6 ms·

It's funny how some predictions that sound outlandish have come fairly close to the mark in less sexy ways. Kurzweil's defense of "computers commonly embedded i

It's funny how some predictions that sound outlandish have come fairly close to the mark in less sexy ways. Kurzweil's defense of "computers commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry" as applying to iPod Nanos embedded in pockets is a bit of a stretch, but in practicality not far at all. Though I think anyone with a sense for usability could have told you in 1999 that speech recognition, despite its eventual technological maturity, wouldn't be anywhere near the primary mode of text entry a decade later. Ultimately, I'd chalk that up to Kurzweil understanding technology somewhat better than he understands humans.

axiom 17y ago
It would be a lot more impressive if he made those predictions before PDAs were already commonplace, and WiFi was well established. So basically his prediction was "there's gonna be the same stuff we have now, but it's gonna be all over the place!"
- ugh 17y ago
  WLAN well established? Really? Sure, some bigger institutions used it. But today you can be dropped pretty much anywhere in any city and have ten or more WLAN access points show up on your iPod touch. That you just pulled out of your pocket. Everything seems obvious in hindsights.
- toby 17y ago
  To be fair, he says he made these predictions in 1996. The PalmPilot personal, which I would say was the first widely-used PDA didn't come out until 1997. From what I remember, there weren't really any commercially available 802.11 devices until 1999. So while these things were on the horizon, I wouldn't say they were commonplace just yet.
  - varjag 17y ago
    There was already Apple Newton though, so the idea was clearly in the air.
- jerf 17y ago
  Many of his predictions boil down to "You know that weird fringe technology that's too expensive, bulky, and power consuming? In ten years, it'll be common place and cheap." After the fact they look like nothing. But... despite over fifty years of this progression occurring in the electronics arena, the idea that what we have now is all we will ever have remains pervasive. Very few people have internalized the concept. And so he makes predictions, and they are not met with widespread apathy and people claiming they are trivial and obvious, they are met with disbelief and mockery from many people. So you can't say they are vacuously true from the vantage point of 2009. You need to have said it in 1998 when it was published, whereupon I assure you, you too would have been met with mockery and derision. One example of where people are not thinking this way is in our discussions about the environment. The closest thing to innovation any mainstream debate discusses has to do with taking technologies that mostly work now but don't scale, and making them fail to scale marginally less, while assuming the same baseload of resource consumption will be in place. Yet technology marches ever onward, and one way it manifests is increased efficiency. A command of nanotechnology, even if it never quite reaches the dizzying heights described in the farthest-out singulatarian literature, will still have massive consequences for the efficiency of manufacturing, manufacturing of food resources, and numerous other issues as well. I find the idea of the Kyoto protocols utterly laughable, because built into the very concept is the idea that we can have meaningful discussions of what our resource consumption will look like in 50 years, an idea so absurd that it is remarkable that it passes without comment. What's the point of negotiating a binding treaty on a world that may literally be growing houses, just to take one incredibly small example?
  - axiom 17y ago
    Except that the predictions that actually came true are the obvious ones (e.g. smaller faster computers everywhere predicted in 1999) while the ones that didn't come true (e.g. "Translating telephones allow people to speak to each other in different languages" ) were the ones that were derided - rightly so.
    - jerf 17y ago
      I accept Kurzweil's defense. He's off by two years, tops, for common use, and in terms of simple existence, he's not wrong at all. The software already exists: http://www.jibbigo.com/website/index.php http://www.jibbigo.com/website/index.php . That's real. You can buy it. The only thing stopping me from linking straight into the app store is the app store won't let me. Even if you want to get anal about the year (which is not really appropriate), that was out in 2009. And I'm pretty sure that's not the only one, either. Compared to the general rate of prediction failure he is in a league of his own. And again, you just claimed his predictions were trivial as if I didn't mention that issue at all. I feel you may not have read my message, as you don't seem to have actually reacted to it. It's not about the triviality apparent in 2009. It's about whether the general public he was speaking to would have considered it a trivial prediction in 1998-ish. That's easy: No. I remember that time. Many technologically-aware people like me wouldn't have blinked at most of the predictions but they were not in the public's mind.
Femur 17y ago
