Stanley Bing is a writer for Fortune.com. He provides a business viewpoint with a crusty tint to it. It is fun to read. The other day he wrote about a time when he was young. Several classmates went with him to see a farm and the they learned a life lesson – chickens run around after their head is chopped off. There is blood and there is twitching. The story was an analogy for the US economy and being graphic was intentional. I agree with what his viewpoint is, except it assumes there is only one chicken. But there isn’t. There are many chickens and life goes on. The point I’m trying to make is that there are a lot of great ideas in the US economy right now and these ideas are not simple “wouldn’t it be great” fluf” either. The future is bright.
Two examples of technologies I think are ready to launch:
The R Programming Language
It is making large amounts of data much easier to work with and not just for those that watched Stargate either. The language is fairly easy to pick up once you need to apply it. And that is what I see as most valuable. A new segment of the population is dealing with very large sets of data that before had to use an intermediary. This empowers them and it makes the challenge of ever increasing data scalable. Here are a few links to more information:
R (programming language) – Wikipedia
Data Analysts Captivated by R’s Power
– A NY Times article
R You Ready for R? – A NY Times blog entry
The R Project for Statistical Computing – An application of R
The Open Frameworks
This labels itself as “creative coding” and I have to agree. It names itself OF. Just watch the video and check the links below it.
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=921725&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
made with openFrameworks from openFrameworks on Vimeo.
openFrameworks – Wikipedia
openFrameworks – Home
openFrameworks – Wiki
Working Thoughts 