Design for Dasein: Understanding the Design of ExperiencesThomas Wendt
This talk explores the connections between design and phenomenological philosophy. It is based on my book by the same title.
Book site: designfordasein.com
Amazon: bit.ly/dsn4dsn
Book description from Amazon:
This book draws from philosophy, psychology, object studies, and design theory to articulate the intersection of design thinking and human experience.
When designers talk about related fields, they often mention anthropology, cognitive science, psychology, information science, etc., but philosophy is usually left out. Why? Why don’t we talk about philosophy as a contributor to the understanding of design, especially when phenomenology, the philosophical study of human experience, has contributed so much to our understanding of the interrelation between humans and technology?
Design for Dasein attempts to apply phenomenological thinking to design in order to further inform what designers (especially what we might call "experience designers") do in their day to day work. Many activities designers perform every day can be traced back to insights from phenomenology. Activities like user testing, prototyping, sketching, interaction models, personas, interviewing, ethnography, participatory design, and processes like design thinking and lean UX all have phenomenological roots. The book will highlight these connections and explore how they contribute to designing better experiences, providing the reader with new ways of thinking about his or her work, and new strategies for designing systems for both present and future scenarios.
The Quantum Internet: Hype or the Next StepJohn Ashmead
What do we mean by the quantum internet? Why do we need more than just quantum computing? What are quantum cryptography, quantum key distribution, quantum sensors? How are these concepts entangled? What are the advantages of the quantum internet? key problems? Who will get to use it? And do we have just a bunch of interesting technologies that all have quantum in their name or can the whole be more than the sum of its parts?
Design for Dasein: Understanding the Design of ExperiencesThomas Wendt
This talk explores the connections between design and phenomenological philosophy. It is based on my book by the same title.
Book site: designfordasein.com
Amazon: bit.ly/dsn4dsn
Book description from Amazon:
This book draws from philosophy, psychology, object studies, and design theory to articulate the intersection of design thinking and human experience.
When designers talk about related fields, they often mention anthropology, cognitive science, psychology, information science, etc., but philosophy is usually left out. Why? Why don’t we talk about philosophy as a contributor to the understanding of design, especially when phenomenology, the philosophical study of human experience, has contributed so much to our understanding of the interrelation between humans and technology?
Design for Dasein attempts to apply phenomenological thinking to design in order to further inform what designers (especially what we might call "experience designers") do in their day to day work. Many activities designers perform every day can be traced back to insights from phenomenology. Activities like user testing, prototyping, sketching, interaction models, personas, interviewing, ethnography, participatory design, and processes like design thinking and lean UX all have phenomenological roots. The book will highlight these connections and explore how they contribute to designing better experiences, providing the reader with new ways of thinking about his or her work, and new strategies for designing systems for both present and future scenarios.
The Quantum Internet: Hype or the Next StepJohn Ashmead
What do we mean by the quantum internet? Why do we need more than just quantum computing? What are quantum cryptography, quantum key distribution, quantum sensors? How are these concepts entangled? What are the advantages of the quantum internet? key problems? Who will get to use it? And do we have just a bunch of interesting technologies that all have quantum in their name or can the whole be more than the sum of its parts?
How to build a PostgreSQL-backed website quicklyJohn Ashmead
We will show how to get started building a PostgreSQL-backed website using Ruby-on-Rails. We will look at Model-View-Controller architecture; what tools you need to get started; how to work with the online tutorials; what kind of workflow to use; and which tasks to let Ruby-on-Rails handle versus which are better done by PostgreSQL.
The Quantum Internet: Hype or the Next StepJohn Ashmead
What do we mean by the quantum internet? Why do we need more than just quantum computing? What are quantum cryptography, quantum key distribution, quantum sensors? How are these concepts entangled? What are the advantages of the quantum internet? key problems? Who will get to use it? And do we have just a bunch of interesting tech that all have quantum in their name or can the whole be more than the sum of its parts?
Oz’s Tik-Tok to the Mechanical Turk, from Neural Nets & Genetic Algorithms to Chess & StarCraft, from fighting the Coronavirus to flying Killer Drones, from Facial Recognition to Fakes, Deep Fakes, & Anti-Fakes, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere today. How did it start? What do we mean by AI? What are the basic AI techniques? How is it being used? What are the benefits? risks? and how should we manage AI going forwards?
Time dispersion in time-of-arrival measurementsJohn Ashmead
Can we prove that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle does not apply along the energy/time axis in the same way it applies along the space/momentum axis?
