Transitioning To Virtual Ease and Triviality

I took this photo a few weeks ago on the streets in Washington, D.C.

This was a huge box from eBay coming to someone.

In my building, they recently built an extra storeroom for all the deliveries that are coming everyday--there is no where to put all of them.

Jeff Bezos was recently names the 4th richest person in America, as the stock price of Amazon is up 45% in the last year alone. 

While today in the Wall Street Journal, even the revered retailer of Herald Square, Macy's, had their stock price shed half it's value in the last year, and other big box retailers are hurting just as bad. 

eCommerce is threatening the very survival of brick and mortal retailers, as they are seriously eating their lunch--and breakfast and dinner too!

But this is part of a much larger transition occurring from our physical to virtual worlds...

As we abandon department stores and the Mall for online shopping, 

movie theaters and playhouses for home theaters and video streaming, 

physical activities for gaming and virtual reality, 

and even factories and office work for telework and robots,  

soon we will have no real place to go and nothing to physically do. 

From the bed and couch to the computer and gym, like hamsters on the wheel of triviality, we might as well package ourselves up in the big eBay box and send ourselves to outer space--but only as long as we can get Internet access there. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal) 

Transitioning To Virtual Ease and Triviality

Last Man Standing Wins

So it has always amazed me how until modern times, armies would line up and face-off on the battlefield to basically bash each others skulls in. 

Whether in medieval times or in the civil war...it goes something like this. 

- Red coats line up on this side. 

- Blue coats line up on that side. 

- Everyone pull out their weapons.

- Scream your bloody heads off.

- And run towards each other swinging. 

- The last man standing from either side is the winning army!

How brilliant is that? 

Basically, mass suicide for both sides (like trying to take the hill running straight into machine gun fire). 

These days, there is a notion at least of using stealth, smart bombs, and sending in drones or robots, so as not to risk real people's lives unnecessarily. 

But I guess that takes the fun out of it--can't slice and dice and smash the enemy with your bare hands.

Last weekend, I watched people who like to fight the old fashioned way, dress up in medieval gear, take their sides on the field in the park, and go at it. 

They had swords, and clubs, and javelins, and bow and arrows, and more.  

They even had roles, and one guy I talked to was actually the king for one side of the fight--and apparently you have to earn that role in battle and in council vote. 

On the battlefield then the people get together and go at it hitting each other with some pretty scary weapons that fortunately are (mostly) padded, but still they seemed to get some pretty good zets!

Honestly, it sort of looked like a lot of fun and good exercise, but probably (more than) a little dangerous too. 

I saw one combatant coming off the field, taking off his outfit as it was pretty hot out, and he literally had layers of shielding on, so aside from seeing them take hits again and again, I could see that they felt they needed the protection. 

What was also interesting watching this--and I understand sometimes they get about 150 people on the field at a time to go at it--is that people seem to really want to go back in time to the way things were...more natural, more real, and even more deadly--up close and personal!

We are so much in a virtual world or like Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX and Tesla) said living in a simulation, that there is just a wild yearning and craving to get back to nature, basics, and what's tangible and real. 

Even if it means bashing heads on a hot Summer's day...and reenacting the times of lore...put your smartphones down and pull out your swords and clubs--it's a new day and age. ;-) 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Last Man Standing Wins

When Technology Is Our Superhero

I liked this Linux Cat Superhero sticker that someone put on the back of the street sign in Washington, D.C. 

There is something great about the promise of technology (with G-d's help of course) to make our lives better. 

When we get excited about technology, envision it, invest in it, and bring it to market--we are superheros making the world a better place. 

While many technologies may be "pie the sky" invoking more hype than higher purpose, if we can discern the doers from the duds then we can achieve the progress for ourselves and our children that we desperately want. 

Technology should be a superhero and not a villian--when its about the mission and doing what we do better, faster, and cheaper.

While Washington DC is a long way from entreprenurial and innovative Silicon Valley, the nexus between IT and public service has never been greater or more important. 

For example, when it comes to ideological clashes between (the iPhone's) security/surveillance and privacy or between the proliferation of robots vs. jobs for real human beings, balancing the competing interests is the soul of technology and public policy. 

Every truly useful technology should have it's superhero to represent and advocate for it, while us mere mortals sort out the implications and make sense of it all for the real world. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

When Technology Is Our Superhero

Two Days--Two Scary Statistics

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)

Happy Presidents' Day today!

The picture is of a snoozing guy on the Washington, D.C. metro with a scarf that looks like the American Flag.

