Rendezvous

A blog on Virtual Worlds, Science, Technology, Women and the Digital Age

 

The Imitation Game

     Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a British computer scientist, mathematician, logician and cryptanalyst. He is also widely credited as the father of the modern computer and of theoretical computer science. During the Second World War he worked at Bletchley Park and helped Britain and its allies decipher German coded messages of the Enigma machine by devising a code-breaking machine thus greatly contributing to successful operations. Turing, for his contributions, was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire. After the War he went on to design and develop computers and became a pioneer of artificial intelligence, developing the Turing Test.  He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society but was subsequently prosecuted in 1952 for his homosexuality.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/609739/Alan-Turing#toc214876

 

     "The Imitation Game" is a film released in 2014, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. I have actually recently seen at an HMV store that it has just been released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and I have yet to watch the movie. It is based on the book "Alan Turing: The Enigma" a biography of the computer scientist written by Andrew Hodges. It also stars Charles Dance, the English actor probably best known for his famous/infamous role as Tywin Lannister in HBO's "Game of Thrones". The movie has 8 Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. You can find the official movie site here:

http://theimitationgamemovie.com/

     I have decided to write a little more about it later on in a separate post after having watched it. The New York Times called it "kind of perfect, and also kind of stale", explaining that though "an Alan Turing biopic is, all in all, a very welcome thing", the subject matter was nonetheless "a lot for a single movie to take in."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/movies/the-imitation-game-stars-benedict-cumberbatch.html?_r=0

Roger Ebert said that though the film is "one of the more rousingly entertaining crowd-pleasers (...) (it) also happens to be one of the most devastatingly sad."

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-imitation-game-2014



Keira Knightley with Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg at
The Imitation Game Screening credit: Business Insider 

The New York Times also said that "Hut 8 at Bletchley Park serves as a prototype for the corporate campuses of Apple, Google and Facebook". Speaking of which, there was a special screening of the film in Silicon Valley where Keira Knightley met tech titans like Google founder Sergey Brin and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
One of these tech moguls even invited her to have a look at some spaceships. Keira asked them when hovercrafts like those seen in "Back to the Future" would become real traveling vehicles but did not get a serious response and she apparently also freaked out when she saw the co-founder of Google wearing crocs.
You can find the amusing Knightley interview with Jimmy Kimmel here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/keira-knightly-on-jimmy-kimmel-sergey-brin-crocs-2014-11



I wonder if Alan Turing would have worn crocs back in the day? I have a feeling probably as geniuses are more famous for their eccentricities than their sense of fashion. On the other hand, this is not entirely true of the co-founder of Google as Sergey Brin can, in fact, be very stylish if he so chooses. 

Sergey Brin at New York Fashion Week (photo credit : Getty)

With intelligence like his I can see that he is quite comfortable in his hoodies, jeans and crocs (which also make him look rather cool) and cares little about what the world thinks (he does not have to, after all) but at the New York Fashion Week and show of the Spring 2013 collection of Diane von Furstenberg, who also helped Google with the marketing campaign for Google Glass, we can see that Sergey Brin was all class as an elegant highlight of the party. Little surprise he has become quite the lady's man (even, according to rumours, leaving his wife for one of his employees at Google Glass called Amanda Rosenberg).

For a full account of the story, you can read the following article on the official website of Vanity Fair or the original can be found in the April 2014 issue of Vanity Fair magazine:

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-rosenberg-affair

At any rate, one thing is certain, I believe that 2013 fashion show of Furstenberg and Google Glass gave a prime example of one of the first significant collaborations between technology and fashion, two topics that have always had my interest. With wearable technology and the internet of things on the rise, we will, in all probability, be seeing more and more of the futuristic fashion shows many used only to dream of several years ago. I suppose we can but wait to see what the future has in store for the new generations that will grow up on all things digital.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode of Alan Turing, which ended in a veritable gossip-house of fashion, rumours and scandals that had little to do with Turing himself and all the more with Mr. Sergey Brin and Google. Stay tuned for part 2! 

THE FORSAKEN CONTINENT (excerpt from my unfinished Novel - No Title - by Giselle Rakobowchuk ©. All rights reserved. ©

 

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH: THE FORSAKEN CONTINENT (excerpt from unfinished Novel - No Title - by Giselle Rakobowchuk ©) All rights reserved. ©

On did the paths without borders take them. Ahead did their feet traverse. The whiffs of haze veiled their eyes; the memories of smoke, of a land of cement, of a dreary past resurfaced in her mind. A turn to the left, an ascending slope. A turn to the right, a rugged ground. The presupposed hour transformed into two for the steps of the lady were slow. Time wore on as hope for an end diminished. But, halt! No further could they go. Before them stood a great wall of dried out bushes which, being perplexingly entangled into each other, blocked their path (...) It was not long before the way was finally cleared and a small entrance made. (...)

“There, before me thou art, but I do not fully see thee for a concealed part of thy soul is what I am seeking. Aye, those eyes of thine that shine like dew...so many significant expressions are captured in them...and they alternate, as the changing climates of the year; they flash with irrevocable signs of fury; they shimmer with enigmatic gusts of joy; cry they do, but no tears have I seen fall; whisper they do, but their words I comprehend not; they express all that is in thee...yet I cannot grasp what ‘tis. What...what...I ask of thee is this; what lieth beneath all that?”
Her heart softened as irrepressible joy overwhelmed it. Clearly, in her eyes, he had not only given her his friendship but had been expecting hers in return.
by Giselle Rakobowchuk © All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form only admitted with approval from author...

