Thursday, March 09, 2006

Closer to the Singularity My friend Dave Cline sent me another link today about Mechanical Turk. It's a story from the MIT Technology Review about Pennies for Web Jobs. To me this is the type of article that backs some of of my theories on the coming Singularity. From the article, I really liked this quote: Not only did participants supply the necessary answers, but they did so "outstandingly fast," according to Cabrera, allowing Amazon to use the photographs in its search results. "This is the tip of the iceberg, but you can see how it enables 'massively parallel' human computing," he said. When I last met Vernor Vinge I spoke with him about my theories on how to measure the presence of the Singularity. I proposed that we might look to create a metric based on how many people are performing machine driven work. Mechanical Turk is a very good example of this ... and yes it is simple ... but there are people and systems putting "work" into a large database, and there are people who are executing on queues of tasks for money. To me, this really isn't that different from the little mouse pressing a bar for a piece of food. A more complex example are the drivers for UPS and Fedex. Their entire day is coordinated by massively complex computer systems that manage the thousands of drivers all over the world. From the beginning to end of the day they are simply following the directions of computer systems that are managing a process far too complex for humans to direct anymore. In fact, the computer systems are managing the flow of packages and simply using humans as one of the components in that management system. Vernor talks about a hard takeoff, and a soft takeoff of the Singularity. I will argue that we are already accelerating on our way in a soft takeoff. [tags: singularity future mturk amazon ai automation] 11:51:51 AM      Microsoft Origami - first thoughts Well ... it's been fun watching the media uproar, and the debates over the hype about the Microsoft Origami device. I has also been fun to see the product announced and in the press. It was fun since we at Agilix Labs had one here at our facility for quite some time prior to the leaks. We've been tweaking our GoBinder code to ensure that our Tablet PC applications work on this new device. So what do I think about the UMPC/Origami device? I actually like it! Yes, like many people are saying, this is a mini-Tablet PC type of device. There is nothing earth shattering about it that I know of right now, but I do want to buy one for my three year old son. He has been using my HP Tablet PC for quite a while now, and is becoming very adept at navigating the user interface, and easily switching from mouse to stylus. I have really been thinking about what I buy him to use ... or do I give him my old laptop as I upgrade? What about a PlayStation Portable? Oh ... what about the $100 Laptop Project? My laptop is too large for my son. The PSP? It's still $250.00 and doesn't have half of the capabilities nor features. The $100 Laptop? Way too limited in my opinion in that it lacks the breadth of application support ... and isn't yet available. A Tablet PC? No ... too expensive today. In my opinion the key is going to be the price point of these new Origami devices. When I can buy a device like this for the ~$600+ I have a hard time considering anything else. It runs a standard operating system (and might even support Linux!) and brings the full breadth of application support. It'll run games, and provide Internet connectivity. It'll have Bluetooth and integrate with cell phones. I'm not saying that this product is going to kill the $100 Laptop Project ... that will always have it's place. But in more affluent societies where some extra money can be spent it seems to me that the Origami is addressing a real market. This is the place between the PDA/PSP types of devices, and the laptop/Tablet PCs. So I'll probably buy one for my son. Will I buy one? I think that I might buy one for myself ... just to experiment as a platform for new applications. Religion aside, when Microsoft and Intel (and Samsung, and ASUS, and ...) get behind something they are going to create a new market. I do believe that for software developers, there is going to be a whole new generation of applications for this platform. [tags: origami microsoft intel umpc agilix gobinder tablet pc] 8:51:16 AM

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