ABSTRACT NUMBER 5

CITATION:

Peterson, Tommy. (March 2001). Where humans and machines meet. Computerworld, 56p.

SUMMARY:

The article started out by advice given by Ray Kurzweil; which stated that you should “Take care of yourself for the next 10 years…you’ll have a shot at immortality’. Mr. Kurzweil was a speaker at the Association for Computing Machinery’s ACM1: Beyond Cyberspace conference. He was one of 15 speakers at the national news coverage on technology. The ACM1 was an exploration of how IT is changing the way we live and gather data. It also shows the interaction between human and machines. In reference to the impending pervasive computing, Michael Dertouzos claimed that “…people are serving machines and now it’s time…they serve people.” Chief scientist William Buxton pointed out that the processing power of machines might be growing exponentially. Kurzweil also said that it is a statistic possibility for immortality. The article said that Kurzweil has a vision that nanorobots will navigate our capillaries and download information from our brains. The inventor Dean Kamen produced the most compelling images at ACM. Kamen arrived to the convention center stage in his Ibot. A devise that runs on two wheels with microprocessor controlled gyroscopes to stay balanced. This devise showed that it is possible for machines to do the work humans are capable of. For instance, Ibot was able to climb stairs and throw a 25-pound bag of sand back after Kamen originally threw it to “him”. He left the conference by saying that raising visibility of science and engineering in young people is essential. The article ending left some expected statistics from the poll taken of attendees of the conference; for example by 2015 computers will be smarter then humans and that 66% said that computers will be self replicating by 2047. The article also stated as a statistic that 16% of people expect to be immortal due to technology; 23% said that their grandchildren would be immortal. And only 53% said that pervasive computing will improve our quality of life.

PERSONAL REACTION:

I found this article to be very interesting. I really think this is a conference I would have liked to have gone to. I think each speaker (from the article) made reasonable points on how IT is changing the way we live and gather data. I liked the fact that the people in the article are people who know what they are talking about. The speakers obviously have experience in this field and are stating facts, opinions and visions for the future. These men are not ordinary men off the street; the mentioned men have the educational level to make such analogies. For instance: Ray Kurzweil is the man who brought the world the first text to speech synthesizer and first flatbed scanner. Then there is Robert Metcalfe. He is the Ethernet inventor and 3Com Corp. founder. Also in the lineup of speakers was Michael Dertouzos; he is the director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Another speaker (in the article) was William Buxton, chief scientist at the Alias/Wave –front in Toronto. I enjoyed the part in the article about how the interaction between human and machines are changing. I think in technology in retrospect of our lives especially. I knew the technology and the power of machines are moving fast but I didn’t realize just exactly how fast it was moving. It’s amazing. Personally, I think Kurzweil to say it will lead to immortality will lead to controversy, among religious groups and individual people (specifically among older people) whom are not up on the new technology. I also think the expected statistics at the end of the article were quite interesting. I think computers and people are well on their way in technology to the future but the question is just exactly how far?