Douglas Crockford: Mister Symbol Man and the Herald of Doom
- Mar 18, 2014 · 6:30 PM
Learn about an amazing ideographic language that could be read by all people, regardless of their native language invented by Charles K Bliss, an Austrian Australian. His goal was to produce a communication tool for severely handicapped children. Doug Crockford will talk about Charles, his life, and his language. Below is Doug's last TechXploration talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr-nETLcnGI
Agenda:
6:30 PM: Delicious Food, Craft Beer Tasting, Music & Mingling
7:10 PM: Mister Symbol Man and the Herald of Doom, Douglas Crockford
8:10 PM: Q&A
Douglas Crockford was born in the Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, but left when he was only six months old because it was just too damn cold. He turned his back on a promising career in television when he discovered computers. He has worked in learning systems, small business systems, office automation, games, interactive music, multimedia, location-based entertainment, social systems, and programming languages. He is the inventor of Tilton, the ugliest programming language that was not specifically designed to be an ugly programming language. He is best known for having discovered that there are good parts in JavaScript. This was an important and unexpected discovery. He also discovered the JSON Data Interchange Format, the world's most loved data format. And he works at Paypal.
How to find us: TechXploration takes place at PayPal HQ at Town Hall, which is facing North First Street.
Public Transit Info: PayPal Town Hall is directly across the street from the Karina Station of VTA/Light Rail in San Jose, CA.
Parking Info: All unmarked spots at PayPal HQ are up for grabs. When you pull into the campus, look for Town Hall (large building says "Town Hall" above doors, faces North First) and then park where you'd like.
Please encourage your guests to register and RSVP themselves for a more fluid check-in.
Please bring a photo ID.
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Mark R.
My favorite part of learning the symbolic language of Charles Bliss was trying to guess the meanings of the symbols before Douglas Crockford gave the answers. Overall, the topic wasn't as interesting as previous TechXplorations, but it was fun as usual.
March 19, 2014
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Rich M.
For the RadioLab program on Charles Bliss (etc), see http://www.radiolab.org/story/257194-man-became-bliss
1 · March 19, 2014
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Amanda S.
Definitely not. I expect that it will be around an hour. Lemme change that :)
February 27, 2014
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Quite an interesting topic. Something really different from the typical tech talks. It was nice to learn about the power of symbols in a semantic graphical language (Blissymbolics) and hear the story about the life of Charles Bliss. For some general information about Blissymbolics you may take a look at http://www.blissymbolics.org or if you want to look up Bliss-symbols you may give http://www.blissonline.se/download a try. Really enjoyed it. Thanks to Douglas and the organization team!