« June 2004 | Main | June 2005 »

March 19, 2005

Summer Retreat in Alaska

Read the Anchorage Daily News, Anchorage Press, Alaska This Month and Northern Light

My bike path:
Tony Knowles Coastal Trail


I will spend the first week in June (to avoid the crowd) in Denali National Park and Preserve.


I will come back in mid-Winter to take photos of
Northern Lights
(scientific name is Aurora Borealis)

Posted by emeagwali at 06:49 PM | Comments (4)

Weekend in Annapolis, Maryland

I had a four-hour walk yesterday. I wasn't feeling well and I took a detour to our local Barnes & Nobles bookstore. I called Dale to come and take me home.

Today, Dale and spent the afternoon walking through the historic streets of Annapolis, Maryland. Annapolis is a quaint village steeped in 200 years of maritime heritage. We relaxed at the waterfront and visited the Kunta Kinte - Alex Haley Memorial.


Posted by emeagwali at 08:56 AM | Comments (1)

March 04, 2005

A Little Bit Out There (in OTTAWA, Canada)

March 4, 2005
I had an hour-long interview with The Ottawa Citizen , one of the most widely read Canadian newspapers. The interview was about my forthcoming visit to Ottawa, my life and work.

I made the point that the early computer pioneers were mathematicians attempting to solve computation-intensive problems in physics. The first computers, or rather supercomputers, on the Internet were for mathematicians attempting to solve computation-intensive problems in physics. The Internet, was invented, to enable mathematical physicists access remote supercomputers and to solve computation-intensive problems.

March 5, 2005
My interview did not appear in The Ottawa Citizen . It was bumped by stories about the release of Martha Stewart from prison.

March 6, 2005
I travelled from Washington to Ottawa, the cold but beautiful capital of Canada. I checked into the Les Suites Hotel (les-suites.com, 1002) at noon and had a quiet dinner at an Indian restaurant, swam in the hotel's indoor pool, slept for an hour and wrote my speech.

I thought that I will be speaking on information management but discovered the day before my speech that the marketing materials stated that I will be speaking on the future of the Internet.

March 7, 2005
After speaking from 10:15 to 11:00 a.m., I had an hour of meet-and-greet and returned to my hotel to get some sleep. I only slept for three hours the previous night.

Since both the computer and the Internet are primary technologies that created the need to manage information, the very information they have made so readily available. To accurately forecast the directions of information management requires that we first accurately forecast future computer technologies.


QUESTIONS tossed during the Meet & Greet:


I was asked to explain my statement "The focus was on computing, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was about communicating."

I explained that you can have a hundred of the greatest minds in the world in one room and working on the same problem, but if they don’t communicate, it is no different than having any one of them working the problem alone.

Because we named it a “supercomputer” we first think of “computing” when the word “supercomputer” is mentioned.

But the problem was not about computing. It was about communicating. Because we had been computing for centuries, we knew more about computing than about communicating.


March 8, 2005
I swam, had lunch and headed to the airport. I read the newspapers and saw a profile of me in The Ottawa Citizen newspaper. The same article was distributed by wire service to 280 Canadian newspapers and also picked up by African newspapers. I introduced many new concepts in my 20-page speech but the media only highlighted the theme "African scientist says email of the future will be telepathic..." See the article You Aint' Seen Nothin' Yet

AFTERTHOUGHTS


After my speech, a lady said that it sounds great to be able to communicate without keyboards and monitors. I told her that I will go nuts when my brain is bombarded with t-mail spams and other nonsenses. Her children will visit pornography sites without her permission.

Also, the CIA could send subliminal messages and suggestions to Osama bin Laden. And strangers will send sexual suggestions to each other.
The possibilities are endless. [Send me your thoughts!]

March 10, 2005
Dale and I chilled out at The Funk Box, a Baltimore (Maryland) night-club. The performers of the night were reggae legend Jimmy Cliff and a Kenyan cultural group Jabali Afrika.

The shows were great. I have been a Jimmy Cliff fan since 1972, as a teenager in Onitsha (Nigeria, Africa) and I have seen him in concert on two previous occasions. He was the first to bring reggae to a worldwide audience.

Listen to Jimmy Cliff here.

March 12, 2005
My attention now shifts to my forthcoming speaking engagements in Germany and New York. If the weather is nice, I might also vacation in late April in Amsterdam or Berlin.

Posted by emeagwali at 09:17 AM | Comments (6)