By popular demand (well, Stephen asked for it, and he's a popular guy) here's the text of my recent speech, which expands on the ideas presented in the original exponentials post.

Mr. Toastmaster, my fellow Toastmasters and guests, our story begins with the invention of a game called Chaturanga in India some 1400 years ago. Chaturanga is the precursor to the game we call chess; it's played on a board similar to the one used today for chess, checkers, and backgammon. The ruling prince of the region where the game was developed was so taken with Chaturanga that he summoned the game's inventor and offered to reward him for his genius.

Now the man who invented Chaturanga was, indeed, a genius. He asked the prince that he be given only a very modest reward. Just one grain of rice placed in the first square of the Chaturanga board. That's all. Oh, and then two grains of rice in the second square and four in the third and eight in the fifth and so on, doubling until all 64 squares were filled.

Well, the prince was pretty shocked that his subject should ask for such a paltry reward, but he felt he had to comply. So he dispatched one of his stewards to fulfill the order. It took the steward a while to report back, and when he did the news was not good. Although harvest was just completed, the gift was going to completely exhaust the royal granaries. And they were only on the 40^th square!

In fact, it turns out that if you were to keep doubling until you reached the 64^th square, you would have an amount of rice greater than the total yield of every rice crop in the history of the planet earth. The inventor of Chaturanga had trapped the prince with what mathematicians call a geometric progression. As we follow the progress of the rice as it doubles with each step, we're witnessing what's called an exponential increase.

As the example with the rice grains shows, any time we witness an exponential increase, we're in for quite a show. Things start out small and get crazy really quickly. Let's look at a few exponential trends that are unfolding in our world today. (My first three examples come from an article by Rodney Brooks that appeared recently in MIT Technology Review.)

We'll start with what the computer industry calls Moore's Law. In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel, observed that the size of each transistor on a computer chip is cut in half every two years. When the transistors get smaller, they get faster. Plus you can fit more of them on a chip. This means that computer processing power is increasing exponentially -- basically quadrupling every 24 months. Over the past 40 years, Moore's Law has proved to be amazingly accurate. We have seen exactly the increase in processing power that Moore predicted.

So where will that take us? If processing power keeps quadrupling, we will eventually have computers with the same processing power as the human brain. I remember when I was in college, one of my professors explained that if a computer were ever built to match the human brain, it would occupy a building 180 stories high and require enough electricity to power a large city. Now they're talking about computers with that kind of processing capability sitting on desktops. Within the next few years! And if Moore's Law holds out, we'll be seeing computers with many times that power shortly thereafter.

Personally, I hope that prediction is accurate. If it is, I'm going to get one those computers, teach it how to do my job, and go fishing. Talk about outsourcing.

But maybe thinking computers are a kind of spooky example. Let's look at computer storage. This is my iPod. It holds 20 gigabytes of memory, or about 500 songs. Last year's model could hold only 10 gigabytes, about 250 songs. If I were using my iPod to hold text rather than music, it could hold about 20,000 books. And at the rate its capacity is growing, by the year 2020 my little iPod could hold the entire Library of Congress - text, graphics, everything.

Imagine what life will be like for a college student in the year 2020. Imagine what it will be like for a first grader! This thing is smaller and lighter than any single textbook any of us ever had to lug to school. Let me pass it around. Imagine holding virtually all human knowledge in the palm of your hand.

Of course, not all exponential developments are related to computers. The cost of sequencing DNA is diminishing exponentially. By next year, the cost of sequencing one person's genome, one person's individual genetic code, is going to be only one cent per base pair of genes. In 1990, it was $10 dollars per base pair. At that rate, by the year 2020, sequencing a person's 3.2 billion base pairs will cost only $32,000. Within a few years after that, sequencing your entire genetic code will be no more expensive than, say, having a simple blood test done. Imagine how much more effective medical treatments will be when doctors are able to understand our bodies down to the molecular level.

So super-smart computers and portable libraries and advanced medical treatments are all very well, but how are we going to pay for all this stuff? Economist Robin Hanson made an interesting observation a while back, one that I referred to in the Inspiration talk I gave around Labor day. What the economists call Total World Product - the average wealth per person times the number of people - has grown exponentially over the last century, doubling about every fifteen years. That means it's increasing about sixty times faster than it did before the Industrial Revolution. And the transition isn't over yet. It won't be long before the world's total wealth doubles every six years. And if it keeps up, eventually, every year. Hanson goes even further than that, demonstrating that (if the trend holds) we will one day see total global wealth doubling every week. That one is pretty hard to picture, isn't it?