I'd say for the most part nearly all of the technology Kurzweil predicts ends up being available, it is just the implementation of this technology that muddles the prediction. In Kurzweil's talks he often expounds on the high predictability of technological progress (price and power of computing, etc). He does not so much cover how humans will use this tech. Im sure that iPod Nano's (or equivalent) could easily have been embedded or sewn into clothing or hats for years now. Speech-to-text is available now and I use it in Google Voice all the time. It's a matter of choice in this case, not the technology.
- roc 17y ago
  There have been plenty of concept bluetooth rings and watches as well. Technologically they're quite doable and even offer some neat features. None have yet resonated with society enough to be common, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if these caught on in a more significant way much closer to 2009 than 2019; particularly as peripherals integrating wirelessly with a primary personal computer (phone).
  - Retric 17y ago
    The problem with wearable computing has always been how much it costs. People don't want to wear the same thing every day and washing machines and dryers are extremely harsh on electronics. Stepping outside the classics like wrist, ear, and eye is going to require a dramatic advantage. Cell phone watches are possible but holding your risk up to your ear is uncomfortable. PS: IMO eyewear is the final external location for electronics, but it's going to need to be extreamly light, inexpensive and useful to make it there. Some sort of adaptive bifocal technology that watches your eyes and auto focuses might be the first winner.
    - roc 17y ago
      Wearables are destined as peripherals, precisely because it only makes sense to choose a wearable over the computer itself when the ergonomics and use cases are superior. So a cell phone watch is a trivial non-starter. But a bluetooth watch, subservient to the phone, delivering accurate time, calendar information and message notification without having to reach into your pocket and enter your lock code, is a different thing. Similarly, a necklace recording device would be ideal for hands-free audio/video recording to your primary device. Who wouldn't want a trip video they didn't even have to remember to record? Not to mention a necklace/earring combo that acted as a bluetooth headset. Eyewear definitely has a lot of promise, but I'm not entirely sold on it needing to be inexpensive. People pay a lot for stylish eyewear. So I don't doubt people will pay quite a bit for eyewear with features. However, it also suggests that eyewear electronics are dead in the water until they're stylish. The watch and jewelry really isn't that far out there. Particularly during years when chunky jewelry is in style.
dhume 17y ago
Kurzweil's defense of "computers commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry" as applying to iPod Nanos embedded in pockets is a bit of a stretch, but in practicality not far at all. I'll accept this when the iPod is embedded with some degree of permanency and doesn't have to be taken out when I do laundry.
- SandB0x 17y ago
  I have an old Sony network walkman (nwz-e99) that went through a 40 degree wash and works just fine.
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  I would agree here. The effect is ubiquitous computing in both cases, but rather than "a computer in everything" we have "Computers you can take everywhere".
- ZachPruckowski 17y ago
  Do you honestly believe that it's not possible to waterproof/heatproof an iPod? The technology exists to do that, but it's not commercially practical, because no-one buys an iPod for every shirt they own. I bet if I really wanted to, I could pull a shuffle out of it's case, use more expensive and denser flash memory, and shove all this in a tiny waterproof/heatproof baggie or small and thin container, swap the USB connector for mini-USB, insulate the wires, build caps for the external wiring ends, and sew the whole thing to the inside of my shirt behind my shoulderblade. It'd have exposed ports to connect mini-USB to my computer and earbuds to my ears, and if I wanted to wash it, I'd stick the port-caps in and seal it somehow. It'd take a fair few prototypes, but it could be done with today's tech. Edit: I don't think this is commercial viable, but if one of you guys builds it and gets rich, I expect royalties :-)
  - scott_s 17y ago
    The technology exists to do that, but it's not commercially practical, because no-one buys an iPod for every shirt they own. Clearly the implication of such a prediction is that the technology will be at a point where it is commercially practical.
rictic 17y ago
I think a parallel could be drawn to that Sci-fi and futurist favorite: the cyborg. Can we embed electronics into people today? Yeah, actually. But we only do it in extreme cases (cochlear implant, pacemaker, etc). It's so much easier to just wear a pair of bluetooth headphones. It's far cheaper and lower risk, and it fits the rapid upgrade cycle of tech much better.
Carlfish 17y ago
"Kurzweil's defense of "computers commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry" as applying to iPod Nanos embedded in pockets is a bit of a stretch, but in practicality not far at all." It's very far indeed. You're taking a specific prediction about how we are going to use technology and turning it into a prediction that technology will get smaller and more portable. It's a technique shared by fabulists, fortune tellers and cold readers: "I see a brown dog called eric..." "Well, we had a dog but he was a German Shepherd..." "Yes, that's it, I knew I saw a dog!"

