Tag Archives: tech-culture

The Discrete and the Flashy at CES

Posted on January 19, 2025 by jlredford

I was just at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s the biggest tech show in the world these days, with 140,000 attendees and occupying a lot of the city. It fills the gigantic Las Vegas Convention Center, … Continue reading →

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Trump Will Be a Disaster for High Tech

Posted on December 30, 2024 by jlredford

Trump will be a disaster for the entire country, of course, but let me concentrate on his effect on my own area, that of high-tech. I see the following places where he’s most likely to damage the field: curtailing the … Continue reading →

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Execs Erasing Techs

Posted on October 21, 2024 by jlredford

The executives of companies often take credit for the innovations that their lead technicals actually created, and erase them from company history. This is hardly surprising! It seems common enough that I’ve come across it in a number of previous … Continue reading →

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Obscure Creators of the World #3 – Jack Ryan

Posted on June 5, 2024 by jlredford

And now for something completely different! Jack Ryan did not create fundamental innovations like Federico Faggin and the self-aligned FET, or Robert Dennard and the DRAM. He did not have a long, successful career with a strong and supportive family. … Continue reading →

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Obscure Creators of the World #2: Robert Dennard

Posted on November 19, 2023 by jlredford

Many people have heard of Moore’s Law, that the number of transistors that can be put on a chip doubles every two years. Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, noticed this in 1965, and it’s held true pretty much ever … Continue reading →

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Where is Nobel-Winning Science Done?

Posted on October 15, 2023 by jlredford

The 2023 Nobels were recently announced, marking 123 years of the most prestigious science prizes in the world. This is now a big enough dataset to do some statistics on. So let’s ask – what are the countries, institutions, and … Continue reading →

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Tech Crime Seems On the Rise

Posted on September 10, 2023 by jlredford

In the 2000s I was the CTO of a startup that quickly ran into trouble. Our CEO wildly over-promised in order to keep funding flowing, and he then got fired by the board. They appointed a new CEO, and he … Continue reading →

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“Oppenheimer” and the Limits of Scientific Influence

Posted on August 19, 2023 by jlredford

One of the favorite tropes of SF is the mad scientist. He (always he) represents the disruptive power of modern science to old beliefs, and of modern technology to old ways of life. He becomes crazed with this power, and … Continue reading →

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Musk Really Is Like Tesla, But Not In a Good Way

Posted on January 22, 2023 by jlredford

Although Elon Musk did not found or name Tesla Inc, he often gets compared to its namesake, Nikola Tesla. Both were from the provinces – South Africa for Musk and Serbia for Tesla – and made their fortunes in the … Continue reading →

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Ukraine v Russia Is a Tech War Like Union v Confederacy

Posted on May 23, 2022 by jlredford

In the 1860s the Europeans watched the American Civil War in horrified fascination. It had been almost 50 years since the Napoleonic Wars, when they had been in a real war with matched combatants. They had been mainly fighting colonial … Continue reading →

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