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Marc Andreessen Describes Vision of 'Ambient Computing' (telegraph.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, is one of the biggest investors in technology. In an interview with The Telegraph, he spoke about how he envisions the future of computing. It's essentially an extension on the idea of the "Internet of Things." He thinks mobile phones will begin to be replaced in just 10 years. "The idea that we have a single piece of glowing display is too limiting. By then, every table, every wall, every surface will have a screen or can project." Within 20 years, he expects most new physical objects to have some sort of chip implanted within them. "The end state is fairly obvious — every light, every doorknob will be connected to the internet." The term for this is "ambient computing." There will obviously be a transition period — perhaps the so-called internet of things is just an early phase of that transition. But with powerful chips and sensors becoming incredibly cheap, Andreessen's scenario seems possible. I guess it's time to get cracking on those security and privacy concerns.
And when that happens, expect trolling and hacking to become extremely serious, no intent involved felonies. If a troll messes with my house and I get robbed, I want the SOB put away for life. Literally. You mess with people, your lulz should get you not one iota of mercy. Expect if we ever get halfway to this that countries that treat it lightly will be lucky if all they suffer is sanctions.
The "Internet of Things" will be nothing but a gigantic clusterfuck, due to the fact that nobody gives two shits about security.
There is already a domain where ubiquitous integration of high complexity capabilities into virtually all materials with room for them is a reality.
We call it "Biology". And, in my professional capacity as a fungus, let me remind you that you'd be fucking insane to want your computers to go down that path.
It's impressive that machines made of meat work at all; but that doesn't change the fact that they are tottering heaps of uncontrolled complexity, riddled with pathogens and parasites, kept alive only because they are (sometimes) more fault-tolerant than they are faulty; and because the various microorganism militias are too busy fighting assorted cryptic metabolic battles and it is possible to enter alliances of convenience with some of them, if you get lucky.
People have done a terrible enough job keeping a bunch of loosely-linked deterministic finite state machines from descending into a putrid jungle of malware that inspires comparison to unpleasant biological outcomes. You want to add more; and link them more tightly? Have fun with that.
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done.
The more complex a system, the easier it is to disrupt. Last week we lost power one evening for a couple of hours and my young daughter didn't know what to do. She couldn't understand why nothing except her iPad would work. No TV, no computer, no Internet, no music, no texting, no contact with anyone not physically in her presence. But at least she could access the refrigerator and her room.
If, as suggested in the summary, "every light, every doorknob will be connected to the internet." then she wouldn't be able open a door or even enter or exit the house without approval from some server. Lack of power or a lack of connectivity would be a serious impediment to simply living in a house. Would all these things be controlled from a house server? Is everyone going to become a sysop? And think what a hacker could do with access to the house server. Or a burglar.
Or am I misunderstanding how this would all work?
Bullshit!
So, I'm guessing from that statement, that you have the intention of connecting your butt to the Internet of Things. Who knows, it might be a big hit, and your butt will be the next Facebook . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Thank you. Nothing he said wasn't ridiculously obvious, even 10-20 years ago.
every table, every wall, every surface will have a screen or can project." Within 20 years, he expects most new physical objects to have some sort of chip implanted within them.
That sounds like a hacker's playground to me.
DEFCON is going to get more and more fun the closer we get to that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That line edited for the summary (and people say editors don't do anything) actually goes like this:
"The idea that we have a single piece of glowing display is too limiting.
By then, every table, every wall, every surface will have a screen or can project," he told the Telegraph.
"Hypothetically you walk upto a wall, sit at a table and [talk to] an earpiece or eyeglasses to make a call. The term is ambient or ubiquitous computing."
If tables, walls etc. have screens or projectors - why special earpieces or glasses?
If special glasses are ubiquitous - who needs screens in tables and walls? Wouldn't empty and clean flat surfaces be far more useful then?
And what's the use of a chip in a chair? To tell you that it is occupied or not? Wouldn't a single camera in the room do that and more?
