Author Archives: jlredford

A Catastrophic Failure of Verification

Posted on January 15, 2012 by jlredford

So your competitor has come out with a new product.  It beats yours hands down.  You’ve been working away on a similar thing, but your engineers are arrogant and uninterested in the ideas of others.  You’re now hopelessly behind.  You … Continue reading →

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A Small Eco-Doom

Posted on January 4, 2012 by jlredford

So your family has been farming a particular spot of North Dakota for the last 130 years. When you were a kid, there was a lake off in the distance, Devil’s Lake, that was good for perch fishing, but horrible … Continue reading →

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The Oldest Active Computer

Posted on December 29, 2011 by jlredford

Digital computers are a fairly old technology at this point.  The first ones date from the mid-1940s, which makes them older than nuclear reactors, integrated circuits, polypropylene, and orbital satellites. What they aren’t is a durable technology.  Computers age fast, … Continue reading →

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The Farewell Dossier and CIA Cyber-Sabotage

Posted on December 17, 2011 by jlredford

I recently came across an extraordinary story of Soviet industrial espionage and subsequent CIA wrong-doing – the Farewell Dossier.    I heard about it through the French movie “Farewell” (2009), which is a fictionalized version of it.  “Farewell” is a rather … Continue reading →

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The Moon Is Dull

Posted on December 1, 2011 by jlredford

Last summer there were two movies partially set on the Moon: “Transformers: the Dark of the Moon” and “Apollo 18”.  In the first, the Apollo program has a secret agenda to explore alien robots that are discovered there.  In the … Continue reading →

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Beautiful Inventors

Posted on November 23, 2011 by jlredford

So I see that Richard Rhodes is coming out with a new book about Hedy Lamarr and the invention of spread spectrum communications: Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.  … Continue reading →

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Boston Power becomes Beijing Power

Posted on October 20, 2011 by jlredford

Well here’s a depressing story – a local lithium-ion battery startup, Boston Power, has recently been bought out by Chinese investors and the Chinese government, and will be moving most of its R&D operations to Beijing.  The American execs are … Continue reading →

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Auto Automobiles

Posted on October 14, 2011 by jlredford

The consistently interesting Brian Hayes has a column in the latest issue of American Scientist speculating on the consequences of true self-driving automobiles.  He makes a number of valuable points: For liability reasons, they’ll only be present in large numbers … Continue reading →

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SF Writers At War

Posted on October 3, 2011 by jlredford

In 1942  three of the country’s leading SF writers – Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and L. Sprague De Camp – all started working together at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.    The US had just entered WW II, and everyone wanted to … Continue reading →

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“MIT Seeks to Flatter Wealthy Businessmen”

Posted on September 23, 2011 by jlredford

… is what the headline should have read on this Boston Globe article, “Stars of invention – Walk of Fame in Kendall Square celebrates technology and the entrepreneurial spirit”.  Apparently MIT and the city of Cambridge have set up a … Continue reading →

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