Tag Archives: information technology

Is it 1984 yet?

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This article is about the role of new technology advancing the cause of censorship and social control, sometimes without our realizing it. I am concerned about this, but I also think about how relatively starved for information we were even in the early 90s compared to now.

Another interesting idea is that the “planned economy” could now succeed where it failed so miserably in the past. In other words, maybe early Soviet economists had the theory but not the computing power to pull it off.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/technology-big-data-dystopia-by-mark-leonard-2017-11

 

 

Facebook let two chat bots talk to each other and they invented a new language

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Facebook let two chat bots talk to each other and they invented a new language, one seemingly nonsense to humans but apparently they understood it.

…this nonsense was the discussion of what might be the most sophisticated negotiation software on the planet? Negotiation software that had learned, and evolved, to get the best deal possible with more speed and efficiency–and perhaps, hidden nuance–than you or I ever could? Because it is.

This conversation occurred between two AI agents developed inside Facebook. At first, they were speaking to each other in plain old English. But then researchers realized they’d made a mistake in programming.

“There was no reward to sticking to English language,” says Dhruv Batra, visiting research scientist from Georgia Tech at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). As these two agents competed to get the best deal–a very effective bit of AI vs. AI dogfighting researchers have dubbed a “generative adversarial network”–neither was offered any sort of incentive for speaking as a normal person would. So they began to diverge, eventually rearranging legible words into seemingly nonsensical sentences.

No Man’s Sky

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I was somewhat of a gamer before I had children. That was then, this is now. Maybe when they are safely off to college. I don’t know how fun I would find this game, but the interesting thing is that the universe itself is procedurally generated, which means generated by the computer using a set of rules, rather than designed by the programmers. This means it can be enormous and you can just wander around in it as long as you want.

iris scans

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Border counties in Texas are using mandatory iris scans to build a database of illegal immigrants. I imagine it will spread to big city police departments, and then to everywhere else. I imagine at some point it will become a form of identification people can use as an alternative to carrying a wallet and passport. I don’t know that the technology is concerning in and of itself – it’s essentially just a modern and accurate form of identification. What’s concerning is what some immoral governments, amoral corporations, and criminal elements might be able to do with large databases of this type of information.

recording podcasts

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This episode of The Setup talks about the hardware and software people (or at least one person) are using to record podcasts.

I edit my shows on Logic Pro X. I kind of hate it, but it’s partly my fault for being resistant to understanding it. I just want tech to work without having to devote any brainspace to it.

Izotope plugins – the Dialogue De-Noiser is actually magic. Trint to transcribe interviews – then you can click on a piece of the text and it’ll play you that part of the sound file, or vice versa. It has saved me a lot of hours of typing this past year.

Ecamm Call Recorder for taping voicemails and interviews via Skype, Audio Hijack for other online audio-ripping.

It goes on like that. This website is clearly trying to sell you stuff, but I forgive it that because it is very interesting.

Tech vs. Telecom

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Are the big telecom companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon tech companies? Or are they giant, lumbering change-averse utilities of yesteryear? Well, they’re sort of in-between. I would like to see Comcast succeed because they are a major employer and providing support to local startups in my city. And yet, I have had awful experiences with them and just dropped them in favor of Verizon. I’ll be happy with Verizon until my introductory promotion runs out.

These companies are not good enough. They are not providing the kind of internet we need at a price we can afford. This article in Wired says Apple, Google, and Facebook will end up eating them alive, by accident.

These tech titans didn’t plan to take down the telcos. But they depend upon you having fast, reliable internet, so they’re bringing everything in-house. This promises to make things drastically better for you as a consumer, so if you hate big telecoms, you’ll feel schadenfreude at their demise. But you might end up with more of the same as the new guard becomes the old guard…

You’ve probably heard about Google Fiber and its shift toward wireless Internet over fiber-optic cables. Google Fi mobile service could be even more radical. Instead of building cell towers, Google resells access to Sprint and T-Mobile networks. Companies like Cricket and TracFone do this too, but Google-Fi lets your phone use the best signal available at any moment…

As new technologies and expanded access to the wireless spectrum drive down the cost of operating cell services, Google and other wireless brokers will be able to create nationwide–even worldwide–networks. That would make wireless service a commodity and shift the balance of power from incumbents like AT&T to companies like Google.

I wonder what major industry will be the next to go down. Will it be the fossil fuel industry challenged by renewables (the coal industry is already close to collapse), the finance industry challenged by upstart new financial tech companies (if they don’t shoot themselves in the foot again first), or the traditional telecoms falling to the new tech giants?

the future of payments

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Here’s an article on the future of payments. Not only is cash becoming obsolete, but the idea of a physical credit card is quickly becoming obsolete, replaced right now by mobile apps, and eventually by RFID implants and facial recognition. Somehow money that is just invisible transactions in the air seems less real to me. But then, credit cards seemed less real than cash just recently, and before that paper money seemed less real than gold and silver. Eventually, we will get used to this too an it will seem real. Of course, any form money is only as real as we collectively beiieve it to be.

Scratch

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“Scratch” is another programming language supposedly aimed at children.

Scratch Overview from ScratchEd on Vimeo.

If you watch the TED talk in the first link, there is an analogy I like – just because you use technology created by others (web browsing, texting, etc.) doesn’t make you fully literate in that technology. It is akin to being able to read but not able to write.