Monthly Archives: January 2009

We call it inauguration after the Romans, of course. Beginning at midnight on January 1st of each new year, the priests would take the augurs — the signs and portents — for the two new consuls, the duoviri who would govern the Republic for the next year. The ceremony would end with a long, slow [...] Continue reading →

The Technium: Instead of dozens of geniuses trying to program an AI in a university lab, there are billion people training the dim glimmers of intelligence arising between the quadrillion hyperlinks on the web. Long before the computing capacity of a plug-in computer overtakes the supposed computing capacity of a human brain, the web—encompassing all [...] Continue reading →