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The Harrow Technology Report
Insight,
analysis, and commentary on the
Copyright © 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All rights
reserved.
A New Tattoo.
Give your eyes a rest... It's amazing what chip developers now consider "common" technology! This new "super-convergence" will be changing ALL the rules. Our technological future is not without its risks! If Nature doesn't work the way we want -- just change it! LISTEN To This Issue.
Do you prefer to let your ears do the work of keeping you in-touch with, and thinking about where technology is taking us? If so, "The Harrow Technology Report" is also available in an audio-on-demand, Web-based, MP3 version. If you have an MP3 player on your system (and most do, such as Window's Media Player, RealPlayer, etc.), clicking on the link below will either stream the file to you, or, depending on how your system is configured, it might download the file before playing it. Alternatively, if you specifically want to download the file, simply right-click on the link, and choose "Save Target As..." Also, to learn how you can listen at whatever speed is most comfortable to you, check out the FAQ at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/help.htm . So, if you wish, just click on the following link to listen to this issue! http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020923/20020923.mp3 .
Quote of the Week."We
are in development of a 1-billion transistor
microprocessor.
Paul Otellini, president and chief operating
officer, Intel, These and other advances in computing capability that we're going to be experiencing in the near future are pretty impressive. For example, it's Intel's expectation that they will offer a 3.0+ GHz Pentium -- well before this holiday shopping season! And they've just demonstrated a "tri-gate" transistor (http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020916S0088 - also with thanks to reader Sander Olson). AMD has just announced their fabrication of "the world's smallest double-gate transistors" with gate lengths of a mere 10 nanometers (http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020909S0106). And IBM describes its "Fin-Fet" version of a double-gate transistor at http://news.com.com/2100-1001-957087.html (with thanks to reader Sanford Forte.) Don't Blink!
NBIC Update.
NBIC, or the convergence of Nanotechnology,
Biology, Information sciences, and Cognitive
sciences, is going to be producing an incredible
array of products and services that I suspect will
go far beyond where even science fiction writers
have yet to tread. Take, for example, these
preliminary indications of an innovative, "stickless"
way for diabetics to keep track of their glucose
levels, as reported in the Sept. 1 BBC News and
brought to our attention by reader Kenneth LaCrosse
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2225404.stm): High Tech Tattoos. The system starts with a very high-tech tattoo.
But instead of ink that is absorbed by cells, this
tattoo uses polyethylene-glycol beads, which are
coated with fluorescent molecules, which happen to
be just a bit larger than ink molecules. Which is
quite important, because this allows the tattoo to
remain in the interstitial fluid between cells,
where glucose levels closely mirror the glucose
levels in the blood. (Why not let the molecules
enter the cells like traditional tattoo ink?
Because the glucose within cells is rapidly
converted to energy and so would show consistently
low levels.) Better "Video Cards" For Restoring Sight! On another NBIC front, Ken points us to a Sept. 5
announcement from Sandia National Labs (http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2002/mat-chem/blindsee.html)
that describes work going into an artificial retina
that would generate "1,000 points of light;" it's in
the form of an array of MEMS stimulators that could
stand-in for damaged rods and cones, or for eyes
damaged by certain diseases. The camera would sit
on eyeglasses, and it would send the image data and
the power run the implant (at the back of the eye)
via a radio signal! "Compared to the elegance of the original biological design, what we’re doing is extremely crude," says Wessendorf. "We are trying to build retinal implants in the form of electrode arrays that sit on the retina and stimulate the nerves that the eye's rods and cones formerly served." "The size of cones and rods, as well as nerve connections, are in the micron range -- a difficult but doable realm for scientists used to working with micromachines. 'We'll [initially] use a crude, shotgun approach that fires groups of nerves. In the long run, of course, we’d like to stimulate each individual nerve.'"
