Paul Buchheit: January 2010

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Censorship flamewar

This post is inflammatory and unfair. It argues an extreme position that I don't agree with, but nevertheless find amusing. When writing angry responses, please direct your hate at the straw-man, not at me :)

Agree/Disagree:

When a powerful group forces information to be removed from the internet, that is censorship. Some acts of censorship are more acceptable than others depending on what information is being censored and why.

For example, Disney can force people to take certain information off of the internet because they have exclusive rights, and the free availability of that information threatens to undercut their profits, which would undercut their power to make new movies and also new laws to protect their interests (such as retroactively extending copyright, or increasing penalties for violations). In this case, censorship is good because if Disney lost that power, their profits could disappear entirely and then the world might run out of Princess movies. Perhaps someone else would start making Princess movies, but making Princess movies is difficult, and without the ability to censor the internet, they too might fail.

A second example is the Communist Party of China. They can force people to take certain information off of the internet because they have exclusive rights, and the free availability of that information threatens to undercut their power and profits, and without that power they could lose control of China. In this case, censorship is good because if the Communist party lost that power, their control could disappear entirely and they would no longer be able to preserve the peace, stability, and growth of China. Perhaps someone else would start governing China (after a quick revolution), but governing China is difficult, and without the ability to censor the internet, they too might fail.

Debate.

Monday, January 04, 2010

Books and stuff: three years of Amazon addiction

I'm a slow reader, but that doesn't stop me from buying a lot of books. Inspired by a Blippy review, I thought it might be fun to publish my Amazon order history.

My threshold for buying books is very low, so don't interpret these purchases as endorsements. Also, I haven't read most of them yet, so if you spot anything especially good, please let me know.

Saturday, January 02, 2010

10 predictions for the world of January 1, 2020

After writing my predictions for the past 10 years, I decided it might be fun to write a few predictions for the next 10 years as well. This is a little more dangerous though, since I now lack the benefit of hindsight and at least one of them will probably turn out to be as dumb as "Palin/Gore win the 2014 presidential election".

That said, here are my (random and probably over-optimistic) predictions for the world as of Jan 1, 2020, assuming civilization doesn't collapse first:

All data lives "in the cloud" and can be accessed from anywhere. Most computers are essentially stateless caches which can be replaced without any data-loss or need for reconfiguration or reinstallation. This prediction was copied from 10 years ago, but this time it's right.
Android and iPhone kill off all the other mobile phone platforms. Android will be bigger (it will run on all of the "free" cell phones), but iPhone will still be "cooler", and will work more seamlessly with Apple's tablet computer.
Facebook will be a big success, possibly as big as Google. I'm probably over-optimistic because I work there, but the people are smart and ambitious.
3D displays will be popular because people want to watch Avatar and all future 3D movies and games at home (plus porn, of course -- think of the porn!).
No human-like artificial intelligence, but computers get a lot better at both high level and low level intelligence. At the high level, Google will release an amazing question answering service that can answer complex questions and is in many ways smarter than any human. Low-level, insect-like intelligence will become common enough that I'll be able to quickly build a Lego robot that uses computer vision to spot ants and physically squash them (and it will be awesome).
There will be an even bigger economic crash. The system becomes increasingly unstable as we try to paper-over the damage from one bubble by creating an even bigger bubble elsewhere. Nevertheless, things continue semi-working for some reason.
The health care system continues to be badly broken, and attempts at reform probably only make it worse (here is a nice summary). Fortunately, solutions will come from outside of the system. People will get better at avoiding disease (start with Taubes), and bio-tech will start to deliver in a big way. Unfortunately, the bio-tech will probably come from China, since they don't have so many rules to slow things down. The Chinese treatments won't be approved in the United States, but we can simply travel to Mexico for care. Urgent care will be local, but non-urgent procedures will be performed outside the US. Not everyone will do this, but it will be a very visible and growing trend by 2020.
The drug war will be over, mostly. An increasing number of people will realize that the war is causing a lot more harm than the drugs are (it's killing Mexico, for example). The end of marijuana prohibition in California will demonstrate that non-addictive drugs are not as dangerous as the government claims. It's unclear what will happen with highly addictive drugs such as heroin, but bio-tech may offer a solution that removes the addiction.
The energy problem is largely solved by cheap solar. It's not 100% done obviously, but we'll be on the ramp. Nuclear technology (Thorium?) could do it too, but probably isn't politically feasible. Edit: To be clear since not everyone has the same definition of "solved", for me it means that we have a relatively cheap and scalable energy solution, not that we're fully converted to it.
Politics will evolve much faster than in the past due to the Internet and social networks changing the core architecture of society (what people think and how they came to think it -- the professional media and government are no longer at the center). New movements will arise and gain power very quickly. Obama beating Clinton was the first hint of this. Political outsiders will begin winning elections. Steven Colbert will win the 2016 election -- the left will think he's joking, the right will think he's serious, and both sides will think that they are tricking the other ;)

