Earlier, we talked about how programmers weren’t perhaps what you expect. Code isn’t either. Programmers used to program using series of 1’s and 0’s punched into cards (crikey!) but that’s not the case any more.
Program code has got more and more high level, and some languages are actually quite readable by humans! Some programming can even be done using drag and drop.
Programming is really just a way of thinking. More and more people are becoming programmers, some of them without realizing that’s what they’re doing.
Images from www.alice.org
You can learn to program using The Sims – isn’t that awesome? It’s a great initiative called Alice.
Image used with permission of Kelvin Schutz
More and more video games come with programming capabilities, Warcraft is another example.
There are also programs such as Game Maker or Fusion that allow you to create video games without writing any code – you just have to learn to think logically!
This is relatively simple to create, and doesn’t require much code. It’s recursive, which means we split it into the same problem again and again and again – until we reach something really small and easily solved – in this case by drawing and filling in a square.
That’s pretty short, hey?
This is something I’m working on currently, what I try to do is take some of the huge volume of information we’re presented with every day and make it into something that’s both pretty and useful. For instance, this shows the size and interactions in my Twitter network.
We can also write programs to extract important information from the noise. Here, this graph picks out my core, central network.
The “hard” part of the code is just 6 lines!
Imagine how difficult it would be to create these things by hand!
Credit: flickr / Vermin Inc
Technology has changed our lives considerably relatively recently – we have new and impressive “hardware” and creative and innovating programming. This is just the begining – there’s much more to come.
Technologists – hardware designers, programmers – are at the center of what we will achieve next.
(Don’t you want to be part of that?)
Look around – changes are happening rapidly – in 15 years, you could be talking about what’s happened in your lifetime.
Be inspired! Human innovation is INCREDIBLE!
Push boundaries! Be limited only by your imagination.
Experiment!
This video shows the evolution of special effects in cinematography. Because the movie studios are often at the edge of computer graphics work, it illustrates the evolution of 100 years of technology.
Credit: flickr / takomabibelot, flickr / Kuzeytac ( So, SO busy…), flickr / HuTDoG83
Through human history, there have been various inventions and discoveries that have fundamentally changed things.
The first was probably fire – it’s suggested that the reason for the sudden growth in the size of the human brain was a result of early humans cooking meat.
Another was the printing press, which allowed for the easier sharing and distribution of information. Before the printing press, everything was hand-written – very time consuming. The church got very angry about this development, and tried to fight against it but ultimately they couldn’t stop the advance of technology. To show how utterly futile this attempt was, consider that in order to get enough copies of their reasons why the printing press was such a terrible thing, they had to use the printing press – because scribes couldn’t copy fast enough. We see similar reactions today from some industries and some religious organizations when it comes to the internet.
The combustion engine brought about great changes in production and human mobility. It’s made it possible to flit between continents, the way we take for granted today.
Taken by me at the Museum of Science and Technology, Tokyo, Japan
The internet is another such invention, and we’re just at the beginning of the changes that will ensue.
We can see here that the internet was created about 40 years ago, and email shortly after. The internet as we know it really starts with the invention of the “World Wide Web” over 20 years later, though. The internet is the infrastructure, and the web is the software that runs on top of it. Many people don’t understand the difference, but without the web the services like YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter would not be possible. Now, we’re at the start of the mobile web – by 2020 it’s predicted that more mobile devices will be accessing the internet than computers.
Credit: flickr / just Luh.
My childhood would probably be unrecognizable to children of today – No cellphones! No iPod! No DVDs! (instead there was VHS) No YouTube! No Facebook! No Twitter! My family didn’t have a computer until I was about 12 and it was very slow, and at first it didn’t have internet.
For previous generations, the differences weren’t this huge – they were, as I understand it, mostly differences in TV programs. However with things moving so fast, this has not been the case lately.
Credit: flickr / KhE 龙, flickr / hichako, flickr / macwagen, Wikipedia
The giant brick cellphone on the left? My dad had one of those when I was little! I remember the first iPod, “Dial up” internet, floppy disks, my first CD and DVD and (vaguely!) what using the internet was like before Google.
Figures from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Images credit: flickr / Wayan Vota, flickr / Pink Sherbet Photography
In Canada, about 75 people out of every 100 use the internet. In the US, 74 people out of every 100 do. In China, which is a developing country, just 27 people out of every 100 use the internet. Number like this are why I can say with confidence that the changes we see as a result of the internet and other advances in technology are just beginning. When the whole world is online, the world will be very different than it is now.
China is still ahead of the worldwide average, which is just 25.5 people out of every 100. We have a long way to go before the whole world is connected, but I think we’ll get there.
Old style blog design from http://www.shirky.com/
One of the huge changes that programmers have brought about, through the creation of software, is the possibility for everyone to create content. This is so new, because if you think about it – before we used to distribute everything in books and newspapers etc, which have much higher costs of distribution. This development is something that impacts many people every single day.
The content users could create used to look a little… plain and dull and required some know-how.
Credit: Kevin Cornell, Markus Zeeh, Veerle Pieters, Oliver Wagner, Roman Leinwather, Manuela Hoffmann, Nick La, Pedro Vitor Lamin Júnior, Design Disease
Now, very little knowledge (if any) is required and designers can create beautiful looking web pages, that showcase their artistic sensibilities as well as their content.
In fact, the creators of I Want You To Want me used blog content to make another installation – this one online – called “We Feel Fine”.
