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Clotho.Org and the Coming Cyberclysm
How to survive the coming Cyberclysm? To find a rational position between the alarmists and the utopians? Salvation may come from the menace itself.
Whatever mischief technology creates, technology can undo. The tools of our redemption - and the means of chasing off the ever-circling Luddites -- are right under our noses. Perhaps the great website of the 21st century - or even the last half of this year -- won't sell stocks or auction off goodies. It'll be an Intervention Program, something between a SuperSearch Engine and Information Foraging Site.
We need Websites that really understand us, protect us and go to bat for us. I'd call my personal version Clotho, after one of the lesser gods of Greek mythology.
The ancient Greeks are definitely the place to turn for protection against the Cyberclysm. Their poets and playwrights wrote all the time about humanity's tragic inclination to fiddle with the world and screw it up at the same time.
Clotho was one of the Fates, gods given the subtle but awesome power to decide a person's destiny. Clotho (the other two are Lachesis the measurer, and Atropos the shearer) is the spinner, who spins the threads of life.
Thunderbolt-throwers like Zeus are useless to invoke in this context, too blustery and ill-tempered. Only the Fates have the perspective required, the range of skills. They're used to sorting through complex choices. They assign men and women to lives of good and evil. They decide the length the length of human's lives.
The Fates are discreet, largely unknown, and it's never been precisely clear how far their power extends. What is known is that even the most powerful of the other Gods won't mess with them.
I imagine a Clotho program as an intermediary, standing between me, Gee Whiz Computing and technology, not so much to keep them away as to manage how much I have to deal with.
Intervention Software isn't a fantasy. It's a practical possibility with the advent of intuitive software technology and AI computing advances. Futurists from Freeman Dyson to Ray Kurzweill predict computers will be making rational, human-like decisions in a few years. We could put them to work for us.
The notion that a computing program could intervene in this way - come between us and the Cyberclysm -- and bring some sanity and coherence to an individual's experience of runaway technology and Ubiquitous Computing is hardly far-fetched.
I don't want Clotho.org to turn back the clock, just to regulate the pace of change, leave me the dignity of autonomy, and do me the courtesy of letting me check my own refrigerator for milk instead of letting a digitalized refrigerator do it.
In place of computer-equipped health-monitoring toilets, I'd just as soon retain the right to decide when and if I go to the doctor to have my bodily fluids chemically analyzed. I'd rather see technology deployed in some of the wondrous ways of the Net and Web in recent years --- the open sourcing of computing and the liberation of information, the use of supercomputing to take on social ills from cancer to Ozone, the growth of personal communications and community-building.
But we need help. This is, after all the, the job of the Fates -- to manage coherently.
Clotho.org could stand between us and Ubiquitous Computing, growling back the Microsofts, governments, media - hypemongers and arrogant hordes of programmers, gadgetmakers and marketers. Unlike information-sorting programs and sites - there are dozens - Clotho wouldn't present us with fewer choices, but making tough choices for us. She would function as our Big Sister when it comes to technology, keeping the predators away, occupying the space between humans and the new technologies scaring the hell out of them.
A vigilant Clotho would design her site along the sancrosanct principles spelled out in O'Reilly's landmark guide, "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web," a book Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. It should be the Web designer's Bible, if it isn't already, since it challenges us to put users, not makers, foremost when we think of the Web and the Net.
A Clotho site would use logic and search engine technology to brutally edit the Web, weeding out the excesses of the Cyberclysm. She'd ask hard questions. Do we need refrigerators with computer chips that will alert the local supermarket when we're out of milk? She would scare off, or at least curb, some of the worst Cyberclysm offenders, the microelectronics industry.
Is this really possible?
In his recent essay in Netfuture No. 94, [http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/stevet/netfuture/1999/Sep1499_94.html#33], Winner suggests that humanity's needs for the coming century be rated on a 1 to 10 scale.
Do we need a Palm VII, or should we stop at the Palm IV? Do we need cellphones to access sports scores on the Web as we drive home from work, or can we wait a half-hour till we get home? Clotho would ask. If not, she'd vaporize the thing, or failing that rate it 1.5. She'd keep it away from us.
Perhaps she could draw from Slashdot's amazing and elaborate discussion moderating systems (where offensive speech isn't banned but smothered in cool software programs), and meta-moderate technology for us.
We might program her to screen out anything under a 4. We'd never get the chance to buy it, or maybe even know it was out there. The Cyberclysm would recede, at least for those of us in her care.
Clotho would definitely play God (which is okay, since she is one.) We'd be presented with a handful of news stories each morning - the most significant, the most useful, the most entertaining, based on her own vision and on recognition software that comes to understand our needs, tastes and wishes. She'd rate our need for information in general on the same scale. No story, scandal, press conference, announcement or debate under a 4.0 would get by. If she'd been around, most of us might blessedly never have learned the names of William Bennett, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr, or Linda Tripp.
As far as I'm concerned, Clotho could screen out virtually every debate on every Washington talk show and the country's civic life would be improved a thousand times overnight. This means I'd almost never heard anything from Washington, a technological boon to humanity if there ever was one.
Clotho.org would also fend off much of the techno-news streaming toward us from C/Net and Wired News, and sift for technology information that we actually wanted to know. She could store information we might need to know for a later time.
She'd take revenge on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced to buy things they don't want or things they can't use, made anxious by poor instructions and buggy programs, coerced into hours and days of stressful struggles to reach people who won't take any responsibility for the things they've made and sold, who won't help people figure out how stuff works.
Clotho could be the Goddess of Unintended Consequences, forcing us to consider the implications of the things we bring into the world. Maybe she'd turn the CEO's of the most arroganant companies over to Hades (flamers, beware) for some roasting and agonies.
Clotho would be tough minded, as befits a Spinner. She would ask questions about technology and information before stuff could get past her and reach innocents like me:
l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists?
2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date?
4. Will the people who offer this product support it? Will help be available at all times?
5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction?
Clotho could slow the pace of Ubiquitous or Gee -Whiz Computing, ruling that even in the Digital Age, perhaps we can simply turn our coffeemakers on when we wake up instead of programming them. She'd put a quick, merciful end to health-checking toilets.
She'd created the mythical middle ground, missing when it comes to technology, a place where we grow, learn, and move forward in a reasoned, noncoerable, way. Such a kingdom would be a radical departure from the insane Technoville in which we now increasingly dwell.
- Seth Finkelstein
So, basically, Katz's heroic Clotho.org is an agent that will give people without self-control self-control by never exposing them to 'temptation.' They don't have to worry about losing control and impulse buying because they'll never be exposed to anything like that.
Personally, I prefer the heroic legbreaker.org. By breaking my legs repeatedly, I never have to leave my house and thus am saved from having to experience the terrible evils of the modern world -- highways, big businesses, pollution, etc. Sure, I'm crippled, but it's a small price to pay for my mental safety!
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
That's a massive cop-out. Katz thinks that he himself cannot make hard choices about technology, life, and himself, so he wants some software to make the hard choices for him. I'm amazed.
More, this software will function as a reality filter, letting only "approved" information through. I can write pages about the consequences of this, but other people, notably George Orwell, already did it much better than me. And who controls this Clotho?
No, really, I never expected to see such a horrible idea to be put forward on Slashdot. Ugh.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Agents, filters, whatever -- objects that filter out what we don't want and reshape information for us ARE useful. Little things like Junkbuster or ad-filtering proxies or custom-written programs that automatically retrieve news from web sites / mail from webmail sites are an example of this. But Katz is proposing that we need such agents, not to be able to shape our view of information (instead of having it shaped by those who provide it to us -- shaped with ads on top), but to protect ourselves from our own lack of control.
If the only thing protecting you from rampant foolish consumerism is an 'agent,' what happens when the agent is subverted? You don't even have your own foolish mistakes of the past to learn from, because you never made them - you were sheltered from all of that. (And trust me, people will find ways to subvert agents just as surely as they subvert search engines to 'pornjack' you.)
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
I already have some filtering systems that work very well. It doesn't use AI, it uses the real stuff. One is called Slashdot. I come here, where lots of interesting stuff gets posted every day. I don't have to surf the whole web, I get nice, neat little summaries of stuff that is likely to interest me. If -I- choose (not some AI program) to read more, I click a link. It's simple, effective, and evidence that the whole basis for the topic of this article is completely wrong.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
As everyone else seems dead set against this idea, let me just expound (and expand) on why I like the idea of Clothos...
I don't have time to surf the web for 8 hours a day. However I do have time to at least skim a bunch of headings and read the ones that sound interesting (slashdot anyone?)
I do know that a lot of stuff is going on that I would be interested in if I could find out more about it. Think about the things that Slashdot doesn't cover that you get sent by friends who thought that you might be interested in it.
I would like something that could sit there and scan the web and newsgroups and flag up things that would interest me. This would make things easier for me. I don't want a web site to "protect me from evil." I don't want a web site that hides things from me, and I don't want to be spoonfed "interesting stories." What I would like is "an intelligent agent" that looks for information that I would find interesting.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
Simply put, you're saying something nonhuman should control the flow of the WWW to prevent users from being overwhelmed by technology. What you're doing is putting technology in charge of something individuals themselves should take care of. You're suggesting that since we cannot control technology, then the next logical step is for technology to control us.
I say no way. It is not by dumbing down the crowd that we'll find salvation from your so-called cyberclism (buzzword). We'll find it by educating them, and showing them that standing up for their principles, to make choices free of constraints, is the way to overcome the buzz.
Tyranny by computer is tyranny nonetheless. Big Sister indeed.
A solution? The solution is already coming. It is called moderation and the gift culture. Even as companies approach, the word of mouth still manages to carry websites further than any ad banner ever can. Take a look at eBay: you don't have a rep there, you won't sell as much.
As the Internet becomes overwhelming (and I still don't think it is), it will be humans acting out as a community, moderating each other, that will filter the sensory overload and let the cream float to the top. Not some frivolous AI (b... oh alright) attempting to think like a human but yet incapable of doing so.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
As soon as there would be any such thing as chlotho, it would be chlotho.gov, not .org. The government can control the TV because there are a few people/organizations that control nearly all of the television channels. The great thing about the web (thus far) is that the government has no place to put it's spin doctors and blur the truth. If there was such a think as chlotho.gov, the government would make sure that you don't see any view other than theirs. Sad but true.
You can have your pre-chewed tasteless news if you want it, but i want the real stuff, the truth, and the uncut. If we let go of our ability to control what we see and give it up to someone else, we lose our freedom of speech. There is no happy balance. Only ignorance is bliss.
Maybe i've lost it, maybe i've listened to mancow too much, or maybe watched the matrix too many times, but i for one don't want a filter that decides what i can and can't see. That's my own decision, thank you very much.
"...and i'll get the duke, and a case of whiskey, and drive down to texas... "
Yak yak yak. Blah blah blah! I can't believe this is posted here (or that I'm replying to it). Aside from the fact that Clotho is dumb -- and if it where implemented would soon be overrun or worked around in any number of ways, Mr Katz is not taking responsibility for himself!