Article further gives examples such as:
Pharmaceutical companies transporting drugs or vaccines need to constantly monitor temperature;
logistics or delivery companies track their fleet of vehicles over long distances;
and perishable food companies need to monitor internal temperature and humidity of trucks to check if their goods are spoiling.
None of that is "Internet of Things" or "ambient or ubiquitous computing" nor would those examples benefit from chips and sensors on every single item that is being transported in those trucks.
Why then all those additional sensors?
Well... cause it would be expensive to make dedicated case by case monitoring systems to replace somewhat manual (but cheap) solutions already employed. As in, there's an employee doing that right now.
So the solution is to cover EVERYTHING with sensors instead.
Thus eliminating the cost of installing sensors and networks by shifting it to every producer of everything in the world.
Who would then shift that cost (and all the unnecessary "features" they'd have to invent for their products) - to the customers.
While "the cloud" will pick up the rest.
Thus, "reducing the costs" of creating "ubiquitous computing" to software only - i.e. nothing, as developers are already being paid anyway, or they'll just do it for fun and experience.
That's the logic.
"The problem is that manual measurements are very common in hospitals, pharmaceutical delivery chains, and even the distribution of dairy and meat produce.
Someone actually goes to the warehouse to fill out a report with pen and paper every 3 hours," says Samsara's CEO Sanjit Biswas, whose previous network technology startup Meraki sold to Cisco for over $2 billion.
His big idea: installing cheap sensors, and uploading and analysing data to the cloud makes Samara 1/10th of the cost of existing industrial sensors (complex systems made by huge incumbents like Intel), and deployable in under 10 minutes.
"If you want a tailored system, someone like IBM will build you a custom solution but it usually costs $5m so it doesn't make sense unless you're a large company," he explains.
Andreessen is a fierce believer in the impact of this wave of software-driven sensor startups.
His core thesis is that over the next 20 years every physical item will have a chip implanted in it.
"The end state is fairly obvious - every light, every doorknob will be connected to the internet.
Just like with the web itself, there will be thousands of of use cases - energy efficiency, food safety, major problems that aren't as obvious as smartwatches and wearables," he says.
Except that is not "software-driven sensors" but "sensor-driven software".
Which relies on someone first providing ubiquitous sensors in every doorknob - which could then be used for "major problems that aren't as obvious".
I.e. It's a solution we don't really have a problem for quite yet. But it would be great if someone else paid for it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
He also says widgets are great, and that despite living in only the 2nd or 3rd generation to be able to have widgets, they are not only essential but should be mixed into soda and consumed with every meal. The road to the future is paved with widgets, upon which we hold numerous patents. So. Buy widgets. Buy them by the truck load. Buy them TODAY!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm sure that some people want to connect their door knobs and white goods to the internet, I'm also sure they are a tiny minority within the general population. Way back in the 90's a friend on mine worked on a fluro lighting system for supermarkets that could be used to change shelf price displays, great idea, brilliant engineering, but it turns out college students with a pen are cheaper.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is just stupid. So I don't need a dedicated "single piece of glowing display" in my hand anymore, because I happen to have a doorknob nearby with "some sort of chip implanted within" that is "connected to the internet". So to read a message, I will go touch the doorknob, and then a nearby light begins flashing the message out in morse code? I know that sounds dumb, but that is what he is inferring, right? You don't need a device in your hand because there's just a random assortment of connected stuff all around?
Dedicated devices purpose-built for interacting with humans will not go away until we have some kind of direct mental link to computers. The keyboard hasn't been replaced by touch screen devices. It serves a specific purpose that cannot be replaced by any other method of input, including speech recognition (I can just see myself coding with speech recognition - "Next line. Next line. Next line. Move right 5 words. Left one word. Right one character. Right one character. Delete. Ampersand." Uh huh.)
