A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
Over lunch yesterday, Rick Karlgaard, the publisher of Forbes, argued that we may very well be close to the moment when the news about the United States will turn good--very good--and stay that way indefinitely.
Rich's argument? Until now, "exponential technologies" have applied mostly to software, finance, and other intangible endeavors. (According to Moore's Law, as you'll recall, about every 18 months the computing power of microchips will double while prices hold constant or fall--that's an example of what Rich meant by "exponential technologies.") Now, however, "exponential technologies" are just getting to the point at which they can affect the material world. Consider, for example, energy. New techniques that computer power have made possible--above all, hydraulic fracturing--have made available vast new reserves of oil and natural gas.
"Energy is just the beginning," Rich said. "Look at transportation. The most exciting project at Google right now has nothing to do with search engines. It's all about the driverless car."
When Google introduced the driverless car just four years ago, it could perform figure eights in an empty parking lot, but that was about it. "Not too long ago the Google car drove down Lombard Street, and now it can drive through mountain passes at the speed limit."
"Transportation is going to be transformed. And if you look at new medical technologies, you can see that ObamaCare could become completely irrelevant. There's a lot of progress out there."
In the words of the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick, "We must learn to bear the truth about ourselves, not matter how good it might be."
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Jun '10
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
George Savage
Paules, I simply must disagree with this point on your list. Modern technology is the main reason that I now perform virtually all of my own automobile maintenance.
Sorry, Doc, but it's not that easy. I have five years shop experience on imported cars. Yeah, all those computer diagnostics work fine when the care is relatively new. What happens when a rodent chews through your wiring harness and the computer starts sending false codes? How 'bout when your car's master computer goes on the blink? It can't tell you what the problem is because it is the problem. And do you have any idea what even a minor wreck can do? All those crash sensors that detonate the air bags have to be replaced at great cost. Give me a simple mechanical system over a computer system any day of the week. If I can see what's broke with my own two eyes, I've got a fair chance of fixing it with my own two hands.
Sep '10
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
Driverless car? No thanks. Once that becomes the standard, government will mandate all sorts of restrictions on where and how fast one can drive. And forget about escaping their scrutiny ever again. Your location will be known by some central computer system every second. The freedom of the open road will be a distant memory that we will tell our grandchildren about--provided that their teachers haven't taught them to turn in subversive talk like that.
Jul '12
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
Paules. Whether you can fix the thing yourself doesn't matter. If you know just a little about how it works you're armed with knowledge needed to ask the mechanic to take a wire brush to the oxidation on the cable end attached to your dead battery and try a charge before he sells you a new one. And when he sez the master computer needs replacing, you need to know enough to ask: "And how do you know that?" And be able to make a judgement about the answer. It simplifies the process for everybody.
Nov '11
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
Hello Peter,
We all wish that Rich is right, but is a dearth of technology ever been the issue? Perhaps if we can acquire the technological elbow room we can evolve from nuclear energy and reach for the hyper-drive button. Big if, but so what?
Even after going to the moon with 1950's technology, which was some feat, we still elected Obama and his policies, and Europe is still being suffocated by a deflating, technocratic zeppelin.
Within reach I have more technology than billions of people have ever dreamed of. Has it made our world any better than did the invention of the light bulb, than the automobile? Are we better off today? Happier?
It is not a shortage of fuel, nor stale technology that is clogging our arteries. We have forgotten how to live as men.
No matter how full the tank is, even a driverless car has to have somewhere to go.
Sorry to be so much the downer.
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
Paules, I agree that simpler is better, and all-mechanical is certainly simplest. Less to go wrong, no question.
By the way, I've had the nesting rodent eat through the wiring harness--happened a few years back. That was truly a pain to fix.
Aug '10
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
For a guy who makes his living in IT, I have to bash technology a lot...
There is good reason exponential improvements have been mostly apparent in software, communications, and other intangible areas. The real exponential *technology* advances have been limited to two areas: calculations (microprocessors) and data transmission (the Internet). Little else has seen real exponential breakthroughs, merely linear gains sometimes augmented by exponential efficiences in calculating some information or transmitting information.
