Google – Don't Gel Too Soon

No Google, Yahoo Mail Won’t Work SO Here We Are In China!

He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a real man, said Chairman Mao. That’s what it says on this tablet. Pay close attention to the photo to determine why we only made it part of the way.

Yup. Rick fell in Hong Kong and sprained his leg. It really hurts. We’re traveling with these crutches and using wheelchairs wherever we can because he’s determined to BE here while we ARE here. And it’s worth it. China is mind-blowing, unpredictable and so very interesting.

We had a great double birthday party for him – first at the hotel with a surprise cake and then with our guide at a local restaurant. If you wrote him, he probably didn’t see it since Facebook isn’t available, so comment here and I’ll relay.

Today we took the bullet train to Xian and tomorrow we will see the Terracotta Warriors. I am very excited.

I promise to post more soon. With real content.

But I don’t have any other way to communicate until I figure out why Yahoo has locked me out. If you’ve tried to reach me with no response, now you know why: many of The Usual Methods do not exist here. At all.

Ada Lovelace, Al Gore, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Google and Where They Took Us All

You know what? Not only did Al Gore never say that he invented the Internet, but he was one of its best advocates and understood the importance of the slew of people who really did. They’re part of a surprisingly exciting and remarkable story told by Walter Isaacson in The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. It’s a fast-paced tour through the evolution of modern technology, from the prophetic work of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace (aka Lord Byron’s daughter) through the first computers, programming, the unsung (big surprise) but enormous contribution made by women technologists, transistors, microchips, video games, the Internet and the Web, as well as personal computees to access it. The story is pretty amazing and yes, inspiring.

The people behind these developments, and the process that carried them, provide a rich narrative and a couple of surprising through-lines. First, about patents and Nobel prizes: the men (and women) who brought us from The Difference Engine to the microchip to the Internet of Everything were not hoarders. Although many of them received patents and made money from their work, rather than withholding developments, most shared them, even precise details. They collaborated to build upon the genius of the ones before. Secondly, much of their work, basic development and science as well as more sophisticated details, was funded by governments; a lot of the American work was funded under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He saw American science leadership as a national security issue, and, as we consider what emerged from that federal funding, it’s hard to argue.

There are dozens of anecdotes as well as illuminating biographical profiles in The Innovators, including Alan Turing, currently played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the highly anticipated film The Imitation Game (Isaacson interviews the cast below). Each story is a worthy candidate for inclusion here. Better though, that like these heroic creators of what became our present and future, you read the book and discover them for yourself.

GOOGLE ME THIS

I worked for Excite when it was a brand new search engine. The idea was to write 20 word descriptions of every site and differentiate Excite as the search engine with quality descriptions to help guide the searcher. I wanted to learn about the Internet (it was around 1995 – near the beginning of search) and they were paying $5/review. It was a blast. Why am I telling you this?

I just finished a book called THE SEARCH: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, by John Battelle, who is a remarkable pioneer – one of the founders of WIRED, the late INDUSTRY STANDARD and blog advertising syndicator Federated Media Publishing, Inc. among others.

As the title suggests, it’s about considerably more than the brilliant and turbulent birth and ascent of Google. Battelle makes the very good case that the rise of search as a web application was essential to more than the future of the Internet as the universal tool that it is. In addition, says Battelle, “Search is no longer a stand-alone application, as useful but impersonal tool for finding something on a new medium called the World Wide Web. Increasingly, search is our mechanism for how we understand ourselves, our world, and our place within it. It’s how we navigate the one infinite resource that drives human culture: knowledge.”

In other words, search is changing us, our culture and our world. It’s a very exciting examination of something that’s become so automatic and familiar that it’s easy to forget just how transforming a force it is. The book is out in paperback and if you’re a web rat like me, you’ll really enjoy it.