JUST TYPING

7/06/2013

ROBOTS WITHOUT INTELLECT

Just a couple months ago I realized that robots are not capable of visual perception. An article I read exposes that watching is a very complex process that needs a lot of intelligence. Understanding a simple chair requires knowing it is the same thing when viewed from different positions. To do this it is not only necessary to have mental images of most chair's angles but an abstraction of the object, which means giving it a name, putting it into a category (furniture, objects for rest by sitting, etc.) Abstraction and defining categories require other skills not directly related to vision: language abilities such as syntax, semantics, words creation, and perhaps even assigning emotional attributes to things (e.g., fire hurts, electricity is dangerous and the like.) And these are not the only problems. Things are not static, they evolve and are part of a three-dimensional world. A glass falls and breaks; this is a process that needs understanding and a corrective action should be taken. People approach, move away or disappear behind a door. A robot will need to know people are its reason to exist, which poses an ethical challenge. Will they be self-aware or have some kind of soul with all this brainpower? For now robots are blind machines, with very restricted autonomy; it seems making them see the world, will not be an easy task.

Some links:
Machine vision
Computer vision
Sentient machines
Can robots create a language?

5/10/2013

ON TECHNOLOGICAL STAGNATION

Guessing the roots of economic crisis

In 2013 the world is crossing through lots of uncertainty, economic difficulties and fear of environmental collapse. In a previous document I had suggested a few reasons to this state of things: oil price, disappearance of some industries, automation, shift of popular interest in cars and some other. But maybe there are other problems like the worldwide conflict between keeping contaminating technologies such as oil fuels and the need of more environmentally friendly ones. Another cause for economic downgrade might be that the private sector just reduced personnel to an optimum. I mean, maybe there was some sort of employment boom, in which there were many job positions not being really necessary. Perhaps outsourcing to less developed countries killed many work positions in the developed world. This should have led to better living standards in poor countries where the outsourcing economy created jobs. But it seems it did not happen. I guess one essential cause for economic difficulties is technological stagnation, I mean not searching for revolutionary options but only improving what already exists.

Cutting edge tech

Up until now technology and perhaps science, have been only refining what had been under development from the beginnings of twentieth century: airplanes, engines, computers, rockets, etc. Reaching the sky is a very expensive endeavor that prevents humanity from conquering new worlds or make use of minerals in the moon or somewhere else. Oil price rises every passing day, which reduces the chances to transportation, commerce and recreational travel. But reducing its cost would lead to higher atmospheric contamination. Renewable resources are reaching exhaustion limits which is a threat to human success on earth. Mineral reserves are decreasing. All of these issues require a true revolution in technology and science in order to guarantee humanity's sustainability and our expansion to new worlds.

What does it take

So far the only motor to technological revolutions has been worldwide war. The US financial crash of early twentieth century was resolved by entering World War II. Atomic technology came out of the war with a great financial cost. After the war all those German engineers and scientists were recruited by the USA and Soviet Union. As a result from this, rockets took people to the moon, airplanes evolved from wooden bodied ones to metallic jets capable of beating the sound barrier. But now planetary war does not seem likely due to nuclear weaponry and its devastating menace. There is a theoretical vision developed by The Club of Rome, which states that human race will collapse by 2040. Now we are experiencing depletion of sea-fishing resources, air pollution, metals shortage and climate change that seem to be confirmations of that doomsday scenario. A nuclear worldwide war is possible when economic crisis deepens to unmanageable. Maybe the world will not end, but atomic weapons apparently model a war to last just days or weeks, until parties at conflict negotiate a truce or someone just loses the fight. This would not allow time enough for a revolution in science and technology. So maybe the engine to this foundational shift will come after reaching the doomsday scenario suggested by the Club of Rome.

A final clarification

I decided to write this document without any Internet research. This is because I think when being too methodical, one misses creativity and our own biases are usually corrected without trace. So maybe I will develop a second document with data gathered from the web so I can check how close to reality I was.