I hear people whining about being inundated with technology every day. If they get too desperate, or heaven forbid, ask me for advice I tell them one simple thing. GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN FOR AWHILE!!!
I've worked in the technology arena for more that 20 years. I have no cell phone, no pager, no GPS system to find me. I get my work done, and play with the technology toys that _I_ choose to on _MY_ terms in _MY_ timeframe. I also get to play with my kids, race my car, jump out of airplanes, and cook great meals. IT'S MY CHOICE!!!
GUESS WHAT! IT'S _YOUR_ CHOICE TOO!!
C'mon kids. It's just like guns or drugs or pokemon cards (or the printing press, or the telephone, or radio, or television...). You are driving. Make good choices.
And yes, this really is my standard signature below:
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, 1977
Anyway, those are some of the things this article made me think about. Perhaps Katz should have thought about those things before he published it...
human://billy.j.mabray/
human://billy.j.mabray/
"Every good system has a backup." -- Dale Hanchey
I'm sorry. I'm a bright person, but I don't think your point got across.
Are you saying you want a machine to think for you? That's what it sounds like. If so, I'd like to
recommend you read In the Beginning was the Command Line again, or for the first time.
My mind is sufficiently advanced to make decisions for me.
Finally, I think the first thing Clotho should do for you is run a grammar check on your writing. I
hate to flame like this, but I find it horribly unprofessional to be a columnist and have so many
errors in your article.
"I am not a number! I am a free man!"-- The Prisoner
Jon Katz has gone so far off the deep end there is no coming back. Was the whole point of this article telling us that someday there will be a computer to tell us when to turn our computers off? That people will be so overwhelmed with information and technology that they will need yet another piece to help them get through it all?
Aside from the horrid prose and the stunted attempt to attract the Xena crowd, basically he is saying that people should rely on some program to filter out what it thinks is meaningless or unattractive information. What's the difference between getting every bit of your news from just one newspaper, or one news-site?
Just my opinion, bad article and bad idea behind it. I'll prove him wrong...I am leaving this website right now, turning off the machine and fixing some lunch all without the help of HAL 9000.
Jon, you're a mess.
I can't resist ... the one question Jon Katz simply can't bear to even ponder is what if the "Luddites" are right? But no, that might shake our faith in technology too much. After all, "Whatever mischief technology creates, technology can undo." So, onward to more and more elaborate techno-fixes!
This is eerily reminiscent of the early nuclear power advocates, who dismissed concerns about nuclear waste with simple technological optimism. "Don't worry! Even if we don't know how to solve this problem now, we will in 20 years!"
Jon's faith that AI will Real Soon Now progress to the point that Clotho.org is implementable is touching, but the delivery of the AI promise has been worse than Microsoft's stragetic vaporware announcements, and is approaching the level of Zeno's paradox.
But let's grant that, in 2003 some genius will in fact create an AI system that can implement some sort of human-like, commonsense reasoning. Since Linux has achieved World Domination by then, let's even say they release Clotho.org under the GPL.
Would Clotho.org pass Clotho.org through her own filter?
l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists?
Define "need to know." Do most people "need to know" the latest in AI advancements? No. Do most people "need to know" which utilities are running on their computer? No.
Clotho.org, being a filter, certainly fails to inform us. And it provides a service that we can readily replicate ourselves. So Clotho.org fails this first test.
2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date?
Detecting whether a product will have unintended consequences is more than human-level reasoning, this is a deus ex machina. Most humans have trouble with this level of reasoning. And have even more trouble reaching consensus conclusions about what the "right" answer is. If we didn't, you wouldn't want to have Clotho.org in the first place.
But putting into place widespread "reality filters" ought to be almost a "gimme" for the likelihood of unindended consequences. Clotho.org fails this test.
4. Will the people who offer this product support it? Will help be available at all times?
A cynic might note that if a product needs 24x7 support, perhaps that's an argument against it? I haven't noticed support lines for shovels and hammers lately.
Assume that help is available over the 'net, and that some company offers support. Probably even the one founded by the genius who wrote Clotho.org in the first place. So I'm certain that Clotho.org would pass herself on this test.
5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction?
Again, this is (literally) a deus ex machina. Humans today have enough trouble telling their spiritual health. An AI that will be able to tell if I'm getting enough meditation and contemplation in my life? This will be quite the expert system.
Consider that part of Clotho.org's specification is
So, imagine starting your day with the equivalent of aI think Clotho.org would have to fail herself here, as well.
Since Clotho.org would clearly fail her own filter, why don't we just save everybody the trouble and simply not build her in the first place?
I think we need a "Katz' Notes" summary for Katz's articles... :-)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Most of the Technology that ends up coming out fills a nich, a want, a never ending quest for new stuff. We, as a species, are astounded by 'new stuff'.
Do you need the newest Palm? Hell no. But, do you WANT it.. Want ends up filling need. I WANT a site that can find data FOR me. Do I NEED it? No, I can pretty much 'get by' with what we have now. But once I have it, it enables me to do more.. Oh, wait, more wants.. I wish I could have a robot scoure the smart search site for things I like. OOhh.. the wants keep coming. The wants turn to needs once you rely on them..
How many people on the net can say they can find a file via archie? Or Veronica? They filled a want. They eventually became a need. When they filled the need, we had more wants, and hence, they are obsolete.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Yes yes. Subversion would be quite simple too. Remember the /. post about the india/pakistani cyberwar? What about the porn-jacking of sites that's been all over the news lately?
Say a regualar user wakes up one mroning and boots up their agent website. Suddenly Tide has a rating of a 9. Holy Shnikies! I better go buy some Tide! Oh-my-josh! Being in a Sucide Cult is now a 10!!! Where's my razor?
Something like this would definitely give rise to the cracker-for-hire industry.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Other than that obvious contradiction, I still can't figure out what's being said here. This sounds like a massive cop out on the part of Katz. He doesn't want to enforce blinds on his own activity (as evidenced by his previous article), he probably doesn't want the goverenment or a company to control what he can see, but he'll let a computer program do so? That makes no sense, so I don't think that's what he would be saying.... then what?
l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists?
You can't know that. Aside from the fact that there is no way to prove conclusively that, once and for all time a piece of information is Useful and Good or Useless and Bad (i.e. to be shown to you or not), it will limit you the mode of thought that the AI has. Think about it - if those who wrote this software considered health issues to be very important to know, then you would constantly be given health updates - which might cause certain people to become hypochondriacs. Or, if they considered product recalls past a certain level of urgency (i.e. child care equipment, cars), etc. -- seeing that information all the time might make one into a consumer advocate.
Your mind is the sum of the information that you have experienced in your lifetime, give or take a bit of magic. Turning the continued evolution of your mind over to an AI coded by other people would make your mind into a reflection of the programmers who wrote that AI.
Wouldn't it?
2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date?
Sexual reproduction has unintended concequences - copying errors produce genetic mutations. These 'unintended concequences' allow evolution.
5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction? through?
Human beings (of the class that you're talking about here - you only seem concerned about the fate of middleclass technocrats) can easily get the time and peace for a spirtual dimension in thier lives - if they care enough to have one. If they don't, well, then no amount of peace and quiet will give them one. It will just make them bored.
You can't make people happy if they don't want to be happy.
Part 1: Cyberclysm
/., and gets caught up in a confusing technology induced downward spiral of Katzian techno-babble overload. Becoming paranoid, Katz fears that Big Brother is hiding in his toilet.
Katz makes the mistake of reading and responding to his own article on
Part 2: Clotho
Afraid of technology taking over his life, Kats proposes an AI agent, Clotho, to take over his life. He hopes that Clotho will provide him with a low tech toilet.
The problem isn't that too much information is available, it's that too much is being shoved in our faces, and that the purpose of this information is not to inform but deceive.
One effect of our ad-driven society is the disconnect between quality/price and number of sales. You see this in the number of shoddy products that have somehow emerged as leader in their field. Ads are breaking capitalism's feedback mechanism in the service of profiteering. It is no longer possible to pretend that the best product wins. It's the best marketed product that is functionally adequate.
Another is the ill-feeling towards progress pointed out by Katz. The ads show beautiful people in beautiful places doing quite wonderful things. This does sell product, else billions wouldn't be spent on it. But as much as they buy, people still don't get this wonderful life. Of course people conciously know that buying the product won't improve their quality of life significantly, but I believe there is subconcious resentment and dissatisfaction that expresses itself as general cynicism and anger towards our commercial society.
Many have bemoaned the fall of journalism, and indeed this is a scary sign in a democracy or republic. But what happened to it? News was repurposed to package advertising. This role reversal, ads being the message and news the carrier, is why quality journalism and investigative reporting are so rare. You don't need a quality news product, just something eye catching and entertaining... and cheap.
Major news outlets will not (and cannot) serve the same vertical markets that /. speaks to (and for). Conversely, /. cannot provide a news digest readily accessible to the common mass audience. If I only read /., then I would not be able to keep up with theater or movies other than SF. One needs a collection of trusted news and analysis sources on various topics of interest. IDIC, as Spock would say.
But Katz has really missed the boat on this one. Intelligent agents are a good thing, but they cannot be all-powerful (top-down editorializing) or exclusive ("I get everything I need to read on allthenews.com!").
The greatest thing we have going for us is community.
Ebay is as successful as it is, not because of technical prowess :), but rather, because of the Web of Trust (tm). You may not know dave123, but 120 other folks say he's alright to deal with. Similarly, I've noticed /. comments that I really jive with, consistantly from the same authors. Maybe I'd be interested in dave123's (here as a /. ID) bookmark list. Maybe I'd like to know which articles dave123 thought were worthy of "Reading More" on. But that, of course, is far too granular a view -- I want an agent that allows me to add dave123 to my Buddy Web with a given weight and compute dave123's habits together with tom456, dick78 and harry9.
Before all you privacy nuts whip out your flame-throwers, let me add that dave123 has volunteered to share his clicks with the world. Or alternatively, by logging in on /., dave123 has given Rob the right to log his access and share his profile with other /.ers. This would have to be an opt-in selection. Happy now?
I am also aware that this has been tried in a more general sense, most notably by Alexa (which then got incorporated into Netscape). The difference is that Alexa didn't let you choose your community. There was/is one whole Net community. When you work with something so amorphous, you can't help it if you get tapioca.
Specialized interests demand specialized communities. I, for one, am willing to share my habits to create greater mindshare for my interests. Are you?
- Richie
And then sell that data to the marketdroids no doubt. The company I work for has a similar policy, they want to make it easier to surf the net by getting these software agents to get to know you. I'm constantly on the look out for abuses, and have staved a couple off already, much to the distaste of the marketting dept. I don't even win all the time.
Cloth-eared more like. Sorry, that was pointless. You want to block it out so it's like I never said it? You want to block out the replies to that, and the whole tree of information that could develop below it? What if Chemical analysing toilets notice a trend in those who do buy them which indicates, when combined with data from that magic fridge, that eating beef that's too fresh gives you migranes or whatever. You want that blocked too? You'd have to learn about the toilets to understand it Katz.
