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One of the challenges of writing about technology is how to escape from what the sociologist Michael Mann memorably called the sociology of the last five minutes. This is especially difficult when covering the digital tech industry because one is continually deluged with new stuff viral memes, shiny new products or services, Facebook scandals (a weekly staple), security breaches etc. Recent weeks, for example, have brought the industrys enthusiasm for the idea of a metaverse (neatly dissected here by Alex Hern), El Salvadors flirtation with bitcoin, endless stories about central banks and governments beginning to worry about regulating cryptocurrencies, Apples possible rethink of its plans to scan phones and iCloud accounts for child abuse images, umpteen ransomware attacks, antitrust suits against app stores, the Theranos trial and so on, apparently ad infinitum.

So how to break out of the fruitless syndrome identified by Prof Mann? One way is to borrow an idea from Ben Thompson, a veteran tech commentator who doesnt suffer from it, and whose (paid) newsletter should be a mandatory daily email for any serious observer of the tech industry. Way back in 2014, he suggested that we think of the industry in terms of epochs important periods or eras in the history of a field. At that point he saw three epochs in the evolution of our networked world, each defined in terms of its core technology and its killer app.

Epoch one in this framework was the PC era, opened in August 1981 when IBM launched its personal computer. The core technology was the machines open architecture and the MS-DOS (later Windows) operating system. And the killer app was the spreadsheet (which, ironically, had actually been pioneered as VisiCalc on the Apple II).

Epoch two was the internet era, which began 14 years after the PC epoch began, with the Netscape IPO in August 1995. The core technology (the operating system, if you like) was the web browser the tool that turned the internet into something that non-geeks could understand and use and the epoch was initially characterised by a vicious struggle to control the browser, a battle in which Microsoft destroyed Netscape and captured 90% of the market but eventually wound up facing an antitrust suit that nearly led to its breakup. In this epoch, search was the killer app and, in the end, the dominant use came to be social networking with the dominant market share being captured by Facebook.

Epoch three in Thompsons framework the era were in now was the mobile one. It dates from January 2007 when Apple announced the iPhone and launched the smartphone revolution. Unlike the two earlier eras, theres no single dominant operating system: instead theres a duopoly between Apples iOS and Googles Android system. The killer app is the so-called sharing economy (which of course is nothing of the kind), and messaging of various kinds has become the dominant communications medium. And now it looks as though this smartphone epoch is reaching its peak.

If that is indeed whats happening, the obvious question is: what comes next? What will the fourth epoch be like? And here its worth borrowing an idea from another perceptive observer of these things, the novelist William Gibson, who observed that the future is already here; its just not evenly distributed. If thats as profound as I think it is, then what we should be looking out for are things that keep bubbling up in disjointed and apparently unconnected ways, like hot lava spurts in Iceland or other geologically unstable regions.

So what can we see bubbling up in techland at the moment? If you believe the industry, metaverses (plural) basically conceived as massive virtual-reality environments might be a big thing. That looks to this observer like wishful thinking for psychotics. At any rate, at its extreme end, the metaverse idea is a vision of an immersive, video-game-like environment to keep wealthy humans amused in their air-conditioned caves while the planet cooks and less fortunate humans have trouble breathing. In that sense, the metaverse might just be a way of avoiding unpleasant realities. (But then, as a prominent Silicon Valley figure recently joked, maybe reality is overrated anyway.)

Two more plausible candidates for what will power future epochs are cryptography in the sense of blockchain technology and quantum computing. But an era in which these are dominant technologies would embody an intriguing contradiction: our current crypto tools depend on creating keys that would take conventional computers millions of years to crack. Quantum computers, though, would crack them in nanoseconds. In which case we might finally have to concede that, as a species, were too smart for our own good.

Brace yourselfTheres a sobering opinion piece in the New York Times by historian Adam Tooze called What if the coronavirus crisis is just a trial run?

Get readingProusts Panmnemonicon is a meditation on rereading Proust by Justin EH Smith on his blog. A reminder that if you want to read Proust in your lifetime, you need to start now.

