Panta Rei. Everything flows....like a river, supposedly. And War is the father of all things. Both sentiments have been ascribed to Herakleitos, a 6th century Presocratic philosopher. Today, war seems to have become rather less of a motive historical force. Technology and the women and men driving it are seen as the true enablers of life, death, and indeed war itself.

Technorati Profile

If one were to look at the world of networking as a layercake of virtual machines, you can probably see that the world of web applications has become surprisingly complicated. There is so much to know and so many interlocking specifications to pay attention to that we shouldn't be too surprised if web users slowly begin to feel overwhelmed.

The Question

I miss the somewhat more "mystical" side of technological progress at times. Who remembers the times when the Internet, Martian rovers and the Matrix seemed to herald a change in global consciousness, when technology seemed to converge with the human genome and body to produce new beings made of bytes and wires?

Instead, we get social networking software. I am not sure I find it as edifying to read about the statistics of networking and the global spread of musical trends. More later.

As friend Gary in Orlando points out, eight fun facts about me are needed.

1) I went to 4 universities in 3 countries, and attended evening courses in a fifth. Eberhard-Carls University in Tuebingen, Germany, Hangzhou (now Zhejiang) University in Hangzhou, China, and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. I did evening classes in Unix and programming at UC Berkeley.

2) I lived in 8 countries: Germany, Italy, China, Taiwan, the UK, the US, India and now the Philippines.

Manila, 15/06/2007

These were heady days in Legazpi. Let me explain: streets were being built to the most remote barangays. Alright, elections were about to happen and it looked as if streets were being built. But I am getting ahead of myself (hits rewind button).

The weekend in Legaspi and Donsol had started well. Fireflies had been watched at night, whalesharks had been oggled and photographed. What else is there to do? Mt. Mayon was not about to break out, but it was hot anyway.

Manila, June 10th 2007

It is one of the joys of being in the Philippines that something familiar to every Filipino is so completely unexpected to an average, well, Anglo-German.

The history of Chinese mathematics has been studied since the middle of the Qing dynasty, and in the West serious academic study began during the late 19th century.

While going through algorithms and texts describing automata in the history of Chinese mathematics, I encountered a new translation based on a rather surprising source.

In my research on ancient automata and algorithms, I decided to pay attention to ancient Chinese technology and science. I am trying to put together a book on the origins of artificial life. I am more interested in the cultural history and early implementations of ideas about artificial life (not AI, so the chess-playing Turk will not get a look-in).