About
Clarke’s Third Law is a podcast for people who make a living online. Covering all aspect of web development, design, emerging trends and the business of doing business online with contributers from around the world.
Why Arthur C Clarke’s Third Law?
Sir Arthur C Clarke, often described as a futurist and prophet of the technological age, is credited for the ‘invention’ of, amongst other things, the communications satellite. At least he first popularised the idea of using geostationary orbits for satellites (initially in 1945 – 12 years before Sputnik), and he lived long enough to see many of his ideas come to fruition.
Born in Somerset (England) in 1917, he postulated his three laws in various books and essays between 1962 and 1973.
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Clarke, with typical modesty (sic) was recorded as stating “As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there“.
Clarke’s Third Law is perhaps the most relevant, and is the one I quote the most often.
For example, the other evening, while walking home from the pub, a friend pointed to a star and wondered aloud which star it was. I whipped out my android™ phone and fired up Google Sky Map, and quickly identified the ’star’ to be Jupiter and Neptune in close alignment. My friend was impressed, but it occurred to me that only a lifetime ago such technology would be impossible to comprehend, and a couple of hundred years ago might have seen me being burned at the stake.
While we might consider that we’re technologists, we’re weaving magic guys.
Bob
The Team
Andy has over 20 years experience as a developer holding positions with Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Exxon, marchFIRST and Intergraph all of which make Andy an “Old Fart”, when it comes to computers. He is a web architect and an ardent standardista with a passion for technology.
He began his career in London and, like many people in IT at that time (well, old people) , he primarily worked on mainframe database design. Before moving into consultancy on database design and information security. In the latter half of the nineties he finally settled down with on-line application development and information architecture on the web, which involved far less pulling of cables under floorboards and less risk of electrocution.
Visit Andy’s Homepage or Follow him on twitter @bohemianpixel
Bob Massey is an IT Consultant based in the South East of England, he has been working in IT since 1979 on a variety of technologies since the IBM 370 he first trained on. In 1998 he published his first website in 1998 – for a local pub, for a tenth of the price the internet cowboys wanted to charge the landlord – and the site has since enjoyed over 72,000 visitors.
Since then Bob’s online empire extends to around twenty local websites have enjoyed more than 300,000 visitors between them. Bob uses a mixture of html and CMS technologies and is a recent convert to Wordpress; he has rewritten several of his sites to exploit the end-user capabilities it provides.
Visit Bob’s Blog
Alan Thornton has been repairing computers and helping end users to get the most from their tech purchases since the mid-1990s. Dozens of his customers have posted kind reviews of his work on Kudzu and on Angie’s list where he has been rated as being in the top 5% of all Atlanta contractors since he was first listed there over 4 years ago.
He built and maintains an award winning computer lab for his hometown Housing Authority and developed and taught a beginning computing course for a program run by the City, the City Schools, the Housing Authority, the Recreation department.
Alan’s undergraduate degree was in English and Speech. He is a former columnist for Computer User magazine. He was the musical director of and a performer in a political satire group for 5 years and usually made enough to cover the bar tab.
Visit Alan’s Homepage or Follow him on twitter @decaturcomp
Jake is a graphic designer who recently began dabbling in web design. Based out of Atlanta, Georgia, he has worked on page layout and design, also in printing, fabrication, and installation of signage for various Fortune 500 companies. He has also done some photography work from behind the camera, for obvious reasons.
Jake is also interested and involved in improving the sustainability of graphic design. Always eager to learn new methods and improve old ones, as well as new products and their cradle-to-cradle capacity. Holding the belief that environmental consciousness will create a better workplace and image for what can be a wasteful enterprise.
Sarah began her career in the early 90’s as a theatre set and lighting designer, but moving to the far ends of Cornwall in the UK brought an abrupt end to that particular direction. However, Sarah set about putting her creative skills to other uses and became a graphic designer and illustrator for all types of applications from large scale murals, t-shirt print design and more recently design for the web. These days she’s more likely to start creating work by hand and transfer her sketches into Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Sarah loves lots of color but is also a perfectionist, so she pays a high attention to detail and her work is often very precise. She cares deeply about the environment and many of her designs reflect this – her work has been used on products for the Eden Project and the like. She also practices what she preaches so she is not likely to be found jet setting on airplanes. but you might find her find her scuttling around on her allotment at the weekend.
Visit Sarah’s page at www.todmeisterdesigns.co.uk. You can buy her work at www.redbubble.com/people/todmeister70 and follow her on twitter @todmeisteress