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Tech Trendspotting For The Future
Dylan Knight Rogers writes to mention a CNN article about an annual 10-year forecast of tech trends. Lots of analysts produce forecasts, but the Institute of the Future goes one step further by crafting artifacts from the future: "mocked-up products claiming to be from, say, 2009. You might go to an IFTF presentation and see baskets of finessed fruit that promise cognitive enhancement. Or you might wake up in the hotel where the IFTF seminar was being held to find your newspaper dated 10 years hence."
Windows Vista?
"Forecasts" to regain letter 'e'.
Slashdot editors to be trained at basic spelling, punctuation, grammar.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I try not to usually respond with such vitrol, but what is the point?
Forecasting is important and people spend tons of money on forecasting reports only to not read them? So we repackage the forecast in a shiny method claiming to be a product from the future?
The article doesn't have any real pertinent information. Was this really worth our time?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
lets talk about E3 in 10 yrs time
several years hence, I forecast the word 'cognitive' to be more prolificatedly used.
Just 30 seconds before reading this article, I came out of a meeting about the future of radio - it will be cognitive radio.
Basically, it means, two radio transceivers that continually and dynamically selects the best channel or frequency they can use to communicate.
But I didn't expect the word 'cognitive' to be used in such close connectivity to the word 'fruit'.
Wow, cognitive fruit. *oishiiii*, tasty.
It's only time before someone puts the daterape drug in and whoever takes a bite turns into Snow White
Reputation accounts? "Downloaded song legally from itunes" Nay sire, I do NOT need people knowing each and every "good" thing I've done. It seems more like a thing from an Orwellian science fiction movie than anything else.
Socially networked movie tickets? Leave me and my friends the hell alone.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It has some hindsight. It makes clear that prototypes will always beat dull analyses. I guess most of slashdotter already know this as scifi (movies) start your imagination.
more believable is a screen shot from "Duke Nukem forever" with a banner ad announcing the upcoming release of MS-Vista
Experience tells me that such predictions are more wrong than they are right. It's part of the nature of advancement to take us places that we didn't even know existed before (ex: computers). As a company it would seem to be more prudent to pay for real research on real products than to worry about what may or may not come about. You really only need to be looking about a year into the future to roll with the punches, and you can to that by reading academic journals (so that you know what areas are expecting breakthroughs).
Philosophy.
Ahhh crap, someone kill me please...
I find it funny that companies that are paid big money to forecast the future are so often wrong.
However, there are virtual stock markets where people predict the future in regards to news, sports, movies, etc. More often than not, these are correct.
http://www.ideosphere.com/
http://www.hsx.com/
http://blogshares.com/
http://us.newsfutures.com/
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
From GK Chesterton's Napoleon of Notting Hill:
THE human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
First, no old jokes.
I remember the NY Worlds Fair from 1964 and the technological exhibits that showed us the world of the future. And what about EPCOT? Another prediction of how we'll all live in the future. Most of the predictions didn't come true, yet it did cause us to think of what was possible.
Edison said every failed project taught him what did not work, in order to find those projects that did work.
Just one example of what may work. The fruit laced with drugs. That may work in countries where a particular drug would have to be refrigerated, but cannot due to the lack of infrastructure. Perhaps the drug would be able to be administered without losing its effectivness via a native fruit which needs no refrigeration.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Don't feel bad, half the national stories you see on local news were shot by an industry trade group and in more than a couple cases, our very own government propaganda ministry.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Experience tells me that such predictions are more wrong than they are right.
Depends on who making the prediction...
If it is lone column writer on some newspaper claiming that we will have Fusion power by 2015 because he saw a science fiction movie then chances are it won't happen.
If it is a small group of scientists with PHDs in nuclear science saying we will have fusion power by 2015 because they have done computer models then it is more likley to happen.
If it is a larger group of government officials, world leaders, and scientists saying we will have fusion by 2015 because they have allocated 1 Trillion dollars to the project then I'd say they will most likley be able to pull it off.
Also some trends are self fufilling prophecies. Take More's Law for example. There isn't anything that is a law about this trend and could up and stop anyday now. However, because this is the goal the market has set for itself, companies know they are expected to keep up with this trend.
