New Phaistos

 The "Algorithm" Today's age is dominated by media. This has been true since the latter half of the 20th century where people really turned into the newspaper, the radio and the TV for news and entertainment. We lately added the internet with its various platforms to the mix. The real difference however is not the technology per se, but rather who determines what media we consume. You see, in the past we relied on human experts to curate our choices. The respective "elite", comprised of renowned entertainers, journalists, editors and businessmen came together and pretty much decided what will be made public. This process determined what articles would be printed and what would make the front page, what music would be played and when, what shows would be green-lit and so on. The state acted as an arbitrator, ensuring everybody played nice (no obscenities and libel, equal representation of view points and so on). What we do not realize is that this expert based mo...

 Logbook entry #9 - The AI hype Even remotely reading tech and finance news these days, one inevitably stumbles upon some news piece about Artificial Intelligence. The piece itself often deals with topics of immediate impact like ChatGPT board politics, NVIDIA stock prices and Apple AI strategy. Occasionally, the news are about a specific new AI application that promises to solve important world problems. However, more often than not the news focus on the potential destructive effect of AI ranging from deep fakes and labour displacement up to MATRIX and Terminator style world domination. I of course understand that these are really catchy topics that people want to read about. What annoys me is the clear lack of technological understanding, even to a basic extent. There are no definitions about what AI is or actual explanations of how it works. In fact, most of what we usually call AI these days are elaborate Machine learning models. This means pattern recognition machines, that af...

 Logbook entry #8 - The (public) space in aerospace This Tuesday 9th of July 2024 marks the first official launch of the new European rocket Ariane 6. This is a fascinating piece of technology that I'd love to share my thoughts on: 1) The rocket is named after the fabled mythological figure of princess Ariadne. The daughter of king Minoas of Crete, she fell in love with the dashing Athenian hero Theseus. She became famous by helping Theseus navigate the labyrinth by giving him a ball of thread to retract his way... You could then say the name symbolizes the origins of Europe and finding one's way among adversity. 2) One of its features is being able to deploy its payload at different times. Meaning that it can carry multiple satellites or other equipment and place them each at their desired position. On that note, it also is designed to be completely destroyed upon re-entry to the stratosphere. Leaving behind no space junk, thus ensuring sustainable exploration of space. 3) Mor...

 Logbook entry #7 - The blog's namesake Our world is full of wonder; and we take most of it for granted. Have you ever considered how special writing is? It unlocks the potential of our species - we can document our shared stories, store transactions, write down recipes and even create new meanings though literature and poetry. The power of writing and language is something that every engineer or scientist implicitly reveres through the use of programing languages, mathematical terminology and domain related jargon. And yet there are still many unknowns to us with regard to writing. We haven't yet deciphered many ancient languages. The mysteries of whole civilizations along with their wisdom, daily worries and art is lost to us. Of particular interest to me was always the enigmatic disk of Phaistos, found in the ruins of the Minoan city of the same name. The disk itself (pictured below) is written in a language of hieroglyphic nature, unknown to us. This marks the third languag...