A Look Back At Kurzweil's Predictions For 2009 307
marciot writes "It's interesting to look back at Ray Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 from a decade ago. He was dead on in predicting the ubiquity of portable computers, wireless, the emergence of digital objects, and the rise of privacy concerns. He was a little optimistic in certain areas, predicting the demise of rotating storage and the ubiquity of digital paper a bit earlier than it appears it will actually happen. On the topic of human-computer speech interfaces, though, he seems to be way off." And of course Kurzweil missed 9/11 and the fallout from that. His predictions might have been nearer the mark absent the war on terror.
Civil Liberties (Score:5, Insightful)
His prediction on civil liberties might not have been so true if 9/11 never happened.
Automated Telephone Systems (Score:3, Informative)
Kurzweil may not be as far off on the human-computer speech interfaces as you may first think. It's currently focused in a narrow domain right now: automated telephone systems, which are are all pretty much voice activated these days.
Re:Automated Telephone Systems (Score:5, Interesting)
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/04/logitech_quickcam_orbit_mp_1.html
Re:Automated Telephone Systems (Score:4, Funny)
So he just predicts they'll be around, not that they actually work?
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That is utter bullshit. Civil liberties have been going downhill for a long long time. His prediction on civil liberties was already true before 9/11.
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Kurzweil had 4chan predicted to counter that.
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Ray Kurzwiel doesn't predict the future, the future forms itself based on his predictions.
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There are infinite universes, but only those that match Ray Kurzwiel's predictions survive.
So, basically (Score:5, Insightful)
Kurzweil has a really good handle on where hardware will be, but not software. What I believe this means is that drives the creation of software is not how quickly it can be developed, but whether there's demand for it.
Demand and innovation are a lot trickier to predict than advances in speed and minitiaturization of electronics hardware, so what we envisioned we thought our future selves might want in 2009 isn't actually quite what it turns out we actually wanted.
Kurzweil thinks speech interface is where it's at, but the world gives us Twitter and Facebook.
Kurzweil wants to use technology to make us immortal or give rise to machines that supercede humankind and take the next evolutionary step as a technological rather than biological one. Meanwhile, people want to make money, get laid, watch stupid video clips, listen to music, and act like their opinion is the best thing there's ever been.
So... Where'll we be in the future? Watch Idiocracy.
Re:So, basically (Score:4, Interesting)
People have never really wanted a speech interface, it's been around FOREVER and has not taken off even when it's quite good.
Re:So, basically (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. Kurzweil thinks they're awesome, in part I believe because he sees it as an incremental stepping stone to developing machines that think. In real life, users get tired after talking for a long time. Imagine how hoarse you'd be if you had to talk to a computer all day long in order to dictate a Word document, launch apps, navigate the interface, etc.
Pointers and keyboards are far more efficient for such tasks. Are there tasks for which a voice interface would be better suited? Perhaps, but I don't think we've seen the applications developed yet that work better with voice than by manual input. Maybe voice-dialing for your cell phone? Nothing else springs to mind.
Would having a conversation with a computer that was capable of understanding conversational english be awesome? I imagine it would be. But what would we talk about? What would I do with such a computer that I couldn't do with my current PC?
Probably a few things would be a lot easier (programming by telling the computer what to do in a natural language rather than having to write objects and procedures in a high-level computer language... Or perhaps gaming applications.
Yeah, that'd be awesome. but that's nowhere near being on the horizon yet, and I don't know that we'll ever get there, because where's the demand for the intermediary steps that would lead us there, and what would those intermediary steps even be??
Hi there sexy... (Score:2)
Re:So, basically (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably a few things would be a lot easier (programming by telling the computer what to do in a natural language rather than having to write objects and procedures in a high-level computer language...
Actually, I don't think programming would be any easier at all. We already have people telling programmers what they want in human language (PGMs) and the result is universally horrible. In reality, the hard part about programming is sorting out the nitty gritty details. Transcribing the solution to the computer is not difficult. And I would *not* want to try to discuss these solutions in such detail in natural language.
This is precisely why design documentation tends to go out of date very quickly -- it's written in the wrong language. We can't easily specify the level of detail we require in natural languages and so defer it to programming.
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You're right, even when programmers talk among themselves they use pseudo-code; natural language is generally insufficient to describe algorithms.