Scary statistic of the day: 

- Robots and artificial intelligence are forecast to push unemployment to 50% by 2045. 

Is that a good thing because people will have more time for leisure?

No says the experts...work gives live meaning, and without it we'll all be sleeping our time away on the Metro. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Happy Valentine's Day yesterday!

This photo is of luscious chocolate covered strawberries from Godiva. 

Scary statistic of the day:

- About 1 in 5 people over the age of 25 (about 42 million people) has never been married, and the median age for marriage is 27 for women and 29 for men and rising.

Is this a good thing since people are perhaps further along in their education and career then and more ready to get married and have this as a priority?

No, says the research, since 50% believe that we are simply not better off with marriage and children as priorities.

_________

With these two holidays and statistics taken together, we are heading towards a very jobless and loveless future.

Andy's advice for the young folks (who of course won't listen because they are young):

1) Get married and get bliss!

2) Get a technology degree and get employed!

You can have a job and a spouse...little human-robot children to follow. ;-)

Two Days--Two Scary Statistics

Fantastic Drone Capabilities Coming

Exciting video by Futurism on what drones can and will do. 

Swarming.

Wall landings.

Acrobatics.

Drone on drone landings.

Playing catch.

Juggling.

Building a rope bridge. 

These little drones are so versatile and dexterous that perhaps what they can do is only limited by our imagination. 

Soon drones will do everything from caring for people's personal needs to building our cities, fighting diseases from within our very bodies, and conducting open warfare on the battlefield and behind enemy lines. 

Small and many is big and powerful! ;-)

Fantastic Drone Capabilities Coming

Color Me Different

I saw this restaurant and followed the color in to take this photo.

They had these multi-colored figurines lined up proudly on the ledge overlooking the tables and patrons. 

Each was different, but also the same. 

They had no faces, and were cut this way and that into segments of color (head, torso, butts, arms, legs, feet)...uniformity, but diversity. 

They are low-tech, but reminded me of robots or toy soldiers, but without the guns--just standing in colorful attention ushering people in to sit and eat and enjoy. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Color Me Different

Ex Machina Will Even Turn The Terminator

So this was a really cool display at the Movie theater yesterday...

They had this head of the Terminator in a enclosed case and roped off. 

Shiny metal alloy skull, buldging bright evil red eyes, and really grotesque yellowed teeth. 

This certainly gets the attention of passerbys for the upcoming new movie, Terminator Genisys (coming out July 1). 

Anyway, Terminator is the ugly dude especially when compared with the robot/artificial intelligence of Ava in Ex Machina that we saw yesterday. 

The Turing test is nothing for Ava!

She can not only fool them as to her humanity, but also outmanuever them with her wit, sexuality, and a good dose of deceit and manipulation. 

Frankly, I think AI Ava could even turn the terible Terminator to her side of things--my bet is that movie to come in 2017. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Ex Machina Will Even Turn The Terminator

The Robotization Of Society

First, it's people--just us, living and loving. 

Then, we welcome robots into our society for automation, industrialization, and services--they are here to help us.

Finally, it's just the robots--we, the people, are obsolete, replaced, maybe even completely gone!

Think about it. ;-)

(Source Comic: Andy Blumenthal)

The Robotization Of Society

Luv Technology, Always

No reason for Sir/Madam technology here to feel down in the dumps.

Yes, we love you technology.

And not just sometimes, but always! ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Luv Technology, Always

Dexterous Drones

Ok, after the da Vinci System that uses robotics to conduct surgeries this many not seem like such a feat, but think again.

While da Vinci is fully controlled by the surgeon, this Drone from Drexel University that can turn valves, or door knobs and other controls, is on the road to doing this autonomously. 

Think of robots that can manipulate the environment around them not on a stationary assembly line or doing repetitive tasks, but actually interacting real-time to open/close, turn things on/off, adjust control settings, pick things up/move them, eventually even sit at a computer or with other people--like you or I--and interface with them. 

Drones and robots will be doing a lot more than surveillance and assembly line work--with artifical intelligence and machine learning, they will be doing what we do--or close enough. ;-)

Dexterous Drones

Super Military Sentry

Awesome robotic sentry being deployed by South Korea along the DMZ.

Ubergizmo reports that the Samsung SGR-A1 costs just $200,000 and supports all weather detection, a 5.56 mm machine gun, grenade launcher, surface to air missiles, and has an illuminator, laser range finder, heat infrared and motion detection, and can track multiple targets. 

