Word: designers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...before tape recorders, some of Wittgenstein's disciples took verbatim notes, so we can catch a rare glimpse of two great minds addressing a central problem from opposite points of view: the problem of contradiction in a formal system. For Turing, the problem is a practical one: if you design a bridge using a system that contains a contradiction, "the bridge may fall down." For Wittgenstein, the problem was about the social context in which human beings can be said to "follow the rules" of a mathematical system. What Turing saw, and Wittgenstein did not, was the importance...
Building on ideas that were current in software design at the time, Berners-Lee fashioned a kind of "hypertext" notebook. Words in a document could be "linked" to other files on Berners-Lee's computer; he could follow a link by number (there was no mouse to click back then) and automatically pull up its related document. It worked splendidly in its solipsistic, Only-On-My-Computer...
...impressive predictive track record--if you squint hard and ignore most of the evidence. Atom bombs, spacecraft, comsats, credit cards, jukeboxes, waterbeds, gene splicing--they all appeared in science fiction first, well before showing up at the mall or on the military base. But science fiction is visionary by design and prophetic only by accident. You'll have a hard time finding androids, aliens, time travelers or psychic powers at the K-mart, even though science-fiction writers have obsessed about them for 70 years...
...genes in the human body. But that catalog, which will soon be completed, will be simply the springboard for understanding what all the genes do. Only when the network of their interactions with one another has been mapped will enduring benefits follow: in the surer design of drugs, in the growth of replacement organs, in the early detection and treatment of many kinds of diseases, including cancer. Only then shall we understand the subtleties of human behavior and how human personality evolves in the course of early life by the interaction of genetic and environmental influences...
...Vladimir Zworykin patents design for iconoscope, a television transmission tube...