Friday, January 01, 2010

My poorly remembered and partially imagined predictions from Jan 1, 2000

Reviewing old predictions is fun. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to write any down, so I'm working from memory here, and of course human memory is very unreliable and selective, so this is rather bogus.

Predictions for the next 10 years, from Jan 1, 2000 (as remembered on Jan 1, 2010):

Prediction: Linux will continue expanding into new spaces and will eventually make Microsoft irrelevant. Windows 2000 is the last release that anyone will care about.

Result: I was over-optimistic about Linux -- the community is unable to produce anything worthwhile on the desktop, most development has moved to the web anyway (making the desktop OS irrelevant), and OSX popularity among developers took away a lot of energy (I develop in Linux, but use OSX to host my web browser and other apps). Linux is a huge success on the server-side though and continues to grow in more "embedded" contexts, such as Android and Chrome OS. Microsoft made itself irrelevant -- they still make a lot of money, but they are no longer changing the world.

Prediction: Wireless data access (such as that provided by Ricochet) will become fast and practically ubiquitous, meaning that the Internet is always with us.

Result: It took longer than I expected, but we're finally starting to get there, and it is awesome.

Prediction: "Computer Aided Reality" will provide a cool visual overlay by using computer vision to identify objects and then fetching info about them from the Internet.

Result: I was very over-optimistic. There are a few basic "augmented reality" apps around, but nothing major. I still think that this will happen, though the display technology is still very uncertain (I haven't even heard about direct retinal projection lately).

Prediction: All data lives "online" and can be accessed from anywhere. Your computer is a stateless cache which can be replaced without any data-loss or need for reconfiguration or reinstallation.

Result: I was over-optimistic. We made some progress with things like Gmail, but computers still store information (configuration at the very least). Chrome OS may be more like what I had in mind, and the iPhone is too if you set aside the fact that it requires manual syncing.

Prediction: The Java VM will get good enough that people will finally stop using C++.

Result: I was over-optimistic. The JVM got somewhat better (though it still has significant GC problems), but Java got worse due to cultural problems. Fortunately, a lot of other interesting languages became popular, including Javascript, and there are a number of fast virtual machines in the works.

Prediction: Google will be a big success, possibly as big as Yahoo. I'm probably over-optimistic because I work there, but the people are smart and ambitious.

Result: I was under-optimistic. Google is bigger than Yahoo ever was, and is getting close to Microsoft (their market cap is 70% of Microsoft's).

Prediction: Humans will be cloned. After the initial outrage, people will stop caring once they see that the result is just a regular baby (like the "test tube babies" before them), not a "soulless monster".

Result: To my knowledge, that hasn't been any successful human cloning, though I wouldn't be surprised if there has and they are just keeping quiet about it.

Prediction: The stock market will crash, and take Silicon Valley (and other bubble-zone) real estate markets down with it.

Result: The market crash came (sort of), but instead of going down, real estate kept going up! Even when it did finally crash, local prices (especially Palo Alto) remained remarkably high.

Prediction: A meteor strike will destroy all life on Earth on November 5, 2007, so I don't need to waste time writing down my predictions for 2010.

Result: I meant 2012, there was an off-by-5 error in my calculation ;)