In an interesting piece of news here researchers in the Netherlands, have produced a device, a skull cap, capable of reading brain potential in order to let users type by thought alone. It doesn't state if the head, needs to be shaved for the skull cap to work, but I'm presuming it would. These prototype would be life changing for extreme paralytics, and might also be modified to measure the motor regions instead of the decision make regions, to control prosthetic limbs.
Its research like this that will over next few year, give AI researchers a chance to see deeper inside that brain than ever before. For my the goal is not just to enhance the lives of the disabled, nor to improve normal human computer interaction. For me the goal is mind uploading. If Moore law continues to hold than by 2030 we will have home computers as powerful as the human brain is. These computer could then be trained to learn to copy the signals of the human brain, learning over time, to replicate in silicon, the human mind. Your now immortal soul would be effectively copied into the
computer.
Of course its very long we to go from measuring signal in the surface of the brain, to measuring all the signal in the brain, but it is a small step along the way. For me magnetic imaging is a way to go, using SQUIDs, superconducting quantum interference devices. The technique is known as magnetoencephalography. Year of improvement of the technical would be need in to for it to have resolution to measure single neuron's firing or at least clusters of neurons, Need to upload a human mind. It was very long road, so promise to stay healthy while your waiting.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
10 Years since the bubble burst on the first dot com boom
March the 10th 2010, was the peak of the American Stock market during the first dot come bubble, soon after billion of dollars where wiped of the world wide markets, and many companies sent bankrupt as the world realised that .com, did't automatically mean rich. The failout led to long global recession, that was deepened by the 9/11 bombing a year and half later.
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
3G Mobile Broadband Experiences
Being temporally hospitalized I've had the chance to see how it is to run an internet company entirely via my Laptop and Mobile Broadband. My bother gifted me with a T-mobile USB Stick, and that was enough to get me a Windows connections. Once I upgraded my Linux to Ubuntu 9.10 Jaunty Jackalope, the USB stick give me mobile broadband straight away, with the configuration tools in the menu. Of course it didn't run fine. Every-time I left the Internet alone for more than 5 minutes, the connection would drop and wouldn't come back, until I rebooted. Linux and Windows both behaved like that so it must be a problem with the USB stick.
T-Mobile came which a download policy that blocks out all adult material, and somehow classes Blogspot and You-tube as adult. The on-line prove you age by credit card page, didn't understand my USB sticks phone number, but a quick phone call to there support center, got me registered, and the content block removed. So far so fine. Of course my Vista partition decided to lose its System Event Notification Services, (somewhere near svchost.exe), and my Linux doesn't like my SiS onboard graphic card, several afternoons, editing xorg.conf, didn't fix it, so i'm working and browsing at 800 by 600 on Linux, and not at all on Windows. None of those problems are T-mobiles, it just part of the hassle of having a laptop.
T-Mobile has a 2GB per month, mobile broad band limit. Now some of you light
weight users, might think that enough. We all know that shared movies and porn downloads will fill that quick, but I wasn't trying any of those. In fact one download of a Windows Vista services pack, and a few Linux Updates, was enough to push me over that limit. Once over that limit you can't download anything between the pick hours of 4pm to midnight. But you can still browser the Internet. Topping up the broadband, can be done via a matching card, or over the phone and Internet, you'll probably find it expense and possibly even outside you budget. But when you stuck in Hospital, there really isn't a better way.
I'd say the mobile broadband with a laptop, reminds me a lot of my old modem days, you know its going to get good soon, but at the moment it full of snacks and traps. Roll on the next generation of mobile broadband. And Some Linux guru please fix up SiS 671 support, in Ubuntu. SiS may be a forgotten player in graphics land, but its still built in to many old laptops. Ubuntu even has xserver-xorg-video-sis in it, so it might just be my models that's missing.
To summaries mobile board band works we'll enough, if only the stick would correctly redial without losing dhcp or whatever, and have a large bandwidth limit, i'd be very happy with it.
