A friend forwarded me this awesome short interview of Nova Spivack,
founder of EarthWeb in 1994 and Radar Networks in 2003 (which just
launched the much-hyped app Twine), in which he discusses
predictions for the coming year and the longer term.
Spivack’s prognostications largely focus on widespread adoption
of the semantic web. He believes the semantic web will enable the
broader web’s evolution to one big database via linked metadata,
and that Facebook is slowly becoming a search engine to compete
with Google, while Google is becoming a social network to compete
with Facebook.
In the longer term, by 2020, “[W]e will move toward an
intelligent web where the web moves from a just knowledge base to a
kind of global mind – an intelligent entity comprised of billions
of pieces of software and billions of people working together to
make some new form of intelligence that transcends human or machine
intelligence on its own.”
Spivack also points out that he disagrees with Ray
Kurzweil on the fundamental roles humans and machines will play
in the coming decades.
Prediction: Retro-active quantification will be a
multi-billion dollar industry by 2015.
Information is power. Humans seek novel information because it
is a tool they can use to generate income, live longer and because
it satisfies their curiosity drives. As technology makes it easier
to mine and piece together more meaningful information, humans will
instinctively apply it to better their situation, causing much
social turbulence.
One particularly disruptive result of the human information
mining instinct will be a booming and widespread retro-active
quantification (Retro-Quant) industry. Consuming knowledge that
millions of human agents currently expect and desire to remain
hidden from their peers, the Retro Quant market will inexorably
bring to light precious political, business, family and personal
secrets.
The broader your information footprint and the more valuable
your information, the more likely it is that this market will seek
your information. Unless you can obfuscate the information that you
cast off, much like a spy agency does to establish cover, your past
behavior and statistics will be subject to Retro-Quant.
Here are ten business scenarios (just off the top of my head)
that I expect will contribute to a massive Retro-Quant industry
that wants your information:
1. DNA Mapping: Both your
current DNA, mitochondrial DNA and RNA and its history
will rise in value as biomedical and geneology companies continue
to piece together a map of mankind’s genetic information. You or
your relatives will be able to sell this info, but new companies
will try to get it on the cheap by collecting and correlating
samples freely available in the public domain.
2. Lie Detection Based on Video Recordings:
Ron Brinkmann notes that face-reading technologies will make it
possible to estimate the accuracy of a person’s previously recorded
on-video statements. (Jamais
Cascio has posted a nice reaction
piece.) This will push up the value of high-rez archived
interview footage and will allow us to estimate to a high degree of
certainty who was actually lying and when.
3. Meme Mapping: Emerging semantic and baby AI
technologies will first pull together all of your online data, then
cross-analyze it a million different ways to discover your
personality type, shopping habits, and longitudinal behavior
patterns. These will contribute to a model of your personality
genome already begun by consumer data companies.
4. Garbage Picking: Once robots or truly robust 3D
scanning and analysis systems get cheap enough, fields of human
garbage will all of a sudden turn to gold. How valuable might some
undiscovered Paris Hilton video snippets or a steroids tainted
syringe with Barry Bonds’ DNA be 10 years
from now?
5. Hi-Rez Satellite Imagery: The behavioral data
contained in hi-rez aerial photographs of humans is valuable to
sociologists, market researchers, product developers, etc. At some
point someone will try to sell rich human history collected by
satellites. Eventually this information could be opened to the
public in response to a quantification uproar. (cont.)
You enter the supermarket, grab an electronic shopping cart that
recognizes you from your touch, and begin tossing items into
pre-opened bags. The monitor on your “smart cart” not only displays
each item, its price, and total amount spent; but also subtracts
items returned to the shelf. Hold an item in your hand briefly and
its description appears on the monitor.
When finished shopping, simply tap a “chipped” finger indicating
which credit or debit card to use, or tap thumb for cash pay, which
directs you to an automated cash machine – then out the door. On
exit, select a security option to deactivate or encrypt all product
chips, preventing evildoers from tracking you or your
merchandise.
