Real & Digital

Machine Learning If you've read our last couple of blog-post's you've gotten a sense of how AI developed and the milestones it has reached over the years. AI is officially a mainstream technology, not just a science for geeks at prestigious universities. No one sub-field of AI has permeated everyday digital life like Machine Learning . From Social media to medical research, finance to sociology and even predicting crime. Machine Learning is now a corner stone technology in our digital lives and even influencing our real - everyday lives. Here's how it works - some really smart geeks design and build an application or 'agent' that learns to perform a specific task. Note it is not programmed to perform a particular task, rather it must learn to perform the task. It starts off performing very poorly at this task but adjusts its performance with each attempt, getting better and better at performing that task. It sounds simple right? Its a bit mor

Its Taking more than a day God may have created man in one day, but its taken us hundreds of years to get to the present state of AI. And even then, todays applications are impressive but primitive compared to organic intelligence and limited in scope.   AI really took off with the explosion of computing in the mid-twentieth century. But its been a slow plodding progress, quiet unlike the developments in other areas of computing eg micro-processor development.  Early optimism fell into frustration and cynicism. But AI's development was held back mainly by the lack of sufficient computing power. Once computing power became powerful enough AI progressed rapidly. Lets chronicle this journey - atleast the modern part of it; 1956 Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, and Cliff Shaw wrote a computer program which they named the Logical Theorist . It went on to prove 38 mathematical theorems by exploring a search tree , the root of which was the initial hypothesis and each branc

On The Sixth day man created . . . AI If you are a Christian (like me) or a Muslim or a Jew you believe that on the 6th day of creation God created Man - the first man. This first man was a notch above all other creature's - made in the image of God himself. 'Man' and his companion 'Woman' were the epitome of Gods creation, given dominion over all creation - animate and inanimate. Together they formed Humanity. Whether you believe this or not, you will agree that humanity has studied and tried to explain the world he lives in through creation of the distinct Natural Sciences - Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. There is one other science though. It grew out of the first four sciences and represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of science - from the search for truth and understanding to creation of the truth.                                                This new science is Computer Science - and the epitome of the paradigm shift it repres

Augmented Reality is gonna be big. Bigger than smart phones and more revolutionary too. If you read my last blog post you now have an idea what AR is. And if you're a 'technophile' like me, your mind is probably extrapolating the possibilities. But AR is not quite there yet - its close though. There's a lot of really intelligent engineers, scientist and product designers working hard to make it a reality. Sadly (LOL) we may never know most of there names, but lets look at the companies rolling the dice and hoping to win big. Google Yes, the ubiquitous Big Brother-esque Google was one of the first players to see the potential of AR. Their first roll of the dice was with Google Glass , who could forget that awesome promo video. . . . reality however turned out to be quite un-awesome. It was un-attractive, had no clear day to day use cases, the gestures made people around you uncomfortable and it seemed to be in Beta-phase for a long time. Google is bouncing b

The geeks amoung us remember when in Dragon Ballz, Vegita came to earth for the first time. He had this monocular sunglass-like thing over his left eye with he used to read the 'power level' of Saiyans. He used it to measure Goku's strength was over 9000 . This was my introduction to augmented reality - even though it was in a cartoon it still counts. That piece of tech helped Vegita get a better sense of his environment and the actors in it. Still in its infancy but Augmented Reality (AR) has a big future, me thinks. And not just because its the ultimate expression of what this blog is all about. If you've been following my blog, you now know how we do this - I'll break down AR, giving you a sense of what it is, the current state of tech, the future possibilities. Now AR is not quiet main stream but it has been around for quiet some time. AR simply refers 'assisted' reality, where your normal sensory life experience is enhanced by additional audio, vi

Now unless you live under a rock you most probably have come across debit or credit cards linked to a bank account. In fact I'm willing to bet you have probably used one to pay at a shop check out or a restaurant or even from an On line store like Amazon. How does it all work? How does the money move from your bank account to the merchants? On-line payments were worth over $700 Billion in 2017 and that number is going only one way - UP! So its a good idea to understand how it all works. Whether for debit cards or credit cards the mechanism is pretty similar. You have a few actors involved; First there's you , the Consumer . With that shiny bit of plastic (your debit/credit card). That card gives you access to your money without you ever having to set foot in the bank. Second play is your bank, they gave you that card so we'll call them the Issuing Bank . They'll also be the guys that hand over the cash when the time comes. Generally upstanding honest guy. .