T-Mobile came which a download policy that blocks out all adult material, and somehow classes Blogspot and You-tube as adult. The on-line prove you age by credit card page, didn't understand my USB sticks phone number, but a quick phone call to there support center, got me registered, and the content block removed. So far so fine. Of course my Vista partition decided to lose its System Event Notification Services, (somewhere near svchost.exe), and my Linux doesn't like my SiS onboard graphic card, several afternoons, editing xorg.conf, didn't fix it, so i'm working and browsing at 800 by 600 on Linux, and not at all on Windows. None of those problems are T-mobiles, it just part of the hassle of having a laptop.
T-Mobile has a 2GB per month, mobile broad band limit. Now some of you light
weight users, might think that enough. We all know that shared movies and porn downloads will fill that quick, but I wasn't trying any of those. In fact one download of a Windows Vista services pack, and a few Linux Updates, was enough to push me over that limit. Once over that limit you can't download anything between the pick hours of 4pm to midnight. But you can still browser the Internet. Topping up the broadband, can be done via a matching card, or over the phone and Internet, you'll probably find it expense and possibly even outside you budget. But when you stuck in Hospital, there really isn't a better way.
I'd say the mobile broadband with a laptop, reminds me a lot of my old modem days, you know its going to get good soon, but at the moment it full of snacks and traps. Roll on the next generation of mobile broadband. And Some Linux guru please fix up SiS 671 support, in Ubuntu. SiS may be a forgotten player in graphics land, but its still built in to many old laptops. Ubuntu even has xserver-xorg-video-sis in it, so it might just be my models that's missing.
To summaries mobile board band works we'll enough, if only the stick would correctly redial without losing dhcp or whatever, and have a large bandwidth limit, i'd be very happy with it.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
The 2010's the decade the book changed
Idea of the Book, was perhaps the greatest development in mankind's history, it change the passing of knowledge from word of month, family by family to something that could remain permanent though history. The invention of the book, created the peoples of the book, ruled by religion and culture wide believes. The early book where used by the Babylonians and Egyptians, writing on early paper and stone. Old books became permanent believes as evidenced by the middle aged Christians, believing Aristotle works, without bothering to check.
The first major changing to the book, was the invention of the the printing press suddenly knowledge was cheaply distributable, even the poor could own a copy of the bible, and then any book, that would be popular enough to make a profit from publishing. The second major change to the book, is about to happen now, already Internet publishing is a major industry, weather as websites, or as blogs. But the book is only just making it to the internet.
Almost everyone knows the players of the internet book revolution, already, Amazon has been selling books by mail order since the late 90's. And Google has been bizzy indexing every book (especially the copyright free out of print books), since 2003. Publishers are beginning to fear for there profits. On the internet information is available freely. Where comes the money from publishing a book. Publishers have begun suing Google over its indexing plan. But perhaps publishers have more to fear from Amazon. Amazon has make the jump from selling paper books, to electronic tombs, readable only on Amazon propitiatory Kindle tablet. Despite being one usage, black and white, with worse contrast than paper, Kindle is a small success, and where success is seen, others are sure to follow.
The future of book, might go two different ways, or somewhere between. First the internet might become a free library giving every book away for free to anyone with internet access. Publishers would hate this, and they would have change they're business model to gain money by advertising, perhaps even product placing, inside stories, like sometimes happens in Hollywood. The other way the internet book might develop is with regulated digital rights management, DRM, for each copy of the book, paid for and read on propitiatory tablets. This would be far worse, for book owners, who tied to particular equipment, can no longer swap or sell books second hand. Likely a bit of both will development, and governments will be arguing about book ownership and copyright for a long time to come. Here are some of the threads about book lawsuits that are already happening.
