Category: This Amazing Web

The Global Web

Ever wonder what it takes to make it possible for you to visit gazillions of websites? I suppose we wonder only when there is a disturbance in the web, as it happened a few days ago when five undersea fiberoptic cables mysteriously snapped and some parts of Middle East and India were affected. So I did a little futzing around the web and found a pretty good write up on one cable system — the FLAG: the Fiberoptic Link Across the Globe. The report is really really long and really really informative. It is also old — written in 1996, when FLAG was still being laid. Go read the report Mother Earth Mother Board. It makes great weekend reading.

Here’s a contemporary map of the amazing physical world wide web which underlies the digital world wide web.

[Click on the image above to see an enlarged version.]

Here are some fun facts taken from the above image.

* The vast majority of the world’s communications are not carried by satellites but an altogether older technology: cables under the earth’s oceans. As a ship accidentally wipes out Asia’s net access, this map shows how we rely on collections of wires less than 10 cm in diameter to link us all together.

* The first intercontinental telephony submarine cable system, TAT-1, connected N . America to Europe in 1958 and had an initial capacity of 640 kilo bytes per second (kBps). Today that is about 7 trillion Bps — a 10 million time increase.

* SeaMeWe-3 is 39,000 kms long

* Southern Cross is 30,500 kms

* China-US is 30,500 kms

* FLAG Europe-Asia 28,000 kms

* South America-1 25,000 kms

The Most Important Image Ever Taken

The Hubble Deep Field and the Most Important Image Ever Taken by Humanity.

Watch it and wonder. Wonder how insignificant our concerns are, how parochial our interests, how utterly immaterial even our greatest conflicts are. Watch it and wonder how ignorant the so-called sacred scriptures of humanity are. The visible universe is 78 billion light-years across. Our galaxy is huge — with about 5 billion stars, one of which is our sun. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies.

E O Wilson and EoL

Oh wonderful new world of the web, that has such people like E. O. Wilson in it!

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf

E O Wilson got his wish. “As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we’re still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; yet we’re still steadily destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), using the acronym HIPPO, and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.”

“Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.”

Watching that video makes me appreciate how lucky I am that I can glimpse the world vicariously through the eyes of such a gentle human being.

Lyre Bird

BBC’s David Attenborough shows us what an amazing artist the lyre bird is. The clip beings with David asking in a whispered voice, “What bird in the world has the most elaborate, the most complex, the most beautiful song in the world? My guess there must be lots of contenders but this bird must be one of them, the superb lyre bird . . . ” Go watch the three minute clip.

The Habit of Reason by Brand Blanshard

Brand Blanshard was only 92 years old when he delivered Boston University’s 111th Commencement in 1984. Titled “The Habit of Reason.” I came across this magnificent piece here. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon it and so should you since you are reading this. Appropriately the piece is thoughtful since he urges the students to think.

The piece resonates deeply with my own feelings about the goals of education. He says, “Life is a succession of big and little crises, and one main aim of education is to supply us with the strategies necessary for dealing with them. Furthermore, dealing with them thoughtfully may become a habit. Indeed, my thesis today is that if you have acquired that habit of reasonableness, you will have acquired the best thing that an education can bestow.”

Here are the concluding paragraphs of his address.
Continue reading “The Habit of Reason by Brand Blanshard”

Delusional People

Two items today from this amazing web. First, a simple rant telling monotheists that they should stop being delusional. Nothing fancy but a lot of fun. Next, a great conversation with Susan Blackmore at the Point of Inquiry. “In this far-ranging discussion with D.J. Grothe, Susan Blackmore talks about her research into the paranormal and near death experiences and why she left that field of study, memetics and religion as a meme, free will and the question of moral responsibility, consciousness and the illusory nature of the self, and Zen Buddhism and meditative practice, among other topics. She also explores why is it more important than ever for scientists to speak out about important issues of concern in the world today.”

This Amazing Web — 1

Check out this site. Click on the little square after the site has finished loading. Like that instruction on the shampoo bottle, repeat. Isn’t the web an amazing place? Why? Because the world is full of inventive, amazing talent and it allows people to showcase their ingenuity, and because we get to share in the joy of discovering those nifty ideas.