Re:So, basically (Score:4, Insightful)
Another example: legalese. If you've ever tried reading a legal document, you'd notice that while nominally written in a "natural language", it's:
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Probably a few things would be a lot easier (programming by telling the computer what to do in a natural language rather than having to write objects and procedures in a high-level computer language... Or perhaps gaming applications.
Programming? Yeah right. Probably last thing ever to go voice-activated. Something more plausible would be for example info-desk style application or perhaps GPS navigation system. After all you're supposed to be driving the car if you change your mind about destination etc.
Gaming is dead-on, too. In fact it's surprising it's been used so little. There was ancient c64 game that already could be taught 3 speech commands. Given the modern cpu and memory capabilities it should be all over the place, especially
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Probably a few things would be a lot easier (programming by telling the computer what to do in a natural language rather than having to write objects and procedures in a high-level computer language... Or perhaps gaming applications.
Programming? Yeah right. Probably last thing ever to go voice-activated. Something more plausible would be for example info-desk style application or perhaps GPS navigation system. After all you're supposed to be driving the car if you change your mind about destination etc.
Well, when I'm talking about "programming" using a natural language text interface, I don't mean what we currently think of as programming, I just mean programming in the sense of "giving a computer instructions to execute" -- basically, how they portray in Star Trek, where Kirk says "Computer: Do..." and the computer figures out what Kirk means by that, how to do it, and does it.
It's very unrealistic based on how we understand computers today, of course, but perhaps a super-advanced computer could be deve
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It's fiction of course, but I think Star Trek had it more or less right. You can talk to the computer, and it can understand you and comply with requests, but people generally only use this capability for quick and dirty things: ordering food, making a minor parameter change to the holodeck, opening a communications channel, etc. When you're doing something like writing a Holodeck scenario, driving the ship, analyzing data, etc you use something that looks like a combination of keyboard and touch screen.
Re:So, basically (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the problem is that developers focus on creating a pure speech interface rather than a mixed one.
Also complicating things is the fact that we already use speech to interface with the world around us, other people telephones and such are often talked to while using the computer keyboard and mouse. How is the computer to know what is a command and what is being spoken to someone else?
You either have to offset spoken commands with some token that won't come up in conversation and normal background speech or you have to give the computer context recognition which is also difficult.
I'd like to bring back a revival of latin. Make all speech control software respond to latin phrases while normal speech is carried out in everyday language. Latin would be ideal because it is dead, and has a focus on commands in its grammatical makeup.
Re:So, basically (Score:5, Funny)
"Computer.
Earl Grey.
Hot."
Re:So, basically (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So, basically (Score:5, Funny)
Unless they're using the replicator to solve the problem of how to be culturally sensitive to the nutritional needs of cannibals without actually having to kill anybody.
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Because people also get it iced?
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Re:Idiocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent post. The worst thing too is that techy Internet pundits always bring up the Idiocracy reference, as if only the Internet could walk in a clean white suit above the supposed muck of the idiot masses.
But of course, they all forget their own idiocratic backyard that includes places like 4chan, /b/, and Encyclopedia Dramatica. Or even places like Boing Boing or Youtube, which is a constant barrage of bite-sized irrelevant data for the ADHD crowd. /.'ers don't need to watch Idiocracy. We are living in an Internet Idiocracy that no one cares to improve because of the lulz. Neil Postman's 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' is THE ultimate predictor of the future. We are going to giggle ourselves to death with LOLcats, and people will argue vehemently that it's morally better than any alternative. Like Postman said, we'll beg to stay entertained.
Re:Idiocracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Gracchus: Fear and wonder, a powerful combination.
Gaius: You really think people are going to be seduced by that?
Gracchus: I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they'll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it's the sand of the coliseum. He'll bring them death - and they will love him for it.
-gladiator
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So what's the Next Big Medium that has an intellectual price of admission?
Been there. Seen it before. Amateur radio was a nerd's kingdom in the 60s. Then came CB in the 70s, Good Buddy. Once you've paved the path, the idiots will get on it.
Re:Mod up (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrast that to today. In Western societies (at least) just about everyone from the bottom of the barrel to the top has plenty of free time -- when they're not scarfing down cheap caloric loads taht would stagger their forebearers -- to surf 4Chan and Something Awful, and play videogames. Yep, when freed from want, it turns out most people go for entertainment.