Perhaps though, the internet will take the book even further the we can currently imagine, when I read a book, and become evolved in it, I begin creating an imaginary world inside my own brain, that matches the story or the knowledge the author is imparting. Unlike a web-page with its may links, book is a tome of knowledge that tries to be complete in itself. With each book, comes an imaginary world, that might become a movie, a play, or a computer game. This means that along with a book, a certainly amount of artificial intelligence should come. Paper books, just have indices and contents', and Internet book, might come with its own virtual world, automatic illustration. Books might be playable, (like Warlock of Firetop Mountain), with multiple endings. I believe that adding AI to the humble book, will be an even more transformative change to human knowledge than the petty arguments, about ownership and money. The decade of two thousand and teens may be the decade of the book wars. But the decade of the two thousand and twenties might well be the decade of the AI book.
The first major changing to the book, was the invention of the the printing press suddenly knowledge was cheaply distributable, even the poor could own a copy of the bible, and then any book, that would be popular enough to make a profit from publishing. The second major change to the book, is about to happen now, already Internet publishing is a major industry, weather as websites, or as blogs. But the book is only just making it to the internet.
Almost everyone knows the players of the internet book revolution, already, Amazon has been selling books by mail order since the late 90's. And Google has been bizzy indexing every book (especially the copyright free out of print books), since 2003. Publishers are beginning to fear for there profits. On the internet information is available freely. Where comes the money from publishing a book. Publishers have begun suing Google over its indexing plan. But perhaps publishers have more to fear from Amazon. Amazon has make the jump from selling paper books, to electronic tombs, readable only on Amazon propitiatory Kindle tablet. Despite being one usage, black and white, with worse contrast than paper, Kindle is a small success, and where success is seen, others are sure to follow.
The future of book, might go two different ways, or somewhere between. First the internet might become a free library giving every book away for free to anyone with internet access. Publishers would hate this, and they would have change they're business model to gain money by advertising, perhaps even product placing, inside stories, like sometimes happens in Hollywood. The other way the internet book might develop is with regulated digital rights management, DRM, for each copy of the book, paid for and read on propitiatory tablets. This would be far worse, for book owners, who tied to particular equipment, can no longer swap or sell books second hand. Likely a bit of both will development, and governments will be arguing about book ownership and copyright for a long time to come. Here are some of the threads about book lawsuits that are already happening.
Perhaps though, the internet will take the book even further the we can currently imagine, when I read a book, and become evolved in it, I begin creating an imaginary world inside my own brain, that matches the story or the knowledge the author is imparting. Unlike a web-page with its may links, book is a tome of knowledge that tries to be complete in itself. With each book, comes an imaginary world, that might become a movie, a play, or a computer game. This means that along with a book, a certainly amount of artificial intelligence should come. Paper books, just have indices and contents', and Internet book, might come with its own virtual world, automatic illustration. Books might be playable, (like Warlock of Firetop Mountain), with multiple endings. I believe that adding AI to the humble book, will be an even more transformative change to human knowledge than the petty arguments, about ownership and money. The decade of two thousand and teens may be the decade of the book wars. But the decade of the two thousand and twenties might well be the decade of the AI book.
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
Crop Circle Day on Google
Its Crop Circle day on Google 15 September 2009. Why Not, there pretty and mysterious, and so this is the girl from hipper liner. I run a crop circle list myself. So does google like me? Where is my list entry, Crop Circles @ Feed Distiller.com, secret. Shout it from the roof tops baby. Guess what most of the top pages are Virals. Crystal Links was typical, links on crop circles and a spooky infovermercial bleep virt. Beamed me to mean me. You pay for the link by paypal, and the love and attention that went into the graphics was UGLY. I've not master of graphic design either. And graphic Designers have turned me down, when I was offering cash. Lazy Gits. Crystal link could get a link to from my system for the price of reading it. If that has a name its probably "open viral". So...
I'm also interested in the mechanics of the ecology of Viral themes. Do you like being called Viral? Its just descriptive here. Lazy people people want free money from google, and will pay a lot to get it. What traps do those playing P.J.Barham fall into here. The laws of the arena are not clear to me. If Google and Microsoft Bing, want to, they could wipe me out a second. Where's the L in the logo. Do microsoft or google, want the job of managing the ecology. Probably No, its to much thinking. Plus all the politians and pressure group will want to interfere in it. God help us all, if widow twanky starts making the laws. Google and Microsoft make the algorithms, to manage the ecology. Gaming the ecology, matters. Money grows on trees. Sometimes decision trees. But Societies has to work fairly fairly. I've lost the lottery, now what, sofa surfing?. Are the skills going in the tea shops and pubs you'll retreat to. Porcelain china, and Do a lot of work for charity. Graphic designers are safe, especial if they look like models. Another cold hard day for the morlocks.
