Author: Alan Oppenheimer
-
Leverage
Distributing the Future to a few people is a good thing, but with over 300,000,000 people in the U.S. and 8,000,000,000 in the world, a few more people having the Future doesn’t make it much more evenly distributed. That’s where Leverage comes in. Don’t try to distribute the Future all by yourself. Help other people…
Written by
-
2015: Three-Quarters of the Way
Computer people love powers of two. Doubling or halving. We’ve done the beginning (1983), middle (2004) and end (2025) of our timeline, and then the first half of the first half (1993). Now on to the first half of the second half. By 2015, the Alan & Priscilla Oppenheimer Foundation had been working with on…
Written by
-
2007: The Genome for the Rest of Us
The Human Genome Project (HGP) took over 10 years and 3 billion dollars to complete. The end result, in 2001, was a “draft” version of the 3 billion or so DNA “letters” in a single human genome (yes, right around a dollar per letter). Scientist Craig Venter published his own genome at about the same…
Written by
-
1993: Half Way to Half Way
We’ve started at the beginning, gone half way to the (Present) end, then all the way there, then on into the Future. Let’s back up and go half way to half way. 1993 was a banner year for distributing the Future. Literally. We love to complain about advertising, but every so often an ad campaign…
Written by
-
1984: The Computer for the Rest of Us
As far as distributing the Future, there has been nothing more fundamental, in at least the last half century, than the Macintosh computer. As 1984 dawned, the Future of computing was, in fact, already here, but it was very unevenly distributed. Apple billed the Macintosh as “The Computer for the Rest of Us,” and that’s…
Written by
-
The Future Future, Finally
This blog is about the Past, Present and Future of distributing the Future. So far we’ve talked about a couple items from the Past (1983, 2004) and about the present Present. Now, finally, it’s time to start on the future Future. The Future may be here already, but, being unevenly distributed, most of what we,…
Written by
-
2025: The Present Present
Having started at the beginning (of our timeline) and continued with the middle, it seems appropriate we now move on to the end. Of course one of the main points of this blog is that there is no end; there will always be a Future to distribute. But for now we’ll go with the end…
Written by
-
2004: Let’s Continue in the Middle
Our timeline may be linear, but this blog is not going to be. Let’s jump to the middle of the timeline, right between the start and the present. By mid-2004 Alan and Priscilla had been living in Ashland, Oregon for almost ten years. Best known for its Shakespeare festival, Ashland also sports a classic July…
Written by
-
1983: Let’s Start at the Beginning
“Distributing the Future since 1983.” That’s this blog’s tagline, so let’s start there. What happened in 1983? May, 1983. After five years wandering the Infinite corridors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alan graduated from that Cambridge institution with a combined Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Alan’s thesis, “A Local Area Disk…
Written by
-
Initial post: Distributing the Future
Distributing the Future since 1983 It’s January 1, 2025. The start of the second quarter of the 21st century. It’s also the start of this blog about distributing the Future. 1983 is when I, Alan, graduated from M.I.T., started work at Apple Computer on something called the Macintosh, and met Priscilla. We’ve been helping distribute…
Written by