4 ms·

On the Future of Computing

21 points by Garbage 16y ago

TomOfTTB 16y ago
In many ways this vision is why I believe in ChromeOS. I don't believe you'll ever see desktops with ChromeOS on it. But I think the line between Desktop and everything else will blur to the point that desktops will eventually stop existing (and I think it will happen much faster than the 20 years this author predicts) At that point the laptop won't be a desktop replacement as much as it will be a way to quickly and reliably take a little bit of functionality with you. So while your TV and your table and your walls will be your home computing devices the laptop will be something that you want to just open up and do a few discrete functions on. When you look at it that way ChromeOS' priorities are in the right place. Speed, simplicity almost to a fault and highly redundant.
jessriedel 16y ago
> Self driving cars will have begun to become common. This is, unfortunately, not true. It it were true, its (massively positive) effects would dwarf everything else mentioned in the essay.
- nene 16y ago
  Why do you think self-driving-cars are so far fetched? We already have some pretty good prototypes. Additionally, what would be those massively positive effects? I can see less car accidents and reduced amount of mundane driving, but I wouldn't consider those effects as dwarfing everything else.
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    > Why do you think self-driving-cars are so far fetched? We already have some pretty good prototypes. We've had pretty good prototypes for more than 20 years. There are two huge barriers: (1) The progress in computer vision, like voice recognition, has slowed. People had pretty good speech recognition since the 1980's, but the gap between "pretty good" and "good enough to use" remains uncrossed. The gap in computer vision for cars will be even wider because mistakes will be much more costly. (2) Even with all the tech problems solved, the regulatory hurdles to implementing this are staggering. Suffice it to say, I would make a "Long Bet" (longbets.org/) against autonomous cars making up 5% of all cars in 20 years, with 10:1 odds. > Additionally, what would be those massively positive effects? Car accidents cost the US about $250 Billion per year, with 45,000 killed. Autonomous driving has the potential to decrease this by at least an order of magnitude (most accidents are due to driver error). That's a mind-bogglingly staggering benefit. 10 million Americans commute more than an hour each day, which is $25 Billion per year at minimum wage. There's much more lost among the rest of the commuters, and a factor of 4 to account for realistic wages. I could go on about how autonomous driving would also (a) drastically reduce the total number of cars we'd need, (b) cut emissions and gas usage by allowing ubiquitous slip streaming, (c) virtually eliminate the need for nearby parking in cities, freeing up vast amounts of extremely valuable real estate.
    - bsaunder 16y ago
      > Even with all the tech problems solved, the regulatory hurdles to implementing this are staggering. I think we will "back in" to self driving cars. I think they will first appear as safety features on luxury cars (this is already happening). The real statistics of these features will become obvious. Eventually the car won't let the driver do anything stupid and people will become annoyed that they have to hold on to the wheel when basically the car could be doing that for them. Earlier production models of self driving cars will work like cruise control. Perhaps the system analyzes the road conditions and in optimum environments it enables a button that engages autopilot with warnings when conditions degrade (eventually stopping the car if the driver does not resume control).
    - orangecat 16y ago
      Yes, it's absolutely huge. A while back I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation trying to account for the direct and indirect economic benefits, and it was on the order of a trillion dollars a year. That might even be low, because I don't think I considered your points about parking and real estate. I would have agreed with your barriers, but I'm very encouraged by Google's experiments. They show that you can deploy automated vehicles alongside normal traffic, and that getting government permission isn't an insurmountable problem. If it does gain traction, there will be a point where our collective rationality will be tested. It's nearly certain that occasional system malfunctions will occur resulting in deaths. Hopefully we'll be able to realize that such incidents are on balance vastly less harmful than the damage done by human drivers, and won't allow manufacturers to be sued out of existence or shut down by demagoguing politicians.
- izend 16y ago
  I strongly agree the mass adoption of self driving cars will be the most significant development of the foreseeable future. It will create a social upheaval on par of the Industrial revolution by the mere fact of the number of people who happen to make their livelihood driving a vehicle across the globe.
6ren 16y ago
My understanding was that voice transcription was stuck at around 95% accuracy (one word in twenty wrong!), and wiki says only 80% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#Performance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#Performance Of course, you'll do far better in severely curtailed domains (eg. recognizing digits, since there's only 10). Is there other evidence for voice transcription improvement? Otherwise, this sounds a bit like "AI is just around the corner".
loup-vaillant 16y ago
Benjamen Bayart said: "The printing press allowed people to read. The internet will allow them to write." Sorry, but people won't have that right if everything is in the cloud, because it will be controlled by a handful of giga-corporations. If you think this future is likely, I humbly suggest you screw that, and fight for an alternative. Here's one : (1) 5 years from now, people will begin to distrust for-profit corporation with their privacy. (2) 10 years from now, the FreedomBox will be ubiquitous. (3) 15 years from now, consumer awareness and demand (triggered by the FreedomBox) will raise upload capacity up to download capacity. Likely results are ubiquitous (and unstoppable) self publishing, e-mail that's actually private, and distributed encrypted back-up that just works. This should help flourish public debates and actual democracies.
scorpion032 16y ago
"Computing will cease to be something separate and discrete. The internet will be a literal extension of your brain." Can't wait.
scorpion032 16y ago
http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_n... Juan Enrique shares his insights on similar lines. "It would be mildly arrogant to presume, the purpose of the universe from 13.5 billion years, is we men. Home Sapiens give way to a new breed of Living creatures called Homo Evolutus, that controls its own existance" - my paraphrase, from what I remember. A must watch.