axiom 17y ago

It would be a lot more impressive if he made those predictions before PDAs were already commonplace, and WiFi was well established. So basically his prediction was "there's gonna be the same stuff we have now, but it's gonna be all over the place!"

ugh 17y ago
WLAN well established? Really? Sure, some bigger institutions used it. But today you can be dropped pretty much anywhere in any city and have ten or more WLAN access points show up on your iPod touch. That you just pulled out of your pocket. Everything seems obvious in hindsights.
toby 17y ago
To be fair, he says he made these predictions in 1996. The PalmPilot personal, which I would say was the first widely-used PDA didn't come out until 1997. From what I remember, there weren't really any commercially available 802.11 devices until 1999. So while these things were on the horizon, I wouldn't say they were commonplace just yet.
- varjag 17y ago
  There was already Apple Newton though, so the idea was clearly in the air.
jerf 17y ago
Many of his predictions boil down to "You know that weird fringe technology that's too expensive, bulky, and power consuming? In ten years, it'll be common place and cheap." After the fact they look like nothing. But... despite over fifty years of this progression occurring in the electronics arena, the idea that what we have now is all we will ever have remains pervasive. Very few people have internalized the concept. And so he makes predictions, and they are not met with widespread apathy and people claiming they are trivial and obvious, they are met with disbelief and mockery from many people. So you can't say they are vacuously true from the vantage point of 2009. You need to have said it in 1998 when it was published, whereupon I assure you, you too would have been met with mockery and derision. One example of where people are not thinking this way is in our discussions about the environment. The closest thing to innovation any mainstream debate discusses has to do with taking technologies that mostly work now but don't scale, and making them fail to scale marginally less, while assuming the same baseload of resource consumption will be in place. Yet technology marches ever onward, and one way it manifests is increased efficiency. A command of nanotechnology, even if it never quite reaches the dizzying heights described in the farthest-out singulatarian literature, will still have massive consequences for the efficiency of manufacturing, manufacturing of food resources, and numerous other issues as well. I find the idea of the Kyoto protocols utterly laughable, because built into the very concept is the idea that we can have meaningful discussions of what our resource consumption will look like in 50 years, an idea so absurd that it is remarkable that it passes without comment. What's the point of negotiating a binding treaty on a world that may literally be growing houses, just to take one incredibly small example?
- axiom 17y ago
  Except that the predictions that actually came true are the obvious ones (e.g. smaller faster computers everywhere predicted in 1999) while the ones that didn't come true (e.g. "Translating telephones allow people to speak to each other in different languages" ) were the ones that were derided - rightly so.
  - jerf 17y ago
    I accept Kurzweil's defense. He's off by two years, tops, for common use, and in terms of simple existence, he's not wrong at all. The software already exists: http://www.jibbigo.com/website/index.php http://www.jibbigo.com/website/index.php . That's real. You can buy it. The only thing stopping me from linking straight into the app store is the app store won't let me. Even if you want to get anal about the year (which is not really appropriate), that was out in 2009. And I'm pretty sure that's not the only one, either. Compared to the general rate of prediction failure he is in a league of his own. And again, you just claimed his predictions were trivial as if I didn't mention that issue at all. I feel you may not have read my message, as you don't seem to have actually reacted to it. It's not about the triviality apparent in 2009. It's about whether the general public he was speaking to would have considered it a trivial prediction in 1998-ish. That's easy: No. I remember that time. Many technologically-aware people like me wouldn't have blinked at most of the predictions but they were not in the public's mind.