Talk given at the International Association for
Relativistic Dynamics
Time dispersion in quantum mechanics -- Philcon 2019 versionJohn Ashmead
We know from quantum mechanics that space is fuzzy, that particles don’t have a well-defined position in space. And we know from special relativity that time and space are interchangeable. But if they are interchangeable, shouldn’t time be fuzzy as well? Shouldn’t the rules of quantum mechanics apply — along the time dimension? Bohr and Einstein — who disagreed on so much — nevertheless agreed on this.
Is time fuzzy? In quantum mechanics space is fuzzy. And in special relativity time and space are interchangeable. But if time and space are interchangeable, shouldnt time be fuzzy as well? Shouldnt quantum mechanics apply -- to time? Thanks to recent technical advances we can put this to the test. We ask: How do you get a clock in a box? How do you interfere with time? When is one slit better than two? And what happens at the intersection of time and quantum mechanics?
Why do we want to go? How do we get there? How do we live there? What might we find? What are the dangers: radiation, low gravity, dust, our fellow humans? Is there life on Mars now? Was there once? and did our own evolution actually start on Mars?
Practical Telepathy: The Science & Engineering of Mind-ReadingJohn Ashmead
From van Vogt's Slan to Willis's Crosstalk, telepathy has been a staple of science fiction. But what are the real world chances of reading another person's mind? With MRI & PET scans we can see what images a person is thinking of, with brain implants we can help the blind to see, and -- the way the science is going -- we are only a half-step away from direct mind-to-mind communication. Nothing to worry about here!
This is the Capclave 2018 version
From Startup to Mature Company: PostgreSQL Tips and techniquesJohn Ashmead
This talk is for people relatively new to PostgreSQL who are wondering:
How do I get going with PostgreSQL -- in a way that won’t create problems later on!
We’ll go over best practice in:
Table design
Indexing
PostgreSQL types
Stored procedures -- when & how to use, when not
Triggers
How to work with a web framework (i.e. Ruby-on-Rails): what works belongs in the framework, what should be done in the database
Error & exception management
Doing the right amount of planning
Why you might want to build the help system first, and use it to help build the rest.
Nistica has its ownership in Japan, engineering in New Jersey, & manufacturing in Vietnam so we’ll take a special look at:
Handling different languages & character sets
Timestamps & time zones
How to sync data from one part of the world to another without letting data fall on the floor or creating infinite loopiness.
Nistica has gone from startup to world player in the manufacture of optical switches. It has run its manufacturing on PostgreSQL from the start, using PostgreSQL to drive every step from assembly to quality assurance & tracking all part data in the database.
Going from the ad hoc procedures appropriate for a startup to the disciplined approaches required by the world market has taught us a lot about how to get the best out of PostgreSQL.
We’ve learned a lot from the PostgreSQL community; now we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned from our experience.
Practical Telepathy: The Science & Engineering of Mind-ReadingJohn Ashmead
From van Vogt's Slan to Willis's Crosstalk, telepathy has been a staple of science fiction. But what are the real world chances of reading another person's mind? With MRI & PET scans we can see what images a person is thinking of, with brain implants we can help the blind to see, and -- the way the science is going -- we are only a half-step away from direct mind-to-mind communication. Nothing to worry about here!
What are StarGates? Why & wither wormholes? Dangers of sphaghettification. How to build a wormhole? Negative energy & vortices. At the edge of testable. Today, a bridge of birds, tomorrow the cell phone: nearly impossible today, but tomorrow?
Call them Stargates, Jumpgates, Fargates, Hypergates or just an invitation to every unwanted pest from the far reaches of the Galaxy to visit, they're absolutely necessary if we're to have the glorious Science Fiction action we desperately need. Could they actually be built? Modern physics may permit: how to glue black holes together to build a wormhole, how to avoid the dangers of spaghettification, radiation poisoning and paradox noise, and just what would it take to build one in practice.
Quantum dots (QD) are semiconductors made via several possible routes. John Ashmead discusses how they are made, their properties and their applications in research.
Call them Stargates, Jumpgates, Fargates, Hypertubes or just an invitation to every unwanted pest from the far reaches of the Galaxy to visit, they are absolutely necessary if we are to have the glorious Science Fiction action we desperately need. But could they actually be built? We look at what modern physics has to say: how to glue black holes together to build a wormhole, how to avoid the dangers of spaghettification, radiation poisoning, and paradox noise, and just what it would take to build one in practice.
Time travel in the works of Tim Powers: The Anubis Gates, Three Days to Never, The Medusa's Web. Talk given at Washington DC Science Fiction convention, Capclave 2016.