There is also the personal / privacy aspect. Just because I can project something on a wall 10' wide on the other side of the room doesn't mean I want to read and reply to my private messages in that way. What if there are 5 people in the same room? Who gets the wall? Or do we carve it up into 5 pieces? "Son, you take the left half of the coffee table, and mom, please take you feet off the coffee table so our daughter can use the other half. I get the west wall today, and hun, you can do your FB on the ceiling."
The number of holes in this silly prediction of the future are simply too great. It will not unfold in this manner.
Better known as 318230.
Ambient is the name of a data service that broadcasts easily-agreed-upon facts like stock quotes and sports scores and stats and weather nowcasts and AccuWeather forecasts. Marc, you need to call this new concept something else.
Screens are essential. They create a window into the virtual environment with a bezel around it to prove you're jumping into something not really there.
Same ideas that Mark Weiser was talking about at Xerox PARC in the early 1980s.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
First it was people walking around being obsessed with USENET, discussion forums and flame wars. Then it was their iPhones - continuously textings, facebooking, whatever. I see them on the street all the time, not to mention in restaurants. But now that's not enough. Noooo... We're going to be connected through the Internet of Things - network connected refrigerators, stoves, home furnaces, lamps, medicine cabinets, toilets, table lamps and door knobs. And that's not to mention our self-driving cars and chips in our pets, kids and family members.
It's just the next step to Borg. Besides...
How is a guy EVER going to cheat on his wife?!
Marc Andreessen over-estimates his mental ability. He accidentally made a lot of money. Now he thinks he is intelligent.
It is BS because there is no reason to connect a doorknob to the Internet. Once a door is smart enough, it can open itself, and there won't be a doorknob. I was once with a friend who missed his bus. He said he wished he had a Star Trek transporter ... so he could beam himself to the next bus stop. Wishing for a "smart doorknob" is the same sort of small minded thinking.
A mere fragment of the summary tells the important point: ... is one of the biggest investors in technology.
Marc Andreessen
He was once a technologist but he has been a finance puke ever since. As with all of that kind, his primary interest now is in blowing the biggest bubbles he can bet on. Then he will quietly exit by selling to fools before the bubble bursts.
Why will your parent's retirement funds buy into these bubbles near their end of life? Because the same finance pukes tell them too!
Of the many items and functions I have put under computer control at my houses, exactly none of them were ever visible on any Internet link.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
Someday, you won't be able to enter your house without waiting for a software update to complete. Nirvana!
Have you read my blog lately?
Why care about security? Surely nobody is going to hack your car, or your refrigirator. Why not hook everything to the Internet? Your pace maker, your Parkinsons brain implant, should all be online and accessable at all times.
I was once with a friend who missed his bus. He said he wished he had a Star Trek transporter ... so he could beam himself to the next bus stop.
Darn it Bill. Well done indeed. My hero Yogi Berra would have loved it!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm still not seeing a strong use case for having every-thing connected ..
Certainly for things like furniture, just as not all those objects or walls will have need for a display.
It goes back to an old recycling meme .. the "you can extract petroleum, refine it, form it into pellets, form that into a fork, transport it to market where it is bought, transported to place of use and than finally -- used and discarded .. or you can wash the fork and set it aside for reuse".
Meaning in this context, you _could_ have the tables and chairs in a diner report their utilization and/or have a system optimally place customers to enable more people to be served in a given period .. or you can allow the much simpler approach customers use of "sit at an open table".
One little fly in the ointment.... security. Just what I need, some hacker in Nigeria turns off my table unless I give him access to my refrigerator to hide some $60M of his inheritance in gold bullion. Then what the hell am I supposed to do with a platform supported by a quattro-brace?
Talk about security concerns.
It will be like cars. At first no one cares about safety, until things start going badly wrong and they are forced to care.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
we thank you for your cooperation.
"... every light, every doorknob will be connected to the internet."
