Google’s Dart[2] language is now[3] an official ECMA standard with the catchy name of ECMA-408[4]. ECMA[5] may not be a household name, but if you’re reading this, your browser is using ECMAscript to render at least some parts of this page. That’s because ECMAscript[6] is the official standard body behind JavaScript. In the past, the organization has also been behind the specs for JSON, C#, the Office Open XML format and various CD-ROM specs.
So I like this because it makes the concept much more concrete: leaving excavation equipment in the ground because they didn't have a plan for extracting it (and now it is 'too expensive'). Sound familiar tech folks?
So
I am not so sure how 'useful' these examples are. Is the fact that most of them have negative connotations a reflection of the person who curated them or of the Russian language?
This was one of my favorites:
переподвыподверт ('per-e-pod-'voy-pod-'vert) Reddit user deffun on /r/doesnottranslate defined this noun as “to do something in a complex, incomprehensible way.”
The word kind of embodies itself, as it has four prefixes including one that repeats itself twice.
So
I think this is an interesting approach to gesture control of a device that does not require a camera. It uses changes in wireless signals.
The challenge is going to be making this work in an area occupied by multiple people (and with multiple devices). How do you 'cue' a device that it should react to a gesture? What do you do about mis-cues?
So
About a month ago, I attended the API Strategy and Practice conference in San Francisco. Overall, a pretty good conference and, as always, much of the value was in connecting with people between and after sessions.
One panel discussion was concluded with the question 'what is the future of the internet?'. The responses seemed to fall into two categories 1) code/APIs everywhere and/or 2) intelligent consumption and composition of the available APIs.
I wanted to point out that the first category of thought reflected the view of a (now defunct) little technology outfit just down the highway who voiced the credo of 'the network is the computer'. They had a great spec/implementation for a technology called JINI that very much reflected the philosophy of 'be a node and not a hub' – inherently scalable and cluster-able running practically anywhere.
The second group reminded me of the great AI gold rush in the mid-90s, when 'intelligent agents' were going to manage all our personal data and book travel and plan meetings based on all of the metadata that we surround ourselves with. Companies were funded and failed trying to deliver on this vision (General Magic anyone?). Perhaps it was an idea before it's time and enough has changed and opened up that it might work this time. We shall see.
