Apparently I published this before I meant too. Anyway, today in Techdirt, they published a discussion on copying, innovation and evolution. Basically, a biologist argued that we are evolutionarily predisposed to copy and use group learning to develop new tools. What this means is that instead of going out and developing something out of the blue we first have to see what someone else has done and then we copy whatever they did, then in a parasitic way, make marginal improvements on the original. We're nothing but freeloading copiers that make things a little better.
Techdirt completely disagreed with this point of view. They argued that simply copying something or a part of something doesn't mean you're freeloading. You can add a great deal to something to the point that whatever you copied simply becomes a part of a larger whole.
Anyone should know from my writing that I support Techdirt's perspective. This comes from several several different arguments. The first is from the evolution of technology. If you ignore some of the human motivation behind the changing technology itself and focus on the selection process, you can see that technology changes through incremental adjustments. These changes are selected by the market or in primitive societies by the end result of an improvement. Spears that last longer, less energy expended on making new spears, spears that can be thrown farther, less danger from the animal being killed, or sharper shovels, less energy spent gathering food - more food. This selection process is a very natural process. Additionally, there would be some specialization of skills even at this point in our history. Some people would have been better at making spears and in a collaborative environment, because there were no patents and sharing was for the best of everyone, many people could experiment with new spear designs. This innovation while based on copying is a very real form of innovation that likely lead to gradual improvement over a great deal of time.
The second argument that supports innovation after copying is the argument of Cesar Hidalgo, which argues that looking at what countries are currently producing you can see a relationship with their innovative ability. By looking to see what technologies they import and export you're able to see how well they have developed scientifically and in the manufacturing world. For example you can expect to see more advanced products come out of a country if they got into producing fertilizer very early in modern times. This typically leads to a general chemical industry which can lead to pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Why? Well developing a strong base in chemistry with fertilizers can be expanded into drugs and as a base for semiconductors.
How do new countries move into these fields? Essentially, they have a knowledge transfer from a country that is already doing it. This can be done in two ways, one is the easy way: have a multinational company set up a manufacturing then R&D facility in your country. This allows a direct flow of knowledge on how to manufacture the material, which increases the rate of copying. Would allow the country to be a fast follower but will still require significant time for them to eventually innovate on that technology. Having an R&D facility would increase this rate, because local scientists would have already been trained on how to innovate in that field. They would have already been doing research in that industry and would more easily be able to innovate if a spin-off was created (or if the state nationalized that part of the multinational). The second manner is much slower: repatriating of knowledge workers. This is essentially what has happened in Taiwan and India. Educated Indians or Taiwanese returned from the US and created spin-offs and became professors at the local universities. This isn't always successful.
Saudi Arabia is trying to develop a third way, which is having some success. They are recruiting experts from around the world to develop their own universities and companies. This is having mixed results and education and industry needs to pay attention to these attempts to see how well it plays out in the long run.
Copying is extremely important in education and is required to develop new industries in a country. Technology evolves through copying previous technology, recombining with new learning from other fields and from experimentation within the current field. Without copying there cannot be innovation. The more people participating in an economy where innovation through copying is rewarded, the greater our culture and the greater or technological evolution will be. Biology needs to take a lesson from Evolutionary economics.
Showing posts with label philosophy of technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy of technology. Show all posts
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Can technology Save us? A wrap up
In my last three posts I've asked the question if technology can save us from many of our own problems. I've discussed several technologies for each topic, water, energy and food. These technologies are not all of the ones out there by any stretch of the imagination. These are the technologies I'm aware of at this point. I wouldn't say I've done an exhaustive search for technologies either. I hope to have made it obvious that technology alone cannot save us. We need to make a concerted effort to change the status quo and that won't be easy to do.
We have some major problems adopting new technologies. First, we have incumbents interests that have no desire to see the current energy regime change. We have problems of ownership of technical problems. Why should the US invent new ways to extract water when Mexico is the country that will suffer? How do we know that a given technology is going to be the best, or even good enough for our needs? What happens if all our best efforts turn out to actually make things worse?
These aren't easy questions to answer. We have to make a choice as a society to decide what constitutes a good investment for research. In one Urban Time article I posit that the EU can over take the US in terms of scientific research in the upcoming decades. This should terrify people. This is what has driven the US economy since the 40's and to some extent earlier. The shifts in capitalism have driven our company goals toward shorter and shorter returns on investments and less visionary goals. The ability to experiment in companies and use government funds to experiment with deploying new energy systems has floundered.
