Reflections

What does Rocco Siffredi have to do with Google and technology? The common point is clear: the display of enormous power, sexual in one case and computational in the other. I leave it to the reader to guess which one is Google and which one is Siffredi. The parallel appeared very clearly in my mind when I listened to a talk here at EGU (read this post to discover what EGU is) about Google’s new search and computation engine for Earth sciences, EarthEngine. IMAGE By Niccolo Caranti (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons ...

I have various friends and acquaintances outside my work circle with whom I often end up talking about my activities. Every time, surprisingly, I discover how hard it is to explain what happens at these conferences or meetings I sometimes attend. Having already given up on answering the fatal question “what do you do for a living?” when asked by non-specialists over 70, I now try to explain how a congress such as EGU works. I once tried saying: “I work in EPOS, a European project dealing with the integration of research infrastructures for Earth sciences; now I work on metadata collection for the creation of a catalogue that will allow data discovery and integration.” The result was bewildered looks, mechanical “ah, interesting” replies, and other scenes I will spare you. ...