Domestic spiesPublic Books has a terrific piece by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole Weber on the intrusion of surveillance tools into homes.

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PC, internet, smartphone: whats the next big technological epoch? - The Guardian

'Every company a climate solutions company'

Many business leaders feel they are ready to take on digital transformation. The question is, what do they want to accomplish with new technology-driven approaches beyond simply digitizing existing processes or business lines? Some forward-looking companies, recognizing the pointlessness of going through a digital transformation exercise for the sake of digital transformation, intend to do more with the new possibilities technology opens for them. There needs to be something meaningful and purposeful at the other end such as promoting socially responsible approaches that makes it all worthwhile to employees, customers, partners, and the world at large.

This is the course set at Viessman Group, a 104-year-old climate control solution company, which recognized that digital transformation means more than simply adding new technology it means unwrapping newly acquired resources to promote sustainability, opportunity, and new solutions to vexing problems. Shape the purpose of your organization, make sure everybody understands it, and make it a deep part of your offerings, says Max Viessmann, CEO of Viessmann Group. Viessmann, who leads a family-owned company, based in Germany with 13,000 employees across 75 countries, is transforming itself from manufacturing to digital services provider. Initiatives underway include the provisioning of smart devices that communicate health and status from customers homes or offices to Viessmanns monitoring services, research and development into systems that employ alternative energy sources such as hydrogen or solar, and other green initiatives.

To stay ahead of the curve, Viessmann supports a constellation of venture capital units VC/O that supports the growth of emerging technology companies and technology ventures. We incubate a lot of business models outside of our core, but still related to our core, because we saw that we need to learn a lot, and we need to engage within an ecosystem, says Viessmann. This includes investing in artificial intelligence and quantum computing ventures. Its clear if we do not embrace digital technologies, we would not be able to succeed. We invest in companies that are highly disruptive to our base, to other industries, and we engage with them.

Viessmanns investments cover two main areas deep technology, and clean energy, with a philosophy of investing in base technologies as they emerge, then building specific solutions on top of those technologies over time. Areas of investment include the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial and machine intelligence, frontier tech hardware, enterprise software, distributed ledger technology, cyber security, augmented and virtual reality, and autonomous systems. When people start investing in AI or in quantum computing, its super generic in the beginning when the technology is being developed or adopted, says Viessmann. But at some point in time, you will see that a technology has a horizontal impact on many sectors, its generally a good investment. But it also allows you to understand how this can be applied to our own vertical. Thats why we invest in horizontal technologies, because we can understand it much earlier than other companies.

Currently, the company is an investor in IQM, one of the largest quantum computing companies in Europe, as well as companies in the EnergyTech and PropertyTech space which focus on bringing digital, data-driven solutions to living and working spaces. The word digital is even disappearing from the companys lexicon, Viessmann says. If you look at our strategy in 2017, it was still a lot of digital scale, end-to-end supply chain management a lot of buzzwords, and a bit fuzzy maybe at some points. Today, whatever we initiate needs to have that digital element to it, otherwise its just not giving us a competitive advantage. In our strategy looking forward to 2025, we dont use the word digital, because its not a building block, its just a hygiene factor. Things are now at a higher level.

This includes initiatives to build more software-driven and AI capabilities into its product lines, enabling company technicians to predict and resolve issues at customer sites before they arise. Solutions can be downloaded to customer installations automatically, without the need for a technician to arrive onsite. Were able to optimize and update the systems over their lifespan, says Viessmann. Our service partners can anticipate if something goes wrong, so they can fix the problem before it even occurs. A problem may arise with a device over a course of 20 years, depending on different conditions. Technology is helping us to understand some of the patterns."

At the same time, there isnt necessarily any magic with AI, Viessmann emphasizes. AI is such a big word, and it helps a lot of equity stories to be written, obviously, he points out. But if you just look at the deep learning side of it, you're just understanding is there a pattern, and can adjust what the algorithm is about to do, based on the learning and the pattern that has been recognized. AI allows you to handle that complexity, and to make it much more productive and efficient, that you wouldnt be able if you control it manually, or if you would have a static algorithm that just does in and out. For us, its not rocket science, its just understanding patterns and learning from it.

