techandsoc.com

From David Friend at Vanity Fair

“One petabyte is equivalent to million gigabytes. A zettabyte is a million petabytes. A yottabyte is a thousand zettabytes.”
—The New York Times, March 2, 2010

Linguists who study changes in Internet-related terminology have discovered an increasing use of ever-more-bizarre and sometimes Yiddish-sounding phrases when it comes to characterizing large quantities of digital information. As a service to Web users, VF Daily offers this handy glossary of new terms:

From Andrew Lawler, Orion Magazine

For Wired magazine cofounder Kevin Kelly, technology is neither the practical nor the neutral result of scientific discoveries, but a powerful universal force for creating opportunities. He speaks in unapologetically theological terms. The internet is “a miracle and a gift” that allows humans to organize and create in radically new ways. He says that we are moving from being People of the Book to People of the Screen. Kelly’s radical pronouncements earn fire from both sides of the chasm between religion and science, even as he seeks to see beyond those dogmas. Today he wants to “talk about faith using the vocabulary and logic of science.” When I arrive at Kelly’s home south of San Francisco, he’s sweaty from riding his bike up the steep hill, which rises from the coast. Poet, wanderer, publisher, cross-country bicyclist, former hippie, and self-described nerd, Kelly’s trimmed white beard is that of a New England clipper-ship captain. His home office is perched in a wooded neighborhood and has the pleasant feel of a lived-in tree house, the floor strewn with books and papers and gadgets.

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From Jim Sinopoli, Automated Building.

The electrical utility grid that Thomas Edison initiated over 100 years ago is long overdue for an overhaul. It will be a 180 degree change in the utility business model, going from selling more and more energy to consumers to putting everyone on a healthy energy “diet”. The entire concept of the utility grid, buildings, vehicles, energy sources and energy storage all communicating with one another to enable the efficient use of energy is ambitious and breathtaking. It will be the details of implementation that will determine its success.

Much of the Smart Grid is obviously focused on utility grids not necessarily buildings. However, some of the characteristics of the Smart Grid effort addresses the integration of distributed energy resources, demand response, demand-side resources, ‘‘smart’’ appliances and consumer devices, plug-in electric and hybrid electric vehicles, thermal-storage air conditioning, and timely information and control options for consumers. Intuitively we know that a smart grid without smart buildings would be a greatly diminished deployment and a very expensive lost opportunity.

The larger question is what are the attributes and characteristics of the connection between smart buildings and the smart grid? What are the applications? What is the communications interface? How will it be addressed technically? What could or will it mean for building owners and facility management? Buildings are being designed and upgraded to be energy efficient but that effort often is disconnected from the Smart Grid initiative- how do we get the two in sync? Let’s start with the possibilities of applications and then review the possible communications protocols.

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From Farhad Manjoo, Slate.

Nearly a year ago—in the course of cajoling people into joining the ubiquitous social network—I marveled at Facebook’s astonishing growth rate: The site had just signed up its 150 millionth member, and about 370,000 people were joining every day. “At this rate,” I wrote, “Facebook will grow to nearly 300 million people by this time next year.” I confess, though, that I didn’t think it was possible for the site to keep growing at that rate. Every hot Web site begins to fade at some point, and back then, the tech world was enamored of an upstart that was gaining lots of attention from celebrities and the media—Twitter. Even Facebook seemed scared of the micro-blogging site. In June, it redesigned its user pages to display updates as quickly as Twitter does, a move that prompted a barrage of threats to quit.

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