The Genetic Computer

Biological Computer



Researchers at Stanford University have created genetic receptors that can act as a "biological computer" . The team has created a series of genetic transistors that can be inserted into cells and turned on and off if certain conditions are met.

"Once the transistor determines the conditions are met, it could then be used to make the cell, and many other cells around it, do a specific thing--like telling cancerous cells to destroy themselves."

"The researchers' biological transistors, which they've dubbed "transcriptors," use enzymes to control the flow of RNA proteins along a strand of DNA, just like a computer would use silicon transistors to control the flow of electrons."

Sheryl Oring

The work of Sheryl Oring is more interactive than other performance art pieces that I have seen. My favorite piece of her's is called "Writing Home"

Oring sets up a 1950s office and invites people to dictate letters to their ancestors. Her work has a spontaneous quality. Oring has no idea what people will ask her to dictate and this gives the work an authentic quality.

By asking people to write letters to their ancestors, Oring is able to explore family relationships.

Her Morning Elegance

YouTube operates as a microcosm, showcasing the high (and often lows) of our culture. The way that videos spread through the internet is so rapid that it has been termed as "going viral." Her Morning Elegance is a mediocre indie song with a stunning video. The still frame animation of the sleeping woman is simple but beautiful. 

The artistic cinematography almost makes the song sound better.

Historic Computers

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California is home to two rebuilt IBM 1401 Mainframe computers. These prehistoric monster computers were a business staple in the 1960s and 70s. Instructions were entered on these behemoths by punch card and the data was stored on spools of tape.

Robert Garner, one of the technicians who has spent the last decade rebuilding the computers, says that the old computers are like a time machine. "When people are here, experiencing this, it sparks their imagination. It transfers them back in time, but it also takes them forward in time. It makes them feel like they too can build new things."









I often reflect on how technology has advanced just in my lifetime, I remember the first cell phone that my parents owned. It was a copycat of the Nokia "brick."



10 years later my phone is essentially a small computer. 






Seeing how far computing has come since the 1960s makes wonder what lies ahead. 

Flip Book

I had a lot of trouble with this assignment. When I began I didn't grasp how much material was needed for a 200 page flip book. I did a lot of stopping and starting. Overall it took me about 5 non-consecutive days to finish.

Grid Art

For my grid art project, I choose a picture of my nephew.He is four months old and I love him so much.

This is what dreams are made of

The surrealist movement began in the 1920s. It grew from the Dada movement of the early 20th century. Artist Andre Breton wrote the surrealist manifesto. He defined surrealism as Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation." 

The Golden Age of Surrealism occurred in the 1930s. Salvador Dali is arguably the most famous Surrealist painter. Most of his works were derived from dreams and they include heavy symbolism.

His most recognizable piece is the Persistence of Memory (often incorrectly called "Melting Clocks")


My favorite work by Dali is Swans Reflecting Elephants. Elephants are a recurring symbol in Dali's work



Rene Margritte was another surrealist painter. My favorite image by him is The Son of Man 

August Sings Carmen

I definitely was not expecting the video to include a parade of sexual fetishes but somehow it works. I did my research paper on "Carmen" and when Carmen sings this piece in the opera she is talking about her many suitors. The alternate of the song is "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" which translate into "Love is a rebellious bird" This video highlights the strange and rebellious ways that people can show they're love of each other.

Triumph of the Nerds Part III

August 24th 1995: Windows 95 is launched

In 1983, computers were still difficult for the average person to use

Graphical User Interface (GUI):  allowed for PCs to become more user friendly

In 1971, Xerox set up the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

The Xerox Alto computer was built in 1973. It doesn't qualify as the first personal computer because it was not for sale and the parts costed about $10,000

"It had the first GUI using a mouse to point to information on the screen. It was linked to other PCs, by a system called ethernet, the first computer network. And what you saw on the screen was precisely what you got on your laser printer. It was way ahead of its time."

The companies headquarters did not see the value in this technology.

"Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry today. Could have been you know a company ten times its size. Could have been IBM - could have been the IBM of the nineties. Could have been the Microsoft of the nineties."-Steve Jobs

The Macintosh computer was Apple's answer to the IBM PC. Bill Gates was hired to design a GUI as the software. It needed more applications in order to become a successful competitor.

John Warnock: co-founder of Adobe systems, helped developed the laser printer.

The Adobe Application created "desk top" publishing

"The launch of Windows 3 in 1990 killed off Apple's hopes that the Macintosh would win the GUI wars." It made IBM PCs and all the clones as easy to use as Macs. 