So if we want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise it would appear that all we have to do is sit back and let the exponentials do the work. Of course, nothing is ever quite as simple as that. I'm reminded of the story of the New York city planner who, in the 1890's published a report that included dire predictions of a coming ecological disaster for the city. Looking at the current growth numbers of the day, he predicted that the city would be uninhabitable within fifty years. What's interesting is that his population predictions were pretty accurate. What he got wrong was his prediction that, by 1950, Manhattan would be three stories deep in horse manure.

Guess he just didn't see that whole "car" thing coming.

On a similar note, you may be wondering whatever became of the man who invented Chaturanga. Well, there are two versions of the story. One says that the prince was so impressed by the man's wisdom that he made him his most trusted advisor, and as a result the man got to live the rest of his life amid great pomp and splendor. The other version says that the prince got annoyed and had him beheaded for being a wise guy.

Let that be a lesson to us all. When we base predictions of the future on extrapolations of current trends, we stand to gain tremendous insights into the world that's coming. But at the same time, we risk putting our heads on the chopping block. Or worse yet, we run the risk of peddling thousands of tons of imaginary horse sh... er, manure.

It's a fine line. So be warned.

Thank you very much.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the Future... ..robots will be polite, and know how to play a wide variety of party games.

Futurist: M104 member Robert Hinkley.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Phil has linked to and commented on several stories in the last couple of days that have a common theme:

• Brain Juice [electrical currents enhancing brain function]

• Ho Hum [monkey controlling a robot with its brain]

• The Brain Fix [electronic brain prosthesis]

• Brain tissue transplants

Even though most of these treatments would only be used on diseased or injured brains, some ethical issues must be considered.

If a patient has a stroke that damages a portion of her brain, will she remain the same person if she is treated with a brain prosthesis or brain tissue transplant?

Objectively there is little to argue about. If my family member has suffered a stroke and can't speak or take care of herself, and if a brain tissue transplant could reverse that, then the post-op person is more like the person I knew before the stroke.

But what is the subjective experience of the patient? Is her personhood violated by the treatment? Certainly the stoke or neurodegenerative disease violated the patient first. But there are many instances in medicine where doctors choose not to treat rather than risk additional harm.

This problem is akin to issues science fiction fans have discussed for years. If my memories and personality are copied into a computer or into another body, have I, personally, been moved? Am I live or Memorex?

Or if the "transporter" from Star Trek can take apart my atoms, transport them through space, and reassemble me perfectly on some alien world, is that still me? Maybe. But, what if - as Star Trek suggests - only the digital information of my pattern is transported. My actual atoms are left behind to replicate Hot Earl Grey tea or something. Is that still me?

I don't know, but I certainly understand Dr. McCoy's aversion to the transporter.

The ethical problem with brain prosthesis and tissue replacement is different from these fictional dilemmas only in degree. A brain prosthesis or tissue transplant might simply be thought of as an aid for the remaining brain, but it just as logically could be said to be "new brain." Where exactly does "self" reside? Does "self" remain in the damaged brain that the prosthesis or new tissue is aiding, or is it within the "new brain?" Could it be a both?

There is no easy answer to that. But I know that if I had a stroke and was told that the only way I could walk again or speak would be to undergo a such a procedure, I'm sure I'd agree to the treatment.

This seems to be the best solution to the problem. Our decisions have an impact on who we are anyway, so there seems little reason to question a patient's decision regarding such care - provided they are capable of making the decision.

Obviously someone will have to judge whether the patient is capable of understanding the treatment and making the decision. Should that be the doctor or the family? Its time to update my living will forms.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When exactly did the Third Age of Middle Earth end?

SCIENTISTS who announced yesterday they had discovered a new human species suspect the "hobbits" could have lived as recently as 500 years ago.

Experts from two NSW universities told how finding the dwarf-like skeleton in a remote cave on the Indonesian island of Flores was just the tip of the iceberg.

They hope to continue digging in other parts of the island -- and prove some of the species survived until the 1500s, when Dutch explorers settled in the area.

If the theory is proved correct, it would mean the 1m-tall hobbit -- scientifically known as homo floresiensis -- interacted with modern-day man, until it eventually died out.

"Could they have persisted somewhere else on the island? Yes, they could have done," Professor Bert Roberts of Wollongong University asked.

Any chance that somewhere in the 10,000 islands one or two of these creatures might still survive?

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Raymond dropped a paper sack containing his belongings by the front door. Six more such bags were lined up there. He wandered into the common room, where some of the children were sitting around the television, watching more coverage of the Phenomenon.

He plopped down on the big gray sofa next to Lucinda.

“Well, I did it,” he said. “Okay? But I still don’t think it makes any sense.”

“Thank you,” said the younger girl.

“What time is it, anyway? Are we going to have dinner?”

Bettina, who was sitting on the floor in front of the TV, turned to look at him.

“There’s some soup on the stove,” she said. “We already ate.”

“What kind of soup?”

“Tomato,” several voices offered at once.

Raymond sighed.

“I don’t want yucky tomato. Is there any tuna fish?”

“Plenty,” said Lucinda. “And there’s Miracle Whip and celery and sweet relish in the fridge if you want to make tuna salad. But we’re out of bread.”

Raymond grunted with disgust.

“No bread? How am I supposed to eat it if there’s no bread?”

“You could have it al fresco,” said Lucinda.

“Al fresco? Eat tuna fish right out of the bowl? Mi scusi, no.”

“Are there any crackers left?” asked Lucinda.

“Not the big ones,” said Bettina. “Just oyster crackers.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Raymond. “Tuna fish on crackers would be double-yuck. Possibly triple. Does anybody have any money?”

Robert, who was sitting next to Bettina turned up from the book he was reading.

“I have two dollars and some change,” he said. He thought for a moment. “Forty-seven cents,” he added.

“Molto bene! Benissimo!,” said Raymond.

“Let’s drop the Italian,” said Lucinda.

“You started it. Robert, how about you and I take a stroll to the market for some bread?”

“The market is closed,” said Bettina. “It’s after eight.”

“So? We could go to the Super King. It stays open until at least eleven.”

Lucinda laughed.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The super King is at least a mile and half from here. If you’re that hungry, why not open a can of Chicken and Stars?”

“Quadruple, quintuple, sextuple, etc., ad infinitum, yuck.”

“I thought you liked soup,” said Bettina.

Raymond nodded.

“I do. I like vegetable beef and beanie-weenie. Anyway, a mile and half isn’t so far. It’s only bad if you have to walk it.”

Robert looked puzzled.

“What choice do you have besides walking? Are you thinking about taking the bus? I don’t think $2.47 will get you there and back in a cab, not if you plan to buy a loaf of bread.”

“Yeah, Rob, but think — why take a bus or cab when we have a perfectly serviceable vehicle just sitting out back not doing anybody any good?”

Bettina gasped.

“You’re kidding, right?” she said.

“I am not. Now that we’re in charge around here, we have to make use of what we’ve got. The car is part of the home. If we need bread, I say we take it to get some bread.”

Estelle, who had been sitting quietly in the little brown chair, apparently paying more attention to her elaborate needlepoint project than to the conversation, now looked up.

“But he answered and said, ‘It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God’.”

Raymond shook his head.

“Estelle, I know you have a limited repertoire and all, but that is really beside the point.”

She glared at him.

“Pride goeth before destruction,” she said. “And an haughty spirit before a fall.”

“I do not have an haughty spirit. I just want a stupid sandwich. Besides, where did that come from? I thought you could just do New Testament.”

“No,” said Lucinda. “The Bible that she and…that she was reading had the Psalms and Proverbs as well.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good,” said Raymond. “I guess it’s too bad it wasn’t the whole thing.”

Estelle nodded.

“It’s all right,” said Lucinda. “I’m sure Corey will figure out how to fix things eventually.”

“That’s right,” Raymond agreed. “And if he can’t, Todd and Judy will. Or even Lucy-Lu, here.”

Lucinda smiled at the use of Grace’s pet name for her.

“Everything will be fine,” she said.

Estelle nodded again.

“Exactly,” said Raymond. “And meanwhile, life goes on. So what do you say, Robert? Do you want to go for a little drive?”

“That is out of the question,” said Lucinda.

“Why?”

“First, you don’t know how to drive. Second, you do not have a driver’s license, and the station wagon is not insured for anything that might happen while you’re driving it. Third, and most importantly, you don’t have the keys.”

Raymond smiled.

“Your first point is incorrect. Even before Corey started helping me out — but certainly since then — I have paid very close attention whenever I watched…somebody…anybody…drive. I know everything there is to know about how to operate that car. Your second point is entirely irrelevant. If we’re going to get all sticky about legal technicalities, we should be on the phone with the police and social services right now. We should just turn ourselves in. Right?”

He stood up.

“As for your third point,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “looky here what I found.”

He held up the keys to the car.

Lucinda stood up.

“Where did you get those?” she asked.

“Hanging on a hook in the pantry. Right where they’ve always been, for those of us who were paying attention.”

“Give them to me, Raymond.”

“I don’t think so. I’m going for a drive.”

“Come on, Ray,” said Bettina. “You know you’re not supposed to drive the car.”

“Who says I’m not? Todd? Judy? I’ve already waited here for them all day and packed my bag like a good little soldier. They don’t tell me what to do. Nobody does. I’m the oldest person here.”

“Nobody’s telling you what to do, Raymond,” said Lucinda. “But be reasonable. Taking the car out would subject you and the rest of us to a needless risk. As you pointed out, we aren’t calling the police and announcing ourselves to them. Why engage in activities that risk exposing us to them?”

“I don’t see that there’s any risk. I’ll drive carefully. Teenagers drive all over this town all the time. Nobody knows me, so nobody knows that I’m underage.”

“Ray, I don’t like waiting here any more than you do,” said Bettina. “I think it’s unfair that Todd and Judy and Lucinda make their plans and don’t tell us what’s happening. But for now we have to wait here. We all need to stick together.”

“I’ll be back in half an hour. Less. Rob, are you coming with me?”

Robert, who had returned to his book, seeming to take no particular interest in the entire exchange, looked up again.

“Is there anything I or anyone else can say that will talk you out of this lunacy?”

Raymond shook his head.

“I just want a sandwich,” he said.

“All right,” said Robert, closing his book. “I’ll go with you.”

“Robert,” said Lucinda, “you must be joking. You know this is crazy.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, no. None of us should be venturing out of the house right now. But if we are going to do it, we certainly shouldn’t be doing it alone.”

“Raymond,” said Lucinda, “what is the matter with you? Why do you want to drag Robert into this?”

Raymond put the keys in his pocket.

“I don’t know, I guess being brought back from the dead makes me hungry. You’re all making a mountain out of a molehill. Come on, Rob.”

He started towards the kitchen and the back door. Lucinda looked at Robert.

“Don’t go,” she said.

Robert put his book down and stood up.

“I’ll try to keep him out of trouble,” he said.

___

Raymond turned the key in the ignition and touched his foot to the gas pedal. The engine started. He stepped on the accelerator to rev it just slightly and keep it from dying cold. He was certain he had seen this done many times, and it was a bit unsettling to observe that he couldn’t remember who he had seen do it.

He knew that it was important to rev the motor for a while before putting the old green station wagon in gear. He used the time to adjust the rear and side mirrors to his liking. This proved more difficult than he had expected; it wasn’t obvious to him exactly what should be framed in his backward views. He concluded that it would become clear in the process of driving, and he would have to make some adjustments along the way. This was not the first time he had been in the driver’s seat — he had practiced many times in the past. It was, however, the first time he had ever needed to reach the pedals and have a good grip on the steering wheel and look out the windshield and see what was happening behind the car all at the same time. More importantly, it was the first time he had ever been there with the engine running.

He turned and looked at Robert.

“Let’s skip the radio this time, okay?”

Robert nodded.

“You probably don’t need the distraction,” he said.

“That’s for sure.”

In the past, there had been many prolonged discussions (often extending far beyond the actual duration of the trip) about what should or should not be played on the car radio.

“See?” said Raymond. “No girls, no problems.”

Robert shook his head.

“I think the boys argue about the radio as much as the girls,” he said.

Raymond sighed, annoyed. He put his foot on the brake and took hold of the gear shift, which extended from the steering column. He pulled down on it, finding that he had to apply more force than he would have expected. The motion was not as fluid as he had imagined.

“Having trouble?” asked Robert.