5/02/2013

ROBOTS AREN'T TAKING OVER, YET

It's a common idea that robots will take most jobs and people won't work anymore. This would lead us to either fall into misery or enjoy a life of abundance, according to different views of the future. But this is an oversimplification of robotics. We assume robots are almost-human-machines with emotions and moral thought. That's far distant from reality. Currently robots are just tools with very limited capabilities and lots of technical issues. Except for drones, robots can't get freely around. They are like trees, stuck to a fixed place or requiring human supervision to move between locations. And there is another major problem: machine-understanding of visual content (watching things) is just at its beginnings. For now any image or video, is just a bunch of pixels that no computer can see as we humans do. So there is no way for a robot to process its surroundings in a human-like way. Finally, I think machines with some kind of consciousness will be ready in at least 30 years. Then, The Judgment Day is away. But robotics will have overcome most of current challenges when conscious machines arise. Therefore, perhaps robots will be ready to beat humanity when that day comes.

In 2013 the world economy is going through a crisis that could worsen. Automation is blamed for this and robots are perceived as a close danger for employment. How much of that is true? I searched the Internet and found the opposite: robotics boosts job creation! There is a double explanation for this. First, as I already explained, robots are unable to behave or move like humans. This means any job that requires understanding what's around, walking or simply casually interacting with people, needs human workers. The second reason is that robotics (broadly automation) at factories dramatically increases production. This leads to more distribution and sales forces that only can be met by humans (more jobs.) New technology usually leads to lower prices which allows people to buy other things, which leads to new companies and new jobs. Automation in general does not affect highly and lowly paid jobs but middle level ones seem to be decreasing either in manufacture or services. Then, maybe this is the big concern for most.

After all these marvelous ideas were written, the world economy remains in great turmoil. I searched for causes and found that everything started with banks uncontrolledly lending money in the US, for real state acquisitions that led to a financial crash when people failed to pay their debt. But why did banks follow this trend? Something is still missing. My next suspect was oil price, but I found that in the 80s it was even relatively higher than today. Then come all those gone industries: music-records, film-photography and even the current publishing-books industry victimized by the Internet and people like me at blogging. Have all those gone jobs not recovered? My last suspect is the car industry. The developed world has been spinning around cars and parts factories. But it seems production reached its peak and now people are not so interested in buying more of them. Maybe the technological shift to a more automated world is taking its toll.

4/09/2013

PROCRASTINATION AND COMPANY

Procrastination means doing something that feels more pleasant or less important, in order to avoid performing other things considered more relevant or harder to reach. Procrastination happens only when some kind of failure hits (because of the distraction). I think procrastination is linked to prohibitions, fears, conflicts or insecurities, all of them running in the unconscious mind. I guess the most difficult task is not necessarily the one being postponed, but that considered as more dangerous, forbidden, risky or conflictive. Perhaps the fear to expose ourselves to society and not succeed is a trigger. Performing activities or reaching objectives could fail if they are in conflict with some plan of life, which was abandoned on the road and unconsciously claims its place. But even chasing after your dreams could lead to procrastination if relatives are a very strong counter-influence. Then you end up unconsciously sabotaging all plans to get to your chosen destination. I think there exists some kind of broader social syndrome comprising the abandonment of projects, school failure, multitasking as a way not to focus on a particular chore, even self-destructive behaviors such as drug abuse or overworking. In fact all procrastination is harmful, because it leads to some kind of failure and the personal discomfort for not making what is owed. Taking time to rest when tired or pausing for creative thinking are not procrastination but could be when degrading the process.

Negative effects of procrastination

Guilt, anxiety, uncertainty, accumulation of pending work, loss of opportunity, missing the chance to learn, decreased self-steem, possible failure in achieving the goal, time loss, social failure, vice as a way of escape or compensation, vicious cycle of guilt and more procrastination, existential or personal failure, vulnerability.

Positive effects

Doing pleasurable things as substitutes, doing necessary things for substitution, personal growth in other areas as a compensation.

There are other causes for procrastination such as depression, anxiety, brain chemical imbalances that induce inactivity, mental illness not manifested, the adverse effects of drug use and even the side-effects of medications, especially psychiatric ones.

I think if one is constantly avoiding certain activities, abandoning projects or evading responsibilities, it is better to ask about one's general view of life or even either family or social relationships to determine possible motivations. Writing down the procrastination issues, even when they do not cause major problems, could help clarify ideas, clear doubts and define priorities.