We look at the history of the multiverse, the big bang theory, the problem of fine-tuning, how it is solved by the anthropic principle, how the combination of eternal inflation & string theory might create many universes, and a bit of discussion as to the odds of the multiverse being true.
We review the double slit experiment, the "central mystery" of quantum mechanics as Feynman put it. We included a number of animations, including some from Larry Latham specially done for this presentation! Unfortunately the animations don't seem to post correctly to slideshare, alas.
How to convert from MySQL to PostgreSQL: discuss history of each, current status, when you might wish to convert, what might motivate you to convert, & how to do so. With references.
How to build a PostgreSQL-backed website quicklyJohn Ashmead
We will show how to get started building a PostgreSQL-backed website using Ruby-on-Rails. We will look at Model-View-Controller architecture; what tools you need to get started; how to work with the online tutorials; what kind of workflow to use; and which tasks to let Ruby-on-Rails handle versus which are better done by PostgreSQL.
The Quantum Internet: Hype or the Next StepJohn Ashmead
What do we mean by the quantum internet? Why do we need more than just quantum computing? What are quantum cryptography, quantum key distribution, quantum sensors? How are these concepts entangled? What are the advantages of the quantum internet? key problems? Who will get to use it? And do we have just a bunch of interesting tech that all have quantum in their name or can the whole be more than the sum of its parts?
Oz’s Tik-Tok to the Mechanical Turk, from Neural Nets & Genetic Algorithms to Chess & StarCraft, from fighting the Coronavirus to flying Killer Drones, from Facial Recognition to Fakes, Deep Fakes, & Anti-Fakes, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere today. How did it start? What do we mean by AI? What are the basic AI techniques? How is it being used? What are the benefits? risks? and how should we manage AI going forwards?
Time dispersion in time-of-arrival measurementsJohn Ashmead
Can we prove that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle does not apply along the energy/time axis in the same way it applies along the space/momentum axis?
Talk given at the International Association for
Relativistic Dynamics
Time dispersion in quantum mechanics -- Philcon 2019 versionJohn Ashmead
We know from quantum mechanics that space is fuzzy, that particles don’t have a well-defined position in space. And we know from special relativity that time and space are interchangeable. But if they are interchangeable, shouldn’t time be fuzzy as well? Shouldn’t the rules of quantum mechanics apply — along the time dimension? Bohr and Einstein — who disagreed on so much — nevertheless agreed on this.
Is time fuzzy? In quantum mechanics space is fuzzy. And in special relativity time and space are interchangeable. But if time and space are interchangeable, shouldnt time be fuzzy as well? Shouldnt quantum mechanics apply -- to time? Thanks to recent technical advances we can put this to the test. We ask: How do you get a clock in a box? How do you interfere with time? When is one slit better than two? And what happens at the intersection of time and quantum mechanics?
Why do we want to go? How do we get there? How do we live there? What might we find? What are the dangers: radiation, low gravity, dust, our fellow humans? Is there life on Mars now? Was there once? and did our own evolution actually start on Mars?
Practical Telepathy: The Science & Engineering of Mind-ReadingJohn Ashmead
From van Vogt's Slan to Willis's Crosstalk, telepathy has been a staple of science fiction. But what are the real world chances of reading another person's mind? With MRI & PET scans we can see what images a person is thinking of, with brain implants we can help the blind to see, and -- the way the science is going -- we are only a half-step away from direct mind-to-mind communication. Nothing to worry about here!
This is the Capclave 2018 version
From Startup to Mature Company: PostgreSQL Tips and techniquesJohn Ashmead
This talk is for people relatively new to PostgreSQL who are wondering:
How do I get going with PostgreSQL -- in a way that won’t create problems later on!
We’ll go over best practice in:
Table design
Indexing
PostgreSQL types
Stored procedures -- when & how to use, when not
Triggers
How to work with a web framework (i.e. Ruby-on-Rails): what works belongs in the framework, what should be done in the database
Error & exception management
Doing the right amount of planning
Why you might want to build the help system first, and use it to help build the rest.
Nistica has its ownership in Japan, engineering in New Jersey, & manufacturing in Vietnam so we’ll take a special look at:
Handling different languages & character sets
Timestamps & time zones
How to sync data from one part of the world to another without letting data fall on the floor or creating infinite loopiness.
Nistica has gone from startup to world player in the manufacture of optical switches. It has run its manufacturing on PostgreSQL from the start, using PostgreSQL to drive every step from assembly to quality assurance & tracking all part data in the database.
Going from the ad hoc procedures appropriate for a startup to the disciplined approaches required by the world market has taught us a lot about how to get the best out of PostgreSQL.
We’ve learned a lot from the PostgreSQL community; now we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned from our experience.
