In the 20th century, many things changed about how people allocated their money. One of the biggest was the movement towards investing capital in education for one's children.
A couple of aspects of this are interesting to note. First, such education is a form of inalienable property. One is unable to divest themselves of their education after they've obtained it. They can effectively rent out their education by becoming an employee, but they can't sell it. You could imagine someone attempting to sell the right to their lifetime earnings in exchange for a lump sum, but this would most likely be unconstitutional, as it comes too close to indentured servitude.
Since there is no market for buying and selling the educations that people have obtained, it seems likely that there are some large inefficiencies in this area. There are likely to be many people either over- or under-educated for their jobs, or people unable to properly utilize their education, while there may be many others who would like to put someone else's skills or education to work, but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons. Of course, an even simpler place to see inefficiencies is in the decisions of people as to the subjects and extent of their studies before they embark upon them -- it's clear that we can't properly predict how to make those choices, because we can't properly predict the need for skills by future employers.
In recent years, we've seen software systems slowly encroaching on various low-skill industries, and more recently, on higher-skill industries. Many have noted that some people will be displaced in this process. But I haven't heard anyone talk about the theory I present here.
What will be the effect of this use of skilled software? I think that possibly, it will be to begin to detach education from people. What I mean by that is that as software becomes more and more sophisticated and capable, it may be possible that it could serve as a replacement for human education to a large extent.
The principal advantage of this is that whereas there is no market for received education, there is a market for software. Not only a regular market, but a market in which transactions can often be performed online, further reducing transaction costs even below the level of real-world markets in goods. This could allow businesses to avoid the great inherent inefficiencies of the market in employees (i.e. education rental), and effectively buy and sell skills in the form of software, to the exact extent required.
This change may allow many people to avoid the extensive education we undergo now, and instead operate software. This makes people below the skill level of software mostly fungible, and mostly obviates the need for education below that level.
What sorts of social changes could this lead to? I think it's clear that this could create a much greater divergence in education and wealth between those below the skill level of software, and those above it. Let's call this line the software line. Those who thought they could hack the education required to get above the software line would work hard to get it, and those who thought they couldn't would avoid any excess education.
I expect that this could lead to a discontinuity in the continuum of wealth and education across our society. If those below the software line aren't found to be completely useless, they will still gain little benefit from rising above their peers. On the other hand, those above the line will feel the same incentives to improve their education as all of us do now. In the end, we may return to a completely bifurcated society of upper and lower classes with a complete inability to understand and empathize with each other...
Well, I saw the video iPod for the first time today. I stopped by an Apple store to check it out on the way between studying at the cafe and more studying at home.
My reaction over the last few hours has been vacillating between "cool" and "meh." Why? Because I can't imagine actually using a music player without a remote. Every MD player or CD player or walkman I've had since the late 80's has had some sort of remote. I just couldn't use my iPod without its remote.
Can you imagine having to take your iPod out of your pocket every single time you want to skip forward a song, in order to turn off the hold button, push 'forward', set hold again, and put it back? Maybe some people could deal with this, but I can't.
Especially now that we have podcasts. I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately because it allows me to multitask, but many of them are either random people droning on for an hour about nothing, or 10-minute news segments. A remote with a song-skip function is essential in both cases.
As for the video functionality, I think it is going to be revolutionary. The experience of viewing video on the iPod is only so-so, but the entire model it portends for video distribution, I believe, is going to change our world. Within 5-10 years, I predict that we'll be getting most of our TV via RSS feeds, downloading it with swarming protocols like bittorrent, and watching it whenever the heck we want, either on a portable device like an iPod, or on a computer or a TV hooked up to an iPod.
The thing of it is, I would much rather have 40 gigs of 320x240 TV shows and movies on an iPod that I could take with me wherever I go, than have them on DVDs that are higher quality, but always left at home. The vast majority of what Americans watch is not movies anyway; it's TV. We watch orders of magnitude more TV than movies, and PVR devices have shown people what it's like to be able to store it for later. The iPod, or something similar, is going to be the next PVR.
