The first time I heard about GPS enabled navigation devices was during the Persian Gulf War when television reporters highlighted the use of GPS technology by the USA and the allied forces. Enhanced navigation helped not only the soldiers on the ground, sea, and air, but also provided a very advanced degree of control for…
One of the highlights of my recent trip to Colombia was the visit to the National Park Corales del Rosario and San Bernardo. A natural reservation of choral reefs in the warm waters of the Caribbean and a collection of little islands with beautiful beaches, lagoons, and vegetation. We stayed in one of these islands,…
Today, January 18th of 2012, the web goes dark in protest against #PIPA and #SOPA. Last time a strike happened in the internet was in 1996 when many sites went dark to protest the Communications Decency Act. Although I didn’t blackout my blog, I decided to create this log entry to document the strike. I…
Grotesque, Gothic, and bizarre, are some of the adjectives that commonly describe the films directed by Tim Burton. Although their stories are often simple, Burton’s films have unique visual and aural styles that complement the lack of narrative complexity and captivate the audience with their rich symbolism and energy. On the one hand, their visual…
I have been back in my homeland, Colombia, and I have been on the road and on the streets re-visiting some towns and cities. I received the new year 2012 in Cartagena de Indias, a city in the Caribbean coast plenty of history (founded in 1533 by by Spanish commander Pedro de Heredia in the…
Children-Computer Symbiosis and the Reinvention of Childhood Since the 1950s, researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and computer science, were asking questions about how humans learn and think. At university laboratories they were designing theories of the mind and imagining machines that could think and augment human intelligence. One of the most influential…
The cover of BYTE magazine (the small systems journal) from November, 1976, is a color photograph of two children sat in front of what it seems to be a home computer system. The children are not looking at the camera. Instead, they are looking the screen of a 15” TV monitor that is placed in…