Practical Telepathy: The Science & Engineering of Mind-ReadingJohn Ashmead
From van Vogt's Slan to Willis's Crosstalk, telepathy has been a staple of science fiction. But what are the real world chances of reading another person's mind? With MRI & PET scans we can see what images a person is thinking of, with brain implants we can help the blind to see, and -- the way the science is going -- we are only a half-step away from direct mind-to-mind communication. Nothing to worry about here!
What are StarGates? Why & wither wormholes? Dangers of sphaghettification. How to build a wormhole? Negative energy & vortices. At the edge of testable. Today, a bridge of birds, tomorrow the cell phone: nearly impossible today, but tomorrow?
Call them Stargates, Jumpgates, Fargates, Hypergates or just an invitation to every unwanted pest from the far reaches of the Galaxy to visit, they're absolutely necessary if we're to have the glorious Science Fiction action we desperately need. Could they actually be built? Modern physics may permit: how to glue black holes together to build a wormhole, how to avoid the dangers of spaghettification, radiation poisoning and paradox noise, and just what would it take to build one in practice.
Quantum dots (QD) are semiconductors made via several possible routes. John Ashmead discusses how they are made, their properties and their applications in research.
Call them Stargates, Jumpgates, Fargates, Hypertubes or just an invitation to every unwanted pest from the far reaches of the Galaxy to visit, they are absolutely necessary if we are to have the glorious Science Fiction action we desperately need. But could they actually be built? We look at what modern physics has to say: how to glue black holes together to build a wormhole, how to avoid the dangers of spaghettification, radiation poisoning, and paradox noise, and just what it would take to build one in practice.
Time travel in the works of Tim Powers: The Anubis Gates, Three Days to Never, The Medusa's Web. Talk given at Washington DC Science Fiction convention, Capclave 2016.
We look at the history of the multiverse, the big bang theory, the problem of fine-tuning, how it is solved by the anthropic principle, how the combination of eternal inflation & string theory might create many universes, and a bit of discussion as to the odds of the multiverse being true.
We review the double slit experiment, the "central mystery" of quantum mechanics as Feynman put it. We included a number of animations, including some from Larry Latham specially done for this presentation! Unfortunately the animations don't seem to post correctly to slideshare, alas.
How to convert from MySQL to PostgreSQL: discuss history of each, current status, when you might wish to convert, what might motivate you to convert, & how to do so. With references.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Encryption in Microsoft 365 - ExpertsLive Netherlands 2024Albert Hoitingh
In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
From Siloed Products to Connected Ecosystem: Building a Sustainable and Scala...
The Physics of Time Travel
1. The Physics of
Time Travel
John Ashmead
akmed@voicenet.com
• “Really this is what is meant by the Fourth
Dimension, though some people who talk
about the Fourth Dimension do not know
they mean it. It is only another way of
looking at Time. There is no difference
between time and any of the three
dimensions of space except that our
consciousness moves along it.” - The
Time Traveler
3. Time is Weird (1)
• Pole moving
• House at rest
• Pole is shortened, so
fits in the house
• (per Sartori)
4. Time is Weird (2)
• Pole at rest
• House moving
• House is shortened
• But “fortunately” both
doors are open at the
same time!
5. Time is Weird (3)
• Pole
house
together
on one
space-
time
diagram.
6. Tachyon loops (plain)
t • In the diagram (drawn to
-
a scale) Alice sends a message
x
i at a which gets to Bob at b.
s .8
,w cd
=1 c
Bob processes the message
=-3
w’ cd b then at c sends Alice a reply
w ab
=3 which she receives at d,
a
before she sent the first
d
message.
Primed observer going
)
at .75 c relative to
.7 5
unprimed. Both are able
!=
b(
to emit 3c tachyons
Bo
(in own rest frame).
Alice
x-axis
Tachyon loop
7. Tachyon loops (musical)
t
-
a
x
• Bob might
c dah
i
s
=1
.8
dit
dit choose to send
w cd dit
Alice the first
dit dit dit dah
b
= 3
a w ab
few notes of
d
Beethoven’s
)
Primed observer going
.7 5
at .75 c relative to
Fifth
!=
b(
unprimed. Both are able
Bo
to emit 3c tachyons
Alice
(in own rest frame).
x-axis
symphony…
tachyon loops 2
11. • Wormholes,
Tachyons, Time
Travel, Oh My
• Excellent introduction
to the physics
• And short!
