Month: November 2023

7 Disruptions You might not See Coming

I wrote these down in a notebook yesterday, as I listened to a conference presentation by Daryl Plummer at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo.* One reason was to count the number of times a presenter would mention “Generative AI.” I lost that count.

Here are seven (or eight) disruptions (with my comments) around the corner:

Impact from Geo Magnetic Storms

There is a potential for solar flairs to knock out a majority of our communication satellites.  Our challenge is to harden our power and communications infrastructures.

Regulated AI

An enormous amount of effort, engineering and forsight will be necessary to understand AI in order to regulate the technology.

Space Race

We do not know yet what benefits our exploration and habitation of space, but it’s an enourmous economic giant right now.

Silver Workers

It refers to people in the workforce who are of an age that we think of as “Retirement.” But the speaker emphasized the worth of older workers in their experience and the work environment history that the hold. Perhaps with a less demanding work experience before the age of 65 would make this prospect more appealing to me.

Laggards Leapfrog Leaders

Laggards refers to companies that are so big and established that innovation becomes extremely difficult. The speaker suggests that the opportunity is startups. Use their enourmouse capital to buy the innovations.

AI Driven Legacy Modernization

Remember with our calendars announced the 21st century, and we were worried that everything would just stop. It was because so much of our digital infrastructure ran on legacy software, written by people who had long retired. The speaker’s suggestion is that AI be utilized to modernize those legacy systems.

Pace of Engineering Innovation

No one, who’s paying attention, can deny the pace of engineering advancement. The real benefit, in my opinion, will come when we are willing to make those technological marvels are available to everyone.

Number eight would have to be Generative AI. Wikipedia defines it as:

Artificial intelligence capable of generating text, images, or other media, using generative models. Generative AI models learn the patterns and structure of their input training data and then generate new data that has similar characteristics**

I believe that the speaker suggested that Generative AI might just

“Change the nature of being human.”

* Plummer, D. (2023, November 8). Seven Disruptions You Might Not See Coming: 2023-2028 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVbvcIFeLYw

**Wikipedia contributors. (2023, November 17). Generative artificial intelligence. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13:36, November 18, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence

Why I Stopped Playing with Rockets

For a couple of months, I was spending hours everyday, building space vessels and launching them into orbit and beyond. I was hooked and reading and watching everything I could find on astrophysics and space exploration.

So why did I quit, cold turkey? Like so many things, I reached a point of proficiency where to advance further, would require an additional investment.

My photo of the Orion Nebula
Photo of the Orion Nebula, captured with a Nikon D7100 camera & Tamron 600mm lens.

With astrophotography, I struggled to get a descent photo of a nebula and in another season one of Andromeda galaxy. But I realized that I had reached the most that I could expect from my cludge of DSLR camera, telephoto lens and tripod for a telescope. To accomplish better pictures would require an investment in more hardware.

With Kerbal Space Program, I was not going to actually land on the surface of another moon or planet with a heavy upgrade in my mathematical understanding. The prospect of a deepdive into “rocket science” was not without its appeal — if I was younger.

So, I’ve left Kerbal and the space race behind, spending more time on projects that I might actually finish that might also be of value to others.

¯\_(?)_/¯