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James Martin Predicts The Future
addaon writes: "Every once and in while, it's nice to have a bold look at the future of computing. A recent article over at Discover Magazine shares James Martin's latest ruminations. While, on one level, this is just another discussion of ubiquitous computing, it's well-presented and insightful." Martin has some big ideas (though ones many people born after 1980 may think simply obvious). This piece also mentions the very interesting experiments in evolutionary computing carried out by Adrian Thompson of the University of Sussex.
People respond to the world they are placed in. If you actually act on the statistical knowledge you gain, you will have changed the environment significantly and the information you used will no longer apply to the new world you created. Bigger better computers and more powerful algorithms can't change that fundamental fact. Of course, removing people's ability to act in the conscious knowledge of their surroundings could make his vision possible. That's quintessential Orwellian nightmare material.
Humans are just very hard to predict. Even if a child may not be aware of the criteria for being selected as a troublemaker, and may not know what the consequences of that are, the environment will still reflect that interference. Certain members of the population will be removed for remediation, and the adults will be well aware of both criteria and consequences. Children will respond, and what was supposed to be remediation will simply become punishment for a new set of very subtle and always changing crimes.
There's lots that can be done to help people. If we were all doing what we could, right now, without predictive technology, we could make a lot of difference, I don't see how Martin thinks technology will change indifference that much. We can't make statistical models to automate the process of doing good. It won't work. At best it is stupid. At best.
I'm even suspicious of the mantra of early detection -- the idea that anything, if caught early enough, can be fixed easily. Kids don't just "go down the wrong path", implying that somehow if you "get them on track" they will be okay. People become who they are in a constant process of self-invention, they aren't astroids floating through space that can be nudged into different trajectories if only we use great forethought.
Implication: A robber will gain full and total access to every aspect of your life, ruining it in one fell swoop, and police/government forces in many nations will destroy their opponents just as easily. And this will happen, because human's have both good and evil impulses.
This is why the real revolution will be in money. Perfectly secure, perfectly anonymous stored value is the only alternative to this orwellian vision. The implications of that are truly enourmous: nobody knows how much you have, how you got it, who you give it to, or why. Gosh, we might actually have to prune back our laws to the ones that prevent us from killing or maiming each other. Moreover, we will probably have a choice of which authorities back which banking systems we choose. In other words, money may become de-coupled from nations (nations and money are concepts that arose separately, and they can go their separate ways once again), and not in the Euro model. The future will be stranger than most people can imagine.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Given the current direction of television advertising, and technology like TiVo and the ability to use digital product placement, we're more likely to see TV shows tailored to the extent that you'll see a show where characters use products that are chosen to fit your demographic. So, if you're a rich guy you'll see a Rolex on the character's wrist, whereas I'll see some crappy armitron watch that fits my budget.
Either way, I'm guessing that me being annoyed by a commercial is not something that the broadcasters or advertisers will be too concerned with.
We must abandon the false promise of artificial intelligence-- the general term for technologies that aim to emulate human cognition-- and understand, embrace, and exploit the alien nature of computer thinking, says Martin.
/. readers.
In my opinion, James Martin is completely out to lunch as far as AI is concerned. He may know a thing or two about traditional AI but I doubt very much that he has any idea of what's going on in the field of computational neuroscience. This is where the real breakthroughs are going to come. Neuroscientists like Dr. Henry Markram and Terrence Sejnowski have already figured out that accurate timing of neural spikes is the key to biological intelligence. Great strides are being made in the area of signal timing. In other words, what they are finding out is that what's important to the brain more than anything else is the temporal order of sensory and internal signals, i.e., whether or not two or more signals are concurrent or sequential.
James Martin thinks that highly specialized computers are what will transform the world. In my opinion, they have already done so and this is an ongoing evolutionary process. I think the advent of truly intelligent learning machines are what's going to put an end to the slave labor economies of the world and take us to the stars. That's the advance I'm looking forward to.
There is no doubt in my mind that it will happen within the lifetimes of most
I am SOOO tired of these "what I see for computers and the internet and etc etc etc...." articles. All they are is filler in a magazine and for someone to trot out in ten years and laugh at saying how silly the predictions were.
Ultimatly they are a fluff peice where someone seems to think I care what they think and I should listen to them, well I say Phhhhhtttt to that.