This should be cause for concern. We've seen the result of poorly managed technology in the past few years. Simple things like a software glitch that caused Toyota's to accelerate out of control, flash crashes on the stock markets from high frequency traders and other complex systems like Fukashima. We don't always have proper controls designed into our technologies to protect us from it.
Personally, I'm optimistic about the future of technology and what it can do for us. However, there are plenty of Sci-fi authors out there that are very pessimistic. I love reading the dystopian future and post-apocalyptic books as much (or more) than anyone and we need to realize that without requiring proper controls on our technology and production of our material goods these results could happen.
Technology alone cannot save us from ourselves. We may be able to use technology as a tool to fix problems we've created, but we have to do the dirty work. Technology doesn't design and make itself (yet).
We have some major problems adopting new technologies. First, we have incumbents interests that have no desire to see the current energy regime change. We have problems of ownership of technical problems. Why should the US invent new ways to extract water when Mexico is the country that will suffer? How do we know that a given technology is going to be the best, or even good enough for our needs? What happens if all our best efforts turn out to actually make things worse?
These aren't easy questions to answer. We have to make a choice as a society to decide what constitutes a good investment for research. In one Urban Time article I posit that the EU can over take the US in terms of scientific research in the upcoming decades. This should terrify people. This is what has driven the US economy since the 40's and to some extent earlier. The shifts in capitalism have driven our company goals toward shorter and shorter returns on investments and less visionary goals. The ability to experiment in companies and use government funds to experiment with deploying new energy systems has floundered.
This should be cause for concern. We've seen the result of poorly managed technology in the past few years. Simple things like a software glitch that caused Toyota's to accelerate out of control, flash crashes on the stock markets from high frequency traders and other complex systems like Fukashima. We don't always have proper controls designed into our technologies to protect us from it.
Personally, I'm optimistic about the future of technology and what it can do for us. However, there are plenty of Sci-fi authors out there that are very pessimistic. I love reading the dystopian future and post-apocalyptic books as much (or more) than anyone and we need to realize that without requiring proper controls on our technology and production of our material goods these results could happen.
Technology alone cannot save us from ourselves. We may be able to use technology as a tool to fix problems we've created, but we have to do the dirty work. Technology doesn't design and make itself (yet).
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Is software a technology?
I saw an interesting comment on r/technology today, r/technology is a subreddit devoted to all things technology, where the author complained about too much web/software related articles were being posted on the site. As the site is user driven the choice of the content can be influenced by questions and comments like this. In fact it can change the shape of the entire community and how they interact with each other. For instance r/fitness tested text based submissions only with no external links allowed. This fundamentally changed the discourse in that community. Anyway, this made me sit back and think about if software or websites should be considered technology in the way that a computer or keyboard is.
According to the Google dictionary the following is the definition of technology:
tech·nol·o·gy/tekˈnäləjē/
I believe that software could fall into the first category of technology. Wikipedia says: Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function.
According to the Google dictionary the following is the definition of technology:
tech·nol·o·gy/tekˈnäləjē/
| Noun: |
|
Again this could easily be applied to software. Specifically because of the word techniques. However, I think we need to tread carefully here because both of these definitions would also include all of mathematics as a form of technology. Why does this definition matter? Well, you are able to patent technologies, but you are not able to patent mathematical algorithms or techniques. If some one was able to prove that P=NP in a mathematical proof then it couldn't be patented. However, if you put that same proof into a piece of software it suddenly becomes patentable, and then make some one very rich.
I think there's another fundamentally cognitive difference as well. Despite the fact that people say Android phone technology or Apache web server technology, it feels different than when you say internal combustion technology. I think the main difference is the physicality of the combustion technologies over the technology that has been developed to create phone OSes or webservers. It requires manual labor and a set of tools and skills that are all physical entities whereas with the software, anyone with a computer can learn how to program. That doesn't mean that there won't be a set of people that are better at it or more likely to pick it up than other people. I'm basically self taught in both SQL server and VB.Net.The fact that software can be copied perfectly an infinite number of times also changes how it should be treated.