With that in mind it we use Moore's law (and assume that this trend can continue) we can safley assume by 2018 (or 2020) that we will have enough MIPS or FLOPS (100 billion MIPS) in a $1,000 hardware to simulate all the several trillion neurons of a human mind in parallel and therefore StrongAI will at least be theoretically possible by this time.
Of course we might need to take other things into account, but this is a better prediction of the future because it is based off current trends rather than saying "Look... We have a cars... And we have airplanes and they are both improving on their own field every year... Oh I have a cool idea... Someone could combine them and we can have flying cars in about 40 years!"
Without thinking about the social or technical problems one might be faced with a drunk driver flying their car into a building at 300mph. That said... The reason we don't have flying cars today is because we still can't drive the ones on the ground safely (40,000 died to car related accidents last year)
Speaking of which... (And if you want to talk about future trends and predictions) You should check out the talks given at the Singularity Summit. Sebastian Thrun (the head dev on the Stanley winning car at the DARPA 2005 grand challenge) gives a good talk on automated car technology and his goal to eventually see computers replace people as the drivers. We might not see anything for another 10 years to reach the market, but we know this stuff is feasible given enough research and technical effort. It will be interesting to see what the 2007 Urban Challenge will bring... And it will be more important than any of these CNN predictions.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
How about a hyperlink that just links to more information? The pop-up photo gallery didn't work for me, beyond the first product displayed. I don't care about the technical reasons why I couldn't use the "next" and "previous" buttons (but, FYI, I use IE6, and lots of pop-ups and javascript thingies work for me). I care about the fact that it's unnecessarily complicated. Just put the info in these newfangled thingies called "web pages" and let users browse them with these other newfangled thingies called "web browsers".
... in the year 2000 (cue Conan O'Brien music).
I'm tellin' ya, it could happen
FLOPS (100 billion MIPS)/1 Trillion nerouns = 10^(2+9+6-12)= 10^5 computation per neroun which might seem about right but it's still off by at least 100.
However it's more of a bandwith issue.
Raw estimate of bandwith:
8bit number * 10^(2(cycles / second)+4(number of connections)+12(number of nerons)+2(safty factor))= ~640 billion terabytes / second.
Now looking at the rate of growth of bandwith RAM is not going to be that fast for a long time.
PS: This let's you build something with zero knowlage that would take another 20 years to train...
Duke Nukem Forever?
Oh wait, nevermind...
A bit off topic, but you have to also consider that the neurons in a human mind usually run information about 1 to 120 meters per second in speed. Now, that is fast compared to other things get get up and move, but it isn't as fast as the speed of light which the electrons of the cpu are operating.
So, one would just have to do the same calculations even though not 100% parallel in the same time the neuron has to do its work in the real brain without having latency in the process.
Of course there has got to be a better way than just brute forcing AI by simulating every neuron in the brain.
As soon as you start to measure time it takes the radio waves to get to the tag and back. .
Well understood late 1800s tech. It's available off the shelf or about ten bucks worth of parts from Radio Shack.
KFG
For those at Bank of America or any other place where this is occuring. Make sure you get your severance pay but do not pass on any more information that you have to. You may even considering passing on wrong information. B of A deserves getting screwed by you. If database maintenance has to happen every 12 hours tell them every 12 days. If they call you tell them the idiot you were training wrote it down wrong. Leave critical steps out. Dont provide key contact info or personal tricks. Get ride of any source code, documentation, or scripting that may make someone elses job easier. You get the idea. Remember still have the right to resist this through less obvious tactics. They screwed you and expect you to help them move on. WTF were they thinking. Thats like divorcing your wife and then asking her to teach you new wife how to blow you correctly or she won't get her alimony.
For those who don't work at B of A you need to make sure you never do business with them again. Tell your family not to do business with them either. Explaing to them that they are taking jobs from away from people in your field. This really pisses me off. More to come soon.
I think the parent is a bit confused....
People make forcasts to predict what WILL happen in the future.
The parent seems to be predicting what WON'T happen in the future.
Silly gowen...
"Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future."
The Amazing Criswell
I'm waiting for WOOT to offer an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. I need one.
That sounds like the technique presently used in RDS FM radio transmissions to follow the best signal as people drive in and out of signal range. RDS is broadcast, but the principle will probably remain the same.