Headline, February22, 2014

'" O' BEAUTIFUL LADY : A VIRTUALLY

 SKETCHED DRESS!? > FIT THEE?! "'

 CHANGE may always be good,  but the people facing it don't necessarily see that.

And in  ''Raising Steam'',  we get that sense : this novel is not dark in the way earlier  Discworld  novels were    -it's darkest in the truest sense of the world, reminiscent of  terror  lurking in the shadows.

Thoughtful but graphic,  philosophical but also violent!  Raising Steam is a thoughtful and sweeping commentary on  modernity, aspiration, fear, ambition, and the discontent engendered by metamorphosis.

As the  Discworld  becomes  ever-smaller,  connected to a greater and greater by   technology and its practitioners,  and its inhabitants become closer and closer, Pratchett also raises the question of  suffrage and the rights of people   -not necessarily just humans:

To be treated as actual persons,  rather than broadly painted stereotypes, and idiots .

A look at the systems stack from the processor through the  OS  to the application program clearly shows that the lower parts of the stack are undergoing industry consolidation and standardization.

As career opportunities shift up the stack,  an important question is the depth of education required for a computer scientist on the lower parts. This may seem a lot like a question from an earlier era:

How much do computer scientists need to know about hardware systems?

According to Carlota Perez, who studied technical business and social trends over the past several centuries : all revolutionary technology inventions have three distinct phases. 

First, an installation phase occurs in which early adopters deploy the invention.This is followed by irrational business desires leading to an economic crisis phase or  ''crash'' .

Then the third phase sets in, in which a more mature technology is deployed by productive ways and often plays a transformational role in society. 

Perez studied five successive technology revolutions, starting with the Industrial Revolution in  1771   , and observed that each occurred over a period of centuries.

For example, the  ''age of oil,  the automobile, and mass production"  started in the US and Germany when the first Model-T came off the Ford assembly line in Detroit,  Michigan,  in 1908. The Industry is still evolving the world over!

In addition, each of the five revolutions was driven by technology innovation. New societal-scale engineered systems profoundly impacted the  "educational systems of their day''.

Civil engineering, Mechanical engineering, Physics, Chemistry, and most recently,  computer science,  have all played crucial roles in this journey.

According to Perez,  the   ''age information and telecommunications''  started in the US in 1971,  when the first Intel microprocessor was announced in Santa Clara, California. The Industry has already through the rapid innovation phase and the dot-com bust.

She argues that there will eventually be a shift in focus from technology innovations to business model innovations and eventually to social innovations.

Clearly the technology and business model associated with IT, and hence the underlying support that the field of computer science requires, is changing.

While there are many elements of intersection between the technical, business, and societal changes, three  '''outstanding trends''' might have the greatest impact in the future:

O' World welcome to !WOW!  

-the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of China: See Ya all on !WOW! :

''' Walking On Water '''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless