Singularity Sunrise

Steve Jobs and Ubiquitous Computing

I've been reading all the news and commentary about the death of Steve Jobs and I've been impressed by how well the media have explored all the facets of his life and his legacy. What really can I add to all of that? In terms of the focus of this blog, the technological singularity, I think probably the greatest contribution that Steve Jobs made is that he ushered us into the age of ubiquitous computing. Take, for example, this quote from a recent CBS News report noting an old interview that Job's gave, it sums it up nicely: 

He is on a mission," the magazine writes, "preaching the Gospel of salvation through the personal computer--preferably one manufactured by Apple. He is an engaging pitchman and never loses an opportunity to sell his products, eloquently describing a time when computers will be as common as kitchen appliances and as revolutionary in their impact as the telephone or the internal-combustion engine.

Well, he did it, we are now living in that time. Steve Jobs made computers a part of our everyday lives by making them so easy to use, so intuitive, and so well designed, that we barely even think of them as computers. My iPhone is a powerful computer, but I don't think of it as a computer, even though it connects me like never before to everyone I know and to the global information network. Abstract concepts like "ubiquitous computing" are now so personalized that we don't even stop to think about how deeply embedded into our lives computers and networks have become. And it's just getting started, as the Siri personal assistant in the new iPhone is about to introduce people to artificial intelligence in a way they have never seen before. The real digital revolution is just starting and that, I think, it Steve Job's real legacy.

Image Credit: Los Angeles Times/Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Singularity Sighting in Slate

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, conference travel and start of the year busyness has cut into my blogging time. I'm hopeful that things are settling down a bit now and I'll have more time for blogging. I noticed this article in Slate during my morning browsing, it notes our sorry track record for predicting the future and speculates about the future of the internet, something of interest to those who consider it more than a passing fad. For our particular focus on the rise of the technological singularity, the very last paragraph is noteworthy:

In the realm of outlandish predictions, I feel more comfortable with the extreme optimists. Ray Kurzweil—the acclaimed technologist who in 1990 correctly predicted that a computer would beat the best human chess player by the end of the decade—believes that humans will soon "transcend biology." He says we're on the cusp of "the singularity"—a point when technology will have advanced so far that human beings will essentially become immortal. It's hard to believe. But Kurzweil's predictions are based on current trends, and nothing about them seems really impossible. I doubt the singularity is just around the corner. But, hey, maybe he's right.

This is a fairly predictable piece, nothing really new here, but I did want to point out the singularity sighting, as it appears to be largely positive.

Can Twitter Save Your Life?

This AP wire report picked up by MSNBC notes that the flu beleaguered residents of Mexico are interacting more and more on a virtual level in order to maintain a healthy physical distance from each other:

Churchgoers celebrate Mass via television. Congressional candidates campaign with real-time speeches on the Web. A magazine promises Internet tours through the real Mexico — the one with open museums and pyramids. And rock bands plan online concerts. Swine flu is creating a virtual Mexico. With school canceled nationwide and many parents forbidding their kids to party, teenagers are logging a lot more time chatting on Facebook, Twittering and downloading music and movies from the Internet. So are many adults, especially after most business and government offices in Mexico City shut down Friday for five days.

Is Mexico on the right track? Should governments everywhere encourage citizens to engage in virtual interaction, distance learning, and telecommuting to avoid the flu? Can Twitter save your life? Viva la Revolución!

Your Brain on Twitter

I've posted before about advances in brain-computer interface technology and this latest advance involves one of the hot topics of the day - Twitter. The micro-blogging service has been in the news a lot lately, just a week or two ago Oprah sent her first tweet and Ashton Kutcher and CNN Breaking News each surpassed 1 million Twitter followers. Twitter has become part of the popular lexicon and firmly established as part of pop culture. And now for the neurotech angle: What if you could Twitter just by thinking it? Scientists at  the University of Wisconsin have been working on brain-computer interfaces to help paralyzed patients and they have used the technology to allow a user to send messages to Twitter without typing them in. This is a very promising technology that not only demonstrates the utility of Twitter but also opens up a world of communication for those whose world would otherwise be very limited.

Photo: UW-Madison

Google Spoofs Singularity in April Fools Joke

Google has not let us down with their annual April Fool's Joke. This year they spoofed the singularity and AI, offering a new service that sounds rather remarkable:

Research group switches on world's first "artificial intelligence" tasked-array system.

For several years now a small research group has been working on some challenging problems in the areas of neural networking, natural language and autonomous problem-solving. Last fall this group achieved a significant breakthrough: a powerful new technique for solving reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster.

Since then progress has been rapid, and tonight we're pleased to announce that just moments ago, the world's first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) was switched on and began performing some initial functions. It's an exciting moment that we're determined to build upon by coming to understand more fully what CADIE's emergence might mean, for Google and for our users. So although CADIE technology will be rolled out with the caution befitting any advance of this magnitude, in the months to come users can expect to notice her influence on various google.com properties. Earlier today, for instance, CADIE deduced from a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web a set of online design principles from which she derived this intriguing homepage.

