At The Edge

"In 2002, a survey carried out by the Nobel Institute on 100 of the world’s best authors from 54 countries led to Don Quixote being declared the best book of all time. Newspapers trumpeted the news. But how does one arrive at the “best book of all time”? A year later, Salman Rushdie, one of the writers who took part in the survey, claimed the writers who took part in the survey were asked to list, in no particular order, 10 of their favourite books, then this list was fed into a computer. In the end, the computer declared Don Quixote to be the greatest and most meaningful book of all time. Only decades ago, the fact that a machine was deciding matters of art may have raised some eyebrows and maybe given rise to some interesting critique of the methodology. But not a whisper was heard. Compare this to the plot of Asimov’s 1955 story Franchise and the debut of Multivac. The story is about the US election in 2008. The election was a simple affair. Computer selected a man, a repres...

"In contrast with classical machines, which convert energy, the computer processes information. It is a means towards the conception of structural order and at the same time offers itself as an aid to producing aesthetic order. This which evolves from this is known today under the title 'Computer Art'." ~ 'Computer Art' by Herbert W. Franke Kennedy by Herbert W. Franke Found this in a catalogue of an art exhibition titled ‘Computer Art’ held at NGMA, New Delhi in 1972 from March 27 to April 21 . This is believed to be the first digital art exhibition ever held in India.  The event was a collaboration between Max Mueller Bhavan and IBM India. It was one among the first of such similar events held around the world in between 1967 and 1974. The catalogue offers three essays: 'Computer Art: Possibilities and Limitations' by Dr. Laxmi P. Sihare (then director of the National Gallery of Modern Art ) , 'Computer Art' by Herbert W. Franke ...

[Some more stuff collected from The Indian Express Archive which now is almost complete till 1990s] "If the mind came from a body whose language the Great Race could not physically reproduce, clever machines would be made, on which the alien speech could be played as on a musical instrument." -The Shadow Out of Time by H.P. Lovecraft (1936)   IBM Ad from India. January 1970. Before they were 'kicked out' of India in 1977   Ad for TCS. 1970. Sarkari Kaam . TDC-12. 1970. Sarkari Computer.   1970 ISIJU-1 built in 1966.   1988   Clipper Nantucket 1988. 'Fastest application development tool'   Mag. 1988 1988   HCL Ad. 1988. Not sure if its before their Noida Conquest. 68020 CPU at 18 MHz 2 MB RAM 2 X RS 232C Ports for console Intelligent 16 X RS 232C Port Controller with its 68010 processor 1 X 720 KB Floppy Drive 1 X 80 MB Winchester Drive 1 X 60 MB Cartridge Back-up 1 x VT 100 compatible Terminal Unix V release 2 oper...

Image: Google remembering Tetris Sputnik burned up in the atmosphere, Berlin is now one city, but 25 years later, the Soviet-designed Tetris remains one of the most popular and ubiquitous video games ever created. It has sold over 125 million copies, been released for nearly every video-game platform of the past two decades and even been played on the side of a skyscraper. Yet creator Alexey Pajitnov almost never saw a ruble for his creation. Check the complete story at Time And I remember my Little Master (2) 8 bit game console from Media on which I played Tetris for hours and weeks. Tetris was one of the games that came in with 500-in-1 game cartridge, a complimentary cartridge   that actually had only 5 games, other games included were Mario (what good game cartridge would come without a version of the mad hopping plumber who loves mushrooms and a princess), Duck Hunt ( to play you needed to have that stupid gun not included free in the game console pack), Battle Tank and Ga...

"After we've tested the calculator we either market it...or pick up the pieces" says Mr. G.C Saxena, Quality Control. That's because EC calculators are put through a series of humidity, dry heat, low temperature, vibration and bump tests that no other calculator manufacturer in India does. -  An ad from 1980s for Calculators manufactured by state owned Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). I wonder if even computers undergo that kind of testing these days.

The first Indian computer was Rakhee (code named Shanti) and started operations in the year 1978. It was meant for people in construction business. Rakhee could precisely calculate the amount of steel, cement, number of bricks etc. required for any building. It could also store and file those numbers safely, and reproduce the figures on request. Check for yourself: Scene from the Hindi film Trishul (1978) directed by Yash Chopra. video link This was probably the first ever reference to "Computer" in a Hindi film. However, Computer had already arrived in India by that time. State owned Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) first started manufacturing computing system in the late 1960s. And between 1973 and 1977, ECIL became the leading manufacturer of computers in India, well ahead of IBM (which eventually was forced out of Indian market). -0- Image: Rakhee on album cover of Vijay Anand's 'Black Mail' (1973)

What the hell was Y2K bug? A recall: Since the early days of computing systems, computer programs stored year data only using two digits, for example, 1990 was stored as 90. Why was it a problem? Well, consequently, these computer programs could not distinguish between the year 2000 and the year 1900 because in the system both of them would have been represented as 00. And according to still some other programming conventions, year 2000 could be represented as 19100. Why such an oversight? Well, probably, during those not so heedy early days of computers, no programmer believed that human race would be using the same computer systems when we reach the start of the new millennium(did that mean the start of year2000 or the end of 2000?). Surely flying cars couldn't be managed using such primitive computer systems and logic. And some other people hopefully believed that the world would end well before the start of year 2000, so why worry about a silly thing like date convention. But...