Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Happy Thanksgiving Day. In America, this is Thanksgiving Day. Something about the fourth Thursday in November or something. We attribute this to folks in our history who were thankful that they had a good harvest and had stored enough crops to sustain them through the winter. Their children would not die this […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Expert systems live on after 40 years. Well, sort of. I worked in artificial intelligence research in the mid-1980s. We had an AI boom in that decade. Then a winter and a boom or two since then. Back in 1985, we had “expert systems.” (I am old enough to remember this. I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One of the oldest phrases in computing is still true. Rats. Some folks thought AI would fix this. If I meant to find the sum of 2 and 3 but typed 2+4, I would have the wrong answer. Rats. Inputing the wrong information produces the wrong output. So said Charles Babbage some […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Here come new tools. Adopt them or lose your job? Probably not. Yet more recent news about big tech eliminating jobs due to AI. Or perhaps they were eliminated because those companies simply hired too many people and they weren’t doing much of anything on the job. Here are more thoughts on […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes I can do more than my job. I can exceed and excel. I recommend caution. I read an editorial recently about newspapers. Perhaps that editorial was agreeable or not as it delved into the politics of the English language (thoughtful and fraught with peril). The topic was journalism, journalists, and journal-ing. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes you concede or yield to another person’s experience in a situation. Folks seem to hate that. “You have more experience with this type of thing or this type of situation. I yield to your judgement here.” Seems like that is pretty reasonable and wise. Folks seem to hate it. What is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Revisiting an old post in a new era. The idea is pretty good now more than ever. Way back in 2009, I wrote a little post about the magic words, “Up until now.” These words imply that, while I have always lacked something or other, I can change my future and not […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An old book refreshes how to write to someone else. I recently found an old book—old meaning 40 years old. “How to use the power of the printed word” was published in 1985. It comprises a dozen essays from famous folks of that day about writing and reading and such. I am […]

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