11.22
I started reading a blog by a fellow scientist over at Terminally Incoherent last year. I originally started reading because I found an article he had written about LaTeX and I was diving headfirst into loving this quirky language. He writes insanely long posts but more than half of them stay on track (unlike Steve Yeggie) and are fun, entertaining, or informative. Last week, he wrote a response to a rather ridiculous advertisement by Microsoft.
This ad deserves no attention and only ridicule. I responded to his criticism and mostly agree with his points, but I found myself thinking, if this is the future, the future will suck. He wrote a response to his own article detailing what his vision of the future would be, but this too left me thinking there wasn’t enough description of his ideas to grasp the vision.
I’ll start by giving a run-down of the Microsoft future, then Mr. Luke’s future, and then tear it all down and describe the only future worth striving towards.
Microsoft basically envisioned everything as a mobile phone. Regular desktops, mobile devices, books, and even refrigerators use the typical swipe mechanics. Every surface is capable of selectively allowing light to pass through, being opaque or translucent upon command. Every display is paper thin, even paper displays and mobile phones. Books are as thin as paper but are really just computers with “pages”, similar to two-sided business cards. And most annoyingly, every device employs a 3D display for mundane uses such as bar graphs.
Luke goes on to initially describe something that is vaguely similar to the Star Trek computer. Talk to your house, car, or anything else and it talks back. He then goes on to describe a system where people don’t need to look up their appointments, they just know them like a bird knows which way north points. This concept is referred to as an “exo-cortex” and is a device used to describe how “Bob” just seems to know everything. Communication is done by reaching out within one’s mind and contacting them. It’s all sci-fi but it doesn’t really describe how the future works any better than the Microsoft ad.
So, where did Microsoft go wrong? Almost everywhere. They employed the same devices currently available and made them smaller and added other current technologies on top, such as 3D displays (which oddly work not as stereoscopic images and do no use glasses). Nearly every element in the video is something that can be done today. Automatically translating eyewear, though small in form factor, can already be done (albeit in a phone). Phones, tablets, and now some desktop interfaces already employ the ridiculously annoying swipe interaction for everything. The poly-translucent surfaces (business card and fridge door) is semi-novel and would be extremely useful in more than just a cheesy computer display (think invisibility suit that can manipulate visible light waves to bend them around the object).
Where did Luke go wrong? Well, his first vision of the future is depressingly boring. In fact, this idea started back in the early 90s as “SmartHome“, which Microsoft expanded upon. The interaction mechanism of speech is pretty basic and really doable right now. Most of the things people would use it for are the type of basic Machine Translation problems Siri has demonstrated as an academically complete topic (my initial adviser described it to me as “boring and was completed 2 decades ago”). The “exo-brain” idea was better, but really, it doesn’t go far enough; it’s like the half-way vision of where human nature will ultimately gravitate.
If you haven’t ever watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex, you should. See, while it’s just anime, the writers have an amazing ability to create a probable future. The original movie proposed the idea of the human brain getting an electronic implant that allowed them to connect to “the net” and communicate, perform tasks, and gather information by connecting to the futuristic USB port on the back of the head (a decade before The Matrix employed this idea).
The basic principle of the show is that mankind has embraces robotics and made them a part of their body, becoming a race of mostly cyborgs. Not the normal cyborgs we currently think of, but rather regular humans with electronics to enhance our already human attributes. For example, some characters have robotic eyes to provide better vision, telescoping abilities, built-in HUDs, and more. Not possessing implants of any kind is considered alien to most humans and one such character is labeled as a luddite.
There was one particular episode that struck me as remarkable, the very first episode. The human brain itself became obsolete and some people have opted to download their brain into a “cyberbrain”. This gives them all the computing abilities you expect out of a supercomputer and all of the intelligence seen out of even the most basic human brains. To read a heavy volume of text, the cyberbrain can either download it and process it or scan a barcode like book via the eyes (probably robotic as well). Interaction can be done wirelessly to “the net”, so basically, anything is possible.
Much like the biological brain, it has to process and perform complex tasks, but it can be upgraded, expanded, and improved. Imagine the learning possibilities. Given a more powerful cyberbrain geared for processing physics, the greatest works of Einstein and Feynman would be easily mastered. The open market could sell cyberbrains that specialize in certain tasks. Combined with other cybernetics, the limitations of mankind would know no bounds.
I see the future as one in which the biological human body as the next device to be crafted, mastered, and obsoleted by technology. The only major obstacle: the human nature to be adverse to replacing itself with robotics and ethical challenges. If you need proof that we are the only thing stopping ourselves from adopting concepts like robotic eyes, ears, limbs, and brains, look into the story of Oscar Pistorius.
Me? I look forward to never having to wear glasses, forget a phone number, or deal with an aging brain that can no longer learn.