Kurt Vonnegut Jr. wrote a short story that dealt with human minds being able to "walk out" of their bodies. Eventually, bodies were available for "rent" to walk around or interact with the world; at other times minds preferred to freely wander without the restraints of bodies. Vonnegut also dealt interestingly with the conflicts between those that chose to leave their bodies, and those who did not.
The story was in Welcome to the Monkey House, although the title of the story escapes me right now. It's a great collection of short stories by a very talented author - pick it up if you have a chance.
Sounds very much like what Vernor Vinge calls "localizers" in A Deepness In The Sky. Tiny (in Deepness, they're dust-sized) sensors that form an ad-hoc network. You only need access to a single sensor to hook in and get data from the entire network. Vinge has them powered by microwave pulses from the ship.
I don't know which is scarier, this project, or the fact that this guy owns a gun:
I slid the little PC out the back and then took the cover off. The case is like 16 gauge steel. Seriously, it's thicker metal then that of my gun safe. I figured they did that for additional security or RF shielding or both. (from this page)
But seriously, isn't a conversation with another human being (like the computer on Star Trek) the easiest way for any of us to access information? Humans developed language for a reason - because it was the most efficient way to get information from one person to another.
When we have a difficult problem, or a strange search we need to perform, it's always easier to go and talk to an expert than it is to go on Google. Try answering a question like, "What's that word that means . .." by searching on Google. It's almost impossible. But go up to any other human and they'll probably be able to give you a quick, easy, no-nonsense answer in about 3 seconds.
Eventually, I think, we'll be able to communicate with our machines on the level we communicate with other humans. But that interface will be (IMHO) a combination of aural, visual, and tactile communication with the machine. It will also be two-way. Yes, computers will talk back to us, asking us questions to refine their searches and pointing us in a conversational manner to tangents we probably hadn't even thought of.
These interfaces are not right around the corner, of course. But something like talking to another person is the ultimate interface to vast quantities of information, and I challenge anyone to come up with a better one.
In the "Outlook" section at the bottom of the article, they express an interest in studying the "dynamic" properties of such graph systems. That is, how they pass messages between nodes, how the messages get routed, which nodes are passing the important/unimportant messages, and is there a cyclic pattern to how messages and replies get passed.
I worked as an intern for Election.com (formerly Votation.com) this past summer, before they had signed the AZ democrats. A couple of brief insights:
The first online election they did as a company this summer was for the IEEE. Believe me when I say that IEEE representatives went through the software with a fine-toothed comb, and made absolutely certain it was secure by their standards, which were extreemly strict. While I can't talk much about the software itself, suffice to say that just about any security problem you've thought of they thought of a long, long time ago, and fixed.
As far as the anonymity of the elections, yes, this is difficult to preserve in a strict sense. However, as far as I know, the PINs and names are kept in completely separate databases and never cross-referenced at all. Valid PINs are generated independently of the voters. Election.com also obviously signs strict confidentiality agreements with the AZ democrats, etc, so the chances of vote tracking are remote (and illegal) at best. The PINs are also generated from a pool large enough to make the aforementioned "Birthday paradox" extreemly improbable. It would be infinitely easier to get a fake ID and walk into the physical polling place and stuff the ballot that way.
As far as the disparity between different socio-economic classes, several of the press releases stated that an additional 29 polling places would be set up (above the traditional polling places) in under-privelidged neighborhoods to compensate.
Just on a personal note, regardless of my connections with the company, I think online voting is absolutely one of the best things that could happen to the democratic process in this nation. From the voter turnout in this election alone, we can see that many, many more voters have turned out to express their opinions in this election. Voting this way is not catering to the "lazy" voters out there, as was suggested. Rather, it is giving the opportunity for everyone to take part in their government without ever having to leave their desks. I think if this catches on in other states (and eventually nationally) the democratic process in this country will improve exponentially - more people will care more about what is going on in their government, and for once, more people will do something about it.
As stated elsewhere, this isn't really "bionic" computing at all - just a step ahead in genetic engineering and peering deeper into the cell. There've been discussions and research into other areas of biological computing that come much closer to what we might call "bionic," such as using strands of DNA or protiens. However, these have thus far been limited to specific problems, such as computing the shortest route between two cities or similar problems.
The challenge (imho) to biological computing, if it's ever to be widely useful, is to generalize it. Is DNA Turing complete? = )
Slashdot Mirror
Google File System paper
Obligatory Fox Trot reference.
That's "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA".
