A Quantum of Progress

Apologies to the geeks, nerds, physicists and mathematicians, some concepts in this article are massively simplified for a non-technical readership. 

What’s a digital computer processor? Crudely it’s an electronic adding machine which works in binary (base 2). Each binary digit (bit) has one of two values (on or off, one or zero). There is no magic, everything in a digital computer processor such as the one on your desk or in your smartphone is ultimately achieved by using binary arithmetic to calculate values. The largest single value that can be manipulated in an 8-bit (one byte) processor such as that used by the Apple II, released in 1977, ran is 11111111, which is equivalent to 255 in denary (base 10).  If you want to process a bigger value you chop the problem into pieces or factor it and process the problem iteratively by using memory to hold your partial products. Modern desktop computers typically use 64-bit processors so the largest value they can process in one go is 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 which is 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 in denary (quite big), hence most modern programmers rarely need to use fancy techniques to chop up big numbers. 

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We’ve Lost Our Memories

A long, long, long time ago, thought to be between 48 BC and 642 AD, the Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed. Allegedly up to 400,000 scrolls were lost. We don’t know whether it was destroyed by the notorious vandal Julius Caesar, or in the Muslim conquest of Alexandria, or due to some other event in between. It may have been destroyed several times, certainly there are historical accounts of multiple events to which the destruction is attributed, or it may have merely been partially destroyed in each until the last, final obliteration. Whichever, the destruction of the Royal Library of Alexandria was a major loss that, today, is still mourned by historians because it is presumed that it contained important documents which would enhance our understanding of the Ancient Egyptian and Greek history upon which western civilisation is founded. With the destruction of the Great Library history lost the repository that was responsible for “collecting all the world’s knowledge”. 

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Can You Work With Me?

As employers, business people, senior managers etc., many of those of you reading this article will have built teams, some of you may even list team-building as one of your strengths on your resume. You will each have your own approach to the problem of bringing together a group of people and enabling them to cooperate, so here’s a challenge to think about: bring together half a dozen people who are complete strangers to each other and get them to achieve something without them needing to meet, without having a boss or appointed leader or office or facilities etc., and without the knowledge to tell them what to do or how to do it  ….  All you can communicate is a desired outcome. 

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Receiving You Loud and Clear

In 1982, early in my IT consulting career, a manufacturing client came to us to ask how microprocessor controls could be used to automate his machine shop lathes so that the operators could have both hands free to manipulate the tools and the object being shaped. The answer we came up with was voice control, using very new ultra-high tech dedicated audio-processing hardware which could store and recognise a vocabulary of twenty control words. Thirty-five years ago the idea of being able to talk to a computer was, for pretty much all of us, science fiction.

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Democratisation of Knowledge

I started teaching myself to play guitar forty-something years ago, with a second-hand classical guitar and a classical / folk songbook as a combined birthday and Christmas present from my parents. I still have the book, from which I learned basic chords and technique, but the tunes within were soon displaced by many books of contemporary music scores. My pocket money was largely spent on these, at one pound fifty to ten pounds each in the early 1970’s they were incredibly expensive, but they were how I learned and money was a constraint to the pace of my development. 

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2017 New Year’s Resolutions

Happy New Year to y’all - and thank you for reading. From an IT perspective 2016 was dominated by cyber security and data protection issues. Actually I’m never really sure these days whether I should say “cyber security” or “cyber crime” because such a high proportion of “cyber” incidents, whilst they are breaches of security, are intentional crimes committed for profit. If an authorised person enters your premises and takes away your possessions that’s normally a crime, even if you were so stupid as to leave the front door unlocked and open.

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Productivity is Down

The major business event since my last article has been the UK Chancellor’s Autumn Statement and his recognition of the UK’s low productivity. I am delighted to see this, there have been several authoritative reports over the past couple of decades comparing the productivity of UK industry unfavourably with France, Germany and the USA, but to me it has felt as though the UK, and by extension the Isle of Man because of our strong business connections and similarities, has plodded along the same old path in denial of the problem.

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AI, it’s smarter than you

When I were a lad AI stood for artificial insemination; when I was eleven years old we were taught about the AI of cattle in graphic detail - I can’t remember in which subject the topic came up - which  knowledge was received with many juvenile blushes. As I recall we were taught about AI before we learned about human reproduction. Today however AI has, for most of us, a very different meaning.

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Smart Island

So here we are with a nice shiny new House of Keys, and with one exception new ministerial responsibilities - a new dawn for the island although with a general consensus that dawn has brought a red sky and the expectation of storms ahead. The one exception in ministerial responsibilities is of course the Minister for Economic Development, who has been lumbered with the same portfolio he held prior to the election albeit with different partners in the CoMin team. The DED Minister has not been slow to signal the need for change, reportedly saying that “more focus needs to be put on the local economy on the Isle of Man”, and the “private sector will show us the 'next big thing'”.

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Little Boys’ Toys

As I write I'm on the plane to London, to give a talk about the implications of Brexit for the UK's IT leaders, with a detour via the guitar shops of Denmark Street where I hope to try and buy another electric guitar. It's quite likely that I'll try it, love it, and then have to order one instead of walking out of the shop with the one I try. This, any older musician will recognise, is a Big No No. Musical instruments are individual, each has their own character, you can play two instruments of the same brand and model and they will feel and sound different.

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