Results need to be immediate - they'll soon lose interest if they have to code, compile, execute. Python or Scheme would be ideal, but even VB would be OK if it's more convenient.
And please, don't inflict C/C++ on them if you want them to grow up to be normal.
Last August, I moved across the country, where the company I was (and am) working for has no engineering group, so they offered to have me work from home, which I happily agreed to.
All in all, it's been OK, but not as great as I thought it would be. The best thing I can say about it is that I get to avoid traffic, which here is extremely bad, and I don't have to worry about trivial things like hygeine. Theoretically, I should get much more work done, and I do when it's something I enjoy and need extended periods of heavy concentration for, like design and coding. If I don't enjoy it, it's way too easy to surf instead, since I have a 1Mbs DSL connection and no need to avoid being conspicuous about it. So, basically a wash as far as efficiency goes.
The bigger downsides are that I can't just pop over to someone else's cube whenever I want, attending meetings over the phone is really not the same as being there - at least it's been hard for me to get used to, nobody to go to lunch with. I also think that not being physically there, it's really easy to lose touch with what's going on in general with everyone else, the group, the company, etc, and you don't get as much of a chance to influence things as you would if you were actually there.
I never thought I'd be one to say that the social negatives of working strictly at home make it basically unworkable over the long term, but that's the conclusion I'm coming to. The ideal situation would be to do it for 3 days a week, and be in the office the other 2, IMHO.
I'm glad someone like Bill Joy is talking about these kinds of things; the possibilities have been bothering me for awhile and it's good to know I'm not the only paranoid out there. I don't really see AI/robotics as as much of a threat, though, compared with the other two mentioned - genetic engineering and nanotech. It'll be awhile before we can build a convincing AI, unless it's done in a bottom-up fashion - we just don't understand intelligence enough to do it any other way, and we're a long way from 'growing' an AI in any case.
With the other two technologies, though, it does seem that we're close enough to being at the point of no return to really start worrying, especially considering how financially lucrative the payoff is for taking chances (problem is, the chances being taken potentially affect us all - we'll all see the consequences of bad decisions or mistakes, but we won't all see the (financial) payoffs). With thousands of companies creating 'organisms' or the nanotech equivalent, that can self-replicate, it's just a matter of time before someone introduces a bug into one of these things that really causes catastrophic problems. Some people think that the AIDs virus was just such a mistake (I don't). Imagine an organism or nanobot with the same lethality but able to spread more easily, accidentally (or intentionally) created and unleashed. The probability is that something like this will happen before we're able to create AIs that will help us prevent it.
I think the main point of this article is that we have this potentially dangerous technology at our fingertips, but a socioeconomic structure that virtually guarantees bad things will happen. There's currently no incentive for business to avoid putting the whole world at risk of possible extinction for the sake of profits. The payoff for success is fantastic wealth, the cost of failure is, well, that's the other point - either nobody thinks too deeply about it or, in the current climate of unbridled greed, cares.
So, looks to me like we create 'gray goo' before we create 'gray matter'.
Why would it be sad to see Amazon go? They're just selling books. Bezos is just a salesman. What has Amazon done that's even remotely groundbreaking? 1-click ordering?
The comparison with Netscape is ludicrous. If it weren't for Netscape, Amazon wouldn't have any clicks to use for ordering.
Hate to break it to anyone who thinks the Human Genome Project is either a great achievement or a great danger. We're so far away from understanding even the simplest biology (I give you viruses and cancer as examples) much less the biological mechanisms underlying gene expression that I doubt anything too significant will come out of the raw data before the end of the next millenium, good, bad or otherwise.
It's one thing to throw an automatic sequencer at some DNA and quite another to understand what comes out. The people impressed by this are probably the same ones who were impressed by Deep Blue beating Gary Kasparov through brute force.
It's amazing to me that despite the years of research and tons of cash thrown at biologists, they can't even understand the simplest virus. Maybe if a few slashdotters switched professions, biology would make some progress.