AND THAT CAME TRUE! We're ALL DEAD NOW! Jesus. It was four thousand years ago for god's sake, surely it says more about the constant of human paranoia than any factual destructive drive?
Obvious nit picking here but since when have human-like decisions been rational? Humans are the ones who keep trying to ban good stuff like INFORMATION and even BEER. I imagine these computers, which will one day be built I fear, will be very good at keeping people isolated, far away from the terror of desenting opinion. As long as they want it I guess I have no problem with people trying to drag their childhood out to last their whole life but putting your cloth-eared program in place of their parents. People like cotton-wool. I'm not sure I'd call it wise or rational to stay wrapped up in it though.
Do you really not see the inconsistancy here? You want an autonomous agent to take care of decisions for you so you can take care of them for yourself?
When I read part one I wondered if your TV had an off switch or not, I wondered if you were contractually obliged not to throw it out of the window. Apparently you are. I can only assume you signed up to six years worth of adverts so you could get a free WebTV or something.
And your method to do this is to buy an analytical toilet anyway, presumably because you don't know how to not respond to an advert, then let ClothEared turn it off for you to save you some embarasement? Don't buy one Katz
Well, you sure seem to. Sorry. That was pointless and childish. Still, Clotho can always filter it for you.
You know what I use to stand between me and "Ubiquitious Computing"? I walk away from the machine every lunchtime and go read a book in the pub for an hour. Then of an evening I don't watch TV (Threw the thing out a few months ago. It's just rubbish these days, I can tell that for myself see, I don't need ClothEars to do it for me.) I play around with lego or read some more or TALK TO MY FRIENDS or whatever. You remind me of people who say things like "I wouldn't like being on the dole coz I'd be bored" which just makes me stare at them blankly. You need a Boss to tell you what to do to stop being bored? There's a whole world out there to explore. Just the local library would take a lifetime.
How does some machine making some choices for you manage NOT to reduce the choices you have? Oh, I see, it might take away the choice between, say, Mac and Windows, but it adds a choice of which colour to get the Windows box in?
Erm, I'm begining to think Katz is just trolling us you know. Is there going to be a part three saying "See, I've described the nighmare dystopia that censorship could bring, isn't that more scary than technology?" - it scares me a lot more.
I still don't see how denying yourself even the information that a product exists helps you unless you're too stupid to realise for yourself that you don't need one.
Leaving only those who care about these things to discuss them? Where's the agrument going to come from? If the only people who learned about these pointless things were the moralists, wouldn't the moralists be more likely to have gotten their way? If I never learn of a threat to my safety am I really safer? If I'm told not to be scared of technology by ClothDoll should I just relax knowing she's right?
I doubt it would do political debate much good, I doubt it would improve the way you're governed. It wouldn't actually make you safer, it would make you less safe because you'd be comfortable in your own ignorance.
You saw it here first folks! Turkeys actually arguing in favour of Xmas.
Where the hell are all these people? Name a product you've been forced to buy which you can't use or didn't want? Tell us exactly how "they" forced you. Yeah, I've failed to properly research stuff and bought, for instance, the wrong digital camera. How restricting the information available to me would have make that better I can't imagine.
You can't do that already? I thought the flashing 12:00 problem pretty much forced most people into that anyway. Never had a coffee maker so I dunno.
You're obsessed with these things. I bet you buy one. Really. I bet you end up with two in your house. You clearly can't stop thinking about them.
I feel as though I've responded to a troll. I really do. I can't believe anyone here would agree with a word you've said. I feel like I've just responded to a "ABORTION IS MURDER" post in a pro-choice usenet group. The only people who might need any of this ClothMinded crap are people so suggestable and dumb they'd feel lonely using JunkBuster coz they'd miss that monkey fellow. I'm not sure people that easily convinced to buy rubbish wouldn't actually set that Bagpuss or Old Cloth Cat or whatever to fetch more ads for them anyway. Just because the crap is technocrap doesn't make it harder to refuse, doesn't make it harder to throw away and makes it a hell of a lot easier to let the batteries run out or turn it off.
Well, the two articles do seem to paint a rosy picture of the future. Wheather you have a computer tell you what to buy, or your next cell phone will be able to wipe that bit of spicy brown mustard from your chin, we're apparently all going to Hell.
;)
But what about the possibility of self-correction within the system? Hmmm? It's possible. Happens all the time in other systems.
Do I need to have sports scores on my phone? Nope. not big on sports. Does my roomate who loves Notre Dame football? Yes. Would I like slashdot headlines sent to my pager? Sure. And I think you would too
Eventually people will learn that the newest fastest thing is not necessarilly the best thing, and will start to control their spending.
Also keep in mind that the people that buy all these new fangeled cellphone ans such are a Minority of the population. Most people really don't care. They want a tv, vcr, cable, and a phone. So the Palm has sold a couple of million units. That's nothing compared to the 250+ million people in the USA
We are a part of that Minority, so our views on the matter are biased. We see and hear about every new thing that comes down the pipe. By the time one item makes or breaks it, most of the time we're focusing on the next thing that is almost ready, and forget about the last one.
Did this whole issue arise becuase we are blinded by our own interests? Or is it real?
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
geesh. The ideas that come up around here.
-- Slashdot sucks.
It sounds like the system that Mr. Katz has decided to call Clotho (Cool name, BTW.) is designed to perform two seperate functions. It's a technology filter, searching the hard and soft to decide what new gadgets and tools you actually need; at the same time Clotho can act as an information filter, determining what new ideas you are exposed to. Conspiracy theories aside, there are some interesting things that Clotho could do, but I think Katz is overlooking systems that we have right now that perform much of the functionality of Clotho.
/. know that there is so much new information available each day that it is not possible for any one person to scan all of it. You might think that this is due to the internet, but you would be wrong. Back in the bad old days we used to get our information through newspapers, and I would bet that not a single person has ever sat down and read every page of the Sunday edition of a major newspaper.
/. editors, who put it in a place where I can find it. Likewise, most readers here probably don't listen to NPR in the morning, but I do, and if there are any stories that would be interesting to the /. crowd I'll send them off to the editors. Slashdot functions like an anthill, where each ant scurries off to there own little corner of the kitchen to search for tasty bits of food which they bring back home.
Got Bits?
Let's take the second feature of Clotho first - the agent as an information filter. All of us on
The problem with a system like Clotho is that it would have to be tuned to my personal information tastes, which would be very difficult. What I would rather have is a system that does not make decisions for me, but one which let's me associate with a group of other people who have similar tastes in information as me. In this idealized system we would each scan a managable subset of the total news feeds and send interesting stories to each other as we come across them. Rather than forcing the technology into a role for which it is not suited, parsing news, in this system we would use people to find interesting news and use technology for something it _is_ good for, transmitting that information among people.
The system described above is more or less the same as Slashdot. I don't personally read the EETimes, but I don't need to becasue there is a group of people out there who do, and they send interesting tidbits to the
Next - Clotho as a technology filter.
Unlike the idea of an information filter, which is, in my biased opinion, a Good Thing (tm), the idea of having an agent stand between me a new technology is silly. Katz make it seem like we are all literaly drowning in a flood of new tech, frantically gasping for air as we sink into a quicksand pit of mobile phones, PDA's, and web-enabled running shoes. This is just not true.
Sure, I think that we all find the net-ready fridge is silly, but we have market forces that will take care of these things. If nobody buys it, it will smoothly fade into the background of failed gadgets and dissapear from our lives. And even if there are enough consumers out there who really do want a WebFridge (/. readers, no doubt.) that does not mean that _you_ have to buy one. Every person retains the magical ability to say "This is a piece of shit and I'm not buying one." Ta da! Problem solved.
If you want to be highly wired, then do it. Go on, proudly stuff that wireless, stereo, color LCD, Java enabled, PalmSuppository up your bum each morning and be secure in the knowledge that you can have stock quotes transmitted directly to your rectum wherever you are. But if you don't want to, then don't, and don't feel bad about it.
Recap.
Distributed human news filtering == good.
Machine processed news filtering == bad.
Technology filtering == silly.
Making your own choices in life == priceless.
Some things are priceless. For everything else, use your own goddammed judgment.
-shane glynn
In the past, I've enjoyed JonKatz' work. He's presented quite a few very interesting, and sometimes powerful, articles and resulting discussions (see the Hellmouth series for an example of that).
But this... this is absolutely disgusting.
A "reality filter"? Sure, one heck of a nice concept. But who do you think would be pulling the strings? Not the individual, I can tell you that right now. This is exactly the sort of thing governments would leap at and latch onto. Katz' comparison of Clotho to a "Big Sister" is horrifyingly accurate, in more ways than one.
I seriously hope Katz was merely playing Devil's Advocate with this article. If not, I think it can be safely concluded that he's lost his mind. To advocate the denial of free will and rationality to the human mind... it goes against everything the geek community stands for, not to mention everything Katz himself has written about on Slashdot in the past.
Only one thing can determine what is fit and proper for a person to see: that person (or, in the case of a young child, that child's parents). Not a computer program, not a governmental authority, and certainly not anyone else. A person who considers himself incapable of doing this for himself desperately needs psychatric treatment. Reality is not a game. It cannot be filtered out via a program. It has to be taken and dealt with as it comes; nothing is ever going to change that fact.
This is not intended as an inflammatory comment, but I agree and I feel there were some extreme lapses of logic in this article... I think it missed the point entirely and didn't really suggest a solution.
Clotho wouldn't present us with fewer choices, but making tough choices for us.
She would function as our Big Sister...
Becasue, of course, that is sooooo much better than a Big Brother!
A Clotho site would use logic and search engine technology to brutally edit the Web...
Haven't we been fighting against this sort of censorship? Again, who writes the program, who decides what gets edited, who decides how to rate it?
Do we need cellphones to access sports scores on the Web as we drive home from work,
or can we wait a half-hour till we get home? Clotho would ask.
NO, of course not, do you really need a program, website or other entity to tell you that?
She'd take revenge on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced to buy things
they don't want or things they can't use
FORCED? C'mon, these people have just bought into marketing...they don't need a Software Goddess(tm) to take revenge, they need to wake up and think about what the PR are departments are spoon-feeding them, and then choke on it, and spit it out!
Clotho could be the Goddess of Unintended Consequences, forcing us to consider the
implications of the things we bring into the world. Maybe she'd turn the CEO's of the
most arroganant companies over to Hades (flamers, beware) for some roasting and agonies.
Does this really SAY anything or contribute any useful ideas? This among other points, doesn't seem to refer to anything except a descent into metaphor.
perhaps we can simply turn our coffeemakers on when we wake up instead of programming
them. She'd put a quick, merciful end to health-checking toilets.
Again, why do we need this Software Goddess(tm) to make these decisions? If you have the common sense to see how ludicrous a health-checking-toilet is, don't you have enough to decide that you don't want to BUY one?! And if you want that extra ten minutes sleep then you can program your coffee maker...or if you don't, you can buy a non-programmable coffee maker!
And here begins my rant...
What good would this serve us? If we can't make these decisions to filter on our own, we have more troubles than a programmed goddess can solve! Humans need to become more self sufficient with information, not less.