To which I can only say two things. First -- what the fuck do you expect, we're APES. It's not like there's some special nobility gene waiting to be turned on the second we have computers. And second -- who cares? People who want to do interesting things can still do interesting things (see: universities, make magazine, the people who provide content for the unwashed masses on you tube, the open source movement etc.).
Re:Mod up (Score:5, Funny)
25 years ago?
It is 1985. Life is a constant struggle for survival. There is no fast food*, there are no sweets or snacks*, and there are only four television channels. Modems only work at 300 baud and home computers only have 16 colour displays, so the proles are forced to watch their porn on VHS tapes, played by machines that don't even support stereo sound. If they can't afford "a video", they'll have to buy it on the now-obsolete form of media known as "paper". Truly primitive times. It's a wonder we managed to keep our caves warm.
* except for almost all of the brands you see today
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So... Where'll we be in the future? Watch Idiocracy.
So like.. in the future... we'll be watching Idiocracy?
-metric
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You talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded.
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Right. He knows that what we want is what we end up achieving. And I'm sure he knows that he will be wrong on some of his predictions. A large part of what he is doing when he makes these predictions is trying to get people informed about what is possible, to stimulate people's imaginations, so that we will want the things that he thinks are important and good for our future. Th
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so... you see the future as microsoft bob version 2?
hmm.... :D
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No, not even close. I see a future where the end user has to know little if anything about computers to run one, and they are fun, not just fancy typewriters that double as video displays.
I see your point but I'd rather think of it as something like KDE 14.7.3, or as they like to say in Marketing "VR Desktop" or some such nonsense.
The idea that you use a 3D world/space to access applications brings the user into a realm where their natural given manipulations and perceptions make sense rather than having to
I Predict... (Score:5, Funny)
The following will happen in the next 10 years:
1. Some Terrorist group will blow something up.
2. That people will continue to argue whether Linux is superior to Windows (and vicea versa) on an ideological basis and continue to ignore individual situations/circumstances where their opposing OS would make a better choice.
3. That people will still buy (or not buy) Mac's based on a fashion over function idea (despite the fact the actual Mac offering isn't too bad functionally).
4. That people will make a bunch of random predictions, and several of these will pan out as predicted, and the people will say "Oh Wow!!!", (and then post the original predictions to Slashdot).
Re:I Predict... (Score:5, Funny)
3. That people will still buy (or not buy) Mac's based on a fashion over function idea (despite the fact the actual Mac offering isn't too bad functionally).
Very true. A friend of mine "obtained" the latest beta of Windows 7, and was showing it to me. I pointed out that pinning the items to the taskbar was just like what's been in OSX for a long time now, and he replied (quite seriously), "Yes, but this isn't pretentious."
LOL Dogz (Score:2)
...will be eating the LOL cats...
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3. That people will still buy (or not buy) Mac's based on a fashion over function idea (despite the fact the actual Mac offering isn't too bad functionally).
So they wont buy macs because of blind faith/fanboyism?
4. That people will make a bunch of random predictions, and several of these will pan out as predicted, and the people will say "Oh Wow!!!", (and then post the original predictions to Slashdot).
My predictions aren't random. They're calculated based on Level III Multiverse theory. I predict every possible outcome for every possible event. In one of those universes, all my predictions are correct.
A few of my own predictions...
5. Richard Stallman will get hairier.
6. Google will become more evil.
7. Someone on slashdot will come up with a meme that covers Soviet Russia, car analogies & Profit lists.
I really don't understand why everyone thinks google is evil when they are just doing what every company would do
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Because everyone thinks that every company is evil.
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Exactly, and being or owning a company is the safest way to be evil and not be punished.
Seriously, what reason is there to 'limit liability' for the owners if not to do things they wouldn't do personally?
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The reason is that otherwise hardly anyone would ever start a company - other than people who already own truckloads of money.
Let's say you have this really great idea for a word processor software. You can build it and bring it to market, no problem. But you know that MS will probably sue you and you can't be sure about the outcome of that. With limited liability you at least know that the wo
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Since you said "seriously," I'll answer. Because otherwise no one would invest in any business that they were not personally operating. Suppose you own some shares in a mutual fund. Is it reasonable to hold you personally responsible for actions of businesses whose stock you hold? Exxon has millions of shareholders. Is it reasonable to track down each one of them and shake them down for the costs of the Exxon Valdez cleanup? How many of them had any *control* over Exxon's corporate policies?