Writing a to-do list with priorities and thinking constantly about the outcomes (good or bad) of procrastination could help push oneself into work. Once failure has hit, it is better not to burden oneself with guilt but making an evaluation so one can prevent repetitions.
I hope the procrastination taken to read this document is helpful.

Links

On procrastination

http://goo.gl/s9Da0
http://goo.gl/M4HT2

http://goo.gl/L6Mu4
http://goo.gl/Ly359

Tips
http://goo.gl/6vFk9
http://goo.gl/cXlm8
http://goo.gl/Wb9Fy
http://goo.gl/YEUt5

http://goo.gl/Ebdx3

http://goo.gl/g3O2z

http://goo.gl/RnVTk

Mental issues
http://goo.gl/mxMZK

3/28/2013

WHY STAY ON OIL?

INTRO

Let's imagine a world in which there is no more oil for internal combustion engines, but a cheap recyclable fuel that only needs a first load and lasts until the engine ends its life cycle. ¿Is it possible? I found the hypothetical answer some twenty years ago and I am a lawyer, not an engineer nor a scientist. I cannot test it because financially I live just at minimal human acceptable condition. But I am sure the core idea is running everywhere and already has been tried by powerful corporations and maybe it is under patent protection so noboby can use it. In my simplistic view, it can be adapted to current engines with a few tweaks, except for jet engines that would require an important new approach. But maybe jet fuel could be based on alcohol with new environmentally improving technologies.

WHY REMAIN ON PETROLEUM?

Oil is still abundant and more profitable as it becomes harder to extract
It makes a few Middle East countries powerful and rich
There are many oil byproducts that are still useful and fortune making, such as plastics, lubricant oils and other which are environmentally poisonous too but very profitable
The most important reason for oil to stay as the blood of current civilization: The United States is the main oil-technologician and keeps its own in-ground reserve well protected. This guarantees their true world power in case of crisis or planetary war. US reserves are estimated so huge that could keep the world running on gasoline for centuries.

OUTCOMES
One result from this is that the world will keep emitting carbon to the atmosphere and changing our environment into something less oxygenated and more vegetation-oriented by favoring photosynthesis, yet the true effect on plants is uncertain. Will humans easily adapt to a less oxygenated air? Another outcome is that oil derivatives are going to remain expensive so the world will keep growing slowly. Is this good or bad? If the whole planet's economic growth raises a lot, there will be more consumption and waste, but at the same time, better developed countries become more environmentally efficient. So the net outcome of a slowly growing world could be renewable resources exhaustion, at least in poor countries, while non-renewables might expand their availability.

CORE REASONS

I made the assumption that high oil price is leading the world economics to a slowdown. But the true cause for this might be more difficult to attain. Perhaps oil price is part of the answer but automation and robotics, big corporations' over-accumulation of wealth, rich countries too focused on making cars while the market could have reached its limits or people just shifted desire from cars to other things (maybe because of gas prices) or even rich countries might have peaked their enthusiasm for growth and are just bored and not wanting to keep on leading the world. Scarcity of commodities (renewable or not) other than oil could be part of the problem. The economy of information and fun seems not to be creating as many jobs as needed to boost a depressed planetary economy.

3/03/2013

UBERMACHINES

DISRUPTIVE DRIVES

Solid state drives that are more like huge usb-stick memories are going to disrupt all the computing world, when they replace the conventional hard disk. From operating systems to main processors, nothing will be the same within the next five years. Until now, disk drives have been passive receivers of data waiting for a database update, software configuration change, a new program to install or some other input/output task. All the software development has been conceived in the way of open/close files or read/write data from the disk to main memory. Computers are turned on and off. These new memories, when fast and cheap enough will eliminate the need for the famous RAM memory and maybe letting just some memory space within the processor itself for a more quickly processing (buffering or whatever). Turning on and off will disappear, and the processor will be designed to function in wake-sleep modes only. The sleep state will serve to process some chores that do not require user's participation and maybe help them solve some kind of internet-search problem, prepare the next session with interesting stuff according to user tastes. The most interesting feature of these drives is that their whole space could be used as main memory. So very complex software will be able of performing intelligent activities such as better user-machine interface with audio and video interaction and more intuitive human-machine connection. The input/output or read/write logic might be discarded from programming languages. I think that processors won't be a single chip anymore but distributed ones (embedded into the main memory drive) with more simplistic tasks and maybe one main processor to guide the general operation.