And here's the scary thing: the reason finance has seen exponential "advances" is for the alarming fact that money has become mere information. Monetary sums transferred back and forth at the speed of light sounds like a great idea, and it is. But abstract money can be just as easily created, and manipulated, and malinvested, as transmitted. Technology didn't cause the financial system's fragility, but it certainly enabled it.
Peter, America isn't going to realize exponential changes in other sectors until they come up with an exponential technology of their own. Until then, the cool stuff will come from applying the 80's tech wonders to new areas (Google's car is just super fast calculations applied to driving, for example.)
Edited on July 15, 2012 at 5:53amFeb '11
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
I don't think self-driving cars on public roads are going to happen. There are too many judgment calls that are impossible to foresee and program in advance. For example: a child runs out in front of the car. On the right side of the road, there is a sharp dropoff. To the left, there is opposite-direction traffic. What should the system do?
Note that when the airspeed source was lost for Air France 447, the fly-by-wire computer basically threw up its hands and said "Your airplane" to the human pilots. What else could it do, when confronted with a situation beyond its programming? (And in most circumstances, the time available for a pilot to recover from an autopilot failure is much longer than the corresponding time for a car driver.)
A few years ago, there was a Washington Metrorail crash in which the controlled denied the driver's request to switch from automatic to manual control. The system did not properly compensate for longer stopping distances with icy tracks, and the train slid into a stopped train in front of it and killed the driver.
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
Information technology can do a lot more to improve non-IT applications, such as healthcare. What we need first is new built-for-purpose hardware.
Consider: In aviation, the most ground-breaking advances always occur in the wake of powerplant innovations. The jet engine is the reason we can fly around the world at the drop of a hat. Computers make the whole enterprise smoother and more efficient; turbine engines make it possible.
For the past five years, the scope of consumer IT innovation has been largely tied to the smartphone paradigm birthed by Apple. The entire universe of on-the-go apps was created by this single invention. And the tablet computer is pretty much a larger phone. The next innovative step--already well underway-- is commercialization of inexpensive sensors designed to interface with and through the smartphone to the Internet. This will in turn give rise to the next burst of software creativity and Big Data-fueled insights.
Jul '12
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
BlueAnt: For a guy who makes his living in IT, I have to bash technology a lot...
Peter, America isn't going to realize exponential changes in other sectors until they come up with an exponential technology of their own.
Edited 10 hours ago
I think this misunderstands the argument. The question is what happens when the means of production become cheaper (through a technology that admits of exponential growth). Common sense says you get more producers (but not exponentially more, surely). More of us as producers means more chances to produce things someone might want.
Feb '11
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
Peter Robinson
Yes, yes, yes.
Rich himself in no way partakes of this tendency, but when people out here in Silicon Valley start talking about technological progress, they often find themselves concluding, if implicitly, thatpolitics doesn't matter. Solve the very, very hard political problems we face? No! Just...transcend them!
Which is, alas, as Paul suggests, nonsense. · 20 hours ago
Nonsense? It's anything but nonsense. The entire point of technology is to transcend problems. That is not to say you will not have a new set of problems, but there is no reason to think that the problems of the welfare state has technological solutions that will transcend them.
Sep '11
Re: A Shaft of Optimism From the Publisher of Forbes, Or, Driverless Down Lombard Street
Sorry to rain on the optimism parade, but it's counter-productive to pretend our idealogical opponents are structurally doomed to failure.
Considering that his first point was hydraulic fracking and liberals have made stopping fracking a high priority (see Gasland), I think we should all take a step back.
The driverless car is nothing but a convenience, not a path to prosperity. Any net benefits such as fewer accidents are offset but the extreme levels of regulation this technology WILL be subjected to from day one.
Case in point the FCC, which looked to be on the verge of irrelevance due to the continual shift of media away from the airwaves and towards the internet. But as Milton Friedman pointed out so many times, government agencies have self interest just like the rest of us.
I might go as far as to say Rich has it backwards. Not only will Government regulation and taxation catch these new technologies in a way it hasn't yet with software, it will also slowly get its greasy hands on software and innovation there will be brought grinding to a halt.