Nanomedicine. For another example, consider the idea of tiny nanomachines traveling your bloodstream, designed to home-in on specific types of tissue. If these come to pass, you might program these machines to congregate at the vessels that supply blood to cancerous tumors, choking-off the blood supply and thereby killing the tumor. Or how about nanomachines that target the lymphatic vessels that drain tumors -- close them down and the tumor might also be shut down. But this isn't science fiction -- it's just another example of sci fi coming true (at least in the laboratory, so far) -- researchers at the Burnham Institute and UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering have combined nanotechnology and biology to successfully home in on these specific tissue types! According to the 9/11 MIT Technology Review brought to our attention by reader Rocky Rawstern (http://www.technologyreview.com/offthewire/3001_1192002_2.asp), these folks, "...programmed miniature, nanocrystalline semiconductor particles, called quantum dots ("qdots"), and wrapped them with tiny pieces of protein that home to specific addresses inside living tissue ("homing peptides")." Sangeeta Bhatia, developer of these qdots, summed up their excitement, "We are enthusiastic about these results because we showed that qdots could be successfully used inside the body without causing blood clotting, and because the homing peptides successfully directed the qdots to a specific type of cancer, in this case, breast cancer."
Just The VERY Beginning! NBIC is indeed going to be DRAMATICALLY changing our lives! Don't Blink!
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What's Next?
We spend a lot of time, here in The Harrow Technology Report, exploring the positive potentials, and sometimes the risks, that our exponentially-growing technologies may deliver. Often, this is my take of where these trends may lead. But it's also important to look at other views for balance. Which is why it's my pleasure to point you to the "What's Next" paper written by British Telecom's ("BTexact Technologies'") well known futurist, Ian Pearson.
INTRODUCTION: Let's begin with an overview of what's ahead, as Ian sets the stage: "We are already witnessing disruptive technologies in action. New ad hoc networks and powerful terminals with large storage capability are threatening the future profitability of public networks. Discussions relating to network disposal are therefore highly appropriate and disposal may prove good sense; but, however much this may affect us, it is a very minor disturbance compared to what lies ahead. I have been a futurist for many years and for most of that time I was very optimistic about our future, believing that whatever problems come our way, technology will save us. Industries may come and go and empires rise and fall, but humans as a whole would be much better off. In recent years, I have become rather less optimistic, for good reason. I will share my concerns in this paper as some other futurists have done recently, even in the certain knowledge that doing so will not change anything. Scientific understanding in many fields is quickly followed by commercial exploitation of the knowledge through advanced technology. This has brought about a greatly improved quality of life over the last few centuries. But more recently, technology development has accelerated much faster than basic science. Commercial needs often push science into the background, providing only the funding required to attack the next blockage, and this trend even affects university-based research, which has had to become much more commercially focused. Fields that are not immediately obvious as being commercially important attract much less funding. This dangerous trend comes at the time when we are embarking on the creation of several new technologies that are capable of making life on earth extinct, or at least wiping out a large part of it. Developing such technologies in the absence of a much more developed scientific understanding seems reckless. The technologies in question today are: - Artificial intelligence, especially when coupled with robotics; - Nanotechnology; and - Biotechnology, especially genetic modification technologies. These could undoubtedly bring many benefits, but only if we are still alive to enjoy them. They can only be developed safely if we either dramatically speed up scientific study, or greatly slow down technology development. The problems are made all the more difficult because of their complex interaction with human systems, which are often far from rational. Many future dangers might arise simply from the attempts of people to stop problems. An anti-science backlash would be irrational but fairly likely, and thereby present an ongoing danger. The subsequent sections highlight just a few of the potential dangers ahead that are linked to technological progress."
Continuing on, let's look at a brief (annotated)
highlight of several chapters. Of course these
discussions are only intended to whet your appetite
for reading the entire paper, which is at
DISRUPTION: Could Douglas Adam's rather powerful "do everything, instantly, from anywhere in the galaxy" future PDA become a reality? Possible, although still in the future. But think of the "disruption" this would cause across many industries and businesses. For another example of "disruption," look at the competition that free WiFi (802.11) wireless networks have already created in the wireless world, with some people even renting planes to "scout" a city for open 802.11 networks and mapping them for all ("War-flying.") (For additional insights, see the Oct. 10 Wired article "Being Wireless" at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/wireless.html by Nicholas Negroponte, for his views of why WiFi, or 802.11 wireless networks, are poised to "transform the future of telecom").
"AI researchers are not generally trying to emulate human thinking, but to enable computers to do those tasks for which humans need intelligence, by any means that work." Nevertheless, although not "intelligent" as we might define it for a human (or a dog, or even tool-using monkeys), specialized AI systems are continuously getting better at performing their individual tasks: "One day there will be little left that only we can do, and by then, machines will be able to do many things that we will be unable to do! It would seem unlikely that human-level intelligence is the maximum possible level, and there is little reason to believe that machines will stop improving when they start approaching human levels. Soon, most knowledge will be machine knowledge, and most of the systems on which we all depend will only be understood by machines." Which is something we're already seeing take place. Can you imagine doing any modern design task without computer assistance?