Though this futuristic scenario may still be a few years away,
Albertson’s
Chicago and Dallas area stores are experimenting with “Shop ‘n
Scan”, a wireless scanner shoppers use to ring up groceries as they
take them off the shelf. Eventually, Albertson’s wants to integrate
this with other services that could one day become the precursor to
a scenario like the one described above.
Milwaukee futurist David Zach envisions a bright future for
RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification). “Chipped”
tickets to local Miller Park sporting
events, for example, allows management to recognize customers. Move
to a more expensive seat during the game, and the system debits
your account for the higher priced seat. (cont.)
Here’s a trippy yet provocative YouTube piece by Terrence
McKenna, creator of Novelty theory (which predicts the ebb and flow
of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time), that
explores the the notion of culture as an operating system that sits
atop the natural human brain, conditioning our experiences (it
certainly could do without the spooky music). If more or less
accurate, this concept means that we’ll have the ability to
transform mindset, or to “download a new operating system”, as we
develop the requisite technologies. According to McKenna, that
requires “clearing the necessary disk space”. Take a look for
yourself, if you dare:
How strong are your genes? How smart are you? People have
traditionally estimated answers to these questions based on
genetic
surveys and IQ Tests, which can provide
valuable answers, but stop well short of factoring in the system(s)
surrounding us. This failure to account for environmental effects
and group dynamics ultimately caps their utility when it come to
the fundamental future-related questions we all seek to answer,
like “How probable is it that I/we will survive?” or “How likely is
it that I/we will thrive?”
But don’t worry, we’re getting better at quantifying our system
all the time. Right now, we may be on the verge of a perspective
shift that will help us to fill in a few more gaps and better our
systems definitions. Both human intelligence and evolutionary
studies appear poised for a due emphasis shift from reductionism (the
focus on individual human agents and single brains) to a more
holistic (the focus on
large groups and the surrounding bio/info/tech structures)
approach.
Cognitive theorist Jim Flynn, founder of the Flynn Effect,
argues that it
is impossible to properly measure intelligence without considering
a combination of genetic and environmental effects. He and William
Dickens of the Brookings Institution have developed a new
model, which demonstrates that environmental factors play a
much larger role in the evolution of cognition than previously
thought. They theorize about how “industrialization’s rising
cognitive demands, at work and leisure, could in fact be the kind
of widespread (but not necessarily large), steadily changing
environmental factor that could account for the higher IQ scores
across so many nations.” (cont.)
Check out this informational video on WorldFuture 2008 hosted by
the World Future
Society where Conference Chair Nat Irvin II discusses his first
WFS conference and what to look forward
to at this year’s event.
This year’s conference will be from July 26-28 in Washington,
D.C. and promises to be a great event. Faculty and speakers will
include Peter Bishop, Joseph Coates, John Smart and a variety of
industry leaders and futurists. Download a pdf of the preliminary
program here.
“Sometimes I feel like the late Dr Frankenstein,” once said
celebrated science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Although he was
not being entirely serious, Clarke’s powerful predictions did
release a sort of monster – one whose powerful memes penetrated
many aspects of society and will continue to spiral out of control
far into the future.
In the wake of his passing, Clarke’s predictions have been
highlighted for their genius and accuracy. The following video,
created for Ovation TV, is a great overview of some of his most
exalted predictions, which include inventions like the videophone,
email, space shuttles, laptop computers and cloning, and explains
how he is “responsible for revolutionizing modern communications.”
What follows this overview is commentary by renowned experts
informing the weight of Clarke’s predictions.
Alvin Toffler, acclaimed futurist and author of Future
Shock, said, “The future is not inevitable, it is made, to a
considerable degree by human beings, and chance plays a role.
Nevertheless, it is possible to see patterns that others haven’t
seen. And I think that is certainly something that Arthur Clarke
has done.”
Larry Smarr, Director of the National Centre for Super
Computing, remarked the rarity and utility of Clarke’s work by
saying, “We have incredible numbers of specialists, but how many
people do we have that are synthesizing this knowledge and
visioning the future?”