Limited liabilit
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I think you meant joke instead of meme. I doubt we'd see a combination of those 3 memes spreading outside this thread, for example. But anyway...
1. Go to Soviet Russia.
2. Pay someone.
3. ???
4. Profit
5. Realize that although your joke checks all the boxes at the time of design, it is excessive and misses the mark - much like the Edsel.
I Don't Think That Word Means What You Think... (Score:4, Insightful)
...the emergency of digital objects...
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...the emergency of digital objects...
I blame it on my continuous speech recognition (CSR) software, which has ubiquitously replaced my keyboard. That, and a lack of artificial intelligence on my part.
Re:I Don't Think That Word Means What You Think... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their is nothing Ron with speech wreck ignition. I use it inns Ted of my keyboard awl the thyme.
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Inconceivable!
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Inconceivable!!
Will someone shut him up yet? (Score:2, Insightful)
What? He got like 3 right out of 40.
If you throw enough crap against a wall, some of it will stick.
Kurzweil's 60. At this point, he can't seriously believe that technology is going to keep him alive forever anymore, can he?
Re:Will someone shut him up yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
This one is obvious:
"Individuals primarily use portable computers, which have become dramatically lighter and thinner than the notebook computers of ten years earlier. "
Am I supposed to think that they just get bigger and bigger after 10 years?
"Computers routinely include wireless technology to plug into the ever-present worldwide network, providing reliable, instantly available, very-high-bandwidth communication."
Wrong, we don't have ever-present worldwide network. Even finding 'hot-spots' are hard.
"Communication between components, such as pointing devices, microphones, displays, printers, and the occasional keyboard, uses short-distance wireless technology."
Mouse/keyboard is about it. Display won't be wireless.
"Government agencies, however, continue to have the right to gain access to people's files, which has resulted in the popularity of unbreakable encryption technologies."
Umm, I guess they still have access if they have a warrant.
I don't see your average person using encryption, let alone 'unbreakable' type.
The only thing he got right is the obvious one. They rest are off. Making a 10-year prediction isn't very fun anyway. 20-year or longer predictions are great, especially if they include flying personal transportation.
Re:Will someone shut him up yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, my phone certainly does have essentially an ever-present connection to the worldwide network. And my phone is a linux machine I would have been proud to have on my desktop 7 years ago.
Re:Will someone shut him up yet? (Score:4, Interesting)
Devices are all capable of talking to each other, via bluetooth or other means. Contactless smart cards fit as the ID protection on a chip, so do RFID passports, even if they aren't as secure as he had hoped. Memory on portable devices has moved away from the rotating platters. Kindle and other e-books are out there, and while I still prefer the contrast of paper and the lack of DRM, they are popular. Telephones do send high res pictures and video, my 'new' cellphone is capable of both. It's only new to me, the model has been out for some time. And his prediction of dating online/ virtual sex, I think it nicely sums up all the problems of Second Life. As for people preferring to interact with female AI, he's right. Wasn't there an article here about more people choosing the female workout instructor in Wii Fit?
For his predictions of art, I've seen a lot of the things he dreamed up. People are making music with Guitar Hero 'toys', and cooking up strange new instruments with accelerometers. He didn't get it all right, but he was close.
Re:Will someone shut him up yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Computers routinely include wireless technology to plug into the ever-present worldwide network, providing reliable, instantly available, very-high-bandwidth communication.
Wrong, we don't have ever-present worldwide network. Even finding 'hot-spots' are hard.
I beg to differ. Two weeks ago today, I stood on a beach in Australia — at Hat Head, which, for the curious, is a small and fairly unremarkable seaside town in New South Wales, about 500 km from the nearest large city — where I had no trouble using my Swedish mobile phone/SIM to
Now... You were saying something about the lack of world-wide wireless connectivity...? :)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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10 years ago, I would never have guessed that I'd receive a Troll mod for a misplaced modifier.
Note to sorry excuse for moderator: "I don't agree" != "Troll".
You don't seem to understand the point of a beach (Score:2)
Genrally its to sunbath, swim, surf, 101 other water activities or even get off with your gf. Its generally *not* to sit around playing with a mobile phone.
But hey, each to their own!
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"Communication between components, such as pointing devices, microphones, displays, printers, and the occasional keyboard, uses short-distance wireless technology."
All of these except displays are common place. And despite the pointlessness, people continue to buy wireless network printers and sit them 3 feet from the router despite this. Technically even displays are possible, you can get short range retransmission devices for televisions (meant to hook cable up to an entire household with one output).