Consider this at the time that we have little nanomachines running around in our bodies. Not to mention the already-taking-place automation of much of our critical infrastructure...
TERMINATOR SCENARIO: "A potentially
bigger threat than other humans trying to bring down
our systems is mutiny by smart machines that do not
want to work for us any more. AI-enhanced weapon
systems could interact in unintended ways. In the
worst case, smart machines could eliminate humans.
The Nanotechnology Development Corporation (formerly
Robodyne Cybernetics) has already developed and
prototyped mechanisms that could be used to
construct a real-life version of the T1000 liquid
metal android from the Terminator 2 film!" ... Do you remember "Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)? Info and trailers are at http://us.imdb.com/M/title-exact?+Colossus:+The+Forbin+Project .
AI-BASED CRIME: Intelligent computers that could self-evolve their computer code could revolutionize the still slow, human-intensive, expensive, and "artistic" rather than "scientific" way that we code most computer programs today. But if this task is eventually taken over by computers, will we really know (or be able to figure out) what the program is ACTUALLY doing? Combine this threat with the growing number of "distributed processing applications," such as SETI@home, and the growing number of "media sharing" networks. Now, imagine adding "exploits" into those distributed programs, either by nefarious human programmers or as unintended side effects of computer-generated code -- suddenly, supercomputer power becomes available to perform hidden tasks. "Given the effective intelligence of some of the code that will be produced by these systems in the far future, it may well be the case that the worst master-criminals in the history of the world will actually be software."
NANOTECHNOLOGY AND SELF-REPLICATION:
"However, moving down this road without absolute control over the devices and their environment is a sure recipe for disaster. Sadly, weapons using this technology have already been conceived..."
GRADUALITY: "Technology mostly
develops gradually, so gradually in fact that many
people tell me that nothing much has changed over
the last decade. Yet a decade ago, they were
probably not using a PC, or cellphone, satellite TV,
or even a fax, let alone a Palm Pilot or DVD drive.
People quickly forget what things used to be like.
In the same way, attitudes change gradually, yet
over a few years they can change dramatically." ... Think about this in the context of any of the exponential growth curves you've experienced. Because things start out very slowly (the initial almost-flat part of the curve), people don't get too concerned. But as we know from the advances in CPU power, communications speeds, and far more, during the knee and the steeply-rising parts of the exponential curve, people and businesses who don't pay VERY careful attention can find themselves superfluous in the new environment. And there are some VERY significant technologies now headed in this direction. (Preventing this, of course, is what "The Harrow Technology Report" is all about!)
MUCH MORE! These comments covered less than half of the chapters in the paper (the others are Positive Feedback; Star Trek, Or Brave New World?; Globalization; Environmentalism And Anti-Science; Networked Stupidity; Complexity And Emergent Behaviors; Biotechnology; Wildcard Exponentiation; and Conclusions. But those we've looked at should give you a good sense of the sometimes uncomfortable, but very-important-to-think-about things that we may have ahead of us. Check out the full paper at http://www.sc-server1.bt.com/bttj/vol19no4/wsn/fulltext.htm . And, yet again -- Don't Blink!
Reshaping The World Around Us.
Finally, we tend to explore many of the technological revolutions that, in various ways, are changing the world around us, often through new ways for us to interact with and "package" information. But a picture that I came across in the June 20 issue of Ken Ruthowski's "Daily Tech News" (http://kenradio.com/images/062002.jpg) demonstrates a rather different approach to "packing" things -- in this case, how to get big, ungainly ovoid watermelons to better-fit into our rectangular refrigerators. The answer -- grow cube-shaped watermelons!
They come from farms in Zentsuji, Japan, and sell for about $80 each. Who says that you can't fit a round peg into a square hole!! I really have to give them an "A+" for, dare I say it -- thinking INSIDE the box...?
About "The Harrow Technology Report"
"The Harrow Technology Report" explores the innovations and trends of many contemporary and emerging technologies, and then draws some less than obvious connections between them, to help us each survive and prosper in the Knowledge Age. "The Harrow Technology Report" is brought to you by Jeffrey R. Harrow, Principal of The Harrow Group. http://www.TheHarrowGroup.com . Where To Find "The Harrow Technology Report:"
Copyright (c) 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All
rights reserved.
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