I think that these differences means we should actually treat software differently. I think that it is a technology, but a technology more related to mathematics and logic than other sciences.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Technological Adjacency
Two days ago I talked about Technological convergences, yesterday I discussed how firms can enable technological convergences. Today I'm going to talk about technological adjacencies. First though, why do we care about these? There's a couple reasons. One at the micro level, specifically you, understanding how technological adjacencies work can help you determine different industries that your skill set applies. Does understanding ceramics only help in making durable dishwares or can they be used in the semiconductor industry too? It turns out they can be. Ceramics are great insulators and are used on many different types of tools for manufacturing semiconductors. A step above, at the firm level, being able to produce ceramics can allow a company that used to only make dishware to move into creating other types of technologies, like for semiconductors. This shift can eventually open up an entire new market to allow for continued growth. However, as I mentioned yesterday, this doesn't always work and can leave a company weaker than it was before the shift into the new industry. Finally, technological adjacencies can help spur regional and national growth.
Companies aren't the only thing that can be viewed to have specific capabilities. Regions and countries typically have specialties Pittsburgh used to be the major hub in the world for steel. However, steel collapsed in the 70's and 80's there. Now Pittsburgh has turned itself into a medical and biomedical hub. Because of the steel industry Pittsburgh already had two world class universities and a number of great universities. After the crash of steel these became the main drivers of the economy. The firms that were created helped to rebuild the area.
As I mentioned above technological adjacencies are fairly simple to find after the fact. They are difficult to see ahead of time. It's difficult to know what is a good bet and what is not a good bet for a company. This is why it's important to have an R&D branch that is allowed to explore the adjacent technology spaces around your major technologies. If you don't do this then there could be some great markets your missing out on.
Companies aren't the only thing that can be viewed to have specific capabilities. Regions and countries typically have specialties Pittsburgh used to be the major hub in the world for steel. However, steel collapsed in the 70's and 80's there. Now Pittsburgh has turned itself into a medical and biomedical hub. Because of the steel industry Pittsburgh already had two world class universities and a number of great universities. After the crash of steel these became the main drivers of the economy. The firms that were created helped to rebuild the area.
As I mentioned above technological adjacencies are fairly simple to find after the fact. They are difficult to see ahead of time. It's difficult to know what is a good bet and what is not a good bet for a company. This is why it's important to have an R&D branch that is allowed to explore the adjacent technology spaces around your major technologies. If you don't do this then there could be some great markets your missing out on.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Enabling Technological Convergences
In my last post I discussed technological convergences. I didn't really discuss anything ground breaking or earth shattering. We all know these things happen. Even if we never really make a note of it. What's a more interesting question though is why do some companies, like Apple and Blackberry, succeed and others like Microsoft and Rio (early MP3 maker) fail, either in creating technologies that converge or create technologies that then fail.
One of the first reasons is the culture of the company. To create a totally different product that will shake the core business firms may have to do something called "corporate venturing." This is where a company decides they are going to take people that normally work on the major product and put them into a different area and seclude them and allow them to create a new product. Whatever sort of leadership structure develops, develops. It really doesn't matter if this matches the rest of the firm. Essentially, these people are put into a position where they are starting a new company. Apple famously did this with the original Macintosh program. It was called a skunk works area. Of course recombining the two portions of a company creates huge problems, but good management can figure out how to deal with this.
Another piece required for a firm to successfully move into a new product space is the ability to identify the market need. This one is pretty obvious, but it still needs mentioning. In many cases it's really obvious that there's a product space and that some one should fill it. When companies don't move into it there must be some sort of reason.
One of those reasons comes down to firm capabilities. Every firm has something at its core that it's best at. I would argue that Microsoft is best at taking advantage of a virtual monopoly of a platform and moving into new directions within that platform. Internet Explorer and the Office Suite are the best example of this. Microsoft has also tried to do this with servers and other peripheries. Which is why Microsoft has had difficulty moving into other platform positions. They have failed (or mixed results at best) over and over again with phone OSes because it doesn't rely on their dominate platform.
Another company that is an R&D powerhouse in energy but has failed at anything outside of their major focus is Shell. As a major energy company you'd expect Shell to be moving into other types of energy production to make massive amounts of money in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. You'd actually be right. They have tired and failed. Aside from having a failed solar industry Shell has a moderately successful Wind program. Between the two it actually makes sense why solar failed and wind is doing well.
