My visit to Google? Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral — not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. “We are not scanning all those books to be read by people,” explained one of my hosts after my talk. “We are scanning them to be read by an AI.”
When I returned to highway 101, I found myself recollecting the words of Alan Turing, in his seminal paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, a founding document in the quest for true AI. “In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children,” Turing had advised. “Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”
Google is Turing’s cathedral, awaiting its soul. We hope. In the words of an unusually perceptive friend: “When I was there, just before the IPO, I thought the coziness to be almost overwhelming. Happy Golden Retrievers running in slow motion through water sprinklers on the lawn. People waving and smiling, toys everywhere. I immediately suspected that unimaginable evil was happening somewhere in the dark corners. If the devil would come to earth, what place would be better to hide?”
Category: Technology
Best of What’s New in 2005
Microsoft’s Memos
Via Dave Winer. Microsoft discusses fundamentally altering their business to compete in the internet era. Microsoft has for years been fighting the net. They killed Netscape and let their browser die (Internet Explorer has not been updated for years. It will be in 2007 largely due to the rise of the superior, free, open source mozilla firefox browser). Cringely has more.
GM’s Wireless Car to Car Networking
General Motors is working on a system to equip cars with a combination of GPS and wireless networking tools, according to Engadget.
Dave Says Clone the Google API – I Agree
Dave Winer: “Let’s make the Google API an open standard”. I agree. Several months ago, I emailed the requisite Google email address seeking commercial use of their API. The following thread illustrates my unsuccessful petition:
NSA’s Guide to “Secure” Computing
The Next Battery?
The battery of the future, if a Berkeley startup gets its way, looks something like a fat stick of butter with metal grills stuck on the sides.
And it isn’t a battery, not technically at least. It’s a 4-inch-high fuel cell that should last 10 times longer than the batteries it was designed to replace.
Its inventors, founders of a firm called H2Volt, have joined the hunt for one of the technology industry’s Holy Grails — a new power source capable of running the portable electronics products that grow more complex every year
Voluntary Milking System
DeLaval Voluntary Milking System:
The Voluntary Milking System (VMS) allows cows to decide when to be milked, and gives dairy farmers a more independent lifestyle, free from regular milkings, the company says.
DeLaval was started in 1883 by Swedish inventor Gustaf de Laval. It sells a variety of dairy supply and “cow comfort” products aimed at increasing dairy yields. It claims to lead the automatic milking machine market, with a 53 percent share, and says it has sold more than 1,000 VMSs, in all European countries, Canada, Japan, and Mexico.
Slashdot has more.
Mobile WiMix Discussion
In his latest informal white paper, Belk takes aim at mobile WiMax, a not-yet-finished standard that’s not expected to appear in base stations for deployment until 2007, although all tea leaves I read look like 2008 for any carrier deployment. (My only quibbles have to do with how he compares Wi-Fi usage to cell data usage, and how he boosts ubiquity over speed—but they’re not worth going into in length as the quibbles are small compared to agreement.)
WiMax “could” radically change wireless internet services. On the other hand, it’s been just around the corner for awhile….
Hybrid Car Design Battles
Norihiko Shirouzo & Jathon Sapsford:
A battle for power and influence is under way in the auto industry, as the basic technology under the hoods of mass-market cars goes up for grabs for the first time in nearly a century.
Amid soaring gasoline prices, car makers are rushing to use hybrid engines, which boost fuel efficiency by combining a traditional gasoline motor with an electric one. The result is a race among the world’s automotive giants that — like the VHS vs. Betamax brawl in the early days of videocassettes — could redraw the industry’s hierarchy and system of alliances for years to come.