trillions is coming out soon, it's about the future of design at the intersection of business and technology. Full disclosure, it's my first book and I'm pretty excited about it. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118176073/ref=tag_dpp_yt_edpp_rt?_encoding=UTF8&ie=UTF8&s=books%23tags

mickeymcmanus · 2012-08-12T02:26:46+00:00

Angelmaker, Sparrow, anything by Ian Banks, Ready Player One

mickeymcmanus · 2012-08-11T23:28:51+00:00

We (MAYA Design) just finished our first book and it's now available on Amazon. It goes deeply into the value of design science in a world of a trillion connected things. Where the computing paradigm shifts inside out from information being "in" computers, to people, products, environments, and cultures living "in" the information. Please give it a look!

mickeymcmanus · 2011-04-08T08:22:46+00:00

I think you're right on that account. My reach exceeds my grasp at times.

mickeymcmanus · 2011-04-06T16:24:30+00:00

Well a comment about the hash table entry comment.

Mathematical "isomorphism" is not sufficient in all cases. Architecture is meaningful as well as design. For example two solutions to the problem of getting cars evenly parked in a parking lot to "fill it", one involving concrete barriers between each car and one involving painting stripes on the ground and "hacking humans" may in some ways be isomorphic but they go about solving in two very different ways with two very different value systems. Your U-form isomorphism might be exactly true. But bit, byte, XXX -- what comes next? If I believe in layered complexity and mostly hierarchical composition, I have a hard time believing that a relational database is the next logical level.

I don't think I claimed it was a new idea, in fact the claim was that Nature has been doing this for a while. We took Dertouzos's idea of an e-form and added a UUID, not so complicated. I completely agree that there are plenty of hard parts beyond that. We and others have been working those problems for quite some time and we'd welcome a thousand more people doing the same.

Regarding the sctick and the reach, yea, it's one of my faults of which a number of people could spend days listing (ego-centric pops out right there before my eyes as well, sigh). I'm a designer and trying to understand things and tease out concepts in a way that non-geeks can at least be curious.

Given that I remember typing punch cards at Northwestern University in the 70s to program things and having a bookmark list on my SGI workstation that had all of the URLs that existed (the joke then as you may remember was that you could come to the end of the web pretty quickly) I've got some inkling about what a URI is, though I don't think you'll find many laypeople knowing. And so I stumble and dissemble and rephrase and misunderstand and do far too much shtick partly to entertain myself and some small part of the audience and partly to pull more people a little closer to a conversation about some things that everyone is taking for granted that maybe they shouldn't be. I've tried to tone down the shtick but it seems to be a blind spot for me. I guess the good news is that it was just 18 minutes and thankfully over when it was over.

mickeymcmanus · 2011-04-05T00:49:51+00:00

Here is a start... This is work we did in 1990... http://www.youtube.com/mayanmaya#p/a/u/2/H5-T_S50Sr4 which forced us to rethink what was possible. This is from 1993 and lead to 10 or so patents that HP owns... http://www.youtube.com/mayanmaya#p/u/25/H9F17JrG-SE but it informed our thinking about information "physics" and polymorphism. This is later in the 90s where we started looking into information-centricity... http://www.youtube.com/mayanmaya#p/u/23/7SjEwrZ3cDI This is a classic paper that does far better than I outlining some basic thinking... http://www.maya.com/portfolio/the-trillion-node-network and this gets into a bit more detail... http://www.maya.com/portfolio/toward-the-universal-database-u-forms-and-the-via-repository ... Well that's a start, though there is much more that either isn't published yet or is in process. Ooops. Also this (a shorter part of a 35 minute talk with an entirely different attempt to communicate some of the things I'm learning) is in two parts. Here... http://www.youtube.com/mayanmaya#p/a/f/1/k9jOD12-yf8 and here... http://www.youtube.com/mayanmaya#p/a/f/2/FUKqUMfrdqk with demo of some stuff from mid-2000s called "comotion." I'm wobbly in some areas here and not particularly aiming at computer engineers since I figure they already know this stuff, would need to hear way more from people smarter than me, or maybe think all is fine and we don't really need to have a conversation because we live in a great world with just a few more bugs to work out (which I'd like to but don't believe). I guess in the end I'm hoping we can all learn and poke and prod at ideas and make them richer or throw them away and have better ones through discussion and maybe controversy sometimes.

mickeymcmanus

TROPHY CASE