First, wind is closer to extracting material from the ground than making energy from the sun is. Now hang on, I know, but Shell has to maintain offshore oil rigs in tough conditions. Understanding how to build a wind farm out in the ocean has some similarities. Shell doesn't actually make the windmills themselves, they buy the windmills and put them together to harvest energy. Shell was trying to make solar panels. Intel would be a significantly better solar panel producer than Shell. Why? Because solar panels are semiconductors. You make them with similar machines the technologies are adjacent to each other.
What's technological adjacency? It's whenever you are able to use your current skills and apply them with some research to a related technological field. I'll discuss this more in my next blog.
One of the first reasons is the culture of the company. To create a totally different product that will shake the core business firms may have to do something called "corporate venturing." This is where a company decides they are going to take people that normally work on the major product and put them into a different area and seclude them and allow them to create a new product. Whatever sort of leadership structure develops, develops. It really doesn't matter if this matches the rest of the firm. Essentially, these people are put into a position where they are starting a new company. Apple famously did this with the original Macintosh program. It was called a skunk works area. Of course recombining the two portions of a company creates huge problems, but good management can figure out how to deal with this.
Another piece required for a firm to successfully move into a new product space is the ability to identify the market need. This one is pretty obvious, but it still needs mentioning. In many cases it's really obvious that there's a product space and that some one should fill it. When companies don't move into it there must be some sort of reason.
One of those reasons comes down to firm capabilities. Every firm has something at its core that it's best at. I would argue that Microsoft is best at taking advantage of a virtual monopoly of a platform and moving into new directions within that platform. Internet Explorer and the Office Suite are the best example of this. Microsoft has also tried to do this with servers and other peripheries. Which is why Microsoft has had difficulty moving into other platform positions. They have failed (or mixed results at best) over and over again with phone OSes because it doesn't rely on their dominate platform.
Another company that is an R&D powerhouse in energy but has failed at anything outside of their major focus is Shell. As a major energy company you'd expect Shell to be moving into other types of energy production to make massive amounts of money in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. You'd actually be right. They have tired and failed. Aside from having a failed solar industry Shell has a moderately successful Wind program. Between the two it actually makes sense why solar failed and wind is doing well.
First, wind is closer to extracting material from the ground than making energy from the sun is. Now hang on, I know, but Shell has to maintain offshore oil rigs in tough conditions. Understanding how to build a wind farm out in the ocean has some similarities. Shell doesn't actually make the windmills themselves, they buy the windmills and put them together to harvest energy. Shell was trying to make solar panels. Intel would be a significantly better solar panel producer than Shell. Why? Because solar panels are semiconductors. You make them with similar machines the technologies are adjacent to each other.
What's technological adjacency? It's whenever you are able to use your current skills and apply them with some research to a related technological field. I'll discuss this more in my next blog.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Technological Convergences
Convergences happen in all different ways. They happen in books or book series, where a good author can plan to have plotlines converge in a specific time and place. In the case of the series I just finished, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the author was able to get two totally unrelated characters meet in really unexpected ways. It happens in films too, Crash and 21 Grams are two great examples of this. This happens in technology as well. Most of the time, we as consumers never even see it happening. When we look back though we realize it was incredibly obvious that it would happen. Two great examples of this happened with cell phones.
MP3 players have been wildly popular since they came out in the late 90's. Napster and easy to rip CD's made them incredibly useful and provided hours of great listening. Around the same time cell phones were becoming smaller and more popular. No unexpectedly, phone manufacturers decided that it would be useful to put a music player onto the phone. These were clunky and really only used when people didn't have a better MP3 player. Apple had created a great MP3 player and realized, like the phone manufacturers that users only wanted to carry one of these devices. This is one of the reasons that drove them to make the iPhone. Great interface and good music experience. At this point they already had the music infrastructure and the loyal fan base to be sure of a high number of sales.
Around the same time as the MP3 boom businessmen were starting to use Portable Digital Assistants (PDA). This was a replacement to the calendar and phone book. It also provided a few applications that allowed some work on documents. It could also be used to schedule emails when the PDA was synced with the computer. It was obvious that this would be a great device to connect to some sort of network aside from plugging it in. Blackberry used to make two way pagers and figured out a way to send emails and other useful data over the pager network. This was one of the earliest smart phones. Eventually Microsoft and Palm got into the phone manufacturing game for the same reason. People didn't want to carry two device a PDA and a phone. If you put them both together you'd have a better product and would sell more.