Many people are already fooled into believing that a 30 second story on the news can give them all the information they need! We need to control the Fate of our information ourselves.
Programs can never have the same judgement, compassion or empathy as a human, and we need to exercise our humanity in this technology saturated future, not subdue it under the dominion of regulatory technology.
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
because it would probably be a lot of fun to figure out ways to subvert Clotho and force the zombie sheep to face the very things they have programmed it to avoid.
Jon is saying that the way to avoid over-dependence on the complexity of technology, is to subjugate ourselves to a technology that would make rational decisions for us?
Isn't that like smashing your thumb with a sledge-hammer to avoid the risk of injury while driving in nails?
Tsk-tsk Jon. Whatever you're on, send some my way.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Katz does it again. Explain it to me as if I'm a two year old - What difference does Clotho have with a premodernistic amorphous censorship? Strip away the sugar coated features, and oops! Clotho is just making premanufactured 'perfect' people! People who like the same thing. People who aren't "distracted" by those silly little news stories Clotho doesn't see fit for us to spend time on. Heaven forbid! I bought an clotho-illegal gadget today! *gasp*
See life not for the generic 'right' way of doing things, but instead for the potential to do whatever you want. Maybe I'll make a few mistakes, but at least they'll be my own. When given the choice of choice, I choose choice.
Tain't much, but that's what it does. I wrote it because I needed it. It's a Mac program as that's what I wake up to :) hey, that means Jon could run it! Here it is: :)
http://www.airwindows.com/s hareware/staccato/index.html
It's going to be relocating fairly soon for various reasons- first, I'm doing a major site overhaul to free up some space and re-organize, and second, I'm putting it at root level because it's essentially free software, and it's kind of ludicrous to suggest voluntary shareware payment. Nobody's ever given me a dime for any of my GPLed stuff (though I have to blame lack of publicity first), and even the words 'shareware' and 'GPL' don't really go together. So Staccato is no longer going to be contained in a directory called 'Shareware'.
Anyway- I use this daily. It's the equivalent of keeping a long list with date-equivalences, and then showing a MOTD every day with only those entries significant to that day, sorted by priority. I think the significance of this is in the parsing- you can do many things, but the main rule is this- date to the left of a parenthetical number, entry to the right. Like(2)this. I think that would be parsed as 'no valid date, show every day' at priority level 2, and would say 'this.'.
It's a 'Clotho', but a totally unjudgemental one. It's my tool for offloading some of the stuff I need to keep track of- _it_ will keep track of that, and I can trust it to be predictable and reliable. Jon seems to want a robot to be judgemental for him. He can't have that (in any reasonable form), but he can run this anytime he wants- it's GPL but he won't even need a port as it originated on the Mac. (Actually it'd be a port to Windows (which I'm not going to do), for Linux it would be a slightly elaborate shell script, nothing more- wouldn't even require a _program_. The only suggestion I'd make is this- keep the parsing functionality the way it is, it's like that for a reason. You should only have to remember one rule, the 'date(priority)entry' rule, with no other restrictions on syntax.
If anybody wants to go implement this on Linux before I get around to doing it, go get 'em- I'll probably use your conversion
Uh- 'Farenheit 451' IS fiction. It doesn't really exist. You can look at the ideas of it, but you can't look where that society ended up because there was no society to look at- there's just the book.
Distinguish more rigorously between reality and fiction....
I have just such a thing. I call it the combination of my taste, my common sense, and my discrimination.
I don't want a computer or a website (or whatever Jon Katz meant -- it's not clear) to make the tough choices for me. That would be giving in to technology and allowing it to master me, instead of the other way around.
"But there is so much information out there! It has to be filtered somehow!" (imaginary response)
True... but there's already more information than any one person can handle. We passed that point with the Library at Alexandria. I suppose we'll just have to deal with it.
Once someone demonstrates a working Autonomous Intelligent Agent with fuzzier logic than strict SQL, maybe it'll be time to re-evaluate my position. Until then, I'll make my own decisions, thank you very much.
--
QDMerge 0.21!
how to invest, a novice's guide
What if the only refrigerators available on the markert were WebFridges? At that point, your "choice" is to (a) get a WebFridge or (b) learn why they used to be called "iceboxes."
I run into this all the time with children's toys. I would like to be able to buy simple, classic, durable toys for my kids that aren't
- cartoon ads
- V-Tech "speech enhanced"
- beschpreckled mit der blinkenlights und der bleepinklangen
- cheap plastic sh** that breaks in two days
The problem is that "the market" has decided to stock the shelves otherwise, and I'm not a skilled enough woodworker to create them myself. We have been able to find toys that we like for the kids, but it has involved much searching and extra expen$e.The Amish experience this on a much more profound scale. There are a few places like Lehman's which stock items which the Amish consider "appropriate technology," but in a number of ways, the Amish struggle to determine their own technology destiny against the overwhelming tide of the "English".
Jon Katz wrote about Clotho.org being a "non-coercive" way to restrain technology. I can only assume that he considers any attempt to say "let's decide not to pursue technology X" to be "coercive" to the technophiles who want to be Wired To The Max. What he fails to consider is the coercive nature of a society hell-bent on implementing all that is possible and profitable for those who wish to walk a different path. But I guess such "Luddites" aren't worthy of consideration.
In response to both parts of the "Cyberclysm" series: (the > symbol denotes Katz's comments, and the * symbol denotes my comments) >Even now, nobody can really keep up, and only a few can even fake it. Everyone is frantic, stressed, tethered, broke or worn out trying to manage. We are bombarded by inventions and advances we might not need or understand, that move more quickly and do more things than we want, that we can barely grasp, let alone service or repair. *While I would wholeheartedly agree with the fact that the average American's life's complexities have most decidedly multiplied exponentially since the time of the subsistance farmer, it is foolhardy to assume that "keeping up" would be ANYONE's goal. With the advent of efficient communications, humans have adapted and developed an ability that would have been of little use in previous civilizations. This ability is known in modern vernacular as "tuning out." If we are not interested in something, or we think it is superfluous, we ignore it. I doubt that humans feel much more intimidated by the abundance and prevalence of technology than they would feel in the face of any other mountain of information with which they have little experience, be it philosophy, math, or any other discipline. >Author James Gleick in "Faster" complains that technology is forcing everything to move too quickly. In his new collection of essays, Arthur C. Clarke writes "I have seen the future and it doesn't work." *Unfortunately, I've not read either work, so I can't comment. >The typical twenty-first-century person's day, he predicts, will include: "Skimming five hundred channel program listings, two hours; viewing television programs selected, four hours; catching up on recorded programs, six hours; exploring the hyperweb, six hours; and adventuring in artificial reality, four hours." He didn't even mention checking e-mail, answering fax-spewing and stock-listing cellphones, or responding to pagers and beepers. >This is, of course, satire; and, as satire, it is completely, utterly absurd. Most of what is mentioned deals with communication. It might be important to remember that it is only through these "complicated" means of communication which were undoubtedly considered to be "advances we might not need or understand" that KATZ's opportunity to write to us exists. >Neo-Luddite Kirkpatrick Sale goes further, warning in his books that technology is destroying the world. He wants us to smash our computers to save the planet. *A) This radical action is not very different than burning books, if treated a certain way. If one were to really examine the purpose of computers, one would begin to see that their purpose centers around the facilitation of sharing and storing of information, in one form or another. From playing games to email, from desktop publishing to networking, from accounting and database programs to web surfing, etc. these are all related in one way or another to the proliferation of information. That information may not be useful or important to everyone, but it must be important to somebody or IT WOULDN'T EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE. B)"Saving the planet" sounds grand and many people spout that phrase as their intention, but it is meaningless. I can bet that Sale doesn't really care about the planet, not in abstract he doesn't. He only wants to see planet and, more to the point, civilization conform to the model HE deems best. How noble. >In his apocalyptic new dirge "Staring Into Chaos," author Bruce Brander proclaims that western civilization itself is coming to an end. *I would hope so. The time for a WORLD civilization is nye. The establishment of worldwide communications help to make that finally possible. >The term Ubiquitous Computing is technological historian Langdon Winner's, who in Netfuture... warns that society is drowning in a wave of absurd and unnecessary appliances and electronics, continuously and wastefully cranked out by some of the best minds alive. *Of course these items are unnecessary. So is your car. So is the furnace in your house. We could survive without these just as many people survived without them before they were invented, and just as many people still do today. Absurd? Well, that depends on what you define as absurd technology. Many people (often of older generations) would argue that they got along perfectly well with their businesses before computers, and they do not understand why we "need" them now. It is all about efficiency. Are computers more efficient? I say yes, although like any tool, it takes time to learn how to use them, they can break down, and not all computers are equal. The same applies to other "appliances and electronics." Not all these tools are as useful as one would like, but hey, were the first cars all that useful? That is what innovation is all about: you might not get it perfect the first time, you might not have even come up with a useful invention, and maybe no one will want it. If it is absurd, then it won't sell (not much anyway). Finally, "wastefully?" We live in a society where you can buy silly string, edible underwear, pez dispensors, and beanie babies; and he is just NOW complaining about wastefulness? >Winner, a critic of the Wired-era hype about the Internet and networked computing, exults in what he perceives as a growing realization that Ubiquitous Computing isn't making life simpler or better, but harder, more expensive and chaotic: *One might say that about all technology. Cars are a prime example. What American hasn't complained about car troubles? If he wants to live in a cave and walk everywhere (because horses would be just as pesky, if not more) then that is his choice. It might not be a rational choice, but it is his freedom nonetheless (Ted Kazinsky anybody?). >"Simplify. Save time. Reduce effort. Liberate yourself from toil. This has been the continuing siren song of consumer technology through the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in its own terms, the dream is always self-defeating. As people add more and more time-saving, labor-saving equipment to their homes, their lives do not become simpler and easier. Instead their days become even more complicated, demanding and rushed." *Why are our lives more demanding, rushed? Could it be that we have the opportunity to do more with our lives than ever before. I can guarantee that the subsistance farmer was not rushed like the average businessman. As we do more, we begin to want to do more than that. We realize that the possibilities endless, and we want to have those stock quotes a button away, because information has become key. The gradual migration of the focus of our lives away from the muscular to the cerebral is to be considered an evolutionary step forward, not a fatal mistake. As for our lives being more demanding I have to points. A) We make that choice. As our education increases, the demands we place on ourselves increase too. There are real reasons why time saving devices sell. B) Are our lives more demanding than the subsistence farmer? Or maybe just different. I don't have to go plow a field all day and pray that the weather is right so i can feed my family. This is made possible by people who decided there had to be a better way to do something, and so they invented an "unnecessary" device. >A disclaimer here : I don't share Winner's summary view of computing. For me, appliances, hardware and software are the least interesting aspects of technology. For me, the siren song would be: Speak and Think Freely. Connect. Learn, and Share What You Learn. Then learn and share more. Grow. For me, this promise has been fulfilled, a thousand times over. *If Katz don't agree with Winner's view, why is Katz using it using it in this article? If it does not illustrate what katz is trying to say, then why include it at all? >But Winner, one of the sharpest thinkers about technology in American