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Sentient Data Access
CowboyRobot writes "From Queue comes a piece subtitled Why doesn't your data know more about you? From the article: 'It has been more than ten years since such information appliances as ATMs and grocery store UPC checkout counters were introduced. ... A common language for these devices has not been standardized, nor have current database solutions sufficiently captured the complexities involved in correctly expressing multifaceted data. ... As computing devices expand from the status-quo keyboard and desktop to a variety of form factors and scales, we can imagine workplaces configured to have a society of devices, each designed for a very specific task. As a whole, the collection of devices may act much like a workshop in the physical world, where the data moves among the specialized digital stations. For our society of devices to operate seamlessly, a mechanism will be required to (a) transport data between devices and (b) have it appear at each workstation, or tool, in the appropriate representation.'"
With so many standards running around and devices intentionally not complying with them, I doubt this would kick off in the near future.
I guess starting out a scientific paper with "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if..", but their paper really needs it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Let's see.. You have an appointment in the building and get lost. When you walk up to a wall display, it (without asking) shows you a map and path to get to where you want to go.
Think about what would be required to make that trick work -- then worry about the security problems.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
From Queue comes a piece ...that shows clearly just how little the author knows about computing.
The entire point of computers is that they are general purpose devices. The "workshop" idea surely sounds cool to someone who doesn't know about computers, because it resembles the world before "general purpose" was a graspable concept.
Would I rather want my workplace to be a collection of specialized devices, or a single device that can be configured to be any of the others, plus whatever else or new is necessary? Now that's a difficult question, right?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In the system described here, once bad data gets into your microwave oven there's virtually no way to chase down all the instances of it that will be floating around the universe. Didn't Sandra Bullock star in a movie about this once?
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
XML only solves the first problems of data merging, like making the formats easy to parse correctly and using the right international character set.
RDF/XML solves a bit more of the problem, making the structure of the information clear, in terms of assertional statements. An RDF/XML file is a knowledge base, full of statements saying this has some particular relationship to that. It lets the machines get at more of the information in a uniforn, universal way.
But still, the problem of ontology/schema/vocabulary mapping remains: if one system is talking about patients and another is talking about clients, they might or might not really be talking about the same thing. A single person maybe never counts as two patients but sometimes counts as two clients, etc. At least with the data in RDF, most of this mapping can be done in software once a person figures it out and expresses it in a suitable logic language.
The emerging design of the Semantic Web hopes to make that reasonable, but also to support convergence on common vocabularies by having everything on the web -- if it's trivial to see what vocabularies are already being used, people will mostly only make new ones when the old ones really are different.
Other hard problems remain, of course, like figuring out which data sources to trust. Fun fun.
It's simple: There are not many good reasons for it to happen, to any greater extent that it already is.
Frankly, this just stinks of that old chestnut about interconnected toasters and refrigerators and power drills sharing data seamlessly on a home network. I was never quite able to get thrilled about this kind of thinking when I first heard it, and it rings more hollow every time I've heard it since, which is about a million times, over decades.
I think the big problem here is that there isn't much of a problem to solve. I'm sure that, when we have even more portable and ubiquitous computers and communication all around us, we'll just be deluged with new applications for it that we just can't quite think of right now, but we don't yet. And you can't chalk it all up to "technology isn't ready yet." No, I think it's related to demand, more than supply.
As far as I can tell, there aren't many killer apps that fall well under this umbrella, and those few that there are can't begin to justify the expense of the hardware and software involved, now, or probably for another decade or two.
One thing that always gets me about this line of thinking is that even the examples they lead with tend to be uninspiring and ridiculous: ATMs and grocery store checkouts sharing programming languages and databases? Complicating the "workplace" with converged, general-purpose computing solutions by littering it with specialized information tools? Come on, guys, this is freakin stupid. Does standardizing on a sigle end-all-be-all computer language, OS, or database sound like a good idea to anyone? Or particularly original? What about "un-converging" to any greater extent than we already are? Or is there some new information tool that will change everything?