ISSUES

I read somewhere that solid state drives are prone to fail when intensely used, so perhaps they should be developed to last longer for the prior ideas to be implemented. But it would be more interesting if those new memory drives were able of automatically replacing their own hardware, such as living tissue does, so they can live for many years. This could allow the development of personalized computers suited for each one's particular needs.
A link to a possible solution:
Phase change memory
Self repairing hardware

A FEW CONJECTURES

Maybe bigger platforms carrying SSDs could be based upon artificial intelligence. Then a few questions come out. Will the conventional directory tree and file system be replaced by an associative data storage? What kinds of associations? What could be the minimum data unit? Perhaps an idea could be that minimum. And what is an idea? Would these techniques mimic the chaotic human brain way of thinking? Could machine memories be as dynamical as human ones, being rebuilt every time one recovers them?

Interesting link from a comment on G+:

Phase change memory

1/09/2013

ABOUT ADDICTIONS

Note: this is not a scientific material. If you need help, seek professional assistance. Translated from Spanish.

Document written long ago. Maybe there will be some change.

THE BACKGROUND

An addiction is anything you can not fail to do that hurts you. I heard this on Dr. Nancy Alvarez’s show. I think the concept should include alcoholism, for simplicity. Otherwise, there is a long list of definitions for alcoholism. A trap of addictions is that if you manage to leave one, you start another one. Some even have their positive side. The workaholic may achieve their fortune. But almost certainly they will die early from heart attack, cirrhosis or some other illness. An addiction is a manifestation of an underlying problem, an unresolved internal struggle. I almost dare say the addict to one thing, is to other ones too. Thus, as described above, the super worker also is an alcoholic, drug consumer, seeks sex without control or has a reckless behavior. What characterizes an addiction is that it is self-destructive.

The trick to a solution lies in finding the underlying problem, the inner battle. It might be some abuse in childhood, or a situation too traumatic at any stage of life. My bet is that generally it is a conflict between what parents demand from you and what you do or want to do with your life. I get the impression that this is a failure that comes from the beginnings of mankind.

MY APPROACH

It might exist a causing trauma to an addiction. Although they are usually a manifestation of the subconscious struggle between what your parents (or whoever raised you) decided should be your life, and what you're doing with it or want to do. In part this happens because they longed for a certain type of child. But parents drag their internal battles from the clash with their own parents too. And this non resolved conflict, parents channel it on you in the form of possessiveness, control, contradiction, penalty, claim, hardness, cruelty, and sometimes indifference. It is an endless chain. Perhaps you will do it with your children, or you are doing it already. Up to this point I have not considered the possibility of a mental illness like schizophrenia or some other unmanifested. The ways of conflict are many. It may be that your parents live in a power struggle and you became a disaster as an outcome. Or they have migrated and left you behind, or went into a separation.

SOME TRICKS

I learned this from a television show so long ago that I forgot about it. To face an addiction you have to think about the immediate negative effects. For example, if you smoke, as was my case, you have to remind you rself again and again that it leaves your clothes stinky, ruin your breath, makes you nervous, causes headaches, gets you tired when walking, the smell bothers most women, it's something that makes you look like someone problematic, etc. Do not torment yourself with guilt. This will lead the internal struggle to maintain and increase the problem. If you think about the long-term effects of an addiction, such as cancer, it can even raise the addiction. It sounds absurd, but that is the result. An addiction is a self-destructive behavior rooted in the subconscious. And if you think of the worst effects, it will increase. Another trick I guess I discovered myself, is not to finish the issue at once. This means, not to think you are never going to re-do or are going to stop it permanently. The idea is not to put much pressure on the decision, to prevent the desire for what your leaving from growing. In my case it worked. I do not know if it is useful to others. I sometimes smoke a cigarette (tobacco), only to end up with nausea, headache, dizziness and nervousness. You must resolve the mess inside from the very bottom. Otherwise, you will leave a vice to start another one.

You will solve your problem within yourself and not fighting against your parents or complaining about them.

From wikipedia:

Addictions