Non-Italian friends often ask why Italians have voted for Mr. Berlusconi for 20 years, and still do. I try hard, but it is next to impossible to explain; Italians, they say, are sometimes totally irrational. Well, it seems like Italians are not alone, thanks to Canadians! This is a pretty
Remember when the best search engine was Altavista? Remember how frustrating it was to look for something on the Net? Search results would be mostly unrelated to what you where looking for, sometime adding a search term helped, but, even if Altavista had found what you were looking for, it
The Internet has become part of the fabric of our lives; if we want to create the next big thing we must understand the relationship between the Internet and us and take it to a whole new level. I have been pondering about this relationship since I sold my latest
I'll be in Wimbledon for the next three weeks. Fortunately it is much cooler here than in Italy, so I can work more efficiently! I was expecting to sleep without mosquitoes, but unfortunately I found two of them in the room last night; they have probably come all
Lately I cannot travel too far for personal reasons, though I expect this to change sooner rather than later; so when I found online about the Unconventional Computation Conference to be held at Bicocca University in Milan, I decided to attend. Bicocca is 8 km away from my place, so
Last week I was in Sardinia at the annual Capo Caccia Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop organized by the University of Zurich. This was my third time at the workshop, so I now know many of the participants and it was good to get an update on their research and personal
Understanding the brain means being able to replicate some of its functions. A one page description, or a hundred pages will not do. Current technologies, that allow us to emulate the brain, are all based in a way or another on Turing's work. Modern processors are different from
It is finally becoming mainstream. Economists are slowly appreciating the fact that the current technological progress is so fast and runs so deep into the fabric of our world that it does not allow for a smooth adjustment, but it is actually a revolution that is affecting the economy, society
In a paper by Kozma, I found an interesting citation from The Computer and the Brain, the book that John Von Neumann was writing when he died: It is only proper to realize that language is largely a historical accident. The basic human languages are traditionally transmitted to us in
Check out this video produced by Harvard University. It is an amazing shot at trying to convey how complex a cell is. What you see is just a simplification of the actual inner workings because, in reality, the elements within the cell are all packed together in a way that
Today I took sometime off to read a classical paper from Weaver: Science and Complexity. The paper was published in 1948, many years before computers were first available at Universities, then on every desk and finally in every pocket. It was also published before DNA was discovered and then sequenced.
The two weeks I spent in Capocaccia were worth the trip. The Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering workshop, organized by the University of Zurich, is an interesting mix of engineering, science, math and biology. I was there four years ago, when the main topic was the design of the Neuromorphic chips that