society, does have a point. We are making a lot more things than we demonstrably need. We give far more thought to making and marketing them than we do to whether they are truly useful. TV's and sound systems, watches that monitor global time zones, multi-function phones - keep adding features daily, many of them of doubtful necessity to most of the people who buy them. One ad blanketing commercial TV touts new wireless phone technology that will allow people to get their e-mail, weather and sports scores instantly from anywhere. Does anybody really need to be that wired? *I refer to my argument on "necessary." Also, Katz is really complaining about the whole theory of capitalism with the advent of advertising. This is not specific to technology. Breakfast cereals, anyone? >Even the most ardent geeks complain that they can never be out of touch, never have time to think, never completely catch up. As the world is able to reach us more easily, it expects us to be always available and more or less instantly responsive. This rushes us and our responses. It makes us edgy, grumpy, impulsive. Technology becomes a means of harassing and pressuring us instead of improving our lives. The genuine blessings of technology - information, opportunity, community, the portability of work - get overlooked in all the gadgetry. *Again, every one of the technologies Katz attribute to providing "informatino, opportunity," etc., were considered "gadgetry" when they were first introduced. As for the never having time to think, etc., this is why we can "tune out." Our environment has changed, and we are adapting, just like any other organism. As we and the world get more in touch, it reaffirms that we are ceasing to be completely solitary individuals, but instead members of a functioning civilization. Finally, in the words of George Carlin, "Did ya know there are two knobs on a radio, minister? One of them turns it off...AND THE OTHER ONE CHANGES THE STATION!!!" >All labor-saving devices don't necessarily improve the quality of life. Autonomous human beings can - and maybe should - take responsibility for the smaller details of life. After all, these labor saving devices require considerable labor: they need installation, adjustment, repairs and replacement - often at considerable time, cost and annoyance. There are enormous ecological consequences as well, to making so much plastic and metal, so many wires and chips. *Again, innovation is not always perfect. Almost never, in fact. It is a judgement we are required to make; is the effort it takes to use this device more than the effort required to do the task myself without the device. As for the ecological consequences, why is plastic so hateful? We are not creating anything, really. We are simply shuffling around different configurations of atoms, and it is only a matter of time before we learn how to unshuffle them effectively. Recycling aluminum cans is only the tip of the iceburg concerning what we will be able to do in the future. >Newsweek enthused last week, in a gee-whiz cover story about how the Internet is changing our lives, that tomorrow's automatic coffee maker will have access to our online schedule so it can automatically withhold the brew if we're out of town. This is by -now - instantly-recognizable media language of Technohype, computing and technology wrongly presented as a barrage of gizmos with chips that do things we can just as (or more) easily do for ourselves. *An internet-ready coffee maker is probably just as absurd as it sounds. Consequently, it probably won't catch on. That is how innovation works. Practical technology is just that: gizmos, chips, etc.. If we find that doing it ourselves works better, then that determines the success of the technology. And practical technology is what we are concerned with. If a theoretical technology (a.k.a. a concept with technological applications) never makes it into practice, then it is useless for anything other than brain aerobics. >But if the laws governing technology are unpredictable, those governing capitalism are unwavering: What is made must be sold and, therefore, hyped. *I agree. Capitalism is anything BUT rational. Advertising is all about creating need, or at least the semblance of it. But that is a deeper evil that what we are discussing here. >Such overheated predictions don't evoke the future so much as the past. Remember Walt Disney's Tomorrowland with its notions of intergalactic travel, hover cars, people movers and other things that still don't exist? We may be closer to genetically engineering perfect humans, or even curing cancer, but we still can't cure the cold or come up with a practical battery-powered car, or make computers that don't drive the people using them nuts. *Well, without these outlandish ideas, these theoretical technologies, then we would never have had practical technologies like the satellite (which, interestingly enough, Arthur C. Clark invented in the 1940's). Also, as for the curing the common cold and battery cars, Katz is hitting on a major flaw in capitalism. There is absolutely NO money in cures. Not comparatively. The multi-billion dollar industries of cold medicine and gasoline would collapse if we no longer needed their products. Consequently, a good investment for a gasoline company would be to buy off those well-meaning alternative energy source innovators. Sad. >Alas -- according to almost every business or marketing projection, R&D labs will usher in the Millenium by making the creation and sales of info-gadgets and appliances an even greater preoccupation of the next century. *Probably true, only I don't shudder at the prospect. I have owned for 8 years one model or another of a casio watch that stores my phone numbers. I love it. Some might consider that superfluous. I have DECIDED that it is extremely useful and would rather have it than not. It is not NECESSARY, but it is so useful that i love it. >On the East Coast (where I live), in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, one little-noticed consequence of the storm was that power interruption rendered cordless telephones useless even if the phone lines were functioning. Moreover, the flooding of an AT&T installation in New Jersey knocked out hundreds of thousands of cellphones. For a few days, the only phones that worked were the Lo-tech sort, the non-electronic, non-digital kind that plugged into the wall jack, receivers attached to the base with curly cords. That's as apt a metaphor for the coming Cyberclysm as any. Perhaps the survivors will be the people with the simplest, not the most sophisticated, machines. *This is true of all technology. If suddenly there was no gasoline and no gasoline alternative, then those who only ride bikes (if that is not to hi-tech for them) and ride horses would be the only ones who could effectively ambulated larger distances. Does this make them superior? >Whose responsibility is all this? Nobody's, of course. Technology has a mind, life and direction all of its own. It's inherently uncontrollable, even if anybody was up to trying. *The same could be said of amassed human knowledge. People have tried. They burn books and prohibit the theory evolution from being taught in schools. >But some of the fault lies in the way our institutions - education, politics, media - deal with technology. We're trapped between two useless states - alarm and euphoria. Either we are railing about pornography, disconnection, and addiction or we are banging the drums for Gee-Whiz Computing that exists much more for its own sake than for our benefit. Like cell phones that receive faxes in taxicabs or 21st century toilets that will monitor the family's health through chemical sampling of fecal matter, or mirrors over bathroom sinks that flash the day's headlines, so nobody in the family has to wait until they get downstairs to get the news, if their wireless phone hasn't already alerted them. *Humans fear change and at the same time embrace it. All progress brings with it negative consequences. It is how we deal with those negative consequences (assuming that they are negative and not just so unfamiliar that they invoke fear) that determines the success of a civilization. >Perhaps the idea that there are people who keep up with all this stuff is in itself a technological myth. *Could anyone say that they know everything there is to know about mathematics? Philosophy? Technology is no different. >Clarke warns that we're headed for a Cyberclysm (he and others have used the word), a catastrophic collision between computers, technology and humanity. We won't be consumed by evil aliens or runaway AI machines, as sci-fi futurists have long predicted. Instead, we'll conquer ourselves with too much information about too many things and too many appliances performing too many services. *Interesting prediction. We will see. For my part, I think that it will be a self righting system. When we get too much information, we "tune out." When the gadgets aren't worth it, we don't buy them. >Clarke has written often of the pitfalls of the Dream Machine, the seductive idea that gadgets will run the world and monitor the most intimate details of our lives while we are free to enjoy ourselves. *Well, that would be an end of progress, now wouldn't it? If all we did was pursue what fills our appetites for pleasure, we would then cease to find them pleasurable. For an activity to be truely worthwhile, it must be an end in and of itself. If the activity is merely a means to some other end, then it won't be truly pleasurable. If one's job is simply a method of getting money so that one can enjoy something else, then the job won't be pleasurable, will it? If pleasure for someone consists only of entertainment, sex, food, drink, etc., then the dream machine society would work for that person. I postulate that the dream machine society could never come into being simply because humans would not be content to do nothing. The american dream of making money so one can enjoy oneself is false. This has been proven over and over again by rich, unhappy people. Devoting oneself to seeking pleasure does NOT make one happy, so we humans would never REALLY want the "dream machine." Ask Aristotle. >"There have been many science fiction stories," writes Clarke, "about frantic human attempts to unplug disobedient computers. The real future might involve exactly the opposite scenario. The computers may unplug us." And, he adds: "it would serve us right." *Read Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot." The model for his robots is more likely how it would come to be. >That leaves most of us holding the bag, confronted with two noxious choices: to fall back with the hare-brained Luddites who want to return to the sylvan forests, or to follow the Techno-Utopians on their runaway CyberBinge. *I argue that the Cyberbinge is not so heinous as Katz makes it out to be. Of course there has to be moderation, but I propose that that will come about naturally, and that it is not something to be all that alarmed about. I also find it hard to believe that digital wristwatches and cordless phones with added features will be the downfall of this civilization. There are MANY more likely candidates. If a Cyberclysm is a candidate at all, it is definitely a fair distance down the list, right along side the earth spontaneously exploding. >End Part One. >Part Two: How to stave off the Coming Cyberclysm, to find some rational choice besides the backwards-looking Luddites and the Gee-Whiz Techno-Heads who dominate discussions about technology? Only the Gods can help, and I might have found one who will (one of the Fates, as it happens), with the help of AI computing advances and intuitive software. How to survive the coming Cyberclysm? To find a rational position between the alarmists and the utopians? Salvation may come from the menace itself. *Okay, assuming that a "Cyberclysm" is a viable possibility... >Whatever mischief technology creates, technology can undo. The tools of our redemption - and the means of chasing off the ever-circling Luddites -- are right under our noses. Perhaps the great website of the 21st century - or even the last half of this year -- won't sell stocks or auction off goodies. It'll be an Intervention Program, something between a SuperSearch Engine and Information Foraging Site. *Hmm, like slashdot? >We need Websites that really understand us, protect us and go to bat for us. I'd call my personal version Clotho, after one of the lesser gods of Greek mythology. The ancient Greeks are definitely the place to turn for protection against the Cyberclysm. Their poets and playwrights wrote all the time about humanity's tragic inclination to fiddle with the world and screw it up at the same time. Clotho was one of the Fates, gods given the subtle but awesome power to decide a person's destiny. Clotho (the other two are Lachesis the measurer, and Atropos the shearer) is the spinner, who spins the threads of life. Thunderbolt-throwers like Zeus are useless to invoke in this context, too blustery and ill-tempered. Only the Fates have the perspective required, the range of skills. They're used to sorting through complex choices. They assign men and women to lives of good and evil. They decide the length the length of human's lives. The Fates are discreet, largely unknown, and it's never been precisely clear how far their power extends. What is known is that even the most powerful of the other Gods won't mess with them. I imagine a Clotho program as an intermediary, standing between me, Gee Whiz Computing and technology, not so much to keep them away as to manage how much I have to deal with. *KATZ IS POSTING ON ONE!!! They exist all over the net, and they do not just deal with technology. Name a division of knowledge, and you can find an "intermediary" specific to it. >Intervention Software isn't a fantasy. It's a practical possibility with the advent of intuitive software technology and AI computing advances. Futurists from Freeman Dyson to Ray Kurzweill predict computers will be making rational, human-like decisions in a few years. We could put them to work for us. *Isn't that exactly what Katz is scared of? Isn't a machine that makes our decisions for us FAR more heinous than just producing gadgets we can CHOOSE or not CHOOSE to buy? >The notion that a computing