Moreover, the human operator remains safe at a remote command location, while this robot at the front line targets the enemy at over 2 miles away. 

I would think this needs to be augmented with a bunker, camouflage, and/or additional sophisticated anti-air defense system to protect these stationary devices or perhaps add some mobility to these. 

Can you think of other countries that could benefit in protecting their borders from terrorists and military incursions with such a robot? ;-)

Super Military Sentry

Can You Love A Robot?

Pew Research reports that by 2025, "Robotic sex partners will be commonplace."

While I certainly understand loving (new helpful) technology, actually making love to a machine is taking things a little too far.

Even with great advances in artificial intelligence (AI), a robot can be nothing more than an artificial partner...a humanoid is not a human!

Despite portrayals in the movie Her (2013) of a nerdy writer who falls in love with his life-like operating system, the reality of human and machine love is more a desperate call for companionship and understanding than a real connection of equals--physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. 

While a computer may be programmed to say the things you want to hear, to laugh at your jokes, and even to succumb to your advances, love cannot be programmed or even artificially learned. 

The complex dynamics between two real people locked-in the emotional roller coaster of life with its ups and downs, pulling together and pushing apart, of shared experiences, challenges, and conflicts, can only be met head on with a best friend, soulmate, diametric opposite, and at the same time congruent equal. 

Only another human being can love you and be your love.

A machine, however beautiful designed, charming, and learning of you, can be just a poor surrogate for the sad person screaming out for connection in a large lonely world. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Can You Love A Robot?

Robots, Who's Telling Whom What To Do

There was an interesting quote about jobs of the future by Tom Preston-Werner in Bloomberg Businessweek:

"In the future, there's potentially two types of jobs: where you tell a machine what to do, programming a computer, or a machine is going to tell you what to do. You're either the one that creates the automation or you're going to get automated."

Already, we've seen manufacturing get outsourced by the millions of job to cheaper labor oversees or automated in factories by machines and robotics.

Similarly, agriculture has seen a large decrease in small family-owned farms, in lieu of mega farms run by multinationals and run by automated farm equipment with GPS and drones. 

The military is moving quickly to warfare by drones, robotics, and people geared-up in high-tech exoskeletons. 

Now in the sacrosanct service sector, where it has been said that it could never be done by anyone by local people within their communities, services are moving in the direction of robots. 

Perhaps we can ask if even in government, can there be a future where robots can govern better than we can--and get things done speedily and efficiently!

In one Sci fi hit after another, from Star Trek to Battlestar Galactica to Terminator, a future of humanity embattled by cyborgs predominates. 

Like in the show, Lost in Space, where the robot in wont to say, "Crush, Kill, Destroy," perhaps we can understand this as not jsut a physical threat as people's lives, but also to their ability to earn a living in a world where automation challenges us with the children reframe:

"Everything you can do, I can do better. I can do everything better than you. Yes you can, no you can't..."

At this point, I am not sure it is really a debate anymore, and that Preston-Werner is predominantly right...technology is the future--whether we are end up being eaten alive by it or are its earthly masters. ;-)

Robots, Who's Telling Whom What To Do

Robots Reach The Clouds

So robots have reached the clouds before many of our government agencies have--who would've thought? 

Bloomberg Businessweek reports how robotic activities are being stored in the cloud and are then accessible to other robots to learn from and repeat as necessary. 

The "cloud servers essentially [are] a shared brain" where memories and experiences are uploaded and accessed by other robots with a need to know the same thing. 

The cloud is the means of transfer learning from one robot to the other.

It serves like a master neural network where the Internet provides the how-to for everything from serving juice to patients in a hospital to functioning as autonomous warbots in battle. 

Like the Borg on Star Trek with a collective brain, the cloud may become the mastermind for everything from day-to-day functioning to taking over the species of the universe. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Robots Reach The Clouds

Robot Man

Don't know exactly what it is about this little robot guy, but I really liked it. 

The simplicity of the body and limbs joined by the connector joints and the head as just a clear crown on the rest.

To me, it looked relatively realistic as how robots of the future might actually look.

Humanoid, but so sleek that they are us but in many ways a step up from our aging selves. 

Perhaps, someday the brains of humans and the bodies of machines will really come together in a better alternative to ourselves.

Living (indefinitely) longer and even pain free in bodies that carry mind and soul into the future. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Robot Man

From Pepper Spray to Champagne

Shhh! This is the story of drones. 

