13.04.2006, 07:16
Computers, Governance, Writing

Chris Langreiter has linked an extremely interesting article on kurzweilai.net.
Is AI Near a Takeoff Point? by J. Storrs Hall

A Short Quote
"There are two separable questions here: Should humanity as a whole build machines that do all its work for it? And, if we do, how should the fruits of that productivity be distributed, if not by existing market mechanisms?

If we say yes to the first question, would the future be so bad? The robots, properly designed and administered, would be working to provide all that wealth for mankind, and we would get the benefit without having to work. Joy calls this "a textbook dystopia", but Moravec writes, "Contrary to the fears of some engaged in civilization's work ethic, our tribal past has prepared us well for lives as idle rich. In a good climate and location the hunter-gatherer's lot can be pleasant indeed. An afternoon's outing picking berries or catching fish—what we civilized types would recognize as a recreational weekend—provides life's needs for several days. The rest of the time can be spent with children, socializing, or simply resting."

In other words, Moravec believes that, in the medium run, handing our economy over to robots will reclaim the birthright of leisure we gave up in the Faustian bargain of agriculture.

As for the second question, about distribution, perhaps we should ask the ultra-intelligent AIs what to do."

Our comments
What makes that text so interesting are the questions it poses. It rounds up some of the more interesting answers too. It crucibly leaves out one possible development that Herbert Frank described in a sophisticated fashion in his Dune sequel. Anti machine computing rebellion. I commented in this sense on Chris' log.

The net realization from this is that it's time to broaden the good ole AI debate again. It has been pushed into a near invisible niche twice or even 3 times since its inception. Not good. Let us give it some prominence. Let us keep in mind also that it is a dangerous and complicated debate that could easily accelerate anti machine aggression if, like in the past, its promoters do nothing but create awe, false promises and irritation with people at large and more so with the political elites. Clear thinking and understanding is badly in need. But the debate also requires a lot more work and participation from non computing experts if not participation by all the population at large. Tough communication work is waiting. Might be not funny but will be necessary.

Addendum
Just detected that motzes finds the story to be "yet another annoying chapter of kurzweil's dilemma". I asked her why.

A final statement
Yiyeh tov (means "will be fine")
Why? Because there are many allies, not least the universe which contrary to what many scientists believe is good by nature.

ANTSCD: Writing
The history, development and evolution of the world's writing systems

Tobi Schäfer pointed us to an equally important text on the evolution of writing systems. Krysstal.com is a United Kingdom based educational and information web site by Kryss Katsiavriades and Talaat Qureshi in London. On first sight it looks like an excellent place to easily study topics like language, football, physics, democracy and more.

Media system and writing especially despite all of the academic traditions are still understudied in my opinion. The emergence of sites like this one fit nicely into the current McLuhan revival. Marshal McLuhan's books have experienced a lot of misunderstanding by half competent study and and large gaps in the knowledge of the evolution of humanity's media systems. Historical and political analysis is still strongly biased to West Eurasian history. Weakly connected and unbalanced pieces of half knowledge are a very dangerous thing, ideologically. Then and again ideas can play large and tragic roles in the material world. Take care. But then again: It's getting better all the time, somehow.

23.02.2006, 07:54
Valentine's Day, More Than a Week Ago

You will already have seen this, probably. Read this coverage at Aviran's Place again nevertheless. Made it to Digg's front. No wonder. Don't be lazy, read the published patent.

This man, Neil Balthaser got a patent issued on Valentine’s Day that is said to cover all rich-media technology implementations, including Flash, Flex, Java, Ajax, and XAML, when and if the rich-media application is accessed on any device over the Internet, including desktops, mobile devices, set-top boxes, and video game consoles. Neil Balthaser, CEO of Balthaser Online, which he owns with his father Ken is not shy about his patent: “You can consider it a pioneering or umbrella patent. The broader claim is one that basically says that if you got a rich Internet application, it is covered by this patent.”

Methods, Systems, And Processes For The Design And Creation Of Rich-Media Applications Via The Internet

The patent, No. 7,000,180 or 180 for short, is entitled Methods, Systems, And Processes For The Design And Creation Of Rich-Media Applications Via The Internet. It contains 83 claims that encompass a wide range of rich-media Net application methods, systems, and processes.

Kill HTML before It Kills Us

Now that man's neither stupid nor an asshole. An article on the The Interactive Design Forum quoted from a Balthaser "New Media" article with the above title:
We must summon the courage to throw away our crutches and rally behind the technologies that will liberate our creativity and open the doors of possibility. Currently, Flash is our best weapon. Drop HTML, pick up Flash, and really learn it — then push it.

Flashkit Australia 2001 participant Tammy Creaser had this to say about Neil:
"The conference was great.
Neil Balthazar was an excellent speaker - it was really good to hear from one of the high flyers and innovators in the industry.
The full-on 3D demo at the end was also a highlight for me....
Can't think of any criticisms, sorry. I enjoyed the whole lot."