Femur 17y ago

I'd say for the most part nearly all of the technology Kurzweil predicts ends up being available, it is just the implementation of this technology that muddles the prediction. In Kurzweil's talks he often expounds on the high predictability of technological progress (price and power of computing, etc). He does not so much cover how humans will use this tech. Im sure that iPod Nano's (or equivalent) could easily have been embedded or sewn into clothing or hats for years now. Speech-to-text is available now and I use it in Google Voice all the time. It's a matter of choice in this case, not the technology.

roc 17y ago
There have been plenty of concept bluetooth rings and watches as well. Technologically they're quite doable and even offer some neat features. None have yet resonated with society enough to be common, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if these caught on in a more significant way much closer to 2009 than 2019; particularly as peripherals integrating wirelessly with a primary personal computer (phone).
- Retric 17y ago
  The problem with wearable computing has always been how much it costs. People don't want to wear the same thing every day and washing machines and dryers are extremely harsh on electronics. Stepping outside the classics like wrist, ear, and eye is going to require a dramatic advantage. Cell phone watches are possible but holding your risk up to your ear is uncomfortable. PS: IMO eyewear is the final external location for electronics, but it's going to need to be extreamly light, inexpensive and useful to make it there. Some sort of adaptive bifocal technology that watches your eyes and auto focuses might be the first winner.
  - roc 17y ago
    Wearables are destined as peripherals, precisely because it only makes sense to choose a wearable over the computer itself when the ergonomics and use cases are superior. So a cell phone watch is a trivial non-starter. But a bluetooth watch, subservient to the phone, delivering accurate time, calendar information and message notification without having to reach into your pocket and enter your lock code, is a different thing. Similarly, a necklace recording device would be ideal for hands-free audio/video recording to your primary device. Who wouldn't want a trip video they didn't even have to remember to record? Not to mention a necklace/earring combo that acted as a bluetooth headset. Eyewear definitely has a lot of promise, but I'm not entirely sold on it needing to be inexpensive. People pay a lot for stylish eyewear. So I don't doubt people will pay quite a bit for eyewear with features. However, it also suggests that eyewear electronics are dead in the water until they're stylish. The watch and jewelry really isn't that far out there. Particularly during years when chunky jewelry is in style.

dhume 17y ago

Kurzweil's defense of "computers commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry" as applying to iPod Nanos embedded in pockets is a bit of a stretch, but in practicality not far at all. I'll accept this when the iPod is embedded with some degree of permanency and doesn't have to be taken out when I do laundry.

SandB0x 17y ago
I have an old Sony network walkman (nwz-e99) that went through a 40 degree wash and works just fine.
TrevorJ 17y ago
I would agree here. The effect is ubiquitous computing in both cases, but rather than "a computer in everything" we have "Computers you can take everywhere".
ZachPruckowski 17y ago
Do you honestly believe that it's not possible to waterproof/heatproof an iPod? The technology exists to do that, but it's not commercially practical, because no-one buys an iPod for every shirt they own. I bet if I really wanted to, I could pull a shuffle out of it's case, use more expensive and denser flash memory, and shove all this in a tiny waterproof/heatproof baggie or small and thin container, swap the USB connector for mini-USB, insulate the wires, build caps for the external wiring ends, and sew the whole thing to the inside of my shirt behind my shoulderblade. It'd have exposed ports to connect mini-USB to my computer and earbuds to my ears, and if I wanted to wash it, I'd stick the port-caps in and seal it somehow. It'd take a fair few prototypes, but it could be done with today's tech. Edit: I don't think this is commercial viable, but if one of you guys builds it and gets rich, I expect royalties :-)
- scott_s 17y ago
  The technology exists to do that, but it's not commercially practical, because no-one buys an iPod for every shirt they own. Clearly the implication of such a prediction is that the technology will be at a point where it is commercially practical.

rictic 17y ago

I think a parallel could be drawn to that Sci-fi and futurist favorite: the cyborg. Can we embed electronics into people today? Yeah, actually. But we only do it in extreme cases (cochlear implant, pacemaker, etc). It's so much easier to just wear a pair of bluetooth headphones. It's far cheaper and lower risk, and it fits the rapid upgrade cycle of tech much better.

Carlfish 17y ago

"Kurzweil's defense of "computers commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry" as applying to iPod Nanos embedded in pockets is a bit of a stretch, but in practicality not far at all." It's very far indeed. You're taking a specific prediction about how we are going to use technology and turning it into a prediction that technology will get smaller and more portable. It's a technique shared by fabulists, fortune tellers and cold readers: "I see a brown dog called eric..." "Well, we had a dog but he was a German Shepherd..." "Yes, that's it, I knew I saw a dog!"