These are merely the first steps onto what will doubtless prove a long and difficult road. Considerable bugs remain in CADIE'S programming, and considerable development clearly is called for. But we can't imagine a more important journey for Google to have undertaken.

For more information about CADIE see this monograph, and follow CADIE's progress via her YouTube channel and blog.

Thank you Google for bringing a smile to the face of singulatarians everywhere.

Thanks for the Digital Memories

This report is about the transition from old media to digital media, about how our memories of our past once saved to film or vinyl or tape are now slowly being digitized (AP - Analog's twilight: Slowly, digital trumps physical):

Sometimes cultural moments arrive stealthily. One of those is at hand. Memories, in all their forms, are shedding their containers and bursting forth into a new phase - and with them, our images of ourselves. This is analog's twilight."We get fast food and we get instant information online. Everything is at our fingertips," says Jennafer Martin, editor-in-chief of Digital Scrapbooking magazine. "So it makes a little bit of sense that our memories should be, too." This is not solely a tale of technology, though it is fueled by staggering progress. It is a story about how we interact with the items that surround us, and what it means when they change. It is about our hope that, through fire or flood or theft, the things we value will be around not only for our lifetimes but for our children's.

The report almost became a mere cheerleader for new technology without noting any downside, but it closed with a nod to the problem of obsolescence. As many archivists have pointed out, digital formats will not escape the fate of rust, rot and ruin:

Sure, paper can last a century or more if cared for properly, but videotape's shelf life is generally about 15 years and film's about 30. Photo prints from the 1990s are already beginning to fade. [...] Digital, too, has its pitfalls, though: It can decay, albeit in a different way, and it is often locked in a specific format - one that may not exist decades from now.

Of course, the difference now is that it's probably going to be easier to convert digital data to new formats that are themselves variations of the digital devices we now use. A least that seems to be the expectation.

Crowdsourcing the Future

Can you crowdsource the future? The designers of the Superstruct computer simulation are betting you can (O'Riley Radar - Superstruct: Crowdsource the Future):

The game's goal is to crowdsource forecasting for the Institute For The Future. And based on that premise the IFTF is hoping that participants will do no less than help them find solutions to super-threats (climate refugees, water, carbon quotas and more are listed). The game will launch September 22nd and will last for six weeks. During that time players will learn more information about the world in 2019. The players will share how they would deal with this new world.

I can't help but wonder what role AI, nanotech and neurotech will play in their simulated future. And if players don't have to consider these as variables then how useful could such a simulation really be?

The Next Google?

Noting the tenth anniversary of search giant Google, Nature asked some researchers and business people to speculate (Big data: The next Google) about what we might see in the next ten years.

Dem Tech

This Wired News report reviews the technology being used at the Democratic National Convention in Denver (Dem Convention Techiest Event in Party's History):

The four-day 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver this week is not just a political event -- it's a celebration of social media, high-definition video and really kick-ass internet connectivity. "This is America's convention, and we're using new technology this time, like text messaging and Google and YouTube, to really break down these walls to make this [convention] more open and interactive," says Brook Colangelo, the DNCC's director of technology.

The report goes on to note the special services and access the DNC is making available to bloggers. To test out their new blogger friendly services I dropped by the DNC website looking for one thing in particular. I recorded last night's primetime coverage and watched Michelle Obama's speech, but all the commentators were enthusing about Senator Kennedy's speech, and that was not presented in primetime. I'd like to watch that speech, the full speech and not just a video clip which is easily accessible on all the major news outlets. I found a link to the Kennedy video as soon as I landed on the website, but in order to play the video I'm invited to download not one but two new software applications (MS Silverlight plug-in and Move Networks media player). I don't really have an interest in doing that right now, I already have Windows Media Player and iTunes installed on this computer, why do they ask consumers to download even more media players just to watch a convention video? This seems to present an unnecessary obstacle in the YouTube age. So, I'm sorry to say that the DNC failed my simple test of their blogger friendly services.

Defining Cyberspace

The Pentagon has redefined cyberspace to better fit the military missions of the 21st Century (Danger Room - 26 Years After Gibson, Pentagon Defines 'Cyberspace'):

"More than two decades after novelist William Gibson coined the term cyberspace as a 'consensual hallucination' of data... the Pentagon has come up with its own definition," Inside Defense reports.  "A May 12 'for official use only' memo signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England... offers a 28-word meaning for the term." It is decidedly "less poetic" than Gibson's.  It is different from previous military definitions.  And it doesn't exactly square with how the Air Force's new "Cyberspace Command" sees this emerging battlefield.

Cyberspace, England writes, is “a global domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers.”

Well, there you go, cyberspace is the global network of interconnected hardware and software which the modern military stands ready to defend and/or attack. What have they omitted from their definition? The wetware - the human mind.