Sci&Tech History

This morning I received an email on Indonesian president and vice president candidate polling. How the survey agency interpret the numbers is quite interesting. Using multistage random sampling covered 3000 respondents, the survey analyzed that from the respondents answers Indonesian most crucial issue is economic crisis. While questions that directly related with the candidate shows [...]

Is open source anti-thesis of proprietary or it complement? If proprietary does not exist, would open source movement emerge? Nowadays, there is a new phenomena on open source movement: collaboration with proprietary. IBM, Novell and SUN are several name who joined open source movement by share their information and resource. In one hand, this tendency [...]

Facing several deadlines turn me into a yuborg: yuti cyborg. Almost half of my day was spent in front of the laptop and I think it drives my crazy. In the beggining, everything seems under control. The time I have is bigger than sum of average I use to spend for finishing an article, paper, [...]

How can you be sure if something hasn’t happened yet? In Minority Report, action was decided based on prediction of three oracle. A more moderate prediction occur in Twilight saga. Alice, the oracle, has the ability to predict based on what people think. Since it is still on the mind, the prediction can change. In [...]

Sometimes, it is easier to write down my thought in the internet. Although I put it in a public domain, I don’t have to face people reaction directly. I think it has something to do with emotion-less and neutrality of machine. In another example, people feel more free to use an automatic machine to kill [...]

Most people will agree that drugs are forbidden in sport event while using high-tech swimsuit or the newest sport shoes technology are allowed. What make those externalities different: is it because one try to manipulate human ability directly in their body while the other don’t? In swimming competition for example, swimsuit technology become one factor [...]

After World War II, US allocated a huge number of research fund to support defense industries. Between 1960 and 1967, the Department of Defense, awarded the Lockheed Corporation, an aerospace giant, more than US$ 10 billion in contracts and General Dynamics $8.84 billion. In 1968 the Pentagon warded MIT $119 million; John Hopkins University $57 [...]

One of my problem in finishing Indonesian Research Mapping is on transformation. The first stage is qualitative. I have to classify hundreds research tittle into priority sector as mentioned in the National Research Agenda. After the data is being grouped, I use quantitative approach to get the general idea of what was happened with Indonesian [...]

The title above is similar with humanizing technology vs technologizing human. Which one become more similar than the other? Are human become more mechanistic or technology become more flexible? In some references, I found stories about fluid technology. Rather occur in a certain shape, technology can be re-shaped by request and culture. On contrary, human [...]

What kind of metaphor do you prefer: using concepts in biology or physics? I see biology metaphor is used in east tradition, while physics is used in the west. Industry revolution is an example on how human are being digitized in a mechanistic way. Machine that record employee daily activities is more powerful than an [...]