Credit: flickr / Steven2005
So there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to change, and one of those things we can say with a good degree of certainty, is that newspapers are going to die out. Some of the brands will remain, but we’ll access them in a different way than on giant pieces of paper.
Some people are getting very angry about this, but it’s pointless to cling onto a dying business model. Innovative companies will survive. Those who waste time complaining probably won’t.
Credit: Wave Screenshot, flickr / Meddy Garnet, flickr / Joe Wilcox, Apple Tablet Image
But innovation doesn’t just mean the destruction of old things, there will also be new things that are created. Tactile computing, like tablets and tables will become mainstream. Communications will evolve through services like Google Wave. And eventually we’ll have house cleaning robots! (Sooner the better!)
Credit: flickr / e-strategyblog.com, flickr / david.nikonvscanon, flickr / Joaquín Martínez Rosado
What is art anyway? A painting in a museum? A sculpture? An iconic photograph?
All of that and more?
Art is a product of human creativity, and there are various medium we can use for it.
Technology is changing art, because it provides new means of distribution, and new means of creation. Let’s look at some examples.
A popular (but unreliable) web service can make an image iconic.
We Tell Stories is a project that uses the web rather than the traditional medium of a book. This enables another dimension to the story, one of the stories is interactive (your choices change the story), whereas another is recounted through Google Maps.
Cover of the New Yorker, May 2009. By Jorge Columbo
This image is created using the Brushes application for the iPhone. Isn’t it incredible?
PostSecret is a community art project, where people write secrets on postcards, and send them in. They’re collated by a man, Frank Warren, who collates them into a series of books and speaks at universities all over the US. Every Sunday, he publishes a blogpost called “Sunday Secrets”. This combines the traditional medium (post and books), and a new medium (blogs).
Created by Shamus Young
Best explained in the video, below.
Isn’t it awesome?
I Want You To Want Me, by Jonathan Harris & Sep Kamvar
I Want You To Want me visualizes data from dating sites, it, “explores the search for love but also the search for self in the world of online dating”.
See the video below.
I really love this project, it’s a great source of inspiration to me in my work and I think illustrates beautifully the intersection of programming and art.
Is this art, or math? Or both?
This is where I introduce myself. Graduate student, computer science. Originally from Europe. Bachelors degree from the University of Edinburgh. Working on Twitter, data-mining, and visualization. 24, so not actually that old, and what I’m going to be talking about are for the most part developments that have happened in my lifetime. I really want to give a sense of how fast technology is evolving, and how exciting it is to be a part of that.
My talk has three themes. The first is art – and the way technology enables different ways of creation and distribution. The second is life – the way technology has changed our lives unrecognizably in the very recent history. The final theme is programming, and this links the first two together because I think programming is central to the changes we’re experiencing. Programmers can be artists, and artists can be programmers. Programmers create tools that enter into our lexicon and soon we can’t imagine living without. Whilst computers and technology are a part of everything I’ll talk about, what’s more interesting is the human capacity for innovation and our reaction to change.
Picture taken by my at the Museum of Science and Technology in Tokyo, Japan
Do you want to change the world? There are many ways you could potentially do that, over the course of my lifetime humanity will likely face many problems with the environment and global warming. Some countries and states may end up underwater, whereas others may have potentially catastrophic shortages of drinking water. We face many issues of global health, such as AIDS and Cancer. The obesity problem in the US is a potential time-bomb, as are the aging populations in the west.
I think that technology will be key to solving the great problems that humanity is facing. I think programmers will be a central part of the solution. So if you want to change the world, programming is potentially a great choice for you.
However, every day peoples lives are made easier, and more productive, through the use of applications that make our lives easier by enabling us to be better organized, or automating boring tasks. Every day, we use things that renders our lives different because someone, or a group of someones, wrote some code to make that happen. Even if we don’t aspire to change the world on a macro scale, we can make change on the micro scale.
Of course, sometimes programmers write horribly unusable applications and make change for the worse. So we should be aware of that too.
What do programmers look like? They have poor hygiene and too much facial hair, and prone to living in basements? There’s a stereotype about programmers, and yes some are like that, but it’s definitely not true of me and, trust me, these attributes are not a requirement for a successful programmer.
Do you like math? Do you like solving problems? Do you like being creative and making stuff that’s visually appealing?
These are things that programmers do. No darkened basement required.
Ada Lovelace – the first programmer
This woman doesn’t look at all like the stereotype we were talking about before, and she was the first ever programmer! Her name was Ada Lovelace, and she was British, and lived between 1815 and 1852. She wrote the first ever program, for a computer (designed by Charles Babbage) that did not yet exist.
Crikey!
Credit: flickr / Dunechaser – Bill Gates and Google Founders
Bill Gates was a programmer with a mission – a computer in every home. In the West, he’s very nearly achieved that – an amazing contribution to humanity.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google with a goal – to organize the world’s information. Google has been around for a little over 10 years, and has succeeded in organizing the web – but that is just the beginning. It’s difficult to imagine the web pre-Google. I remember it being a lot harder to find things.
Credit: flickr / Laughing Squid
Even if you don’t use Facebook, can you imagine keeping in touch with your friends in other way than digitally? Waiting weeks for letters to cross continents?
Services like Facebook have made “ambient awareness” a normal part of life. They’ve revolutionized the way we keep in touch. It’s actually quite incredible.
Programming skills are another tool that we can use to build things, bridge gaps. Programming is also another medium for expression.