The Goggles of Google, Google Glass and Google Plus, Oh My!

We all know that the Goggles of Google is Google Glass but do we know who the leaders of Google+ are? It seems like I've been binge-surfing Google and G+ recently, and particularly working on my account on the latter these past few days. Well, I have always found G+ to be a more time-consuming social media platform than its more popular counterparts, but I have always thought of it as being indubitably more elaborate and perhaps even more intelligent. I have, nonetheless, never quite immersed myself in that world of Google Plus therefore I cannot give detailed accounts on its intricate design. (Ha, I could never actually really do that as I am a writer and not a computer scientist).

 

But I digress, what I really wanted to write about was the news about Google+ that I happened to read by actually having followed +Bradley Horowitz on G+. (My, little wonder G+ is not popular, it does take me forever just to find the plus sign on the top of my keyboard. It is the least used value, I am sure. on any keyboard wherever it is situated).

This is what I like about modern technology and the digital world. Merely owing to the simple fact that I had followed someone and was browsing my stream, I was able to know in advance the soon-to-be-announced mainstream media news announcement. It is a fascinating little wonder in today's globalized world to be, though even just a "millistep" - no such word, I know - ahead of the big strides and leaps of the popular news outlets by knowing the big news before the general public.  I am repeating myself. Very well, so in their quick roundup Reuters tells us that "Google Inc's (GOOGL.O) Bradley Horowitz will run the company's Photo and Streams products, in a move that indicates the company may be reorganizing its Google+ social networking site.

Horowitz, vice president of product management since 2008, announced the move in a Google+ post late on Sunday." http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/02/us-google-managementchanges-idUSKBN0LY0WH20150302

 

Exciting news, I am certain, for the business world out there but I will be quite frank, I never really knew who was in charge of Google + before Horowitz BUT I am content to know that there will be changes and I hope these changes will concern both old and new users to G+ or, to use Shakespeare's  timeworn phrase I also used in a comment: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

I also hope that Google Plus will be more attractive for users though I can hardly imagine how separating the stream and photos will make it more simple. I cannot imagine yet how it will all work so we will have to wait to see.

Davos: The Old and New; Eric Schmidt and Emma Watson

Despite the fact that most news headlines say "The Internet will Disappear" according to Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman was in fact elaborating on the fact that the internet will dramatically change from its current primitive state to becoming something of a technologically advanced seamless part of our lives Chris Matyszczyk CNet article here

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2525914/thumbs/o-ERIC-SCHMIDT-570.jpg?5

Mashable explains that Eric Schmidt didn't predict the end of the internet, he instead said that “there will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it". These statements were made by Google's Eric Schmidt on a panel titled "The Future of the Digital Economy." at the World Economic Forum at Davos. He also said: "It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room. A highly personalized, highly interactive and very, very interesting world emerges."

In "The Business Insider" Jim Edwards tells us that, according to Schmidt, Google's dominance as one of the main companies on the world wide web may also have to give way to new platforms, like the smaller tech businesses for apps in the mobile world. "On the question  of dominance, you now see so many strong tech platforms coming through and you're seeing a reordering, and a future reordering, of the leaders because of the rise of the app on the smartphone."

It seems the virtual world and the real world will be evolving into the one world of the future.

In the meantime, Emma Watson also made an appearance at Davos by addressing the leaders and continuing her "HeforShe" campaign for women's rights and gender equality. She was named Feminist Celebrity of 2014. For more details and photos see this Daily Mail article
 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2923317/This-bring-end-inequalities-girls-women-face-globally-Emma-Watson-addresses-leaders-World-Economic-Forum-new-Women-campaign.html

She Sings a New Song

She has found the new world and traveled across the ocean. Vanadiel may have been left behind but Eorzea awaits. She sings the songs of the bards of old and is enthralled by that virtual world ever advancing in beauty and depth.

Credits to Square Enix for Final Fantasy XIV snapshots of my character and of the virtual world of Eorzea. By the way, as a sociologist it is very interesting to study virtual societies on an online platform and have immense fun at the same time.

The Fairy Robot

A miniscule masterpiece, which is reminiscent of something Leonardo da Vinci could have drawn, the four-winged robot that resembles a jellyfish and a little fairy, was created by Leif Ristroph and his colleagues at New York University. Weighing a mere 2 grams, the tiny mechanical creature needs no sensors and little effort to fly unlike robots designed after birds and insects, explains the New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24638-fourwinged-robot-flies-like-a-jellyfish.html#.UrMb_Z8o6Ag

Time says it could "usher in a new generation of smaller, cheaper drones".
http://science.time.com/2013/11/26/a-flying-robot-jellyfish-now-exists/

Here is the YouTube video, which I first saw when Clive Thompson, writer for Wired and author of "Smarter than you Think", posted it on his Twitter (worth following for cool updates @pomeranian99. He agreed that it was really "quite charming in flight!" http://twitter.com/pomeranian99/status/40518878255279308

                      

At any rate, it truly looks like a little fairy robot!