How do you measure the productivity of a web site, for its money, and for how good it is at doing its reason for existance. As judged by the reviews I guess, is looking deeper a mind trap? But if you don't get the attention of the reviewer that doesn't happen. Google choose crop circles today, which was lucky for crystal links. So it began. And what was the top page on google: The Daily Telegraph. News Matters.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
The Chip of Future, AD 2020
Since I'm blogging here about the future of computing, i'd thought i'd have a look today, at what the next ten years will bring to the CPU, the processor chip at the heart of all modern computers. Futurology is often a difficult subject but when it come
to silicon the future has been pretty well mapped out by maths. Back in the 1960s when the silicon chip was first invented Gordon Moore of Intel, predicted the following.
Taking these a face value, and starting with 2010s model CPU, 8 cores each running at 4GHz, 12MB of cache. We can extrapolate tens years, five die shrinks of 1.414 time smaller a piece. Lets make that six, to make the math easier, so where really looking at the chip of 2022. Here what we get:
Are we really going to get a chip like that? In particular does the average user need 500 way multicore chips. The Multicore trend only started in the 2004 because chip designer found it was the most efficient way to increase the power of there processors. If it is to continue, software needs to change in order to use many processors at the same time, this will be a big change in programming style, it will
require new Operating Systems that can intelligently schedule big tasks to many processors while keeping small regular tasks easierly started on other spare processors. I'm sure it can be done, but will it? If not manufacturers will find it difficult to sell such massively parallel many core chips.
If multi-cores don't catch on, then its more likely manufacturers will opt to use the space on silicon chip to build complete computers on a chip, with I/O, Graphics, Memory all integrated into a single chips, continue the trend started with AMD Fusion chips (graphics processor and cpu on the same chip). For gamers a big GPU and a few cores of CPU, perhaps with a dedicated physics unit, might be the prefer options.
Our chip of 2022, is made at 4nm lithography (6 shrinks from the 32nm Intel and AMD will be using in 2010), this is about the limits as to how small we can design chips. In a Silicon Crystal atoms of silicon are spaced about 0.5nm apart. Our 4nm chip has wires just 8 atoms thick. Quantum tunnelling between adjacent wires becomes a problem already at 16nm (scheduled for 2013-2016). Once we can't shrink processors any further we can only make more powerful computers by increasing the size of chip itself or by building vertically, but either way we would have to pay more for building either. Once we stop shrinking chips, the price for each transistor stops going down. So it really looks that the end point of conventional silicon chips is reached in the 2020s.
Our computer of 2020, is still at bit short of a human brain, which is estimated to need about 10^16 Computations per second, and 10TB of memory to emulate. We're about 300 times to slow to match a human brain, and 100 times to little memory. To get there we need another 6 dies shrinks, but one atom thick wires just aren't possible. Having said that a 2020s supercomputer made with hundreds of processors is there, so big organisation, can start playing god with brain rate supercomputers if the're so funded. In fact through, for modelling the brain, we've very much got the wrong architecture above.The brain is made of 100 billion slow but parallel operating neurons connected by 100 trillion interconnections. To emulate really we want chips
which are vastly more parallel, integrated with a rewire-able transport system able to connect any segment to any other in real time. Such a chip might only be made once AI or mind-uploading is already standard.