This, in turn, raises energy efficiency to new levels, thereby reducing carbon emissions resulting from coal-fired power plants, he continues. By employing software-driven installations supported by AI, moving to alternative sources of power without the onerous labor required in the past. Were using technology to reduce the time that is being wasted on inefficient commissioning processes and inefficient service processes, he states. A one-and-a-half-hour exercise, now its done within a split second.

Its not technology for technologys sake, Viessmann emphasizes. We want to have the most positive impact on the environment and on living spaces, and whatever helps us to achieve that from a technology perspective is worth trying out, he explains. A few years ago, IoT was a generic term. We invested in protocol or communication companies that enabled IoT. It was clear that vertical solutions within sectors would be created. So we created our own solutions for the climate and energy side of things, based on the technology that was available.

Digital transformation has not only meant providing digital services to customers, but also transforming the companys corporate culture. Employees are encouraged to develop ideas which often make their way to piloting and production. For example, when the Covid pandemic hit, a group of employees took materials from around the companys plant and created ventilators for Covid patients, eventually shipped to hard-hit areas such as India.

The Covid crisis, for one, provides many lessons for corporate social responsibility, Viessman says. The pandemic has shown all of us how deeply affected we can be from a change in our environment, he explains. A pandemic shows us who we are and not who we think we are. Theres a curve to the pandemic. But if we look at some of the consequences that are a result of progress in climate change, its just made it transparent to all of us that is not just going to go away.

Businesses need leaders to seek to achieve sustainability and greater purpose. Make it your own, Viessmann urges. Its our uppermost responsibility to look beyond our bottom-line performance and see the impact were having on the environment, and to what extent we can actually improve that. Every company must become a climate solutions company. It must come straight from the heart of people already believe. We need to emphasize the responsibility that we have in the future, and be aware of how we live today will impact future generations. If its part of why people buy your products, or engage with your services, then it becomes a true part of your DNA.

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Digital Transformation Is Only The Beginning: A Companys Journey - Forbes

When it comes to people pushing the frontiers of science, few institutions can match the talent of the Department of Defense, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. national laboratory system. With ample budgets and flexible oversight under that aura of national security, ambitious scientists and engineers are working on everything from quantum computing to next-generation satellites.

That wealth of talent is often left behind in the frenetic product development and fundraising world of Silicon Valley. Langley, Arlington and Los Alamos are a far cry from Palo Alto or New York City. Even more challenging is the career transition: the government is, well, the government, and the private sector is, well, the private sector. Moving from one to the next can be quite jarring.

Scout Ventures wants to act as the bridge between the startup world and that vast science and technology workforce, with a particular focus on veterans of the military, intelligence agencies and national labs. Founded about a decade ago in 2012 by Brad Harrison, the firm raised two funds and invested in several dozen companies at the earliest stages, including identity verification platform ID.me (now valued at $1.5 billion), mens subscription service Bespoke Post and youth sports management platform LeagueApps. It also incubated companies like health services company Unite Us.

The firm announced this morning that is has raised a $55 million third fund, which will continue its focus on backing veterans while centering its investment thesis on frontier tech in areas like machine learning, robotics, drones, physical security, quantum computing and space (that said, the firm does not invest in weapons).

Harrison, who has been a long-time angel investor prior to forming Scout Ventures and is a West Point grad and Army Airborne Ranger, said that when he started to look at the track records of the most successful founders he backed, many of them happened to be veterans. So he started doubling down on that thesis, eventually hiring Wes Blackwell who graduated from the Naval Academy and Sam Ellis in Brooklyn from West Point as his co-partners.

Scout Ventures partners Wes Blackwell, Brad Harrison and Sam Ellis. Image Credits: Scout Ventures.

Scout is a traditional seed stage fund, and Harrison said that the firm targets roughly a deal per month, with a typical check between $500,000 and $1 million targeting 10% ownership. The firm also reserves $2-3 million in capital for follow-on investments.