“No. It feels different than it looks, that’s all.”

“Yeah.”

Raymond moved his foot from the brake to the accelerator. The car began backing out of the driveway. He turned the wheel, slightly at first, angling the car more sharply as he backed it into the alley. He hit the brake abruptly.

“You’ll want to watch out for that telephone pole,” said Robert.

“No kidding. I have to get used to the feel of the steering. It takes a minute.”

“That’s okay. You learn fast.”

Raymond put the car into drive and started very slowly down the alley.

“Headlights,” said Robert.

“I know,” Raymond answered, annoyed. He found the switch and turned them on. The alley lit up before them.

“I think that’s the high-beam setting,” said Robert.

Raymond sighed with exasperation. He stopped the car and began looking around the dashboard. He fiddled with the light switch, but that didn’t do anything.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a button on the floor,” said Robert. “You push it with your foot.”

Raymond explored the floorboard with his foot. Finding nothing, he scooted himself forward in the driver’s seat and tried again. He found the button. The alley suddenly went dim.

“Good,” said Robert. “See what I mean? You learn fast.”

Raymond grinned.

“Say, Rob, how come we never did this before?”

“Because you never went crazy and stole the car before.”

Raymond brought the car to a stop as they reached the end of the alley. The street was dark and utterly deserted.

“No, not that. You know what I mean. How come we never did anything together?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we did and we don’t remember. Or maybe it’s because we only became friends after Corey showed up.”

Raymond nodded.

“That’s true,” he said, “but I think there’s something else.”

“Yeah,” the younger boy agreed. “There was something else. We didn’t spend much time together because we were busy spending time with other people.”

“I wish I could remember something. Anything. It’s like I want to miss them, but I can’t even remember what there is to miss.”

“I know. But maybe it’s like with Estelle. Maybe Corey can fix it.”

“Do you really think he can?”

Robert shrugged.

“I’m not sure. But he’s a fast learner, too.”

Raymond slowly drove the car out into the empty street.

“Can I ask you something?” said Robert.

“Shoot.”

“What was it like?”

Raymond didn’t look over. He kept driving, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Being dead, you mean?” he said after a moment.

Robert nodded.

“I don’t remember.”

They rode along in silence for a while.

“I hope I never do,” he added.

___

“We can afford it. It’s only 35 cents,” said Raymond.

The boys stood in the only open check-out lane, behind a couple buying three cartloads of canned food. There had been warnings on TV all day that hoarding of food wouldn’t be tolerated, but apparently the manager of the Super King wasn’t watching. The shelves of the supermarket were well picked-over. Raymond had grabbed one of the last few loaves of bread.

Robert shook his head.

“You’re forgetting about the State sales tax. Six percent.”

“I’m not forgetting. It doesn’t apply to the groceries; only to the comic book.”

“What about the candy bar?”

Raymond shook his head, looking at the contents of the red shopping basket.

“Bread, orange juice, Hershey bar…all groceries. Comic book, six percent sales tax.”

“I don’t see why I have to spend all my money.”

“Come on, Rob. I’ll pay you back. I want to give the comic to Grace to make up for the other one. See, it’s a funny one with Forest Critters.”

Robert sighed. He picked up the comic, studied the cover for a moment, and tossed it back in the basket.

“And the chocolate?” he asked.

“Estelle likes chocolate.”

“So what? Everybody likes chocolate.”

“Come on, be nice. She can’t talk.”

“She can talk fine.”

“You know what I mean, Rob.”

After paying for their purchases, the boys made their way out of the store and back to the car.

“Do you notice anything?” Robert asked as Raymond turned the ignition.

“What?”

“Look at the parking lot.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Exactly. No cars. Wasn’t there something on TV earlier about a curfew?”

Raymond cleared his throat.

“Well, that’s nothing to worry about. We’re going home right now.”

He pulled the car out into the street. Two blocks later, they reached a barricade with a squad car parked in front of it.

“Great,” said Robert.

Raymond looked around nervously.

“Should I back up?”

“Only if you’re absolutely sure you want to go to jail.”

A police officer stepped out of the car and started towards them. He was carrying a large flashlight.

“I think I know him,” said Robert.

“Just shut up and let me do the talking,” said Raymond.

Robert nodded.

Raymond rolled down the window as the officer approached.

“Good evening, officer,” he said.