program could intervene in this way - come between us and the Cyberclysm -- and bring some sanity and coherence to an individual's experience of runaway technology and Ubiquitous Computing is hardly far-fetched. *If this machine is "making rational, human-like decisions" for us, isn't that just one step closer to this "dream machine" of which Arthur C. Clarke warned us? Sounds like a voluntary step toward this "Cyberclysm." >I don't want Clotho.org to turn back the clock, just to regulate the pace of change, leave me the dignity of autonomy, and do me the courtesy of letting me check my own refrigerator for milk instead of letting a digitalized refrigerator do it. *How autonomous is an individual if he or she is not making their own decisions? In order for an individual to be autonomous, the individual must act on his her own choices, not someone (or something) else's choices. We are more autonomous now, having the ability to choose to buy that over-featured refridgerator than we would be if we had something choose for us whether or not it that refridgerator is worth buying. >In place of computer-equipped health-monitoring toilets, I'd just as soon retain the right to decide when and if I go to the doctor to have my bodily fluids chemically analyzed. I'd rather see technology deployed in some of the wondrous ways of the Net and Web in recent years --- the open sourcing of computing and the liberation of information, the use of supercomputing to take on social ills from cancer to Ozone, the growth of personal communications and community-building. *That is our choice now, and it probably always will be, no matter how many gadgets are on the market. One doesn't need a new web page making those decisions for you to preserve autonomy; that would be diametrically opposed to whole concept of autonomy. >But we need help. This is, after all the, the job of the Fates -- to manage coherently. *Cute, but wrong. >Clotho.org could stand between us and Ubiquitous Computing, growling back the Microsofts, governments, media - hypemongers and arrogant hordes of programmers, gadgetmakers and marketers. Unlike information-sorting programs and sites - there are dozens - Clotho wouldn't present us with fewer choices, but making tough choices for us. She would function as our Big Sister when it comes to technology, keeping the predators away, occupying the space between humans and the new technologies scaring the hell out of them. *Katz's reference to Orson Wells' novel, 1984, is more fitting than he may realize. I don't know if Katz has read it or not, but 1984 hypothesizes about an entity that limits our choices, no, makes our choices for us. In the face of denial of choice, we are stripped of the ability to apply that which is uniquely human, namely rational thought. By denying us the choice of buying that stock-quoting cell phone, that all-encompassing web page assumes that we don't have the capability to make a decision one way or another using reason, i.e. this gadget would not help me so I won't buy it, or this gadget might be worth the price, so i WILL buy it. Oh, and one more thing. Technologies don't have to "scare the hell" out of people. That is simply fear of the "new and different." Outmoded concepts like racism and sexism have sprung from that source, and we fight those. Why not fight technophobia as well? >A vigilant Clotho would design her site along the sancrosanct principles spelled out in O'Reilly's landmark guide, "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web," a book Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. It should be the Web designer's Bible, if it isn't already, since it challenges us to put users, not makers, foremost when we think of the Web and the Net. A Clotho site would use logic and search engine technology to brutally edit the Web, weeding out the excesses of the Cyberclysm. She'd ask hard questions. Do we need refrigerators with computer chips that will alert the local supermarket when we're out of milk? She would scare off, or at least curb, some of the worst Cyberclysm offenders, the microelectronics industry. *The reason I attack this article is that it proposes an entity of exactly this magnitude. An entity that could curb innovation to that extent is, in my opinion, exactly the "Big Sister" we should actively fight against. In response to the proposed METHOD of sifting, this completely contradicts Katz's earlier arguments. Couldn't humans do the sifting? Why all the "unnecessary" gadgetry and programming? Why not have a panel of humans decide what we can and cannot choose from? Because then it would be no different than having the government control our technology, our market, and, more importantly, our non-ethical choices (meaning those choices not directly related to law and ethics). >Is this really possible? In his recent essay in Netfuture No. 94...Winner suggests that humanity's needs for the coming century be rated on a 1 to 10 scale. Do we need a Palm VII, or should we stop at the Palm IV? Do we need cellphones to access sports scores on the Web as we drive home from work, or can we wait a half-hour till we get home? Clotho would ask. If not, she'd vaporize the thing, or failing that rate it 1.5. She'd keep it away from us. Perhaps she could draw from Slashdot's amazing and elaborate discussion moderating systems (where offensive speech isn't banned but smothered in cool software programs), and meta-moderate technology for us. *Now he's talking. But do we really need to create this cyber-entity when we already have many, many, many pages out in cyberspace that do these things for us and still leave us with choice? Maybe funding more and better review services would be more effective, meaning that one could go online and find multiple of reviews for almost any product. Or do we know have that now? It could be argued that we do, but I would always advocate more, better consumer resources. >We might program her to screen out anything under a 4. We'd never get the chance to buy it, or maybe even know it was out there. The Cyberclysm would recede, at least for those of us in her care. *Sigh. Chosen ignorance. Sad. >Clotho would definitely play God (which is okay, since she is one.) We'd be presented with a handful of news stories each morning - the most significant, the most useful, the most entertaining, based on her own vision and on recognition software that comes to understand our needs, tastes and wishes. She'd rate our need for information in general on the same scale. No story, scandal, press conference, announcement or debate under a 4.0 would get by. If she'd been around, most of us might blessedly never have learned the names of William Bennett, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr, or Linda Tripp. As far as I'm concerned, Clotho could screen out virtually every debate on every Washington talk show and the country's civic life would be improved a thousand times overnight. This means I'd almost never heard anything from Washington, a technological boon to humanity if there ever was one. Clotho.org would also fend off much of the techno-news streaming toward us from C/Net and Wired News, and sift for technology information that we actually wanted to know. She could store information we might need to know for a later time. *It sounds like Katz already does his own sifting. It sounds like he "tunes out." By his logic, Clotho would be another one of those "unnecessary" appliances. Would it really save time? Or would it be so complicated that it could be considered one of those "advances we might not need or understand." I am actually in favor of a webpage that could tailor our news and information to our PERSONAL needs and desires. That would be a worthy "gadget." >She'd take revenge on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced to buy things they don't want or things they can't use, made anxious by poor instructions and buggy programs, coerced into hours and days of stressful struggles to reach people who won't take any responsibility for the things they've made and sold, who won't help people figure out how stuff works. *A) No one is forced to buy these things. You can get a coffee maker that works simply by turning it on at Walmart for $10 dollars (i own one--i can't afford the "better" ones). You can also get a combination espresso-capaccino-ice cream maker that speaks out loud in 5 languages. That is your CHOICE. B)Hopefully, poorly made and poorly supported products (ahem, microsoft) will be crushed under the pressure of natural market influence. For the most part, this does happen. It remains to be seen what will happen in the case of some specific software companies and chip manufacturers. >Clotho could be the Goddess of Unintended Consequences, forcing us to consider the implications of the things we bring into the world. Maybe she'd turn the CEO's of the most arroganant companies over to Hades (flamers, beware) for some roasting and agonies. *Hmm, kind of like slashdot and other pages like it? >Clotho would be tough minded, as befits a Spinner. She would ask questions about technology and information before stuff could get past her and reach innocents like me: l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists? 2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date? 4. Will the people who offer this product support it? Will help be available at all times? 5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction? *Sounds again like pages we already have, but by all means, go create it. >Clotho could slow the pace of Ubiquitous or Gee -Whiz Computing, ruling that even in the Digital Age, perhaps we can simply turn our coffeemakers on when we wake up instead of programming them. *We can all do that now. She'd put a quick, merciful end to health-checking toilets. She'd created the mythical middle ground, missing when it comes to technology, a place where we grow, learn, and move forward in a reasoned, noncoerable, way. Such a kingdom would be a radical departure from the insane Technoville in which we now increasingly dwell. *And it would be truly a trip down the road to stagnation, where ideas are moderated and choices are made for us. I object to clotho only because of its proposed magnitude. Everyone has the right to choose not to think, but they only have that right because they are given the option of choosing.
In response to both parts of the "Cyberclysm" series: (the > symbol denotes Katz's comments, and the * symbol denotes my comments)
>Even now, nobody can really keep up, and only a few can even fake it. Everyone is frantic, stressed, tethered, broke or worn out trying to manage. We are bombarded by inventions and advances we might not need or understand, that move more quickly and do more things than we want, that we can barely grasp, let alone service or repair.
*While I would wholeheartedly agree with the fact that the average American's life's complexities have most decidedly multiplied exponentially since the time of the subsistance farmer, it is foolhardy to assume that "keeping up" would be ANYONE's goal. With the advent of efficient communications, humans have adapted and developed an ability that would have been of little use in previous civilizations. This ability is known in modern vernacular as "tuning out." If we are not interested in something, or we think it is superfluous, we ignore it. I doubt that humans feel much more intimidated by the abundance and prevalence of technology than they would feel in the face of any other mountain of information with which they have little experience, be it philosophy, math, or any other discipline.
>Author James Gleick in "Faster" complains that technology is forcing everything to move too quickly. In his new collection of essays, Arthur C. Clarke writes "I have seen the future and it doesn't work."
*Unfortunately, I've not read either work, so I can't comment.
>The typical twenty-first-century person's day, he predicts, will include: "Skimming five hundred channel program listings, two hours; viewing television programs selected, four hours; catching up on recorded programs, six hours; exploring the hyperweb, six hours; and adventuring in artificial reality, four hours." He didn't even mention checking e-mail, answering fax-spewing and stock-listing cellphones, or responding to pagers and beepers.
>This is, of course, satire; and, as satire, it is completely, utterly absurd. Most of what is mentioned deals with communication. It might be important to remember that it is only through these "complicated" means of communication which were undoubtedly considered to be "advances we might not need or understand" that KATZ's opportunity to write to us exists.
>Neo-Luddite Kirkpatrick Sale goes further, warning in his books that technology is destroying the world. He wants us to smash our computers to save the planet.
*A) This radical action is not very different than burning books, if treated a certain way. If one were to really examine the purpose of computers, one would begin to see that their purpose centers around the facilitation of sharing and storing of information, in one form or another. From playing games to email, from desktop publishing to networking, from accounting and database programs to web surfing, etc. these are all related in one way or another to the proliferation of information. That information may not be useful or important to everyone, but it must be important to somebody or IT WOULDN'T EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE.
B)"Saving the planet" sounds grand and many people spout that phrase as their intention, but it is meaningless. I can bet that Sale doesn't really care about the planet, not in abstract he doesn't. He only wants to see planet and, more to the point, civilization conform to the model HE deems best. How noble.
>In his apocalyptic new dirge "Staring Into Chaos," author Bruce Brander proclaims that western civilization itself is coming to an end.
*I would hope so. The time for a WORLD civilization is nye. The establishment of worldwide communications help to make that finally possible.
>The term Ubiquitous Computing is technological historian Langdon Winner's, who in Netfuture... warns that society is drowning in a wave of absurd and unnecessary appliances and electronics, continuously and wastefully cranked out by some of the best minds alive.