I hate to see Kevin Smith misquoted =)
IMDB reference
The story was in Welcome to the Monkey House, although the title of the story escapes me right now. It's a great collection of short stories by a very talented author - pick it up if you have a chance.
While you're at it, pick up Genius by James Gleick and round out your Feynman experience.
You may not have noticed, but the following probably appeared at the top of your results page:
Thus, your last two searches (and however many more you tried to do afterwards) look identical to Google.
Very cool stuff.
http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/chord/
I slid the little PC out the back and then took the cover off. The case is like 16 gauge steel. Seriously, it's thicker metal then that of my gun safe. I figured they did that for additional security or RF shielding or both. (from this page)
They stole my idea for the Google Programming Contest!
But seriously, isn't a conversation with another human being (like the computer on Star Trek) the easiest way for any of us to access information? Humans developed language for a reason - because it was the most efficient way to get information from one person to another.
When we have a difficult problem, or a strange search we need to perform, it's always easier to go and talk to an expert than it is to go on Google. Try answering a question like, "What's that word that means . . ." by searching on Google. It's almost impossible. But go up to any other human and they'll probably be able to give you a quick, easy, no-nonsense answer in about 3 seconds.
Eventually, I think, we'll be able to communicate with our machines on the level we communicate with other humans. But that interface will be (IMHO) a combination of aural, visual, and tactile communication with the machine. It will also be two-way. Yes, computers will talk back to us, asking us questions to refine their searches and pointing us in a conversational manner to tangents we probably hadn't even thought of.
These interfaces are not right around the corner, of course. But something like talking to another person is the ultimate interface to vast quantities of information, and I challenge anyone to come up with a better one.
The link in the story to the "America" map is wrong - it points to the map for November 19, 2002. Here's the November 18, 2001 map.
Unfortunately, this announcement didn't do nearly as much for the market as the announcement of the August Consumer Confidence report, which has caused both the NYSE and the Nasdaq to slump. See the Yahoo! Finance daily summary and a report on the Consumer Confidence report for more info . . .
In the "Outlook" section at the bottom of the article, they express an interest in studying the "dynamic" properties of such graph systems. That is, how they pass messages between nodes, how the messages get routed, which nodes are passing the important/unimportant messages, and is there a cyclic pattern to how messages and replies get passed.
Does anyone know of any studies on this subject?
election.com's system separates the voter and his PIN from his vote within his browser. The server never sees the two pieces of the user together.
- The first online election they did as a company this summer was for the IEEE. Believe me when I say that IEEE representatives went through the software with a fine-toothed comb, and made absolutely certain it was secure by their standards, which were extreemly strict. While I can't talk much about the software itself, suffice to say that just about any security problem you've thought of they thought of a long, long time ago, and fixed.
- As far as the anonymity of the elections, yes, this is difficult to preserve in a strict sense. However, as far as I know, the PINs and names are kept in completely separate databases and never cross-referenced at all. Valid PINs are generated independently of the voters. Election.com also obviously signs strict confidentiality agreements with the AZ democrats, etc, so the chances of vote tracking are remote (and illegal) at best. The PINs are also generated from a pool large enough to make the aforementioned "Birthday paradox" extreemly improbable. It would be infinitely easier to get a fake ID and walk into the physical polling place and stuff the ballot that way.
- As far as the disparity between different socio-economic classes, several of the press releases stated that an additional 29 polling places would be set up (above the traditional polling places) in under-privelidged neighborhoods to compensate.
Just on a personal note, regardless of my connections with the company, I think online voting is absolutely one of the best things that could happen to the democratic process in this nation. From the voter turnout in this election alone, we can see that many, many more voters have turned out to express their opinions in this election. Voting this way is not catering to the "lazy" voters out there, as was suggested. Rather, it is giving the opportunity for everyone to take part in their government without ever having to leave their desks. I think if this catches on in other states (and eventually nationally) the democratic process in this country will improve exponentially - more people will care more about what is going on in their government, and for once, more people will do something about it.As stated elsewhere, this isn't really "bionic" computing at all - just a step ahead in genetic engineering and peering deeper into the cell. There've been discussions and research into other areas of biological computing that come much closer to what we might call "bionic," such as using strands of DNA or protiens. However, these have thus far been limited to specific problems, such as computing the shortest route between two cities or similar problems.
The challenge (imho) to biological computing, if it's ever to be widely useful, is to generalize it. Is DNA Turing complete? = )
Quite possibly the best thing about the entire nomination is that someone is going to have to sing this song on stage at the Oscars.
'Nuff Said.