“Where do you boys think you’re going?”

“Home. Ma sent us out to the Super King and we were supposed to be home before curfew. I guess we’re running late.”

“I guess you are.” He shined his flashlight directly in Raymond’s face, studying the boy for a moment. The he turned the beam on Robert.

“Where did you boys say you lived?”

Raymond pointed toward the barricade.

“Just a few more blocks down.”

The officer nodded.

“You live in that home for slow kids, don’t you?”

Raymond guffawed.

“What? No sir. We don’t.”

“Sure you do. I remember you. Both of you.”

He turned the flashlight to Robert.

“You. You were okay. One of the few who didn’t really get hurt.”

He aimed the beam back at Raymond.

“But you. They messed you up. Bad.”

“Look, officer, I really don’t have any idea —”

“Uh huh. They messed you up. Ants it was, they said. But it didn’t look like any ant bites I ever saw.”

The officer looked up and waved at the squad car. The headlights flashed in response. He bent back down to look in the car.

“You’re looking much better now, son. You must heal up pretty fast.”

“Ah, yes, I do. Look, sir, we’d really just like to get home.”

The policeman shook his head.

“Sorry, boys. They told us to look out for anything unusual. I’d say a couple of retarded kids driving down the street qualifies .”

He turned off the flashlight.

“Especially when one of them’s been dead for a couple of days.”

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A mere 29 days ago IBM announced that it's Blue Gene/L system was the world's fastest computer capable of a sustained speed of 36.01 teraflops (a teraflop is a trillion calculations per second).

Yesterday, NASA announced that its Project Columbia Beowulf cluster achieved a sustained performance of 42.7 teraflops. The $50 million dollar system will be used "to speed up spacecraft design, environmental prediction and other research."

Remarkably, this system was built in only 120 days.

This rivalry isn't over yet. Neither Blue Gene nor Project Columbia is operating at its top theoretical speed. Only 16 of Project Columbia's 20 computer units were operational at the time it was tested.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the Future...

...many students taking their SATs will attach batteries to their heads.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is interesting. Perhaps a stop-gap solution before full-blown brain prosthetics become commerically available:

Connecting a battery across the front of the head (the prefrontal cortex) can boost verbal skills, says a team from the US National Institutes of Health.

A current of two milliamperes applied for 20 minutes is enough to produce a significant improvement, they found.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nothing to be alarmed about, folks. Just another one of those monkeys-controlling-robots-with-their-brains stories. No big deal. Happens all the time.

Move along, now.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It all started with Moore's Law. Actually, that isn't remotely accurate. Indications are that it all started with the Big Bang. But Moore's Law is such a handy example of my topic — exponential growth — that I'm going to start there. Kurzweil tells us that Moore's Law

is the prediction that the size of each transistor on an integrated circuit chip will be reduced by 50 percent every twenty-four months. The result is the exponentially growing power of integrated circuit-based computation over time. Moore's Law doubles the number of components on a chip as well as the speed of each component. Both of these aspects double the power of computing, for an effective quadrupling of the power of computation every twenty-four months.

Interesting. But where does all this exponential doubling of computational ability get us? Depends who you ask. There are those who say that it will lead us to nothing less than a new era in human history. But that's a topic for a few dozen other essays on another day. Anyway, as detailed recently in Technology Review, there are many other good examples of technologies that are growing exponentially.

Storage leaps to mind. In 2003, a $400 iPod had 10 gigabytes of memory. By early this year, a $400 iPod had 20 gigabytes of memory. If this annual doubling holds up, then 20 years from now we’ll have portable devices with 20 petabytes of storage—that’s 20 million gigabytes—sitting in our pockets. What might we want to do with all that storage, and what new services might it enable?

The iPod is now big enough to contain the entire personal music collection of today’s average listener. But the immediate consequence of storage growth is that our personal music collections will grow as well. CDs will no longer be a practical way to distribute content; they will go the way of wax cylinders and vinyl platters. That’s why so many companies are rushing in to follow Apple in the music content download and management business.

And consider how iPods might play into one of our favorite scenarios:

Today’s iPod could store 20,000 books. That’s more than most people would read in a lifetime. But just 10 years from now, an iPod might be able to hold 20 million books—more than are in Harvard University’s collection. (If you insist on having the pictures and diagrams in those books, too, perhaps you have to wait until 2017. By then you’ll be able to carry around the complete text for all the volumes in the Library of Congress.) To complete this vision, of course, we’ll need a lightweight, easy-to-read screen to display text. And we’ll need technologies that allow for rapidly digitizing millions of books and other documents, and for extracting text without errors, so the books are searchable.