• With a first rate
bibliography (he has
taken time to write a
short one)
13. On Rotating Cylinders the Possibility of
Global Causality Violation
• Niven’s Law:
• “If the universe of
discourse permits the
possibility of time
travel, and of changing
the past, then no time
machine will be
invented in that
universe.”
15. • Chronology protection
conjecture:
• “The laws of physics
do not allow the
appearance of closed
timelike curves.”
• “Thus the possibility of
time travel remains
open. But I’m not going
to bet on it. My
opponent might have
the unfair advantage of
knowing the future.”
16. • Novikov has taken a
stronger position, in
his Novikov
consistency
conjecture :
inconsistent
trajectories are
forbidden: self-
consistency is
treated essentially as
one of the boundary
conditions imposed
on any problem.
18. Three Paradoxes
• Consistency paradoxes
– Killed own grandpa?
• Bootstrap paradoxes
– Where did the book come from?
• Plausibility paradoxes
– No human acts like that!
19. All You Zombies
• A Paradox can be paradoctored!
• “I’m My Own Grandpa”
• “I know where I come from, but
where do all you zombies come
from?”
• (Drawing is from Kaku’s
Hyperspace)
20. • “If you want to see
what would happen if
you turned a machine
gun on Brutus and the
conspirators, we can
arrange that--but not
on this tour! We don’t
want to have too much
fun, do we?”
21. The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle
• “intelligent life…selects out the
actual Universe from among the
different imaginable universes: the
only “real” universes are those
which can contain intelligent
life…”
22. • The large number N:
gravity in the cosmos
• The stars, the periodic
table, and e.
• The fine-tuned expansion:
dark matter and W.
• The number l: is cosmic
expansion slowing or
speeding?
• Primordial ripples: the
number Q
• Three dimensions (
more)
24. A Sound of Thunder
• Eckels … fumbled crazily
at the thick slime on his
boots. He held up a clod
of dirt, trembling, “No, it
can’t be. Not a little thing
like that. No!”
• Embedded in the mud,
glistening green and gold
and black, was a butterfly,
very beautiful and very
dead.”
25. Science Fiction
• Why pick on
grandfather? It seems
that the only way to
prove that time travel is
impossible is to cite a
case of killing one's own
grandfather. This
incessant murdering of
harmless ancestors must
stop. Let's see some
wide-awake fan make up
some other method of
disproving the theory.” –
letter to Astounding
Stories
26. • The law that entropy always increases
holds, I think, the supreme position
among the laws of nature. If someone
points out to you that your pet theory of
the universe is in disagreement with
Maxwell's equations - then so much the
worse for Maxwell's equations.…but if
your theory is found to be against the
second law of thermodynamics, I can give
you no hope; there is nothing for it but to
collapse in deepest humiliation.”
– Eddington
27. Many arrows
➧ Big Bang - the Mother of all arrows
➧ Radiation
➧ Decay
➧ Evolution
➧ Biology
➧ Economics
➧ Linguistic
➧ Psychology
➧ …
30. “We need to guard
against the double
standard fallacy--that
of accepting
arguments with
respect to one
temporal direction that
we wouldn’t accept
with respect to the
other.”
32. Complex time
• In other words, (the pilotʼs) life as observed
from other reference frames must be
consistent with his own observations just as
spatial observations must be consistent. This
does not necessarily mean (the pilot) can
never appear in his own past, but rather that
he cannot change that past after he has
experienced it.
– Asaro
35. Paradox Noise
• “In any case where a signal from the
future seems liable to tampering, either
that signal will come through
sufficiently muddled and unclear, or the
overall system will otherwise conspire
to subvert any schemes for tampering.”
– Peres and Schulman
36. If wave functions can
continue backwards in
time (through one of
his stargates) then
only self-consistent
solutions are allowed.
(By analogy with Bohr-
Sommerfeld
quantization rules for
the atom!)
37. • Kuin sends chronoliths
20 years 3 months
into the past to presage
his intended victory…
• Like the three witches
telling Macbeth a
partial truth to damn
him.
38. Coming to terms with your inner
robot
• “Of course I have free will. What choice do
I have?” – Irving Berlin
39. Elbow Room
• “What we want when we want free will is
the power to decide our courses of action,
and to decide them wisely, in the light of
our expectations and desires. We want to be
in control of ourselves, and not under the
control of others. We want to be agents,
capable of initiating, and taking
responsibility for, projects and deeds.”
– Dennett
40. Presented for your consideration…
Levels of time
• Cause effect
• Entropic
• Parametric
• Strings
• Loop quantum gravity
41. Why time travel?
• High fun factor
– Fight foo fearlessly
• You never know
– “That which is not forbidden is
compulsory!”
• Thought experiments
– Witness the references