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I predict that shit like this will be embedded into our bodies within no time.

I predict that shit like this will be embedded into our bodies within no time.

He made a long bet on this. Not to belittle his boldness in going on the record, but he probably figured this wouldn't be solved until long after he died.

In other news: Wine and Cheese celebrations at the Institute for Advanced Study.

I think the problems with our current model of programming that Jaron is describing can be seen mainly in the idea of Leaky Abstractions. With software abstractions, we try to do exactly what Jarod is talking about; we try to simply make things interface with one another fluidly. What he's pointing out, and what leaky abstractions prove, is that our programming languages just don't work this way. Everything assumes the pieces it interacts with will interact in a specified way. The system depends on every piece to follow it's assumptions and often falls apart completely if one doesn't.

There are questions to be raised about a flexible system like this:

What about misinterpretation? Would software now behave like a human and "missread" another component's piece of information? (as people missread each other's handwriting)

Would "fuzzy" interpretations lead to databases full of occasional false information? Could the same system still operate effectively with these kinds of errors? (a very tricky question)

Could we still make secure systems with this kind of software interaction? Would secure systems still require the strict standards our current systems have? (ie. your password must still be entered with the correct capitalization)

Obviousely, information passing wouldn't work in this model. Think of the party game where you sit in a circle and whisper a message in each other's ears to see how garbled it gets. We would just have to avoid that type of system.

These (and the others I've read) are the kinds of immediate questions that one will make of this concept. I guess Jarod is proposing that these are things that can be worked around conceptually; they're implementation details.

Personally, I think he's brilliant. I think he has stumbled onto what will be the foundation of the future of computing. Here is the big bold statement he is putting on the record for us:

"So instead of requiring protocol adherence in which each component has to be perfectly matched to other components down to the bit, we can begin to have similarity. Then a form of very graceful error tolerance, with a predictable overhead, becomes possible. The big bet I want to make as a computer scientist is that that's the secret missing ingredient that we need to create a new kind of software."

My question is this: Would any of you openly challenge this statement? If he were to more rigourousely define this bet and enter it here, would any of you put yourselves on record saying it was bunk?

I know that's alot harder than simply not challenging him, but think of the ultimate outcome of his work. Do you truly think computing systems will still be cooperating the way they do now 100 years from now? If the answer is no, but you still don't think he's on to something, then what will change things? Genetically altered super-humans whose brains operate as our computers? The "Mentats" of the Dune novels?

If I had $2000.00 to spare, I'd bet it on his idea.

Feel free to quote me on that 100 years from now.

There is an open bet on this.

In 2029 $10.000 may allow you to buy a bag of dog food... maybe a couple of sandwiches.

As the rules say, the money is invested between the placing of the bet and the payoff. So it's $10,000 plus 25 years of compound interest.

Mitch Kapor and Ray Kurzweil have bet $20,000 on whether a computer will pass the Turing Test by 2029.

Anyone serious about preservation of his/her DNA would best save $498,000 and bank their blood or other bodily fluids for 10 or so years. Some companies even offer payment plans on that $2000 charge.

In ten years time the technology to sequence quickly will allow for this operation to be done at 1% of today's cost. (Yes, I will put money on that prediction.)

Of course when the time comes, if you really want to keep the sequence a long time, I wouldn't suggest CD-ROM. With a shelf-life of 50-200 years under optimal conditions, you'd be better with a book printed on acid-free paper. There you're looking at a shelf life of half a millenium or more under the same conditions.

Sounds like you need LongBets

No matter how cheap HDs get, they just don't have the [...] lifetime

Really, it depends on what you mean by "lifetime". Even assuming the media is still good, try finding a working drive for an arbitrary backup from a decade or two ago. And longer than that? Forget it. (But it's plausible that CDs will be an exception.)

For moderately long-term storage, your best bet is stone, although some metals are a good choice, too. But really, the only currently successful medium for real long-term storage is DNA. That's not because DNA is durable; it's because Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe.

So the lesson is that if you really want to be able to get at your backups in the future, the best way is to keep them 1) live, 2) distributed, 3) replicated, and 4) monitored. Whether you do that by colocating a couple of hard drive arrays or by encoding the data into bacterial DNA with checksum-linked apoptosis mainly depends on your budget.

That by 2020 a wearable device will be available that will use voice recognition capability and high-volume storage to monitor and index conversations you have or conversations which occur in your vicinity for later searching as supplemental memory.