“Clark will emerge as one of the greatest visionaries of the
20th century,” added Jeff Greenwald of Wired Magazine – I think
it’s safe to say that even among the moderately informed, few would
disagree with this statement about Clarke’s legacy.
Dr. James Flynn, the
cognitive theorist who discovered the steady rise in human IQ
scores over the past 100 years (subsequently dubbed the Flynn
Effect), is now advancing a compelling new model of
intelligence based on the idea that
environment significantly impacts the development of intelligence,
aka our ability to solve complex problems.
Attributing IQ gains largely to “the rise of the scientific
ethos” and abstract thinking ability, as well as a propensity for
genes to “match better environments”, Flynn imagines a future in
which technological breakthroughs may better our ability to
comprehend complex systems, making us a good deal smarter. However,
he also cautiously points out that we could be approaching natural
limits to critical thinking ability, as the pursuit of decadence
increases and humans become “less willing to do cognitive
exercise”.
What follows is an illuminating must-read interview with Flynn
about his thoughts on the interplay between intelligence and our
rapidly changing environment:
MemeBox: What do you do and how is that related to the
future?
James Flynn: I am both a historian of cognition and a moral and
political philosopher. The latter relates to the future because
clear thinking about the good life and the good society is of
eternal value. However,my recent book, What is intelligence?
(Cambridge), describes the evolution of the American mind in the
20th century. As usual, only if we understand our immediate past
can we see the challenges the future holds. In this case, we can
make two predictions about the 21st century with some probability.
That developing nations will acquire the habits of mind that
developed nations have recently acquired. That the task for
developed nations like America is to build an enhanced critical
ability on the foundation of the IQ gains of the 20th century.
M: Why is the study of intelligence important to us
humans?
JF: That we think it is important is undeniable in that we spend
huge sums on education trying to train intelligence to be socially
useful. We are correct to do so. Intelligence is essentially the
capacity to solve problems and a complex industrial society demands
that we have certain habits of mind: that we classify the world in
a way that promotes a scientific understanding; that we can use
logic to deal with hypothetical problems; and that we can deal with
novel problems on the spot.
M: What is the relationship between environment and
intelligence? (Environment as in the whole system: biology,
information, technology, society, the universe.) To what extent can
we distinguish between the two?
JF: Until recently, it was thought we could use twin studies to
neatly distinguish the effects of genes and environment on IQ and
they said that genes were overwhelmingly potent and environment
feeble. Then I began to document these huge IQ gains over time that
amounted to some 30 to 50 IQ points during the 20th century in
America. These showed environmental factors of enormous potency,
but that of course created a paradox: how could the twin studies
show environment so feeble while IQ gains showed it to be so
potent? (Cambridge), describes the evolution of the American mind
in the 20th century. As usual, only if we understand our immediate
past can we see the challenges the future holds. In this case, we
can make two predictions about the 21st century with some
probability. That developing nations will acquire the habits of
mind that developed nations have recently acquired. That the task
for developed nations like America is to build an enhanced critical
ability on the foundation of the IQ gains of the 20th century.
Google
Australia has just announced the release of a revolutionary new
product called MATE™ (Machine Automated
Temporal Extrapolation) that extrapolates web data up to one full
day in advance of reality.
According to a statement
released by the suddenly resurgent company, “Using MATE’s™ machine learning and artificial intelligence
techniques developed in Google’s Sydney offices, [it is possible
to] construct elements of the future.”
So how exactly does it work?
Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and
our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of
numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis,
online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle
weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the
internet will look like 24 hours from now.
The implications are frankly astounding. The ability to predict
information patterns and the statistical likelihood of certain
content is certain to disrupt established patterns of causality
underlying markets, social dynamics and even physical and chemical
reactions.
In Google’s own words:
We can use this technique to predict almost anything on the
web – tomorrow’s share price movements, sports results or news
events. Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even
predict the actual wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours
before they’re written!