Al
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another thing missed (Score:5, Funny)
And of course he missed the Spanish Inquisition. Possibly he didn't expect that.
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Not bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Quite a bit of that was eerie, when you consider it was written ten years ago. Most decade predictions are way off, with maybe one in ten or twenty hitting near the mark.
roadrunner visual cortex simulation (Score:3, Interesting)
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/13/2014225 [slashdot.org]
problematic economics... (Score:2)
Despite occasional corrections, the ten years leading up to 2009 have seen continuous economic expansion and prosperity due to the dominance of the knowledge content of products and services. The greatest gains continue to be in the value of the stock market. Price deflation concerned economists in the early '00 years, but they quickly realized it was a good thing. The high-tech community pointed out that significant deflation had existed in the computer hardware and software industries for many years earli
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What I want to know is, does any sane person think that overall price deflation isn't terrible for the economy?
It's not insanity. It's ignorance.
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What I want to know is, does any sane person think that overall price deflation isn't terrible for the economy?
I'm no economist, but if we have deflation right now I am pretty happy about it. Maybe pennies will once again be worth the metal we put in them.
It's crushing to anyone in any significant amount of debt (i.e. anyone who holds a mortgage).
Don't buy that house that costs so much more than your annual income.
Re:problematic economics... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that in deflationary periods incomes drop as well as prices, either by direct cuts in salaries or layoffs followed by new jobs that don't pay as well; otherwise everyone would be rich, by magic, which never happens. Thus my family's outstanding mortgage -- currently a fairly reasonable 120 percent or so of our annual income -- would become more and more of a burden.
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He got most of it completely wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of his predictions that he got right were brain-dead obvious in 1999 - we already had portable computers coming into common use, and cellphones everywhere. This trend was pretty clearly going to continue. Hell, the Gameboy was proof enough that we were about to see a generation who grew up with portable computing. "Body LANs" don't exist in any meaningful form. People at best are wearing the utility belt of gadgets, some of which might talk Bluetooth to each other.
The rest? Wireless? Please. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were just coming into fruition around that time, and obviously wireless use was going to come into play. Again, cellphones paved the way for this. Beyond that though... I still see millions of wired speakers, mice, keyboards, dvd players, you name it. I still don't see wireless as being the most common form of network access, hell any network admin worth his salt will rant about the general poor performance of Wi-Fi. Wireless printers and displays never really came about (I do find it amusing that he says "occasional keyboard" - the most obvious use of a low-bandwidth wireless interface). His vision of ubiquitous wireless access never came about - the best we have is the cellphone networks, which again, we already had 10 years ago.
Digital books, movies, music? Napster was already out by then. The entertainment industry did its best to stop this from happening and it's only been in the past year or three that it's even been practical (from a legal perspective).
Eyeglass displays have existed for a long, long time and never achieved much success.
A trillion calculations per second on a home computer, eh?
Anyway, just seems a bit underwhelming. He got so much completely wrong.
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Re:He got most of it completely wrong (Score:5, Informative)
A trillion calculations per second on a home computer, eh?
According to wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the ATI Radeon HD4800 series acheives one teraflop. So, I would say Kurzweil was right on the mark on that one.
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I don't agree with him, I reverse engineered his thought process ;-). Saying that trends are logarithmic is like saying that all distributions are Gaussian anyways. Often true, but you can't rely on that. And everyone knows that computer power expends logarithmically anyways, hence the Moore law. Or rather, not quite, in the real world shit happens, perhaps why he was arguably a bit off on that.
Oh and that's no hyperbole, I grew up and went to high school in France, not Mississippi.
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The article says $1000 in 1999 dollars. So that'd be nearly $1500 today. I think he nailed this one.
Not sure what article the GP post read, but I thought it was pretty much spot on, and it was NOT all predictable. I challenge people to find a similar article that was anywhere near this close.
Then again, it doesn't surprise me. Kurzweil is very methodical in his predictions. He works the math.
He appears to have underestimated . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
. . . the lawyers.
This is surprising since the copyright fanatics spoke much more boldly 10 years ago than they do today.
How much of the truth of his predictions is the result of his predictions?
Funniest line goes to... (Score:5, Insightful)
Style improvement and automatic editing software is widely used to improve the quality of writing."
