My campaign is live! Wonderfully, we raised over $2500 in the first day — a quarter of the way there! There’s still a ways to go, though, and I’d love your help, either by kicking in some cash (and getting a copy of the book in return) or by sharing the love. Here are a […]
Author Archives: admin
Africa Book – Crowdfunding
So I’m finally in a position where I can make the trip to Africa I’ve been wanting to make for most of my life, to write a book about technology in sub-Saharan Africa — the technology industry, but also how technology is evolving there and how Western governments and companies can help Africa develop its […]
Righteous Kill
Like most Americans, I’ve been thinking a lot about guns these past few months, since Aurora and Sandy Hook. And like most Americans, I’ve come to a series of conclusions and convictions about the gun control debate; a position I find morally and ethically solid. And I’ll tell you about it. But first I want […]
If the tech industry worked like the music industry, continued.
“Hey, it’s my rock star devs! How’s it going, guys?” “It sucks. We busted our ass for months building this thing, and we can’t make enough money to pay rent. We’re all living in the same house.” “That sucks, but look: you’ll make your money on the next app. That’s how it works. Aren’t the […]
If the tech industry worked like the music industry
“Hi! You’re a venture capitalist. We’re a tech startup. We have a web app we want to sell to people.” “Great! So here’s how this works: we’re going to give you a chunk of money. You’re going to use this to build your web app. It’s called an ‘advance’. We’re also going to give you […]
A real-world example of BAP robot architecture
You’ll have to excuse me — I’ve got the flu today, and I might not be entirely coherent. But here’s a concrete example of my BAP robotic framework. This is a simple robot with two motors (one on each side) and a GPS unit. The first thing we notice is that each of the motors […]
Refining the ideas.
I’ve been thinking about my little scheme, and I’ve talked to a couple of people who know far more about electronics than I do. I’m a software person, essentially, and so I think in those terms. Basically, one of the problems people have had with my idea is that every actuator requires different circuitry, because […]
Behavioral, autonomic, mechanical compared to Marr’s tri-level hypothesis
As I mentioned in my last post, my model for cybernetic systems bears a lot of resemblance to David Marr’s tri-level hypothesis, which he defines as computational, algorithmic and implementational. I’ll quote from the site linked above: The computational level is a description of what information processing problem is being solved by the system. The algorithmic level is […]
Behavioral, autonomic, mechanical: a model for building badass robots
[Update: since I started writing this, a Twitter friend helpfully pointed me at Marr’s levels of analysis, which upon quick study appears to be pretty much identical to this idea, so I’ll be framing this in his terminology at some point.] This rides on the tail of the previous post. I’m just trying to get […]
The world is a robot.
This afternoon, I attended an excellent talk by Ken Goldberg about “cloud robotics” — the idea of building robots that are essentially taught and controlled by the Internet “cloud”. As Ken was talking, I had a moment of pure epiphany about cloud robotics and the “Internet of things“. I realized that the underlying assumptions about […]