Larry Ellison, the founder of oracle is quoted as saying 
"I hate the PC with a passion. Me going down to the store and buying Windows 95, I've got to get into my car drive down to a store buy a cardboard box full of bits you know encoded on a piece of plastic CDROM and you bring it home and read a manual install this thing - you must be kidding you know, put the stuff on the net - it's bits, don't put bits in cardboard, cardboard in trucks, trucks to stores, me go to the store, you know, pick the stuff out, it's insane. OK I love the Internet - I want information you know it flows across the wire."

In 1995 he made a prediction that the PC would be replaced with a cheap device called the "information appliance." I believe that this prediction has come to pass in the form of smart phones and tablets.

Triumph of The Nerds Part II

IBM started off making mainframe computers for businesses. Once the computer business started to take off, IBM decided to build their own PC within one year.

PC's require software and an operating system.

Gary Killdall  ran a company m Interglactic Digital Research. He had invented the PC's first operating system called CP/M.

Jack Sams was looking for a package from Microsoft containing both the BASIC computer language and an Operating System. Unfortunately, Microsoft hadn't written an operating system and they needed Killdall's permission to use CP/M.

When IBM went to Gary Killdall's home to discuss the agreement, he sent them away. "This is the moment Digital Research dropped the ball. IBM, distinctly unimpressed with their reception, went back to Microsoft."

Microsoft was able to fashion on operating system by modifying a version of CPM. Microsoft and IBM called it PC DOS 1.0 

There were still some legal problems that had to be worked out before Microsoft could move forward with the operating system.Tim Patterson worked for Seattle Computer Products, or SCP. They still owned the rights to QDOS. The rights to the operating system were sold for 50K

 The IBM PC wasn't much better than what came before. In order to increase success, IBM created a spreadsheet program but called Lotus 1-2-3. 

The IBM PC had 50 percent of the market share and other companies wanted to reverse engineer their product.

Compaq was able to successfully reverse engineer an IBM PC and in their first year they sold 47000 PCs.

"Where Compaq led, others soon followed. IBM was now facing dozens of rivals - soon to be familiar names began to appear, like AST, Northgate and Dell." Bill Gates was providing the operating systems for all of these "IBM clones"

IBM wanted an operating system that could not be copied. They called it OS/2. 

At the same time Bill Gates was creating Windows "We kept saying to IBM, hey, Windows is the way to go, graphics is the way to go, and we got virtually everyone else, enthused about Windows. So that was a divergence that we kept thinking we could get IBM to - to come around on."

Larry Ellison the founder of Oracle says that IBM made a $100 Billion mistake by giving a third of their market value to Intel and a third of their market value to Microsoft by accident. 

Triumph of the Nerds Part I

The documentary is off to a good start, but one statement in particular caught my attention:

"This is a boy thing, we call them engineers and techies" Frankly that is absolute garbage. Women are entering the computer field and they are just as capable as men. 

This blog is my stream of consciousness as I watch the documentary:

This section seems to glorify "nerd culture". Eating, bathing and data are frowned upon. I would rather just learn about how computers work. 

Programs are written in binary code and computers must be given instructions on what to do with the programs.

Grace Hopper:  US Navy captain that invented the first computer language. Alas, a woman that was important to the history of computers. 

The microprocessor allowed for the desktop computer. Intel invented the first computer chip. It is made of millions of transistors etched on a silicon plate 

Altair 8800, 1975 was the worlds first personal computer. It was a computer kit that had to be built before it could be used. Information was loaded by flipping a series of switches

Paul Allen cofounded Microsoft. The company was started in Albuquerque, NM.

The hippie movement was important in sculpting the PC revolution. There was a sharing of knowledge

Apple Computers was the first computer company. The first computer was introduced at the Homebrew computer club meetings. The Apple II included a keyboard and a case,

Visicalc was the first spreadsheet program

Google Boys

I cannot remember a time where I didn't rely on Google. During elementary school, I can recall using other search engines like AskJeeves and sifting through loads of irrelevant results.

I am always intrigued to learn how much complex mathematics is involved in computer programming.The basic structure of the Google Search engine uses a software called Googlebot to copy and store every web page onto the Google server. It keeps track of how often every web site changes it pages.The web pages are cataloged by subject. When a search is executed, Googlebot scans its on servers for relevant information. An top secret algorithm called Pagerank is used to categorize searches by relevance. The basic idea is that web pages that have the most links are more important.

In order to perfect the search engine Larry Page and Sergey Brin had to create their own computer out of many smaller hard drives. This combined computing power allowed Google searches to be executed much faster than their competitors.

Google was also the first company to integrate advertisements into the internet search experience. When a user types in a search time, advertisements for companies related to the search term. This allows companies to attract customers.

 Like many visionaries Page and Brin's ideas were not embraced by their contemporaries. Companies like Yahoo! and AOL were more concerned with monetary gains and they could not see the big picture. In my opinion, Google's success can be attributed to its "desire to make the world a better place"