Allow me to be vulgar and say, "Like fuck it will." There is absolutely zero chance of that happening - and I'm kind of a computer loving geek. I have 0 IoT type devices that actually do the whole "internet" part of that - unless you want to count cameras and, even then, I have to login to a local system, as I am not home, and then (and only then) is that very specific IP address allowed to view those camera feeds.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Heh... I had a friend come up and visit last spring and I took him over to a small town where I'd bought a piece of property. I was showing him where some famous people had lived and talking about the town's history, pretty much how everything had passed by and there was little left but memories. We walked by a graveyard and he turned to me and asked, "So, who's dead in there?"
I replied, "Everybody."
At any rate, if you ever get the chance to visit Maine - you might like it. You'd probably fit right in. They let me live there and I'm almost as accepted as a native but I'll always be an "import" or "from away."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'm struck that so many predictions of the future embody two simplistic and misguided assumptions. 1) That the future will progress in a straight line as an extension of the present and 2) that new technology is unquestionably an improvement.
One would think that with the current speed of development we would have developed some degree of immunity to the hypnotic allure of techno-pizzazz for its own sake.
THIS. Unfortunatly, I am all out of mod points, but Mr. AC here speaks the truth. Predictions in the past, that we'd have all diseases cured by 2000, were absolutly ridiculous because they assumed that the rate of drug development would increase linearly. No, we'd just picked the easy fruit, and then it slowed down. For those here who are really old, thry might remember back in the 70's when everybody was told that nuclear power was the way of the future. After all, it was obviously superior to every alternative, how could it lose? And yet, it did, because of the fear over a nuclear fallout (something I personally think was a somewhat silly fear, but I'll keep my opinion out of this).
We're all terrible at predicting the future in advance, and that's not necessarily a bad thing or a good one, but I really wish peope kept it more in mind. Seeing these vague future predictions just makes me facepalm, especially because the articld doesn't even really say why we would need sensors in anything (nor the rather significant cost and saftey hazards of doing so). I would be much more interested of the future two years from now, in the very beginning of 2018. Two and half years ago, the world didn't even know about PRISM, might I remind you.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Just imagine how difficult it will become to commit a crime. Pawn Shops would easily be made to not allow the purchase of any item whose chip is not reporting properly. Twisting a door knob could result in a pic being snapped of every home or door in your neighborhood. Every car, motorcycle or bicycle could record everywhere it goes as could every wallet or wrist watch. If we surveil every object, we actually end up surveilling every person 24/7/365. I wonder how much truth we can live with.
Hmm... They might not be cheaper now. Imagine them all connected to HQ and them just sending the repricing information down the stream to various pre-configured settings. That would almost be trivial at this point - assuming they could keep the devices from being constantly damaged. The expenses that they undergo when they remodel the interior is high enough that such an additional feature might not be more than a trivial rounding error.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
All of these devices will have a certain level of personalization
but it will be mostly used to show people ads.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Years ago, with a then-ubiquitous Moto flip phone at my hip, I "invented" what I called the "Urban Commando Phone" - the cell phone already had a clock, why not add things like flashlight, garage door remote, TV Universal Remote, etc. so that instead of having dozens of devices, you had one to "rule them all".
I had no idea, at the time, of the types of convergence that would come in the form of the smart phone, which has all of these and many more either available built in
or easily available.
The term "ubiquitous computing" has been used for decades, and when I first heard the term, it was to convey the still-radical idea that every home would have a computer.
Computing seems to come in stages or "generations", where each previous generation generally powers or enables the next one. Mainframes became infrastructure for Mini computers, which (eventually) gave way to PCs, which then merged with Mini computers in the Internet revolution, which then gave birth to the smart phone era.
Following this trend, the "next big thing" will use Cell phones, PCs, and Servers to extend their capability. And this is already happening. My cell phone has a small cluster of devices that surround it that it interfaces with: Bluetooth headset, folding mobile keyboard, smart watch, etc. We are just beginning to innovate with these standards-based technologies to develop the true "IoT" that is coming; the things that link to our mobile phones to enable things we haven't begun to imagine.