Drones continue to go from battlefield to backyard. 

Initially, developed for advanced persistent surveillance and later weaponized for targeting terrorists, we heard the like of Jeff Bezos promise drones for Amazon delivery. 

Once again, the double-edge of drones continues...

This week we saw the introduction of scary, "Riot Control Drones" developed by Desert Wolf (a military contractor) that can shoot 4,000 rounds of pepper spray, paint balls, and non-lethal plastic projectiles, employs bright strobe lights and blinding lasers, and issues commands and warnings through loud speakers, and monitors crowds of protesters by high-definition and thermal vision cameras. 

At the same time, we saw drones being used as Flying Bel Hops in the luxury Casa Madrona hotel and spa in California for delivering champagne, treats, toys, and even sunglasses to their $10,000 a night guests on their guest deck or even to a boat out on the bay. 

And we are still only at the beginning, with drones, and robotics in general, moving to revolutionize our world.  

Robots will surveil, they will attack and kill, and they will serve people everywhere from restaurants and retail to hospitals and homes.

You can't shush the robots, they are on the march and they will have the means to help and hurt people--it won't be simple, but it definitely will be completely invasive. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

From Pepper Spray to Champagne

How Our Colony On Mars Will Get Built

Absolutely amazing development in robotics...

According to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard University researchers have developed autonomous robots inspired by termites or ants. 

They can build complex structures by working in a group or swarm.

Each robot is independent, yet by being programmed with the target structure, they work harmoniously together to build the structure without further guidance. 

They have sensors along with a set of rules that enable them to interact with each other and the environment to get the job done. 

They can even build stairs to enable themselves to get to higher levels of the structure and add the next set of building bricks. 

The robots are 8" by 4.5" with pinwheel tires for traction and are powered by off-the-shelf motors.

"Each robot 'walks around the structure until it sees something that needs to be done and then does it...they can recognize errors and correct them.'"

Perhaps, the robots can not only learn from the termites, but we can learn from the robots. ;-)

How Our Colony On Mars Will Get Built

Drone Warfare: Integration At Its Best

I learned a lot about Drone Warfare reading and thinking about "The Killing Machines" in The Atlantic by David Bowden. 

The benefits of drones for military use are numerous:

- Stealth: Drones can be relatively small (some are now even the size of bugs) and they can survey from vehicles that are aerial, terrestrial, underwater, or I would imagine, even subterranean. In a sense, even a spy satellite is a type of drone, isn't it? 

- Persistent: They can hover unmanned over enemy territory for not only hours, but also days at a time, and switching in replacement drones can create a virtually continuous stream of surveillance for months or years, depending on the need. 

- Powerful: The sensors on a drone can include high-definition cameras, eavesdropping devices, radar, infrared, "and a pixel array so dense, that the device can zoom in clearly on objects only inches wide from well over 15,000 feet above." Further, with features like Gorgon Stare, multiple cameras linked together can view entire cities in one feel swoop.   

- Long-range: Drones can function doing reconnaissance or surveillance far away and deep into enemy territory. With drones, no one is too distant or remote as to be untouchable. 

- Lethality: Drones can carry missiles such as The Hellfire, a "100-pound antitank missile" and other weapons that can act expediently on information without the need to call in additional support. 

- Precise: Drones can hit targets with amazing precision--"It targets indiscriminate killers with exquisite discrimination." 

- Safety: Drones carry out their work unmanned with (or without) controllers stationed at safe distances away--sometimes thousands of miles back at the homeland. 

- Expendable: Drones themselves are throwaway. As with a bee, a drone is more or less useless when disconnected from the hive. Similarly, a military "drone is useless as an eyeball disconnected from the brain," since drones function only as an extension of back-end satellite links, data processors, intelligence analysts, and its controller." 

Overall, the great value of drones is their integration of technologies: vehicles, global telecommunications, optics, sensors, supercomputers, weapon systems, and more. 

To me, between the questions of fairness, legality, and privacy--drones are being given a bum rap. 

- Fairness:  Just because one side has a technology that the other doesn't, should not mean it's wrong to use it. This is what competition and evolution is all about. I remember learning in school, when children would complain to the teacher that something was unfair, and the teacher would reply, "life is unfair!" This doesn't mean we should use a shotgun approach, but rather use what we got, appropriately. 