So close [nwsource.com], and yet [xkcd.com] so, so far... [xkcd.com]
Most all the predictions I read in this article have roughly the same problem - it still assumes technology is much more ubiquitous than it is in the real world. I'd say he was probably off by a five to ten years in many of those predictions. Let's see:
Computers: Personal computers are available in a wide range of sizes and shapes, and are commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry such as wristwatches, rings, earrings, and other body ornaments... The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) dictation software.
Getting there, but we're not quite at the point of wearing computers in common objects. Keyboard and mouse are still king.
Education: Students of all ages typically have a computer of their own, which is a thin tabletlike device weighing under a pound with a very high resolution display suitable for reading... Intelligent courseware has emerged as a common means of learning.
Closer, but education still seems largely clueless about how to effectively use computers. Intelligent teaching software is making strides, but still really can't be called "intelligent" by any stretch of the imagination.
Communication: "Telephone" communication is primarily wireless, and routinely includes high-resolution moving images... Virtually all communication is digital and encrypted, with public keys available to government authorities.
Technologists always want that video phone, and the market continually says "no thanks, voice is good enough". In fact, it's gone backwards a bit, with text messaging being rather popular.
Business and Economics: Intelligent assistants which combine continuous speech recognition, natural-language understanding, problem solving, and animated personalities routinely assist with finding information, answering questions, and conducting transactions... Most purchases of books, musical "albums," videos, games, and other forms of software do not involve any physical object.
Again, the overestimation of natural interfaces. And as of right now, a large percentage of software (especially games) is still attached to a physical disk, although digital downloads are gaining Steam... (sorry)
Politics and Society: Privacy has emerged as a primary political issue. The virtually constant use of electronic communication technologies is leaving a highly detailed trail of every person's every move.... There is a growing neo-Luddite movement...
This one's pretty close regarding privacy concerns. As far as neo-Luddite, I haven't seen any such movement emerge in large numbers. There are some anti-technologists, but it's usually a secondary effect of some other philosophical argument.
The Arts: The high quality of computer screens, and the facilities of computer-assisted visual rendering software, have made the computer screen a medium of choice for visual art.
Another one technologists always get wrong is the idea that people are eager to throw away traditional art mediums. I think Star Trek was closer on this one, about how people will always enjoy timeless "classical" entertainment right alongside their "high-tech" (holodeck) entertainment. The two need not be mutually exclusive.
Etc, etc... I'd say the predictions were generally on the right track, but perhaps just a bit too optimistic in the rate of adoption. Still, overall it was fairly insightful, if somewhat conservative. I'm not sure I could have done nearly as well.
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I think you're missing the reason. It's not that people prefer text messaging. I mean, look a
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Technologists always want that video phone, and the market continually says "no thanks, voice is good enough". In fact, it's gone backwards a bit, with text messaging being rather popular.
Wireless video phones are widely available today and have been for years, even my (pretty cheap) phone has that feature. I've never seen anyone use it though, and I've never used it myself. It seemed like a really cool idea when seen in SciFi movies/tv shows, but in reality it's just isn't all that necessary to see the person you're speaking to, especially when on the move as you are with your cellphone.
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Slashdotted (Score:2)
Apparently it could not predict its need for sufficient bandwidth.
mmm (Score:5, Funny)
His predictions might have been nearer the mark absent the war on terror.
Oh I agree. His predictions may have been far more accurate had the future unfolded differently.
Pretty close though (Score:3, Insightful)
I was sitting next to someone with a Kindle on a plane last week, so the digital paper thing is moving fast.
Rotational storage is not going away anytime soon (who though we'd have Terabyte drives?), but you certainly my iPhone can do a heck of a lot of computing with just Flash.
Not right about much that's important (Score:3, Insightful)
The things he was right about were fields where the path forward was pretty certain. We had a pretty good idea then how we'd make microchips smaller and faster, a clear path forward. Only now is that path getting clouded by physical limits. Where he was wrong was in predicting steady, linear progress in areas where there isn't a clear path forward. This includes AI, interface design, economics, and general welfare (I just love his dismissal of the underclass; they're a pretty big portion of humanity, you know, and I don't think the human story can be truly told without theirs as well).