*Of course these items are unnecessary. So is your car. So is the furnace in your house. We could survive without these just as many people survived without them before they were invented, and just as many people still do today. Absurd? Well, that depends on what you define as absurd technology. Many people (often of older generations) would argue that they got along perfectly well with their businesses before computers, and they do not understand why we "need" them now. It is all about efficiency. Are computers more efficient? I say yes, although like any tool, it takes time to learn how to use them, they can break down, and not all computers are equal. The same applies to other "appliances and electronics." Not all these tools are as useful as one would like, but hey, were the first cars all that useful? That is what innovation is all about: you might not get it perfect the first time, you might not have even come up with a useful invention, and maybe no one will want it. If it is absurd, then it won't sell (not much anyway). Finally, "wastefully?" We live in a society where you can buy silly string, edible underwear, pez dispensors, and beanie babies; and he is just NOW complaining about wastefulness?
>Winner, a critic of the Wired-era hype about the Internet and networked computing, exults in what he perceives as a growing realization that Ubiquitous Computing isn't making life simpler or better, but harder, more expensive and chaotic:
*One might say that about all technology. Cars are a prime example. What American hasn't complained about car troubles? If he wants to live in a cave and walk everywhere (because horses would be just as pesky, if not more) then that is his choice. It might not be a rational choice, but it is his freedom nonetheless (Ted Kazinsky anybody?).
>"Simplify. Save time. Reduce effort. Liberate yourself from toil. This has been the continuing siren song of consumer technology through the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in its own terms, the dream is always self-defeating. As people add more and more time-saving, labor-saving equipment to their homes, their lives do not become simpler and easier. Instead their days become even more complicated, demanding and rushed."
*Why are our lives more demanding, rushed? Could it be that we have the opportunity to do more with our lives than ever before. I can guarantee that the subsistance farmer was not rushed like the average businessman. As we do more, we begin to want to do more than that. We realize that the possibilities endless, and we want to have those stock quotes a button away, because information has become key. The gradual migration of the focus of our lives away from the muscular to the cerebral is to be considered an evolutionary step forward, not a fatal mistake. As for our lives being more demanding I have to points. A) We make that choice. As our education increases, the demands we place on ourselves increase too. There are real reasons why time saving devices sell. B) Are our lives more demanding than the subsistence farmer? Or maybe just different. I don't have to go plow a field all day and pray that the weather is right so i can feed my family. This is made possible by people who decided there had to be a better way to do something, and so they invented an "unnecessary" device.
>A disclaimer here : I don't share Winner's summary view of computing. For me, appliances, hardware and software are the least interesting aspects of technology. For me, the siren song would be: Speak and Think Freely. Connect. Learn, and Share What You Learn. Then learn and share more. Grow. For me, this promise has been fulfilled, a thousand times over.
*If Katz don't agree with Winner's view, why is Katz using it using it in this article? If it does not illustrate what katz is trying to say, then why include it at all?
>But Winner, one of the sharpest thinkers about technology in American society, does have a point. We are making a lot more things than we demonstrably need. We give far more thought to making and marketing them than we do to whether they are truly useful. TV's and sound systems, watches that monitor global time zones, multi-function phones - keep adding features daily, many of them of doubtful necessity to most of the people who buy them. One ad blanketing commercial TV touts new wireless phone technology that will allow people to get their e-mail, weather and sports scores instantly from anywhere. Does anybody really need to be that wired?
*I refer to my argument on "necessary." Also, Katz is really complaining about the whole theory of capitalism with the advent of advertising. This is not specific to technology. Breakfast cereals, anyone?
>Even the most ardent geeks complain that they can never be out of touch, never have time to think, never completely catch up. As the world is able to reach us more easily, it expects us to be always available and more or less instantly responsive. This rushes us and our responses. It makes us edgy, grumpy, impulsive. Technology becomes a means of harassing and pressuring us instead of improving our lives. The genuine blessings of technology - information, opportunity, community, the portability of work - get overlooked in all the gadgetry.
*Again, every one of the technologies Katz attribute to providing "informatino, opportunity," etc., were considered "gadgetry" when they were first introduced. As for the never having time to think, etc., this is why we can "tune out." Our environment has changed, and we are adapting, just like any other organism. As we and the world get more in touch, it reaffirms that we are ceasing to be completely solitary individuals, but instead members of a functioning civilization. Finally, in the words of George Carlin, "Did ya know there are two knobs on a radio, minister? One of them turns it off...AND THE OTHER ONE CHANGES THE STATION!!!"
>All labor-saving devices don't necessarily improve the quality of life. Autonomous human beings can - and maybe should - take responsibility for the smaller details of life. After all, these labor saving devices require considerable labor: they need installation, adjustment, repairs and replacement - often at considerable time, cost and annoyance. There are enormous ecological consequences as well, to making so much plastic and metal, so many wires and chips.
*Again, innovation is not always perfect. Almost never, in fact. It is a judgement we are required to make; is the effort it takes to use this device more than the effort required to do the task myself without the device. As for the ecological consequences, why is plastic so hateful? We are not creating anything, really. We are simply shuffling around different configurations of atoms, and it is only a matter of time before we learn how to unshuffle them effectively. Recycling aluminum cans is only the tip of the iceburg concerning what we will be able to do in the future.
>Newsweek enthused last week, in a gee-whiz cover story about how the Internet is changing our lives, that tomorrow's automatic coffee maker will have access to our online schedule so it can automatically withhold the brew if we're out of town. This is by -now - instantly-recognizable media language of Technohype, computing and technology wrongly presented as a barrage of gizmos with chips that do things we can just as (or more) easily do for ourselves.
*An internet-ready coffee maker is probably just as absurd as it sounds. Consequently, it probably won't catch on. That is how innovation works. Practical technology is just that: gizmos, chips, etc.. If we find that doing it ourselves works better, then that determines the success of the technology. And practical technology is what we are concerned with. If a theoretical technology (a.k.a. a concept with technological applications) never makes it into practice, then it is useless for anything other than brain aerobics.
>But if the laws governing technology are unpredictable, those governing capitalism are unwavering: What is made must be sold and, therefore, hyped.
*I agree. Capitalism is anything BUT rational. Advertising is all about creating need, or at least the semblance of it. But that is a deeper evil that what we are discussing here.
>Such overheated predictions don't evoke the future so much as the past. Remember Walt Disney's Tomorrowland with its notions of intergalactic travel, hover cars, people movers and other things that still don't exist? We may be closer to genetically engineering perfect humans, or even curing cancer, but we still can't cure the cold or come up with a practical battery-powered car, or make computers that don't drive the people using them nuts.
*Well, without these outlandish ideas, these theoretical technologies, then we would never have had practical technologies like the satellite (which, interestingly enough, Arthur C. Clark invented in the 1940's). Also, as for the curing the common cold and battery cars, Katz is hitting on a major flaw in capitalism. There is absolutely NO money in cures. Not comparatively. The multi-billion dollar industries of cold medicine and gasoline would collapse if we no longer needed their products. Consequently, a good investment for a gasoline company would be to buy off those well-meaning alternative energy source innovators. Sad.
>Alas -- according to almost every business or marketing projection, R&D labs will usher in the Millenium by making the creation and sales of info-gadgets and appliances an even greater preoccupation of the next century.
*Probably true, only I don't shudder at the prospect. I have owned for 8 years one model or another of a casio watch that stores my phone numbers. I love it. Some might consider that superfluous. I have DECIDED that it is extremely useful and would rather have it than not. It is not NECESSARY, but it is so useful that i love it.
>On the East Coast (where I live), in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, one little-noticed consequence of the storm was that power interruption rendered cordless telephones useless even if the phone lines were functioning. Moreover, the flooding of an AT&T installation in New Jersey knocked out hundreds of thousands of cellphones. For a few days, the only phones that worked were the Lo-tech sort, the non-electronic, non-digital kind that plugged into the wall jack, receivers attached to the base with curly cords. That's as apt a metaphor for the coming Cyberclysm as any. Perhaps the survivors will be the people with the simplest, not the most sophisticated, machines.
*This is true of all technology. If suddenly there was no gasoline and no gasoline alternative, then those who only ride bikes (if that is not to hi-tech for them) and ride horses would be the only ones who could effectively ambulated larger distances. Does this make them superior?
>Whose responsibility is all this? Nobody's, of course. Technology has a mind, life and direction all of its own. It's inherently uncontrollable, even if anybody was up to trying.
*The same could be said of amassed human knowledge. People have tried. They burn books and prohibit the theory evolution from being taught in schools.
>But some of the fault lies in the way our institutions - education, politics, media - deal with technology. We're trapped between two useless states - alarm and euphoria. Either we are railing about pornography, disconnection, and addiction or we are banging the drums for Gee-Whiz Computing that exists much more for its own sake than for our benefit. Like cell phones that receive faxes in taxicabs or 21st century toilets that will monitor the family's health through chemical sampling of fecal matter, or mirrors over bathroom sinks that flash the day's headlines, so nobody in the family has to wait until they get downstairs to get the news, if their wireless phone hasn't already alerted them.
*Humans fear change and at the same time embrace it. All progress brings with it negative consequences. It is how we deal with those negative consequences (assuming that they are negative and not just so unfamiliar that they invoke fear) that determines the success of a civilization.
>Perhaps the idea that there are people who keep up with all this stuff is in itself a technological myth.
*Could anyone say that they know everything there is to know about mathematics? Philosophy? Technology is no different.
>Clarke warns that we're headed for a Cyberclysm (he and others have used the word), a catastrophic collision between computers, technology and humanity. We won't be consumed by evil aliens or runaway AI machines, as sci-fi futurists have long predicted. Instead, we'll conquer ourselves with too much information about too many things and too many appliances performing too many services.
*Interesting prediction. We will see. For my part, I think that it will be a self righting system. When we get too much information, we "tune out." When the gadgets aren't worth it, we don't buy them.
>Clarke has written often of the pitfalls of the Dream Machine, the seductive idea that gadgets will run the world and monitor the most intimate details of our lives while we are free to enjoy ourselves.
*Well, that would be an end of progress, now wouldn't it? If all we did was pursue what fills our appetites for pleasure, we would then cease to find them pleasurable. For an activity to be truely worthwhile, it must be an end in and of itself. If the activity is merely a means to some other end, then it won't be truly pleasurable. If one's job is simply a method of getting money so that one can enjoy something else, then the job won't be pleasurable, will it? If pleasure for someone consists only of entertainment, sex, food, drink, etc., then the dream machine society would work for that person. I postulate that the dream machine society could never come into being simply because humans would not be content to do nothing. The american dream of making money so one can enjoy oneself is false. This has been proven over and over again by rich, unhappy people. Devoting oneself to seeking pleasure does NOT make one happy, so we humans would never REALLY want the "dream machine." Ask Aristotle.
>"There have been many science fiction stories," writes Clarke, "about frantic human attempts to unplug disobedient computers. The real future might involve exactly the opposite scenario. The computers may unplug us." And, he adds: "it would serve us right."
*Read Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot." The model for his robots is more likely how it would come to be.