- Legality: Is it legal to kill targets rather than apprehending them, trying them, and otherwise punishing them? This is where sincere deliberations come in on whether someone is a "lawful target" (e.g. enemy combatant), "imminent threat" (e.g. self-defense), whether other alternatives are viable (e.g. collateral damage assessments), and will killing them do more hard than good to foreign relations, influence, and even possibly breeding new hate and terror, rather than quelling it. 

- Privacy: The issue of privacy comes less into play with military matters and more with respect to domestic use for law enforcement and other civilian uses (from agriculture to urban planning). The key is protect citizens from being unduly monitored, tracked, and scrutinized--where freedom itself is under big-brother attack and we all become mere drones ourselves in a national hive of complacency and brainless obedience. 

Rather than scaling back drones use, I liked Mary Ellen O'Connell vision of new drones "capable of delivering a warning--'Come out with your hands up!' and then landing to make an arrest using handcuffs."

This is the promise of technology to learn from mistakes of the past and always bring possibilities of making things better in the future. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Don McCullough)

Drone Warfare: Integration At Its Best

ROBOTS Wanted!

Good video from The Atlantic on automation and the concern about Robots taking our jobs.

From the 1800's, when "the Luddites,"--British textile workers--protested the loom to the 1900's where 40% of our nations job were farm workers and now it's just 2%...the question is where does automation stop?

Very likely it doesn't (thanks to evolution)!

As robots can first mimic and then outdo their human developers and as artificial intelligence gets more intelligent, robots are moving from farm to factory to white collar jobs.

Computers and robotics, once relegated to repetitive tasks like on the assembly line, are becoming good at winning Jeopardy and as a surgical platform. 

The bar is being raised not just on technology, but on humans to retrain to ever more sophisticated thinking and communicating positions (from software developers and product designers to branding and communications specialists). 

People are constantly evolving to think and innovate better and are in turn building ever more capable technologies to replace more human jobs and leading once again to the need for even higher-level human performance. 

Progress--a never-ending cycle of outperforming ourselves. 

Where does it stop--the attainment of ever-higher levels of knowledge and productivity leading to heavenly bliss here on Earth or perhaps large elements of burnout, breakdown, and potentially self-destruction.

I often hear people recalling and reminiscing about earlier, simpler, and "better times."

The Wall Street Journal (17 August 2013) just had such an editorial looking to bring back the tranquility and idleness of hot summer Augusts, instead now replaced by more work and school. 

At the same time, very few of us would really want to go back in time before all the technology-wunderkind that we have now and enjoy (many seem think more like you'll have to pry that iPhone from my cold, dead hands!). 

The challenge: Robots may be taking jobs, but we need to stay ahead and to master not only ever higher levels of human knowledge and skills, but also the good sense to reconcile with the technology blitz and be able to actually find the time and inner-peace to sit back and enjoy it all as well. ;-)

ROBOTS Wanted!

What Does A Robot And A Spouse Have In Common?

This is a pretty cool advance in robotics. 

The robot doesn't just perform tasks, but it interacts with the person--sensing his movements and thereby anticipating his needs. 

According to Gizmag, this advanced robot was developed by Cornell's Personnel Robot Lab. 

As you can see in the video, the robot sees the person picking up a pot and moving towards the refrigerator, and the robot "understands" and goes to pull open the fridge door. 

In another example, the robot first without anticipating the person moving his coffee cup, pours coffee, spilling it on the table, but then with the special programming, the robot "sees" the person picking up the cup to drink and putting it down, and waits to pour until the cup is in stably in place. 

The anticipatory skills of the robot are based on 120 3-D videos in its database of people doing everyday tasks and extrapolating from it to what is occurring around it. 

The robot's predictions of the person's actions are refined as the person continues to move making the robot's response that much more in tune and precise with the person it is interacting with. 

The less far out in time that the robot has to predict, the more accurate it is: for 1 second out, it is 82% accurate; 3 seconds out, 71% accurate; and 10 seconds out, 57%. 

It is pretty incredible that we are able to program a robot to watch and sense similar to the way we do, and to react accordingly. 

The challenge will be as in the show Lost In Space, where the Robot is often confounded by illogical or unpredictable human behavior, and frequently, repeats "Does not compute." 

People are not programmed like computers--they experience conflicting and complex thoughts and emotions, behave in unpredictable or seemingly illogical ways, may have difficulty making up their minds in the first place, or may change their minds, even multiple times. 

Being a robot in a human world will by necessity mean being adaptable and understanding to changing human moods, whims and desires, and being able to respond quickly and appropriately--sort of like what being married is all about. ;-)

What Does A Robot And A Spouse Have In Common?