For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If read more

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.

Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source read more

Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in read more

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.

Since the invention of the microprocessor, the cost of moving a byte of information around has fallen on the order read more

Since the invention of the microprocessor, the cost of moving a byte of information around has fallen on the order of 10-million-fold. Never before in the human history has any product or service gotten 10 million times cheaper-much less in the course of a couple decades. That's as if a 747 plane, once at $150 million a piece, could now be bought for about the price of a large pizza.

Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically,' they really mean, 'not really.'.

Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically,' they really mean, 'not really.'.

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find read more

There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be.

This problem, too, will look simple after it is solved.

This problem, too, will look simple after it is solved.