I'm sure as soon as someone actually has a real idea that's plausible enough for science fiction, we'll all get excited about being the first to make it happen.
The article does hint at a few more interesting things; that hierarchical filesystems may be overrated and due for reexamination as the bedrock of computing (although truthfully this is already well in progress - PalmOS? Newton?), that we might see more kiosk or application-specific computers... more "specialized devices" solving problems out in the world... now selling tickets, now portable computerized maps giving directions, perhaps more active displays "everywhere," primarily driven by advertising, but perhaps justified by various underlying civic duties, and location-based computing is undoubtedly going to be more important, as it finally becomes cheap enough to be a factor...
But these are all just hints. Barely that.
But overall I find this to be just another valueless futurist rant, devoid of real ideas, coasting on buzzwords and hype, and basically irrelevant to anyone seriously thinking about the future... or at least, nothing you haven't heard before a million times.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
So why oh why does it remind me to take the receipt when I told it no receipt? It is not printing one out so somewhere in its memory a flag is set. So why can't the last message be adjusted to reflect it? It is a very simple thing to do. I think you learn this kind of thing in the second chapter of any programming book.
I think until such simple things are realised (I seen people waiting for a receipt that is not going to appear making the throughput of the machine slower wich is not good on a busy shoppping day) we can forget such machines ever becoming even the slightest bit intelligent and say use your name to greet you. Let alone be able to give you say access to you bank statements of that month to see if the rent has already been deducted.
Oh and this behaviour is spotted on ATM's in holland in several different models belonging to different banks (our cards work with all banks)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Slow day on slashdot? Why else has somebody posted a mediocre business-school masters "IT management" "research" quality humdrum thesis topic as an interesting article?
They missed out on using orthagonal paradigms, but at least they didn't call it ClippyWear.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
If my memory serves me correctly, the Fritz chip is the basis of the Trusted Computing Platform (Palladium) which would give uber control of your computer to the powers that be (But you already knew that, didn't you ;)) Combining such "sentient data" with the Fritz chip could effectively result in your computer reporting you or your ATM turning you in. It is a serious threat to those of us which sport foil hats, not off topic ranting.
In spite of lofty ideals, we know what the application would look like: Imagine the worst qualities of Clippy, Talky-Toaster, and Genuine People Personalities, stir in some 1984 and Brazil.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Choose your poison:
Email, nntp,IM, xmlblaster, Jabber, MQSseries, SonicMQ, SwiftMQ, Softwired iBus, Jiiva RapidMQ, ICM etc etc etc etc...
What we need to do is write *more* message systems. In fact, lets *everyone* do one.
The real problem is standardisation. The situation is a bit like networking protocols before TCP/IP became all pervasive. Each vendor has their own system and are happy to charge you an arm and a leg to connect it up to everything. You then have the same problem with information definitions and formatting but XML and things schemes rosettanet are gradually solving that one.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
how would we benefit from a standardized language?
the system as a whole would be more prone to hacks and abuse.
I think that's what they're talking about. Just because you don't have a use for all your personal data, doesn't mean nobody does.
Think "cookies for real life".
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Sheesh, that's ALL we need. It's as if web browser cookies aren't enough. Oh, what's this thing called a "Lobstergram"? Went to look it up on google, went to the website, and the next day I find an email from the lobstergram people with some "special offer". I swear that businesses feel entitled to spamming you in the name of doing good business (from their POV of course).
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
My ATM, from LaSalle Bank (owned by a big Netherlands co.), has a lack of 'knowledge' that bugs me every time I use it.
The first question it asks me is whether I want to work with it in Spanish or English... couldn't it remember that from the card? I'm not likely to suddenly forget English. (I did run through the whole thing once in Spanish, just for kicks).
It should know which account I tend to take cash out of, and how much, and highlight those options.