Some examples that I've seen/heard of include all manner of medical devices: insulin pumps that use software on your smart phone to adjust or recommend insulin administration. Devices that provide the ability to test for common diseases "in the field" inexpensively, serving field medics and impoverished areas alike. Payment systems that use our mobile phones and networks to augment or replace credit cards.
And on and on. As always, the game is just beginning!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
My doorknobs, actually they are more like lever, are perfectly fine. They do not need to be computerized. I do not need a screen in my tables. At the work place there are too many things placed on them. And at home. The table is for eating. If there would be a screen in it, like in my tablet, then it would have to be cleaned intensively after every meal. And when I am eating, I am eating. I do not need to surf the net. And if I want to, I could still use my phone or tablet or notebook. I also do not need a computerized toilet. Maybe when I am old and in a home, there will be such thing.
And beside all that. It would require energy and resources like hell. We already have a resource problem. How about a working energy distribution system?
Although, they called it "ubiquitous computing". There were connected white-boards and sticky notes all over PARC when I visited there back in the 1980s. Anywhere a few people could have a hallway meeting, in the conference areas, and work spaces, scribbled ideas could be worked out saved and distributed, and recalled, as needed. Took a fair amount of back-end horsepower, but that was before a 64-bit computer fit on your wrist.
It had definite value to a creative group, as they had then, but in most workspaces or residences, it would just be distributing drivel and be a security nightmare.
It's like seeing a sports star who was great back in the day, or an artist who did one good album.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They'll find a reason to justify it. They wanted to push RFID tags onto everyone, so the idea was to have the refrigerator and freezer internet ready. Then they could tell you how much time each food item had before it expired it's sell by date. An internet-ready toaster could bake messages onto your bread.
Maybe doorknobs would use fingerprint recognition so that doors could only be opened or closed by chosen people at chosen times.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
props on the catastrophic misspelling
Maybe doorknobs would use fingerprint recognition so that doors could only be opened or closed by chosen people at chosen times.
Face recognition would be a better way to achieve that. Fingerprint recognition won't work if the user is wearing gloves, and you would still have all the old drawbacks of doorknobs, including spreading disease, difficult to open when carrying things, difficult to use if in a wheelchair or using crutches, etc.
Ah, good old Nutscrape Nervergetthere.
Fucking piece of goddam shit. Mind, you, so was Inthenads Exploder at the time.
I remember when some sites would work on one and no the other, what a PITA.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You have that wrong... Microsoft, integrating a free browser into their OS, Internet Explorer, was the reason for the first antitrust suit against MS. That they gave discounts to companies to not install Netscape.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Yes, but what if you could control your Nintendo with Play-Doh? Or make a piano from bananas?
http://www.makeymakey.com/
No sig for you! Come back one year!
If he thinks that objects everywhere will have displays his vision of the future is very limited. In the display will be always in front of our eyes similar to Google glasses, so we can have it literally ANYWHERE. This will shortly be supplanted by a neurological HUD without physical form.
And all of you running MA down have overseen the creation of much better, even world class, browser engines and finished browsers no doubt?
Really, whether you agree with MA or not, argue about the ideas, not the person. Didn't anybody, anywhere, anytime (mom, dad, teacher, mentor. professor?) ever teach you how to have a DISCUSSION? The focus of the discussion is on the ideas, not on the person. So let's reboot and try this again.
Shit! you just don't get it do you? Andressen, and what became of Netscape, are not the topic.
(actually, I liked Netscape more than anything else at the time. Then I liked Opera more. Then it fell behind and I went back to Netscape, except it was rebranded as Firefox, then I tried Chrome, then FF got better, then Chrome, then....
What was your problem to begin with? Oh, the way things change, ohhhh. And you are voting for Trump no doubt?
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.