Slashdot Mirror
Results need to be immediate - they'll soon lose interest if they have to code, compile, execute. Python or Scheme would be ideal, but even VB would be OK if it's more convenient.
And please, don't inflict C/C++ on them if you want them to grow up to be normal.
Last August, I moved across the country, where the company I was (and am) working for has no engineering group, so they offered to have me work from home, which I happily agreed to.
All in all, it's been OK, but not as great as I thought it would be. The best thing I can say about it is that I get to avoid traffic, which here is extremely bad, and I don't have to worry about trivial things like hygeine. Theoretically, I should get much more work done, and I do when it's something I enjoy and need extended periods of heavy concentration for, like design and coding. If I don't enjoy it, it's way too easy to surf instead, since I have a 1Mbs DSL connection and no need to avoid being conspicuous about it. So, basically a wash as far as efficiency goes.
The bigger downsides are that I can't just pop over to someone else's cube whenever I want, attending meetings over the phone is really not the same as being there - at least it's been hard for me to get used to, nobody to go to lunch with. I also think that not being physically there, it's really easy to lose touch with what's going on in general with everyone else, the group, the company, etc, and you don't get as much of a chance to influence things as you would if you were actually there.
I never thought I'd be one to say that the social negatives of working strictly at home make it basically unworkable over the long term, but that's the conclusion I'm coming to. The ideal situation would be to do it for 3 days a week, and be in the office the other 2, IMHO.
I'm glad someone like Bill Joy is talking about these kinds of things; the possibilities have been bothering me for awhile and it's good to know I'm not the only paranoid out there. I don't really see AI/robotics as as much of a threat, though, compared with the other two mentioned - genetic engineering and nanotech. It'll be awhile before we can build a convincing AI, unless it's done in a bottom-up fashion - we just don't understand intelligence enough to do it any other way, and we're a long way from 'growing' an AI in any case.
With the other two technologies, though, it does seem that we're close enough to being at the point of no return to really start worrying, especially considering how financially lucrative the payoff is for taking chances (problem is, the chances being taken potentially affect us all - we'll all see the consequences of bad decisions or mistakes, but we won't all see the (financial) payoffs). With thousands of companies creating 'organisms' or the nanotech equivalent, that can self-replicate, it's just a matter of time before someone introduces a bug into one of these things that really causes catastrophic problems. Some people think that the AIDs virus was just such a mistake (I don't). Imagine an organism or nanobot with the same lethality but able to spread more easily, accidentally (or intentionally) created and unleashed. The probability is that something like this will happen before we're able to create AIs that will help us prevent it.
I think the main point of this article is that we have this potentially dangerous technology at our fingertips, but a socioeconomic structure that virtually guarantees bad things will happen. There's currently no incentive for business to avoid putting the whole world at risk of possible extinction for the sake of profits. The payoff for success is fantastic wealth, the cost of failure is, well, that's the other point - either nobody thinks too deeply about it or, in the current climate of unbridled greed, cares.
So, looks to me like we create 'gray goo' before we create 'gray matter'.
Why would it be sad to see Amazon go? They're just selling books. Bezos is just a salesman. What has Amazon done that's even remotely groundbreaking? 1-click ordering?
The comparison with Netscape is ludicrous. If it weren't for Netscape, Amazon wouldn't have any clicks to use for ordering.
Hate to break it to anyone who thinks the Human Genome Project is either a great achievement or a great danger. We're so far away from understanding even the simplest biology (I give you viruses and cancer as examples) much less the biological mechanisms underlying gene expression that I doubt anything too significant will come out of the raw data before the end of the next millenium, good, bad or otherwise.
It's one thing to throw an automatic sequencer at some DNA and quite another to understand what comes out. The people impressed by this are probably the same ones who were impressed by Deep Blue beating Gary Kasparov through brute force.
It's amazing to me that despite the years of research and tons of cash thrown at biologists, they can't even understand the simplest virus. Maybe if a few slashdotters switched professions, biology would make some progress.