Recently, I had the chance to attend two different guest lectures sponsored by Microsoft Research.
The first was Michael Deering's presentation, which extended at least an hour after it was supposed to end. He gave an unabridged version of his siggraph lecture on a photo accurate model of the human eye. One vivid memory of his lecture is of the last few minutes, when he described his simulation-based approach to approximating the pushed-together arrangement of replicating cells on the retinal surface. and then immediately jumping into using his model to test the quality of different graphics cards and display projectors! It was insane!!!
The second was Ray Kurzweil's presentation on emerging technologies. His website is at
www.kurzweilai.net. He surveyed the rate of emergent technologies through the history of man, which suggested some startling probabilities when he graphed his data logarithmically instead of linearly.
I was really surprised that all that data, like IRTS' reports, was just waiting for someone like Kurzweil to piece together into a hypothesis. Also, a lot of Deering's math was waaaay over my head, like taking into account quantum effects on photon trajectory calculations yadda yadda. I understood just enough during these lectures to be reminded that there are folks out there still doing basic science. Yeah, it's so easy to dismiss the ivory tower as uncool and irrelevant to the "real world" of multimedia design and UI frameworks, but I think these occasional glimpses are humbling and inspiring :)
Posted by samuel at October 19, 2005 12:41 AM