Rumor has it that Google is set to make available its Street
View software directly through the already formidable and
engaging Earth platform.
Rafe Needleman over at Webware reports: “A source tells me
that the Google
Earth app will get the Street View feature, currently available
only in the browser-based Google Maps service, within a few weeks.
What’s not clear is whether this refers to general release or
internal testing.”
While this merger may at first glance seem like a novelty, it
marks another significant step in Google’s relentless march toward
the real-time quantification of the entire planet, aka the creation
of a total systems Mirror World .
Check out this demo of Street View if you haven’t already
explored the product/service:
As the company strives to “organize the world’s information and
make it universally accessible and useful”, Street View integration
is an inevitable step for Google Earth and is likely to be followed
by inter-stitched geo-tagged photos, richer layers of
user-generated content, more up-to-date / high-rez satellite
imagery, plus whatever additional applications the behemoth can
conceive and implement. The stakes are simply to high for the
company not continue adding info nodes and value to their budding
centralized network.
When considering the future, is it more important to focus on
the extinction risk posed by advancing technology or the massive
potential for social advancement enabled by the same?
Futurist blogger and core Lifeboat Foundation member Michael
Anissimov argues that calculating and combating existential
risk is the moral imperative of our time.
Anissimov writes, “In less
than a decade, humanity will likely develop weapons even more
deadly than nukes – synthetic life, and eventually, nanorobots and
self-improving AI. Even if we consider the likelihood of human
extinction in the next century to be small, say 1%, it still merits
attention due to the incredibly high stakes involved.”
Jamais
Cascio, founder of worldchanging.com and a popular
futurist blogger in his own right, concurs that existential risk is
a most valid concern.
In a recent Nanotechnology
Now column he explains, “[S]ome technologies may enable
individuals or small groups to carry out attacks, on infrastructure
or people, at a scale that would have required the resources of an
army in decades past. This is not an outlandish concern by any
means; many proponents of the “super-empowered angry individual”
(SEAI) concept cite the September 11 attacks as a crude example of
how vulnerable modern society can be to these kinds of threats.
It’s not hard to imagine what a similar band of terrorists, or
groups like Aum Shinrikyo, might try to do with access to molecular
manufacturing or advanced bioengineering tools.”
But then Cascio turns things around a bit and points out that
“angry people aren’t the only ones who could be empowered by these
technologies.”
As personal broadcasting feeds like Twitter and FriendFeed hit the mainstream,
increasingly adding to the information already flowing outward
through social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Orkut and LikedIn, as well as regular
old-school email, it’s steadily becoming more difficult to make
sense of all of the data competing for our attention.
It’s gotten to such a point that Josh Catone over at Read/Write Web
yesterday
wrote that, “Keeping track of all that activity is starting to
feel like watching code in The
Matrix.”
In the Matrix, protagonist Neo’s brain was able to discern the
meaningful patterns in the code. Catone points out that we now have
to take the first baby steps toward such an end:
“The Facebook News Feed only appeared about a year an a half
ago, Twitter only gained real attention about a year ago, and
FriendFeed and similar services are even newer. However, dealing
with information overload is clearly a problem that these services
will need to figure out how to address—whichever does it best will
likely be a big winner.”
As far as tangible near-term solutions, Catone cites basic
algorithmic sorting and a “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” user feedback
system, attributed to blogger/consultant
Jevon MacDonald, that can establish filters. While these are
great first steps, there are a few more techniques and structures
that should be added to the list, not to mention a bunch of
companies already hard at work prepping them.
environment significantly impacts the development of intelligence,
aka our ability to solve complex problems.
value. However,my recent book, What is intelligence?
(Cambridge), describes the evolution of the American mind in the
20th century. As usual, only if we understand our immediate past
can we see the challenges the future holds. In this case, we can
make two predictions about the 21st century with some probability.
That developing nations will acquire the habits of mind that
developed nations have recently acquired. That the task for
developed nations like America is to build an enhanced critical
ability on the foundation of the IQ gains of the 20th century.