Once we reach the end of Moore's Law, I'm sure innovation will continue in computing, certainly in software, but hardware will have stalled, improving only gradually from then on. It might be a long wait before the next revolution, Nanotech, starts. Nanotech rewrites the rule on how to build computers (and everything else), to start it will require 3 dimensional atom by atom construction of self replicating robots, thats not any easy task, nor is it easy to design, Nanotech might come anywhere next century, or never. Some futurologist would like to start Nanotech in the 2020s just to keep Moore's Law working, but Moore's Law is just a line drawn in a existing trends. Hard work makes it continue to be true, but hard work, can't get past the limit of the laws of physics. The computer of much of the current century may have specs like I've describe above, and it will take new revolutionary technology to better it.
to silicon the future has been pretty well mapped out by maths. Back in the 1960s when the silicon chip was first invented Gordon Moore of Intel, predicted the following.
- The number of transistors on a chip will double every two years.
- Or equivalently the width of a transistor will shrink by 1.414 every two years.
- (From the speed of light), the frequency will increase by 1.414 every two years.
Taking these a face value, and starting with 2010s model CPU, 8 cores each running at 4GHz, 12MB of cache. We can extrapolate tens years, five die shrinks of 1.414 time smaller a piece. Lets make that six, to make the math easier, so where really looking at the chip of 2022. Here what we get:
- 512 Cores on a chip each running at 32GHz
- 512MB of cache
- 35 TeraFlops or 35 Million Million Floating Point Math Operation per Second
- RAM modules will be 128 GB and run at about 10GHz
- Flash Memory will around 1TB module size
- Hard Disks? Might well not keep place, might only have 10s of TBs
Are we really going to get a chip like that? In particular does the average user need 500 way multicore chips. The Multicore trend only started in the 2004 because chip designer found it was the most efficient way to increase the power of there processors. If it is to continue, software needs to change in order to use many processors at the same time, this will be a big change in programming style, it will
require new Operating Systems that can intelligently schedule big tasks to many processors while keeping small regular tasks easierly started on other spare processors. I'm sure it can be done, but will it? If not manufacturers will find it difficult to sell such massively parallel many core chips.
The ATOM version
If multi-cores don't catch on, then its more likely manufacturers will opt to use the space on silicon chip to build complete computers on a chip, with I/O, Graphics, Memory all integrated into a single chips, continue the trend started with AMD Fusion chips (graphics processor and cpu on the same chip). For gamers a big GPU and a few cores of CPU, perhaps with a dedicated physics unit, might be the prefer options.
This might be the final chip too
Our chip of 2022, is made at 4nm lithography (6 shrinks from the 32nm Intel and AMD will be using in 2010), this is about the limits as to how small we can design chips. In a Silicon Crystal atoms of silicon are spaced about 0.5nm apart. Our 4nm chip has wires just 8 atoms thick. Quantum tunnelling between adjacent wires becomes a problem already at 16nm (scheduled for 2013-2016). Once we can't shrink processors any further we can only make more powerful computers by increasing the size of chip itself or by building vertically, but either way we would have to pay more for building either. Once we stop shrinking chips, the price for each transistor stops going down. So it really looks that the end point of conventional silicon chips is reached in the 2020s.
The revolution is Over and still no AI
Our computer of 2020, is still at bit short of a human brain, which is estimated to need about 10^16 Computations per second, and 10TB of memory to emulate. We're about 300 times to slow to match a human brain, and 100 times to little memory. To get there we need another 6 dies shrinks, but one atom thick wires just aren't possible. Having said that a 2020s supercomputer made with hundreds of processors is there, so big organisation, can start playing god with brain rate supercomputers if the're so funded. In fact through, for modelling the brain, we've very much got the wrong architecture above.The brain is made of 100 billion slow but parallel operating neurons connected by 100 trillion interconnections. To emulate really we want chips
which are vastly more parallel, integrated with a rewire-able transport system able to connect any segment to any other in real time. Such a chip might only be made once AI or mind-uploading is already standard.