These two technologies converged on a similar product, smart phones. Both types of phones had a very different set of users initially. However, since the iPhone there has been a further convergence of these phones into general purpose phones. Blackberry, while still catering to the business side, is shifting to compete directly with the iPhone because business users want the apps that the iPhone has. Palm has vanished from the market being unable to compete and Android has appeared as the first PC based OS. Android is a distribution of Linux, it doesn't run well on PCs but MS and Apple are moving in a direction of merging mobile OSes and PC OSes (sure it's a Mac, but it uses Intel so there's no different besides the OS).
If we look back at these convergences, aside from new competitors and firm failure, they appear to be pretty obvious. Why wouldn't these companies move into these market spaces? I'll discuss some of that in my next blog.
MP3 players have been wildly popular since they came out in the late 90's. Napster and easy to rip CD's made them incredibly useful and provided hours of great listening. Around the same time cell phones were becoming smaller and more popular. No unexpectedly, phone manufacturers decided that it would be useful to put a music player onto the phone. These were clunky and really only used when people didn't have a better MP3 player. Apple had created a great MP3 player and realized, like the phone manufacturers that users only wanted to carry one of these devices. This is one of the reasons that drove them to make the iPhone. Great interface and good music experience. At this point they already had the music infrastructure and the loyal fan base to be sure of a high number of sales.
Around the same time as the MP3 boom businessmen were starting to use Portable Digital Assistants (PDA). This was a replacement to the calendar and phone book. It also provided a few applications that allowed some work on documents. It could also be used to schedule emails when the PDA was synced with the computer. It was obvious that this would be a great device to connect to some sort of network aside from plugging it in. Blackberry used to make two way pagers and figured out a way to send emails and other useful data over the pager network. This was one of the earliest smart phones. Eventually Microsoft and Palm got into the phone manufacturing game for the same reason. People didn't want to carry two device a PDA and a phone. If you put them both together you'd have a better product and would sell more.
These two technologies converged on a similar product, smart phones. Both types of phones had a very different set of users initially. However, since the iPhone there has been a further convergence of these phones into general purpose phones. Blackberry, while still catering to the business side, is shifting to compete directly with the iPhone because business users want the apps that the iPhone has. Palm has vanished from the market being unable to compete and Android has appeared as the first PC based OS. Android is a distribution of Linux, it doesn't run well on PCs but MS and Apple are moving in a direction of merging mobile OSes and PC OSes (sure it's a Mac, but it uses Intel so there's no different besides the OS).
If we look back at these convergences, aside from new competitors and firm failure, they appear to be pretty obvious. Why wouldn't these companies move into these market spaces? I'll discuss some of that in my next blog.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Remembering Steve Jobs
This post will piss a lot of Apple Fans off. I'm going to say that now.
Steve Jobs was a great designer. He built a company up twice based on maximizing control over the hardware, design and the software. He was able to do this an incredibly well. He was able to use this skill to dominate the early computer industry. However, under more competition Apple faltered as it relied heavily on a single creative driver. The designs that Apple created were radical design, these designs in a way constituted a type of radical innovation. The components within the computers themselves weren't radically improved over the competitors, the design was what made it special.
This is the same for the iPod. By the time the iPod came out there were already many MP3 players and many of them were doing very well. What Apple was able to do was make it simpler to move music onto the device and interface with the device itself. This is the radical portion of the iPod. I feel that this is exactly what happened with the iPhone as well. They created a radical design for the interface, but in many cases didn't even have legacy features.
Apple does a great job in marketing what any other phone maker would have expected as a normal feature. Even some of the biggest changes, like the fantastic screen it's an incremental innovation. As a consumer I fully expected some of the newest phones to have amazing screens.
One of the things Jobs did best was to get people to buy the newest version of Apple's phones. The iPad was also a very similar type of innovation. It's a gigantic iPhone. However, the reason it worked so well was the fact that iOS was able to scale up and work well on it. In the end I feel that Jobs was able to use cases of Radical Design innovation with incremental technological innovation a loyal consumer base to turn products into massive success.
