Improbable Insights

While visiting my older daughter, Elizabeth, at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, I attended a talk given by Jon Lindsay, Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Global Affairs at U of Toronto. The seminar was ostensibly about cyber security, but Lindsay mentioned a few things that set me thinking. Consider the language we use when we talk about computers: files, procedures, programs, processes, directories, folders. These terms derive directly from large institutions; more specifically, large business and government institutions. In a way, this makes sense, because keeping track of vast amounts of data is certainly the purview of large institutions? But why these institutions? Why not a laboratory or library paradigm? Why not something unique? David Bryant shares some interesting insights on how our language of computing evolved over time, and we all discuss changes going forward, given the more distributed nature of computing. Tools David makes a big switch in his choice of mobile email clients, receives h