Conclusions: The singularity is delayed
Once we reach the end of Moore's Law, I'm sure innovation will continue in computing, certainly in software, but hardware will have stalled, improving only gradually from then on. It might be a long wait before the next revolution, Nanotech, starts. Nanotech rewrites the rule on how to build computers (and everything else), to start it will require 3 dimensional atom by atom construction of self replicating robots, thats not any easy task, nor is it easy to design, Nanotech might come anywhere next century, or never. Some futurologist would like to start Nanotech in the 2020s just to keep Moore's Law working, but Moore's Law is just a line drawn in a existing trends. Hard work makes it continue to be true, but hard work, can't get past the limit of the laws of physics. The computer of much of the current century may have specs like I've describe above, and it will take new revolutionary technology to better it.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
The Internet, the Worlds biggest Ponzi Scheme?
Not to long ago, i attended a one of those Internet Business Meet up groups. Not many people turned up, certainly no one with success or money to invest. One of the guys there had produced tens of sites, promoted up the hundreds of thousand of hits per month level, but total failed to monetize the sites, despite Google Adsense and various affiliate programs. In his bitterness, he describe the Internet as the World biggest Ponzi Scheme. Is the Internet or part of a Ponzi Scheme? A Ponzi Scheme, named after Charles Ponzi any pyramid marketing scheme that make the early adopters money, by dragging ever more new people to invest in it, and then dies when it runs out of suckers.
Technically of course, the Internet, and the web, aren't any kind of money making scheme at all, there purely enabling communication protocols. Never the less, there is an over large part of Internet business involved purely in promote other parts of the Internet, commonly known as SEO, or Search Engine Optimising. If your involve in any new Internet business you'll want to get in Marketed and if like the majority, you don't have much money to spare, this often means SEO. The nature of Google and most of the modern search engine, is that the more your pages are linked to, the more search hits you get, so the more people see you. While goodness will out, its otherwise a self-reinforcing systems, keeping the old and already popular businesses at the top, and producing barriers to entry for any new operation.
Because of this a major industry of SEO, and Internet promotion has sprung up often promising at lot more traffic and advertising money than is reasonably believable. Many sites, and chat room posts, will inform you of how to start a blog, how to get traffic for it, and write of successful bloggers that have made big money out of it. Showing the self referential nature of the net, many of the these most successful blogs are themselves about SEO, and that part of the Net almost qualifies as a Ponzi Scheme. Fads on the Internet come and go. At the moment Tweeter is in fashion, Tweeter is real time chatting, and doesn't (yet) favour old established sites, yet if you only did Tweeter and ever stop your Tweeter marketing, your find no record of your messages no links to your website or business. Many SEO sites recommend Tweeter marketing it, to my mind it might as well be vapour marketing. We've yet to see what comes out of the growth of Tweet Marketing, as expect nothing, at it to be replaced by a newer fad, but I've been wrong before.
Technically of course, the Internet, and the web, aren't any kind of money making scheme at all, there purely enabling communication protocols. Never the less, there is an over large part of Internet business involved purely in promote other parts of the Internet, commonly known as SEO, or Search Engine Optimising. If your involve in any new Internet business you'll want to get in Marketed and if like the majority, you don't have much money to spare, this often means SEO. The nature of Google and most of the modern search engine, is that the more your pages are linked to, the more search hits you get, so the more people see you. While goodness will out, its otherwise a self-reinforcing systems, keeping the old and already popular businesses at the top, and producing barriers to entry for any new operation.
Because of this a major industry of SEO, and Internet promotion has sprung up often promising at lot more traffic and advertising money than is reasonably believable. Many sites, and chat room posts, will inform you of how to start a blog, how to get traffic for it, and write of successful bloggers that have made big money out of it. Showing the self referential nature of the net, many of the these most successful blogs are themselves about SEO, and that part of the Net almost qualifies as a Ponzi Scheme. Fads on the Internet come and go. At the moment Tweeter is in fashion, Tweeter is real time chatting, and doesn't (yet) favour old established sites, yet if you only did Tweeter and ever stop your Tweeter marketing, your find no record of your messages no links to your website or business. Many SEO sites recommend Tweeter marketing it, to my mind it might as well be vapour marketing. We've yet to see what comes out of the growth of Tweet Marketing, as expect nothing, at it to be replaced by a newer fad, but I've been wrong before.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