This may seem like a troll but I am honestly over these self apointed "gurus" spouting off about things no one can verify or even make a safe bet on.
So here are my predictions for the tech industry : You are going to take a long trip and meet a tall dark stranger , and ultimatly die.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
James Martin has been visionary since the 1960s on computer design and information systems. He contributed to the design of several key systems used worldwide (including Sabre). He has two excellent books that are also worth reading and are quite thought provoking: The Great Transition and Cybercorp. These are worth reading! You can also work for his consulting company. James Martin is also the most prolific writer alive today.
Not long ago Robert Lucky of Telcordia, who is a frequent columnist in IEEE Spectrum, wrote an article noting that technology predictions are worthless; that in his words, we're all just "bozos on the bus" waiting to see where technology will take us next. Even if someone "predicted" the impact of the internet ten or twenty years ago, because technology is so nonlinear, there's no reason why that same person's predictions today are any more valid than yours or mine.
Does anyone else remember this article? Any links?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
While you are busy fooling around with all your high tech gadgets of war, someone will come up behind you and bash your head in with a rock.
Sometimes a simple solution is better and more direct than one that incorporates wonderful new technology and computing power. That is not to say that these things will not change the way we view the world and much of the way we act. Obviously there will be some major cultural upheaval as the current young generation gets into power already accustomed to the current tech and use it for things its inventors never even imagined. However, I think it will take a LONG time for some things. A few examples:
Cash. the more I hear people say that credit cards will take over the more certain I am about how important plain old cash is to our economy and culture. There are simply innumerable areas where a universal credit system would suck
Manual overrides on almost anything that involves danger. This one is a no brainer. The power situation in CA should illustrate that nicely. This includes cars.
Incidentally, the comment about cars tracking drivers' safe (unmentioned: unsafe) driving really does scare me, because insurance companies would definitely try that. It's stuff like that which makes me hope that there will either be some major regulation of the current insurance-companies-as-lord-and-master situation or just a complete collapse of the current stucture. Plain old large corporations are going to become almost silly to worry about in comparison.
Okay, time for some dinner.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Well, you, obviously. Somebody read it one too many times.
Typical slashdot attitude. Any time new technology is mentioned (and it's not on store shelves right now, waiting to go into your computer), the immediate reaction is to say, "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!" In this instance, it means that every piece of new technology will be bad, because (though the descriptions don't support it) everything with a way-nifty feature will automatically report to the government.
A TV that automatically picks the programs you enjoy == A TV that automatically censors and reports to the FBI? Those sound like two different ideas to me. Ditto for the rest of the things mentioned.
Now, if you're really worried that the entire world is conspiring against you, you might (surprise) start thinking by yourself. For instance, it's true that a single smart-card is a vulnerable target for a thief. Perhaps the place to start is by suggesting ways to make it less vulnerable.
There's no reason to bitch and moan and live in general terror over something that nobody said, nobody meant, and that doesn't exist yet anyway. As you asked, "Who will guide [the changes]?" Why not make it us, instead of playing victim and then being put out if anything bad happens?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
A question that strikes me in this fanaticism of replacing humans with automated systems in areas of public concern is where is the public review of this software?
In a democratic society, the people have ( in theory ) the right to review public policy and to express an informed opinion on that policy. As computer software begins to replace human implemented systems, essentially that software becomes public policy. The decisions that an AI system makes in such a data mining search like the one described above becomes an extension of public policy. The public needs an open and transparent way of auditing such software and agreeing upon whether it is suitable. Any software which is kept hidden from public scrutiny through any means ( ie a closed-source licence ) robs us of democratic rights.
Furthermore, it always surprises me that in all forms of futurism, whether it be from cranks, kooks, or ( reputedly ) accurate technological prophets, there is huge talk about how life will be better/worse because machines will remove more and more of our decisions from us. We are told that life will become oppressive because machines will remove our powers of decision and identity, and we will live in a 1984-like society of our own tech-desirous devising. Conversely we are told that we will live in a virtual utopian society where machines like obediant and thankful children take the burdens of society from us and simply give us everything we really want.