Design for Use, not Construction!
How long is it before ATM's / "grocery stores" (supermarkets here) are linked into dating sites and your email?
Dude, if the grocery store tattled on my buying habits and my dating website realized how many twinkies and pints of Ben & Jerry's I buy (not for myself, I assure you!) the dating site may assume (incorrectly, I assure you) that my picture is 5+ years out of date and not representative of my current date-ability and good-lookie drool factor vis a vis the ladies. Soundly suckily Orwellian to me.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
It's almost an anti-security device, too. If a French-speaker has their card stolen by an English-speaker, it the ATM only prompted in French, that would be at least a little bit of a deterrent for illicit use, wouldn't it be?
It's crazy to talk about a universally connected web of smart data when the individual machines are, even after years of evolution, so profoundly stupid.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
Why should one organization bother making their devices talk to others, when a backlash from privacy advocates could make the effort costly, disgraceful, and futile?
If you're a privacy advocate, the current somewhat insular world of independent devices is best. Our refrigerators do not talk to our phones. We have some control over our lives.
However, there are some times when I wish some of those devices were more 'open'. My grocery store UPC checkout counter knows a lot about me. Since I don't eat out any more, it knows exactly what I eat (eventually). That information would be most valuable when seeing a doctor or dietitian.
I get a paper receipt for each purchase, why can't I do that record keeping myself? Because I'm to darn disorganized and it takes to much effort. So I have just a fuzzy idea of how much sugar, fat, red meat and carbohydrates I consume. And I have no idea how I compare to the average forty-year-old American male.
My store has a dietitian managing the healthfood department. I asked about the value of having a complete record of purchases for the customers she sees. While she acknowledged the value, she couldn't get past the privacy issue.
I suggested she talk to other dietitians and her management about making scanner data available. But why should she? Opening up the system would cost money with no sure payback. Then there are privacy advocates who, out of principal, would attack such a breach.
By myself, I can do nothing. The only thing I can do is make an appeal. If your are privacy advocate, make clear what you do and do not oppose. Support data sharing that has more value then cost. Support data sharing principals that would lead to successful project and that respect individual rights. The first such principal is that the collector (grocery store) and the individual have joint ownership of customer data. The second is that the individual has a right to access his/her own data. The third is that when individual data is shared between organization, it must pass through the individuals hands or the right waived. The fourth is knowledge of who has access to individual data must be available to the individual.
If we as a society agree on data sharing, the people in a position to advocate projects can have more confidence that their efforts will be successful. When a project is suggested that would violate agreed principals, whistle blowers would also have confidence in raising the alarm.
"The good sense"??? Would that be "the good sense" as in the good sense of knowing that since something didn't work yesterday it won't work ever in the future? "Sorry, a cryptoalgo was found to be flawed last year, which proves to that us that _all_ future cryptoalgos will be flawed"???
Before talking about "us here" you should realize that "us here" contains a lot of people doing things that no one had even though of a cpl of years ago, or that people thought was impossible or didn't have a clue on how to do... Just read some of the news posted here... Pausing light, building rockets for going into space (trying at least, will get there sooner or later), P2P-networks focusing on anonymity... perl turning 16... no one knew 16 years ago what perl would look like today.
In the most basic form of what I was talking about the client wouldn't do anything but download a list of that stores products, and all the information they'd get (without you providing more simply because you're a nice guy) would be that you got the information, when you got it and if they fingerprint the hardware/client what hardware/client you're using.
Any information identifying the client could be randomized/rotated, so they can't even tell if you've been there before.
perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'
My microapps teacher told me a story of his grandfather refusing to use the phone. He said, "Why would I ever talk into a peice of plastic. If I want to talk to somebody, I'll go down the street and talk to them." While some people today may be concerned about big brother, new generations are more open to technology. I think that someday, tomorrow's kids will not have a problem with technology controlling their lives because they will be brought up in a world where technology is already doing so.