Rob's Flash Messages

Rob's Stories

653

While stuck again in a huge traffic jam on our way to the airport, there was plenty of time to think about that something really has to change in our ways to move ourselves from A to B. Our transport systems for longer than walk or bike travels by train, car or airplane are already 1 or 2 centuries of age without any change except better trains, cars and airplanes. The philosophy and systems remained the same.

The main problem is that the infrastructure for this kind of transportation is costly to build and maintain, highly inflexible, a waste of a devastating portion of our environment and economy in terms of time and money. Parked cars all over the place, asphalt and concrete everywhere, long waiting times in traffic, train stations and airports, air pollution and more. It's a long list of concerns we obviously just accept. Additionally the fact that humans are still the drivers of vehicles which nowadays serve as a major killing factor for people and animals and is even used as terrorist weapon, needs to be re-evaluated. Yearly in traffic 1 1/4 million people are killed worldwide and that number will more than triple in the next 15 years.

Elon Musk proposes an alternative for mainly long distance with trains and airplanes with his Hyperloop. Impressive concept and technology but it needs a massive infrastructure change which will be again costly and inflexible. It's comparable to bullet, TGV or Maglev trains and similar, just a few steps beyond. 

708

Professor Stephen Hawking  and Elon Musk (PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX) among others, recently warned again for the consequences of our own inventions like robots and artificial intelligence (AI). Already a few years ago, Hawking advised mankind to explore space faster to find one or more planets to escape to from the consequences of our own existence. What he obviously meant is that we should put some people as they are today somewhere in a "zoo". The next evolution of mankind could still enjoy the existence of the  current one long after it became extinct. The only difference is that we put ourselves in a zoo now as opposed to wait before our successors do that. After all, we are quite convinced that our successors are already knocking at our door.

Although I do feel sympathy for my own species, I believe it's rather arrogant to believe mankind is the best thing nature can develop or even will develop.

256

People keep asking me about industrialization with its means and its goals. Where it starts and where it ends. Whether it's a good or a bad thing and of course, what the consequences for our IT profession would be.

Well you know, I just have an opinion about it like anyone else so I don't have a clear scientific underpinned definition of true industrialization of IT but I'll give you a few angles to look at it. The first lines on Wikipedia about industrialization start like this: "Industrialization is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial one. It is a part of a wider modernization process, where social change and economic development are closely related with technological innovation…” 

Projected onto my IT-profession, it means that industrialization of IT changes the way we are producing software and delivering IT-services in general from “hand-craftsmanship” towards an automated, outsourced and off-shored production-line. In other words, it changes the delivery model and in some circumstances even the business model dramatically. 

Some people might argue that it is mainly about standardization and achieving more efficient, cost-reducing processes to create and sell products or services for a lower price. Well, the answer would be both a yes and a no. Efficiency is just the means but usually not the goal. The money freed by lower-cost production should be re-invested to deliver better and more innovative products or services to the clients. Why? Because unless you want to be the “cheapest-product-seller-of-the-world”, market and competitive distinction will come from continuous innovation of products and services with a decent price to deliver the margin.

804

humansandrobotsI recently came across the work of photographer Frans Steiner, obviously a man inspired by the beauty of people. Nevertheless, as the collage image of one of his series shows, obviously he is, just like me, wondering about the co-existence of humans and their evolutionary successors: intelligent artificial humanoids. The description of latter species already implies three major obstacles:

  • Intelligent, they obvioulsy  "think like us". At least it means that their IQ matches or exceeds human level. Future robots communicate, act and play on a level comparable to humans. It's difficult to predict if the current generations will ever acknowledge intelligence brighter than their own. Humanity can not stop the development of it because it's a technological evolution emerged a long time ago and today we already count on it with our Tesla's, Google Search, Siri and medical robots. However, discussions about the "soul" of machines will make the acceptance even more awkward because, although the concrete intelligence of a robot might be superior, their conclusions about human matters will always be questioned;   
  • Artificial, they are "made by us". So we have designed and produced them in our studios and factories as opposed to having them grown in the belly of another human or maybe a petri dish. Humans tend to draw a strict line between "human grown" and "human made". We obviously already have forgotten that that line is already crossed many years ago with the acceptance of all sorts of medical tricks from artificial insemination until keeping humans alive anyway, let alone the replacement of human parts from hips, lungs, hearts, eyes, ears, kidneys, limps and sooner or later connections to our cognitive skills and abilities, say artificial parts of our brain. As a deaf person, I'm following the development of cochlear implants or direct brain connections closely and for me, these "brain improvements" can not come fast enough; 
  • Humanoid, they "look like us". Altough human resemblance is not mandatory for an intelligent robot, it helps to blend them into human environments which are after all shaped by humans for their own convenience.

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