There's a video on youtube of a very nifty
image resizing algorithm.
It got me thinking about supercomputers. Thirty years ago people were predicting what supercomputers would do when everyone had one, and it wasn't this.
They thought supercomputers would _DO_ all kinds of amazing things.
It turns out that one thing supercomputers are good at is messing with reality. Mediated reality. So the more we run reality through computers the more power they have to change our experience.
I had my first close up glimpse of a segway last weekend. There again, there was this incredible real time responsiveness, but the intention was all coming from the rider. None of the processing was doing decision making, it was all mediation between rider and ground.
In a weird way watching the segway and watching the image resizing work felt similar.
Dated: 09/04/2007