>That leaves most of us holding the bag, confronted with two noxious choices: to fall back with the hare-brained Luddites who want to return to the sylvan forests, or to follow the Techno-Utopians on their runaway CyberBinge.
*I argue that the Cyberbinge is not so heinous as Katz makes it out to be. Of course there has to be moderation, but I propose that that will come about naturally, and that it is not something to be all that alarmed about. I also find it hard to believe that digital wristwatches and cordless phones with added features will be the downfall of this civilization. There are MANY more likely candidates. If a Cyberclysm is a candidate at all, it is definitely a fair distance down the list, right along side the earth spontaneously exploding.
>End Part One.
>Part Two: How to stave off the Coming Cyberclysm, to find some rational choice besides the backwards-looking Luddites and the Gee-Whiz Techno-Heads who dominate discussions about technology? Only the Gods can help, and I might have found one who will (one of the Fates, as it happens), with the help of AI computing advances and intuitive software.
How to survive the coming Cyberclysm? To find a rational position between the alarmists and the utopians? Salvation may come from the menace itself.
*Okay, assuming that a "Cyberclysm" is a viable possibility...
>Whatever mischief technology creates, technology can undo. The tools of our redemption - and the means of chasing off the ever-circling Luddites -- are right under our noses. Perhaps the great website of the 21st century - or even the last half of this year -- won't sell stocks or auction off goodies. It'll be an Intervention Program, something between a SuperSearch Engine and Information Foraging Site.
*Hmm, like slashdot?
>We need Websites that really understand us, protect us and go to bat for us. I'd call my personal version Clotho, after one of the lesser gods of Greek mythology. The ancient Greeks are definitely the place to turn for protection against the Cyberclysm. Their poets and playwrights wrote all the time about humanity's tragic inclination to fiddle with the world and screw it up at the same time. Clotho was one of the Fates, gods given the subtle but awesome power to decide a person's destiny. Clotho (the other two are Lachesis the measurer, and Atropos the shearer) is the spinner, who spins the threads of life. Thunderbolt-throwers like Zeus are useless to invoke in this context, too blustery and ill-tempered. Only the Fates have the perspective required, the range of skills. They're used to sorting through complex choices. They assign men and women to lives of good and evil. They decide the length the length of human's lives. The Fates are discreet, largely unknown, and it's never been precisely clear how far their power extends. What is known is that even the most powerful of the other Gods won't mess with them. I imagine a Clotho program as an intermediary, standing between me, Gee Whiz Computing and technology, not so much to keep them away as to manage how much I have to deal with.
*KATZ IS POSTING ON ONE!!! They exist all over the net, and they do not just deal with technology. Name a division of knowledge, and you can find an "intermediary" specific to it.
>Intervention Software isn't a fantasy. It's a practical possibility with the advent of intuitive software technology and AI computing advances. Futurists from Freeman Dyson to Ray Kurzweill predict computers will be making rational, human-like decisions in a few years. We could put them to work for us.
*Isn't that exactly what Katz is scared of? Isn't a machine that makes our decisions for us FAR more heinous than just producing gadgets we can CHOOSE or not CHOOSE to buy?
>The notion that a computing program could intervene in this way - come between us and the Cyberclysm -- and bring some sanity and coherence to an individual's experience of runaway technology and Ubiquitous Computing is hardly far-fetched.
*If this machine is "making rational, human-like decisions" for us, isn't that just one step closer to this "dream machine" of which Arthur C. Clarke warned us? Sounds like a voluntary step toward this "Cyberclysm."
>I don't want Clotho.org to turn back the clock, just to regulate the pace of change, leave me the dignity of autonomy, and do me the courtesy of letting me check my own refrigerator for milk instead of letting a digitalized refrigerator do it.
*How autonomous is an individual if he or she is not making their own decisions? In order for an individual to be autonomous, the individual must act on his her own choices, not someone (or something) else's choices. We are more autonomous now, having the ability to choose to buy that over-featured refridgerator than we would be if we had something choose for us whether or not it that refridgerator is worth buying.
>In place of computer-equipped health-monitoring toilets, I'd just as soon retain the right to decide when and if I go to the doctor to have my bodily fluids chemically analyzed. I'd rather see technology deployed in some of the wondrous ways of the Net and Web in recent years --- the open sourcing of computing and the liberation of information, the use of supercomputing to take on social ills from cancer to Ozone, the growth of personal communications and community-building.
*That is our choice now, and it probably always will be, no matter how many gadgets are on the market. One doesn't need a new web page making those decisions for you to preserve autonomy; that would be diametrically opposed to whole concept of autonomy.
>But we need help. This is, after all the, the job of the Fates -- to manage coherently.
*Cute, but wrong.
>Clotho.org could stand between us and Ubiquitous Computing, growling back the Microsofts, governments, media - hypemongers and arrogant hordes of programmers, gadgetmakers and marketers. Unlike information-sorting programs and sites - there are dozens - Clotho wouldn't present us with fewer choices, but making tough choices for us. She would function as our Big Sister when it comes to technology, keeping the predators away, occupying the space between humans and the new technologies scaring the hell out of them.
*Katz's reference to Orson Wells' novel, 1984, is more fitting than he may realize. I don't know if Katz has read it or not, but 1984 hypothesizes about an entity that limits our choices, no, makes our choices for us. In the face of denial of choice, we are stripped of the ability to apply that which is uniquely human, namely rational thought. By denying us the choice of buying that stock-quoting cell phone, that all-encompassing web page assumes that we don't have the capability to make a decision one way or another using reason, i.e. this gadget would not help me so I won't buy it, or this gadget might be worth the price, so i WILL buy it. Oh, and one more thing. Technologies don't have to "scare the hell" out of people. That is simply fear of the "new and different." Outmoded concepts like racism and sexism have sprung from that source, and we fight those. Why not fight technophobia as well?
>A vigilant Clotho would design her site along the sancrosanct principles spelled out in O'Reilly's landmark guide, "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web," a book Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. It should be the Web designer's Bible, if it isn't already, since it challenges us to put users, not makers, foremost when we think of the Web and the Net. A Clotho site would use logic and search engine technology to brutally edit the Web, weeding out the excesses of the Cyberclysm. She'd ask hard questions. Do we need refrigerators with computer chips that will alert the local supermarket when we're out of milk? She would scare off, or at least curb, some of the worst Cyberclysm offenders, the microelectronics industry.
*The reason I attack this article is that it proposes an entity of exactly this magnitude. An entity that could curb innovation to that extent is, in my opinion, exactly the "Big Sister" we should actively fight against. In response to the proposed METHOD of sifting, this completely contradicts Katz's earlier arguments. Couldn't humans do the sifting? Why all the "unnecessary" gadgetry and programming? Why not have a panel of humans decide what we can and cannot choose from? Because then it would be no different than having the government control our technology, our market, and, more importantly, our non-ethical choices (meaning those choices not directly related to law and ethics).
>Is this really possible? In his recent essay in Netfuture No. 94...Winner suggests that humanity's needs for the coming century be rated on a 1 to 10 scale. Do we need a Palm VII, or should we stop at the Palm IV? Do we need cellphones to access sports scores on the Web as we drive home from work, or can we wait a half-hour till we get home? Clotho would ask. If not, she'd vaporize the thing, or failing that rate it 1.5. She'd keep it away from us. Perhaps she could draw from Slashdot's amazing and elaborate discussion moderating systems (where offensive speech isn't banned but smothered in cool software programs), and meta-moderate technology for us.
*Now he's talking. But do we really need to create this cyber-entity when we already have many, many, many pages out in cyberspace that do these things for us and still leave us with choice? Maybe funding more and better review services would be more effective, meaning that one could go online and find multiple of reviews for almost any product. Or do we know have that now? It could be argued that we do, but I would always advocate more, better consumer resources.
>We might program her to screen out anything under a 4. We'd never get the chance to buy it, or maybe even know it was out there. The Cyberclysm would recede, at least for those of us in her care.
*Sigh. Chosen ignorance. Sad.
>Clotho would definitely play God (which is okay, since she is one.) We'd be presented with a handful of news stories each morning - the most significant, the most useful, the most entertaining, based on her own vision and on recognition software that comes to understand our needs, tastes and wishes. She'd rate our need for information in general on the same scale. No story, scandal, press conference, announcement or debate under a 4.0 would get by. If she'd been around, most of us might blessedly never have learned the names of William Bennett, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr, or Linda Tripp. As far as I'm concerned, Clotho could screen out virtually every debate on every Washington talk show and the country's civic life would be improved a thousand times overnight. This means I'd almost never heard anything from Washington, a technological boon to humanity if there ever was one. Clotho.org would also fend off much of the techno-news streaming toward us from C/Net and Wired News, and sift for technology information that we actually wanted to know. She could store information we might need to know for a later time.
*It sounds like Katz already does his own sifting. It sounds like he "tunes out." By his logic, Clotho would be another one of those "unnecessary" appliances. Would it really save time? Or would it be so complicated that it could be considered one of those "advances we might not need or understand." I am actually in favor of a webpage that could tailor our news and information to our PERSONAL needs and desires. That would be a worthy "gadget."
>She'd take revenge on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced to buy things they don't want or things they can't use, made anxious by poor instructions and buggy programs, coerced into hours and days of stressful struggles to reach people who won't take any responsibility for the things they've made and sold, who won't help people figure out how stuff works.
*A) No one is forced to buy these things. You can get a coffee maker that works simply by turning it on at Walmart for $10 dollars (i own one--i can't afford the "better" ones). You can also get a combination espresso-capaccino-ice cream maker that speaks out loud in 5 languages. That is your CHOICE. B)Hopefully, poorly made and poorly supported products (ahem, microsoft) will be crushed under the pressure of natural market influence. For the most part, this does happen. It remains to be seen what will happen in the case of some specific software companies and chip manufacturers.
>Clotho could be the Goddess of Unintended Consequences, forcing us to consider the implications of the things we bring into the world. Maybe she'd turn the CEO's of the most arroganant companies over to Hades (flamers, beware) for some roasting and agonies.
*Hmm, kind of like slashdot and other pages like it?
>Clotho would be tough minded, as befits a Spinner. She would ask questions about technology and information before stuff could get past her and reach innocents like me:
l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists?
2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date?
4. Will the people who offer this product support it? Will help be available at all times?
5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction?
*Sounds again like pages we already have, but by all means, go create it.
>Clotho could slow the pace of Ubiquitous or Gee -Whiz Computing, ruling that even in the Digital Age, perhaps we can simply turn our coffeemakers on when we wake up instead of programming them.
*We can all do that now.
She'd put a quick, merciful end to health-checking toilets. She'd created the mythical middle ground, missing when it comes to technology, a place where we grow, learn, and move forward in a reasoned, noncoerable, way. Such a kingdom would be a radical departure from the insane Technoville in which we now increasingly dwell.
*And it would be truly a trip down the road to stagnation, where ideas are moderated and choices are made for us. I object to clotho only because of its proposed magnitude. Everyone has the right to choose not to think, but they only have that right because they are given the option of choosing.