One of the firms unique differentiators is taking advantage of ample non-dilutive funding from government programs and locking that in for its portfolio companies. Harrison said that the firm typically can secure three dollars of such funds for each dollar it invests, allowing its portfolio companies to grow faster for longer and with less dilution. Were seeing the most active money flowing through Air Force number one, Army number two, and then you are seeing some money flowing through the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, Harrison said.

In terms of companies, the target is so-called dual-use startups that have applications that can be used by both the public and private sectors. These are core, disruptive technologies that we believe are going to bring a shift change, so they inherently have applications to the DoD and the commercial sector, he said. They are hard to find, and that is why we talk to so many companies.

As examples of startups within this thesis, Harrison pointed to four companies in quantum computing and others in electronic warfare, where applications can be as important to the NSA as to telecoms like Verizon and T-Mobile. He also pointed out companies like De-Ice, which is using electromagnetic technology to make deicing of planes and other equipment faster and safer. Such technology could improve operations for the Air Force as well as civilian carriers.

Ultimately, Scout hopes that its unique network and focus will allow it to access these hard-to-reach founders who are really distrustful of most VCs, Harrison said. That makes us competitive.

Among the LPs of the new fund are the New Mexico State Investment Council (home of the Los Alamos National Laboratory), former Citigroup chairman Richard Parsons, Auctus Investment Group, restaurateur and brewer David Kassling, and Michael Loeb.

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With $55M third fund, Scout Ventures is funding veterans ready to tackle the hardest technical challenges - TechCrunch

Its one of the most famous scenes in modern film history. In The Matrix, the 1999 phenomenon that introduced the world to bullet-time fight sequences and briefly made fiddly little sunglasses without arms the height of fashion, Laurence Fishburnes Morpheus offers Keanu Reevess Neo a simple choice. After explaining to him that he has lived his whole life in a virtual prison for [his] mind known as The Matrix and offering to show him the truth outside of that cage Morpheus presents him with a pair of colour-coded pills: You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe, he says. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes remember, all Im offering is the truth, nothing more.

That moment was invoked this week in a viral marketing campaign for The Matrix Resurrections the fourth film in the franchise which is set for release this December. The films website allowed viewers to choose between a red or blue pill, which in turn determined the teaser trailer theyd be shown. The decision to place the choice between the two pills front and centre in Resurrections marketing feels purposeful: a possible attempt by director Lana Wachowski to reclaim the contemporary narrative that surrounds the scene. It isnt hard to find evidence that she and her sister Lilly, who created The Matrix together, have become unhappy with how its meaning has been twisted and reinterpreted. In May 2020, after Elon Musk tweeted: Take the red pill and Ivanka Trump replied: Taken!, Lilly responded pithily: F*** both of you.

The red pill, of course, is the same pill that Neo chooses. In the film, his decision symbolises his rejection of received wisdom, and his brave determination to reject comforting illusions and keep seeking out the uncomfortable truth. Later, however, that symbol took on a life the Wachowskis never could have predicted.

Mens rights activists vociferously adopted it, believing that theyd seen the truth that society is unfairly structured to benefit women. They called themselves red pillers, and congregated online in deeply misogynistic groups like the subreddit r/TheRedPill, which proved so unruly even by Reddit standards that its been placed in the sites quarantine since 2018. That means its subject to tighter controls, is invisible in the sites search function and that anyone trying to visit the group is first warned that it is dedicated to shocking or highly offensive content. One of the groups core rules forbids anyone declaring in a post that they are, in fact, a woman. From that ignoble interpretation, the idea of taking the red pill became a running motif for Trump supporters, QAnon followers and anyone else who believed they were declaring their rejection of a perceived liberal consensus. If youve taken their version of the red pill, you probably havent had the Covid vaccine, either.

Needless to say, this was not the message the Wachowskis intended their film to send out into the world. When they made The Matrix in 1999, Lana and Lilly had yet to come out publicly as trans women. Lana transitioned after the sisters made Speed Racer in 2008, and then in 2016 Lilly announced she had also transitioned. Last year, in an interview with Netflix Film Club, Lilly Wachowski was asked what she thought of fans now interpreting The Matrix as an allegory for the trans experience and she pointed out that it had always been. Im glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention, she said, before hinting at why that fact wasnt publicly discussed at the time: The world wasnt quite ready, at a corporate level the corporate world wasnt ready for it.