Aviran's Place's Fact- 'n Sayfinding

Because he began developing the methods and processes more than a half decade ago, he believes he can prove his invention is novel and nonobvious, two requirements to get a patent, and can fend off any patent challenges from potential licensees who might contend the invention is neither new nor obscure. “Are we ready to defend our patent?” Balthaser asks. “Absolutely. We’re ready to defend it vigorously if we have to. But [litigation is] not the approach we’re taking in terms of licensing.”

What tinytalk analysis says

Licensing fees are going to flow for a while yet (mostly from MSFT, GOOG and ADBE), the patent will be difficult to handl for the Mozilla foundation, but: In the end, the open source software + professional services concept is going to win out because it will be more productive, efficient and more fun. That holds not only for structured computer software, but also for any kind of content, so the Common Creatives will also win in the end. All fundamentals point to that. We also have reason to believe, that in spite of scary symptoms the revolution will be unbloody and televised too, probably.

11.02.2006, 07:13
Funny

It's an old hat but still once in a while it strikes me as funny that machines that provide us with cutting edge fast big hot expensive data processors (PCs, gaming consoles, graphix subsystems, linux servesr) still seem to attract a lot of "old school" speed oriented software written in "old school" strongly typed languages with basically early binding and tight coupling to TCA (target computing architecture) provided by rather agressive optimizing compilers provided by either the cpu manufacturer or nice but slightly deranged geeky speed measurbator guys. That software (browsers, games, word processors, grafic editors ...) Those SWs also use little to none AGC (automatic garbage collection).

The second type is often disappointing and shallow. Mobile mail is working now, 30 years after its invention and will soon become terrible when version 2 will be a mighty social communityware client.

04.02.2006, 08:39
Tech Tact

While flying back from Köbnhavn and a meeting with 3 algorithm researchers gone entrepreneur, my mind floated around and these little things came to my mind:

If you are a young and fast tech company these days your obstacles boil down to about 3 essential adversaries you must heed. Money industry, Pharma industry and, most important of all, yourself.

An advice now: Play all (and I mean all) well or go to a small and boring niche.

25.01.2006, 19:44
Postel's Law
"Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others."



I seem to have it with laws these days. I was reminded of this one in Ed Dumbills post on Firebug (found on lngr) where he maintains, that Browsers follow only half of it. Guess which one.

In WiPe Postel's Law is called the Robustness Principle.

According to the JP Memorial Site at ISI the law or principle or whatever it is now, it originated in RFC 760 DOD STANDARD INTERNET PROTOCOL

RFC 1122 - Requirements for Internet Hosts - Communication Layers and RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet treat the Principle in extension.

The former contains this: ... host software should be prepared, not just to survive other misbehaving hosts, but also to cooperate to limit the amount of disruption such hosts can cause to the shared communication facility.

The latter is said to be the latest RFC formulation of Postel's Law. §3.9 of it gives the following interpretation: Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving. Implementations must follow specifications precisely when sending to the network, and tolerate faulty input from the network. When in doubt, discard faulty input silently, without returning an error message unless this is required by the specification.

Slauti now ventures to put a reformulation of a smart observation by Alan Kay into this pool of robustness:
Sharing's important - everybody is a communications junkie - just keep this in mind: Humans have large bandwidth disparity; they take in fast and easily but give out slow and arduously; luckily the bandwidth disparity of our devices is reciprocal to the human one; it's hard for them to take in but they can give out - what they have - very fast and very easily.



In slauti's eyes such combinations make for pretty robust overall systems. plink, nix    praise or blame!
 

21.01.2006, 09:44
16 Years ago: Email 2.0 / EIG
Anlässlich einer kleinen Diskussion bei den elephånten eine klitzekleine Klarstellung:



eMail 2.0 wurde 1989 auf einem zwischenzeitlich obsoleten OS releas(e)d(t).

Wenn IBM (wo der binärcode jetzt ist) und MSFT (wo, damit sie endlich von 1.99 auf 2.0 upgraden können, die implementationsneuronen engagiert sind) das Zeuch jetzt noch taggen und offensourcen, dann aber hallo!

Ihr denkt unwahrscheinlich, glaub' ich nich'! We all will live to see that. Just look at Declan Lynch and Rocky Oliver's Blog(o)sphere.

Danke nochmal an kris für die Inspiration.

Noch 2 - 3 Kleinigkeiten.

• Stevie Jobs scheint jetzt wirklich der größte Disney Acktionär zu werden. Der meint es ernst.
• Es ist ja bekannt, dass slauti elektromechanische devices lieber hat als elektronische. Er wusste nie recht warum. Dank Andy Milonakis ist nun alles klar: Electronic Devices Are Gay!.
• GVP (Google Video Player) is rather uncool and heavily DRMed.

21.12.2005, 08:40
Do not always go for the obvious lessons
The ENIAC was a highly parallel computer; ...
Long before ENIAC was completed, it became clear to the designers that they could utilize the equipment more efficiently if they would adopt serial methods instead of so much parallelism;

Don Knuth :Von Neumann's First Computer Program

This paper exists as a pdf in the ACM portal. You gotta have an account to get the full text delivered. plink, nix    praise or blame!