Basically futurists would have us believe that the only choice before us is whether we want to view the future as "1984" or as "brave new world". The future is coming they tell us and we have no choice in what it will be, you can just decide what perspective you want to take on it. I ask, where is the increase in freedom and democratic rights that computers can give us in all these visions?
Why isn't anyone talking about abolishing representational democracy in favour of computer-supported direct democracy? With the increase of communications technology their is no longer the need to have elected officials ( or at least a very reduced need ), when the public can be directly polled on issues, when the public can propose their own initatives, and have them reviewed publicly for increased attention.
Naturally the opportunities for stuffing the ballotbox becomes easier with a computer database. However, given a well-designed system subject to public review, should be able to solve issues of authenticating voters and preventing fraudulent votes. In fact the level of accuracy should be increased overall ( *cough* Palm Beach *cough* ). The NSA and the Pentagon have spent huge amounts of public money developing systems that are virtually impregnable to false use - why should we not get them to prove how devoted they are to democracy by providing the public with a secure openly reviewable system for increasing our abilities to take more control over how our world is run?
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
For all you whipper-snappers out there, James Martin has been a self-professed IT guru for about 25 years. There was a time when you couldn't open a trade rag without finding him blowing hot air about something or other. Whatever the current fad - Info Engineering, CASE, whatever - there he was.
The thing is, Mr. Martin had a small army of research associates working for him who did all the hard slogging for the "James Martin" brand. Frankly, I cannot believe this guy is still alive! He must be about 90 years old!!
Anyways, as most folks can tell by reading the arcticle, Mr. Martin has a profound grasp of the obvious. This has always been my beef with his kind of industry punditry. A lot of it reads no better than a 1950s-era Popular Science article ("in the future we'll be good-looking, wear jumpsuits, and drive flying cars to our 2-hour/week office jobs..."). Good to see that James has not slowed down, or changed his modus operandi.
And thus endeth the history lesson.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
...but you get the feeling that at the top where they list his impressive "hits" from his 1977 predictions, they left out the other 90%, the "misses".
You get this feeling from statements like "software will detect patterns in behavior of children that leads to crime" that belie an insufficient grasp of the sociology and specificity of crime. That's just one example.
But there's balance to this: the caption to the picture is "cars that report good driving," not "cars that report bad driving." So he understands operant conditioning: reward good, and ignore bad, and you will affect behavior the most, and without unwanted psychological side effects.
No doubt he'll have more hits, and more misses. I fear the worst miss will be his prediction of the egalitarian distribution of the fruit of massively-available technology. It's more likely that the physical benefits will be everywhere, and everyone will be sending the monetary benefits to Bill Gates et al in the form of subscription and repair fees.
--Blair
A quote:
"Safety will improve. Troublemakers will be identified early, as data-mining software flags behavior in children that leads to crime, sparking remedial programs."
How nice. I think I'll live in my old-fashioned world, where we wait for someone to commit a crime before they're a criminal.
Or, for that matter, Bill Gates visions ...
...
Think about it. James Martin says "we are on the cusp of a discontinuous leap in what computers can do and that the changes coming, properly guided, will lead us all to a land of milk and honey".
But, who will guide them? Look at the images shown in the article, for example:
1. The messy jumble of cash, keys, and credit cards will be distilled into a single smart card that can be carried in a pocket.
Implication: A robber will gain full and total access to every aspect of your life, ruining it in one fell swoop, and police/government forces in many nations will destroy their opponents just as easily. And this will happen, because human's have both good and evil impulses.
2. A TV will choose programs the viewer enjoys. Better yet, commercials that annoy will not be repeated
Implication: Who chooses? Will we control it? Will the TV rat on you? Will you be jailed due to what you watch (they subpeona your book purchases in the US, after all). 1984, anyone?
3. Cars will report good driving so that insurance rates drop
Implication: Cars will report bad driving. Rich people will buy cars that expunge thier bad driving, poor people will have their cars turn them in and go to jail. Those with money and power make the rules, as anyone in France can tell you. And a rich person can hire (and have jailed) a chauffeur.
4. A house will sense the mood of its owner: The coffee machine will kick in when it's needed.
And, when you have a brownout, it will mess up the files and go back to the factory settings. Or it will listen in to your morning gripings and save them to the FBI/SS file kept on you.
Be careful what you ask for - you may get it
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?