The trans symbolism of The Matrix is easy enough to identify. Neo is living a double life. By day, hes an office drone known as Thomas Anderson. By night, he is a hacker with a name hes chosen for himself. He is troubled by the nagging sensation that something is off about the world, something he cant quite put his finger on. In other words, he is suffering from dysphoria. Neo only becomes his true self when he breaks free from The Matrix, but not everyone is happy about it. Hugo Weavings terrifying baddie Agent Smith only ever refers to Neo by his original, socially approved name Mister Anderson, a practice known as deadnaming when done to trans people. Then theres the red pill itself, which can be seen as analogous to hormone therapy. The metaphor is a neat one: in the Nineties, prescription estrogen given to transitioning trans women did indeed come in the form of a red pill.

The Matrix Resurrections: First trailer released for sci-fi sequel

It remains to be seen whether Lana Wachowski will take the opportunity presented by her return to the world of The Matrix to make these themes more explicit. The fact that the red pill/blue pill dichotomy is so prominent in the new films advertising, though, does suggest shed like to reclaim them symbols not of right-wing nonsense, but of positive change.

Its about time. It is, after all, the red pill that allows Neo to become the hero he was always destined to be, by first allowing him to become the person he always was.

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Red-pilled: Can The Matrix Resurrections reclaim Neo from the alt-right? - The Independent

Keeping women under mans thumb

Dwell on this thought:Abortions can only be performed on pregnant women. If abortions are so abhorrent to the alt-right, why is it not supporting easily accessible and free birth control to all women who determine they are not financially and emotionally prepared to bring a child into the world?

For 2,000 years, policies of the Christian church have been dominated by misogynic men obsessed with original sin and Eve as the villain. Man, although believed by the alt-right to be created in the image of God, is obviously too weak to deal with women on an equal footing. The conservative Supreme Court now wields the Bible to keep women subservient to mens control.

It is counterintuitive that while availability of birth control that reduces the number of abortions is not touted in TV ads, we are inundated with ads for Viagra and penialdysfunction to keep that perfidious snake strong and upright. It is counterintuitive that those in favor of forced birth turn their back on financial, health and housing support and in fact are trying to deny it once a child is born in poverty.

Founding Fathers said no to religious doctrine in government.

Karen Mahoney, Florence

I am the son of two educators, who fortunately are no longer alive to see a picture of a teachers taking a selfie of her and her sign no mandates (tests, masks, vaxx). Teachers in this state were vaccinated weeks before I (72) was able to. Rather than hold a grudge against them, I have volunteered more than 200 hours, 33 clinics and 11 fullweekendsto help get people vaccinated and tested.

I wonder what this teacher is teaching perhaps she believes messenger RNA is junk mail, masks make the brain hypoxic and that a COVID-19 test is mandated as part of No Child Left Behind. Considering how women have taken the brunt of COVID-19suppression recommendations in hospitals, in the sky, in restaurantsand yes in schools,she appears to be ill-suited for her job. When she meets this variant, which she will, she may not die, only get long-haul and then want the rest of us to pay for her care.

Michael S.Smith, Eugene

Vaccinations, masking and distancing are time-proven methods of slowing the spread of a virus. COVID-19 mutated to delta in 2021 by adapting, spreading more easily and becoming more virulent. In the name of freedom, some refuse to practice the methods that slow down the virus. It seems forgotten that freedom demands responsibility, and that none of our freedoms exists without cooperation. As the delta variant grows stronger, more people are falling ill and dying from this avoidable illness. The virus races forward while humanity debates its self-imposed regression. Thankfully, the solution is simple: To accept our responsibilities: vaccinate, mask and distance to return to the new normal.

Rae Lea Cousens, North Bend

Submit a letter of 200 words or fewer to rgletters@registerguard.com. Include your full name, mailing address and phone number for purposes of verification.

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Letters to the editor for Friday, Sept. 10: Women's rights, vaccine drama and the freedom conundrum - The Register-Guard