However, Jobs has also turned Apple into one of the largest patent trolls in the world. With the level of control that Jobs had over Apple, it seems unlikely that he would not have initiated the litigation. Jobs did remember how they lost the PC war in the 80's and 90's. I think that Jobs is attempting to use patent law to control the market. There were no software patents during the initial PC battle, however there are software patents now and Apple has been patenting a great deal in order to control how devices are marketed and developed.
Finally, I think that Jobs was what Jim Collins called a level 4 leader. Similar to Lee Iacocca (of Chrysler), Jobs was able to control Apple through sheer personality and create a great company. However, he doesn't like dissent and would probably pull a George Lucas and change the original Star Wars trilogy.
Jobs did have a vision of what devices should look like and how they should work. He was excellent at creating great designs. He will be remembered for saving a trouble company, bringing design back into mobile devices and forcing a huge number of companies to compete in the mobile market space.
Steve Jobs was a great designer. He built a company up twice based on maximizing control over the hardware, design and the software. He was able to do this an incredibly well. He was able to use this skill to dominate the early computer industry. However, under more competition Apple faltered as it relied heavily on a single creative driver. The designs that Apple created were radical design, these designs in a way constituted a type of radical innovation. The components within the computers themselves weren't radically improved over the competitors, the design was what made it special.
This is the same for the iPod. By the time the iPod came out there were already many MP3 players and many of them were doing very well. What Apple was able to do was make it simpler to move music onto the device and interface with the device itself. This is the radical portion of the iPod. I feel that this is exactly what happened with the iPhone as well. They created a radical design for the interface, but in many cases didn't even have legacy features.
Apple does a great job in marketing what any other phone maker would have expected as a normal feature. Even some of the biggest changes, like the fantastic screen it's an incremental innovation. As a consumer I fully expected some of the newest phones to have amazing screens.
One of the things Jobs did best was to get people to buy the newest version of Apple's phones. The iPad was also a very similar type of innovation. It's a gigantic iPhone. However, the reason it worked so well was the fact that iOS was able to scale up and work well on it. In the end I feel that Jobs was able to use cases of Radical Design innovation with incremental technological innovation a loyal consumer base to turn products into massive success.
However, Jobs has also turned Apple into one of the largest patent trolls in the world. With the level of control that Jobs had over Apple, it seems unlikely that he would not have initiated the litigation. Jobs did remember how they lost the PC war in the 80's and 90's. I think that Jobs is attempting to use patent law to control the market. There were no software patents during the initial PC battle, however there are software patents now and Apple has been patenting a great deal in order to control how devices are marketed and developed.
Finally, I think that Jobs was what Jim Collins called a level 4 leader. Similar to Lee Iacocca (of Chrysler), Jobs was able to control Apple through sheer personality and create a great company. However, he doesn't like dissent and would probably pull a George Lucas and change the original Star Wars trilogy.
Jobs did have a vision of what devices should look like and how they should work. He was excellent at creating great designs. He will be remembered for saving a trouble company, bringing design back into mobile devices and forcing a huge number of companies to compete in the mobile market space.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Future of Employment II
Yesterday I talked a little bit about the future of employment. Apparently this isn't the most interesting topic. However, it's important. The Slate series ends with some startling research that shows even scientists could eventually be replaced. I think we are a long way from those things happening. In my opinion the first things that machines will do in R&D is replace humans in the creation of incremental innovations. In fact, to some extent computers already do replace humans in some of these things. Computers do a great deal of CPU, DRAM and Flash designing. Typically, these are incremental innovations. They are building on a current technology and making improvements. Humans are required for the radical innovations, such as a new chip set, calculation methodology or what have you.
Even some advanced R&D work could easily be improved by computers. Researchers have to read a great deal of papers to keep up with the state of the art in research. As the slate series points out, this is a form of data mining and lawyers are currently using automated programs to find specific words. There's actually a branch of Science and Technology Studies that focuses on word analysis. They use similar programs and dump a few papers into it and figure out what verbal connections between the papers exist. This is a way of creating maps of knowledge. You are able to see through citations and similar word usage that a specific theory is prevalent or not. How would this apply to R&D? You could put in the materials that you're using the problems you're seeing and a bunch of papers that might be related and see what comes out. It could give you new materials new designs things of this nature. For this to work though, it's a ways away.