Of course, not all exponential developments are related to computers:

Finally, the cost of sequencing DNA is diminishing exponentially. By next year, the cost of sequencing a person’s genome is expected to be a mere penny per base pair. Compare that to the $10 it cost in 1990. At that rate, sequencing a person’s 3.2 billion base pairs should cost only $32,000 by 2020. As a practical matter, it’s only necessary to look at 10 million base pairs to cover all the variations in the human genome. Sequencing this number—in order to determine a person’s genetic fingerprint and disease susceptibility—would cost only about one dollar by sometime in the 2020s.

It's likely that gene-based treatments for disease will also increase rapidly, if not exponentially, in line with this drop in price. And speaking of money, economist Robin Hanson has made an interesting observation:

Economists’ best estimates of total world product (average wealth per person times the number of people) show it to have been growing exponentially over the last century, doubling about every fifteen years, or about sixty times faster than under farming. And a model of the whole time series as a transition from a farming exponential mode to an industry exponential mode suggests that the transition is not over yet - we are slowly approaching a real industry doubling time of about six years, or one hundred and fifty times the farming growth rate.

So if we want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise it would appear that all we have to do is sit back and let the exponentials do the work. Of course, nothing is ever quite as simple as that. I'm reminded of the tale (possibly apocryphal) of the New York city planner who, in the 1890's published a report that included dire predictions of a coming ecological disaster for the city. Looking at then-current growth numbers, he predicted that the city would be uninhabitable within fifty years. Interestingly, his population predictions were pretty accurate. What he got wrong was his prediction that, by 1950, Manhattan would be three stories deep in horse manure.

Guess he just didn't see that whole "car" thing coming.

Let that be a lesson to us all. When we base predictions of the future on extrapolations of current trends, we can gain tremendous insights into the world that's coming. Or we may end up peddling thousands of tons of imaginary horse manure. It's a fine line.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Phil and I have been talking about poker...and AIs playing poker...at Beyond Words: Poker and Patriotism. Because we are Speculists, after all, we're beyond the Data Playing Poker with Picard and Wanting to Be More Human stage of this concept. If AIs were playing AIs, how would they bluff? What would be the "tells?" Would there be some artifact, not a human-mimicking trait, that would develop? Talk amongst yourselves...

Better yet, you can practice with Jared the Poker Robot!

Posted by Kathy at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This very big story broke late last week:

The world’s first brain prosthesis has passed the first stages of live testing.

The microchip, designed to model a part of the brain called the hippocampus, has been used successfully to replace a neural circuit in slices of rat brain tissue kept alive in a dish. The prosthesis will soon be ready for testing in animals.

The device could ultimately be used to replace damaged brain tissue which may have been destroyed in an accident, during a stroke, or by neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. It is the first attempt to replace central brain regions dealing with cognitive functions such as learning or speech.

In addition to treating degenerative conditions, brain prostheses will eventually be used to enhance learning and skills for everyone. I'm personally looking forward to the hardware upgrade that will make me able to play the piano or speak Italian.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the Future...

...you will need to show a photo ID in order to buy batteries or a quart of milk.

via White Rose

Originally published July 22, 2003.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ScrappleFace is usually pretty amusing, but this piece didn't strike me as being the least bit funny.

Evocative, yes.

Tragic, possibly.

Eloquent, undeniably.

But not funny. Have a glimpse of a world that should have been:

A little-known group of Islamic fundamentalists intended to hijack several airplanes and ram them into the buildings, causing untold devastation.

But thanks to the funding increases during the Clinton administration, the CIA had the resources to uncover the plot. It arrested several dozen men who currently await trial for conspiracy to attempt mass murder.

A spokesman in the CIA's New York office, located on the 99th floor of World Trade Center Two, said he his colleagues were "just doing what we're paid to do...provide reliable information to protect all Americans."

One issue I would take with Scott's scenario: in a world in which we were that on top of things ahead of time (under Clinton), it's not a foregone conclusion that Bush would now be President.

Originally published July 21, 2003.