Hardware, Firmware, and Software – Biology, Culture, and Behavior 

Hardware, Firmware, and Software – Biology, Culture, and Behavior 

This article is part of larger context I have been documenting about my study of Anthropology and Computer Science, and how it changes the way you think. I often think of a person’s actions and personality in the context of three main layers – Biology/Hardware, Culture/Firmware, and Behavior/Software. For example….

Computer Science & Anthropology

Computer Science & Anthropology

Anthropology and Computer Science don’t typically seem like they would have a lot of overlap, but they do. Each focuses on how discrete units change temporally and spacially. One focuses on human evolution, the other on engineering – one on statistics, the other on digital logic. In Anthropology, at least in the US, we study

Explaining Race Conditions to Non Programmers

Explaining Race Conditions to Non Programmers

A few weeks ago, I was down in Columbus at a coffee shop. This place happened to have a bathroom which needed a key to use. I went to the counter to ask for the key because mother nature called, but the key was nowhere to be found. Somebody was already in the bathroom and

Netflix – Technology Wizards or Good Content?

I love the content they produce like Orange is the New Black, Narcos, Stranger Things, and House of Cards. But, remember back to before Netflix produced this content? They were struggling with subscribers, under attack from cable companies, and their future looked very, very uncertain. So, how did they turn the ship around? They started

Intrinsic Value of Free Software?

Intrinsic Value of Free Software?

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] I recently read an article by Benjamin Mako Hill called When Free Software Isn’t Better. This article addresses the fundamental argument of importance, between the Open Source engineering paradigms and political Software Freedom. For an outsider, this argument can be difficult to understand. The approximate argument is that Open Source

Comparison of Open Source Activity by Country

My senior year in college I wrote a paper about Open Source and it’s implementation in Brazil. This work follows that same line of thought. This is really cool because it shows how different governments are implementing open source. It’s especially interesting that some countries (USA, China) have such active communities, while other countries (France,