I have a better track record than he does. (Score:3, Interesting)
I run Downside [downside.com], where, in 2000, I called the dot-com crash before it happened and named names. Check my track record. Since then, I've occasionally pointed out the obvious before it became conventional wisdom:
The next crash looks to be housing-related. Fannie Mae is in trouble. But not because of their accounting irregularities. The problem is more fundamental. They borrow short, lend long, and paper over the resulting interest rate risk with derivatives. In a credit crunch, the counterparties will be squeezed hard. The numbers are huge. And there's no public record of who those counterparties are.
Derivatives allow the creation of securities with a low probability of loss coupled with a very high but unlikely loss. When unlikely events are uncorrelated, as with domestic fire insurance, this is a viable model. When unlikely events are correlated, as with interest rate risk, everything breaks at once. Remember "portfolio insurance"? Same problem.
Mortgage financing is so tied to public policy that predictions based on fundamentals are not possible. All we can do is to point out that huge stresses are accumulating in that sector. At some point, as interest rates increase, something will break in a big way. The result may look like the 1980s S&L debacle.
The 2004 prediction describes exactly what happened in housing. No question about that.
The 2006 predictions took longer to happen than I'd expected. The Fed cut rates sharply in 2007, accelerating the economy when it should have been hitting the brakes. This deferred the collapse of the housing bubble, but not for long. When it did pop, it was worse than it had to be.
I expected one of the car manufacturers to go bust. Instead, they all almost went bust, and only a Government bailout saved them. The fundamentals indicated something had to give. The housing bubble and interest rate cuts resulted in something of a "car bubble", deferring the inevitable a few more more years.
The hurricane prediction was kind of off the wall, but Galveston was duly flattened.
It's nice to be right, but it isn't happy-making.
Bah! Humbug! (Score:2, Insightful)
The biggest problem with Kurzweil's view of the world is that it assumes that any innovation, if technologically feasible, is going to be adopted. As a simple example, the issue of voice-to-voice translation that he raises in the article. Its just more economical and practical to do business with someone who knows English (or has easy access to someone who knows English)
Similar wishful thinking by Sci Fi doyens caused visions of space colonies and interstellar travel by the first decade of the 21st cent
Re:Bah! Humbug! (Score:4, Insightful)
Tech things from the past decade that he COMPLETELY misses in his book:
Kurzweil, in his long term view, predicted a world where technology starts to change us, and we are replaced with computers. He envisioned conflict over this - people fighting about whether computer rights, the meaning of "human," etc. But there hasn't been much conflict, because computers haven't changed us. Human needs are still the driving force between technological change, and as long as this is the case, technology will continue to satisfy our basic needs - to help us do the same things we *already do* faster and better, rather than suddenly giving me a taste for wireless jewelry.
Yeah, not so much :p (Score:2)
Desperate for Singularity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe he just wants to live long enough to see it begin. Then again, it changes the ball game and seems a shame to die when it seems likely that one day people won't have to (for example, through digitising themselves).
Re: (Score:2)
Is there anyone (aside from crazies) who DOES want to die?
No, but I can say that for me, I don't have any particular fear of death, and I certainly don't want to live forever.
Solid-state memories (Score:3, Insightful)
We're nearly there. Some Netbooks already have solid-state hard drives without any rotating platters. The limitation right now seems to be writing speed and time of life. Flash memory still deteriorates with each delete+rewrite. Getting much better though.
As for exchangable media, well, the USB key seems to have become the medium for personal data - although optical media are still used for mass-produced content like movies and music. Can't see that changing ever - DVDs and BluRay disks are much cheaper to produce than rewritable flash memory.
Why we aren't there (Score:2)
But even if in my own country are widely used (in Uruguay this year should finally be in all the schools of the country, already are in most of it), the utopia painted on the launch of it wasn't reached, and the technology involved was the one available since the start.
Another miss in Kurzweil predictions
dead on? (Score:2)
The chapter contains a bland stew of ideas that were commonplace even a decade ago (when the chapter was written). Most of the engineering goals were major targets even back then, and he didn't exactly nail the timing on most of these. Factor out general knowledge of the tech industry, and he's no more accurate than your average tea leaf reader (even worse, if you imagine that Kurzweil has some access to industry insiders who actually know what technologies they're going to push next). It's a nice chapte
Did anyone actually read TFA? (Score:2)
There's plenty of time (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't listen to the naysayers, it's only January...
LUIs (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure he was so far off. Sure, personal computers don't use it, but have you gone through a phone interface recently? It's not natural language but I've used some of them that are pretty free-form.