21 points by Garbage 16y ago

In many ways this vision is why I believe in ChromeOS. I don't believe you'll ever see desktops with ChromeOS on it. But I think the line between Desktop and everything else will blur to the point that desktops will eventually stop existing (and I think it will happen much faster than the 20 years this author predicts) At that point the laptop won't be a desktop replacement as much as it will be a way to quickly and reliably take a little bit of functionality with you. So while your TV and your table and your walls will be your home computing devices the laptop will be something that you want to just open up and do a few discrete functions on. When you look at it that way ChromeOS' priorities are in the right place. Speed, simplicity almost to a fault and highly redundant.

jessriedel 16y ago

> Self driving cars will have begun to become common. This is, unfortunately, not true. It it were true, its (massively positive) effects would dwarf everything else mentioned in the essay.

nene 16y ago
Why do you think self-driving-cars are so far fetched? We already have some pretty good prototypes. Additionally, what would be those massively positive effects? I can see less car accidents and reduced amount of mundane driving, but I wouldn't consider those effects as dwarfing everything else.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  > Why do you think self-driving-cars are so far fetched? We already have some pretty good prototypes. We've had pretty good prototypes for more than 20 years. There are two huge barriers: (1) The progress in computer vision, like voice recognition, has slowed. People had pretty good speech recognition since the 1980's, but the gap between "pretty good" and "good enough to use" remains uncrossed. The gap in computer vision for cars will be even wider because mistakes will be much more costly. (2) Even with all the tech problems solved, the regulatory hurdles to implementing this are staggering. Suffice it to say, I would make a "Long Bet" (longbets.org/) against autonomous cars making up 5% of all cars in 20 years, with 10:1 odds. > Additionally, what would be those massively positive effects? Car accidents cost the US about $250 Billion per year, with 45,000 killed. Autonomous driving has the potential to decrease this by at least an order of magnitude (most accidents are due to driver error). That's a mind-bogglingly staggering benefit. 10 million Americans commute more than an hour each day, which is $25 Billion per year at minimum wage. There's much more lost among the rest of the commuters, and a factor of 4 to account for realistic wages. I could go on about how autonomous driving would also (a) drastically reduce the total number of cars we'd need, (b) cut emissions and gas usage by allowing ubiquitous slip streaming, (c) virtually eliminate the need for nearby parking in cities, freeing up vast amounts of extremely valuable real estate.
  - bsaunder 16y ago
    > Even with all the tech problems solved, the regulatory hurdles to implementing this are staggering. I think we will "back in" to self driving cars. I think they will first appear as safety features on luxury cars (this is already happening). The real statistics of these features will become obvious. Eventually the car won't let the driver do anything stupid and people will become annoyed that they have to hold on to the wheel when basically the car could be doing that for them. Earlier production models of self driving cars will work like cruise control. Perhaps the system analyzes the road conditions and in optimum environments it enables a button that engages autopilot with warnings when conditions degrade (eventually stopping the car if the driver does not resume control).
  - orangecat 16y ago
    Yes, it's absolutely huge. A while back I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation trying to account for the direct and indirect economic benefits, and it was on the order of a trillion dollars a year. That might even be low, because I don't think I considered your points about parking and real estate. I would have agreed with your barriers, but I'm very encouraged by Google's experiments. They show that you can deploy automated vehicles alongside normal traffic, and that getting government permission isn't an insurmountable problem. If it does gain traction, there will be a point where our collective rationality will be tested. It's nearly certain that occasional system malfunctions will occur resulting in deaths. Hopefully we'll be able to realize that such incidents are on balance vastly less harmful than the damage done by human drivers, and won't allow manufacturers to be sued out of existence or shut down by demagoguing politicians.
izend 16y ago
I strongly agree the mass adoption of self driving cars will be the most significant development of the foreseeable future. It will create a social upheaval on par of the Industrial revolution by the mere fact of the number of people who happen to make their livelihood driving a vehicle across the globe.

6ren 16y ago

My understanding was that voice transcription was stuck at around 95% accuracy (one word in twenty wrong!), and wiki says only 80% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#Performance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#Performance Of course, you'll do far better in severely curtailed domains (eg. recognizing digits, since there's only 10). Is there other evidence for voice transcription improvement? Otherwise, this sounds a bit like "AI is just around the corner".

loup-vaillant 16y ago

Benjamen Bayart said: "The printing press allowed people to read. The internet will allow them to write." Sorry, but people won't have that right if everything is in the cloud, because it will be controlled by a handful of giga-corporations. If you think this future is likely, I humbly suggest you screw that, and fight for an alternative. Here's one : (1) 5 years from now, people will begin to distrust for-profit corporation with their privacy. (2) 10 years from now, the FreedomBox will be ubiquitous. (3) 15 years from now, consumer awareness and demand (triggered by the FreedomBox) will raise upload capacity up to download capacity. Likely results are ubiquitous (and unstoppable) self publishing, e-mail that's actually private, and distributed encrypted back-up that just works. This should help flourish public debates and actual democracies.

scorpion032 16y ago

"Computing will cease to be something separate and discrete. The internet will be a literal extension of your brain." Can't wait.

scorpion032 16y ago

http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_n... Juan Enrique shares his insights on similar lines. "It would be mildly arrogant to presume, the purpose of the universe from 13.5 billion years, is we men. Home Sapiens give way to a new breed of Living creatures called Homo Evolutus, that controls its own existance" - my paraphrase, from what I remember. A must watch.