What does mean in the long run? That no position is safe. I don't think this will happen in our life time though. People are much too conservative to leave everything to computers. They just simply won't be accepted. Even by our generation there's too much distrust. It's going to take one or two more generations for there to be enough trust in computing and technology to allow more control to shift to them. Sure some companies will be on the cutting edge with accepting these changes, others will be laggers.
If computers can do everything why do we need any jobs, isn't the guy from CNN is right? I disagree. People will always want to work. People need to work. I'm not saying this because I'm hoping there won't be a robotic take over or anything, but because people will not allow it to happen. In general people like to feel in control. Even if you aren't the bus driver, knowing that it's a person that you can relate to makes you feel like your more in control. Leaving everything to computers requires a level of surrender. Many people will simply refuse to give up that level of control. We won't have fancy automatically driving cars for this very reason. People love to feel in control of where they go. It doesn't matter if they would be safer, save money and get places faster. They would rail against the change because they loose control.
Would we leave the future of our economy in the hands of machines? You could argue that some companies already have. For instance take the May flash crash on Wall street. This has been attributed to high frequency trading following logical algorithms, it wiped about $1 trillion in wealth, most of it was restored.
In much of my research on academic spin-offs and technology incubators there is an important component related to tacit knowledge. Know how of the inventor of a technology. This is something that we'd lose if all of our work was robotized. There's no difference in that than outsourcing. In developmental economics and innovation theories the ability to create copycat technologies is a precursor to developing their own technologies in that field. I think this is something we must keep in mind when discussing the reality of full automation. Without tacit knowledge and hands on experience with the devices and machines building the product it's very difficult to develop improvements on either.
I think that we'll have many legacy jobs hanging around for a long time. Simply because we need them to continue growing economically. Otherwise, we'll stagnate and keep producing the same technologies.
Even some advanced R&D work could easily be improved by computers. Researchers have to read a great deal of papers to keep up with the state of the art in research. As the slate series points out, this is a form of data mining and lawyers are currently using automated programs to find specific words. There's actually a branch of Science and Technology Studies that focuses on word analysis. They use similar programs and dump a few papers into it and figure out what verbal connections between the papers exist. This is a way of creating maps of knowledge. You are able to see through citations and similar word usage that a specific theory is prevalent or not. How would this apply to R&D? You could put in the materials that you're using the problems you're seeing and a bunch of papers that might be related and see what comes out. It could give you new materials new designs things of this nature. For this to work though, it's a ways away.
What does mean in the long run? That no position is safe. I don't think this will happen in our life time though. People are much too conservative to leave everything to computers. They just simply won't be accepted. Even by our generation there's too much distrust. It's going to take one or two more generations for there to be enough trust in computing and technology to allow more control to shift to them. Sure some companies will be on the cutting edge with accepting these changes, others will be laggers.
If computers can do everything why do we need any jobs, isn't the guy from CNN is right? I disagree. People will always want to work. People need to work. I'm not saying this because I'm hoping there won't be a robotic take over or anything, but because people will not allow it to happen. In general people like to feel in control. Even if you aren't the bus driver, knowing that it's a person that you can relate to makes you feel like your more in control. Leaving everything to computers requires a level of surrender. Many people will simply refuse to give up that level of control. We won't have fancy automatically driving cars for this very reason. People love to feel in control of where they go. It doesn't matter if they would be safer, save money and get places faster. They would rail against the change because they loose control.
Would we leave the future of our economy in the hands of machines? You could argue that some companies already have. For instance take the May flash crash on Wall street. This has been attributed to high frequency trading following logical algorithms, it wiped about $1 trillion in wealth, most of it was restored.
In much of my research on academic spin-offs and technology incubators there is an important component related to tacit knowledge. Know how of the inventor of a technology. This is something that we'd lose if all of our work was robotized. There's no difference in that than outsourcing. In developmental economics and innovation theories the ability to create copycat technologies is a precursor to developing their own technologies in that field. I think this is something we must keep in mind when discussing the reality of full automation. Without tacit knowledge and hands on experience with the devices and machines building the product it's very difficult to develop improvements on either.
I think that we'll have many legacy jobs hanging around for a long time. Simply because we need them to continue growing economically. Otherwise, we'll stagnate and keep producing the same technologies.
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