Consumption Junction: Graduation!
Larry Page of Google gave a graduation speech at the University of Michigan, and Adam Herscher recorded the whole thing.
Building a new-idea factory | Newsmakers | CNET News.com
This is an absolutely great interview with Nathan Myhrvold, founder of Intellectual Ventures. He talks about invention, basic research, and how wonderful it is that we have a patent system that can support such things.
He also talks about his new company, and its goal of allowing inventors to invent and receive compensation in proportion to the value of their ideas, but without having to found their own companies.
Hitachi has decided to explain (or promote) their new perpendicular hard drive recording technology with... a flash animation of a dancing 'bit' getting perpendicular. ;)
This is not only funny, but surprising in the sense that Hitachi has enough creativity and sense of humor to do something like this. Hilarious...
(via Slashdot)
Salon has an interesting article on outsourcing to India. It is in their usual tongue-in-cheek style, but they did manage to hit upon one of the most salient points of the whole phenomenon here:
It is one of the tremendous ironies of the digital era that the easy flow of capital and labor to every inch of the globe, made possible by the superhuman efforts of American and European programmers, has ended up wreaking havoc on the job security of those very programmers.Got a problem with that, Silicon Valley? Don't blame India, and don't blame the CEOs. Blame yourself.
They also have 26 past articles on outsourcing here.
(Yes, I am being purposefully provocative. It's fun sometimes.) ;-)
Microsoft has done some anti-competitive things in the past, and the DOJ has fought them. But are we really so stupid as to think that Microsoft isn't a huge, nay, massively humongous benefit to the U.S. economy?
Apparently, slashdotters and others in the open source community don't see the fact that MS brings in a ridiculous amount of money to the U.S., employs hundreds if not thousands of developers (many of whom have become wealthy) and establishes numerous charitable programs, trusts, scholarships, and on and on.
Some Asian countries have begun to adopt open source software as an alternative to MS. What does this mean? Very simply, it means that a bunch of mostly American coders have written and given away free software that enables some of the biggest economies of the world to stop sending money to MS, and thereby stop sending money to the U.S. These guys have, in my opinion, undermined a major source of revenue for our country, and a major center for U.S. dominance of the software industry.
Needless to say, I find this stupid and upsetting. Next, why don't we also give away all our dominance in secondary education? Oh, I forgot, we're already doing that. Maybe we could give away free drugs to everyone, undermining our drug industry too, and free processor designs, so Intel and AMD employees could spend more time with their families rather than working all day... Sounds great.
Ok, I know tons of people will disagree with me. That's fine. I disagree with them. You know, when you look at the people who espouse free software, they are either in a position to benefit from it (by getting something for free, or by promoting an unknown product), in academia, or in a service or consulting position, usually. Why? Because they don't have to or want to make money from software. But what about the people who do want to make money from software? What about that industry in our country?
Here's some incredible video of an amateur bipedal robot competition in Japan... These things look incredibly similar to the Honda Asimo type robots -- I guess they've hit on a generally good design with that style.
What's amazing to me is that the motors on these things are so small yet so powerful now. I don't think this was possible with motor technology 5-10 years ago...
Check it out on FNN.
At the Tokyo Security Show 2004, quite a few cool security products were displayed. The neatest to me is the security robot for the home that can shoot paintballs and create a smoke screen... I wonder how this might be updated for the U.S. market... ;)
There are also a number of other neat things such as a system that photographs people messing with your front door, and emails a picture of them to you immediately!
You can check out a video news story at FNN.
It will be extremely cool once we finally have this technology.
I just had to post this quote though. Classic.
"You could see this leading to displays everywhere, the sides of trucks with live displays on them - like Times Square but moving," Robert Wisnieff, senior manager of IBM Corp.'s Advanced Display Technology Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. "Imagine the traffic accidents."
From Canada.com
Major power failure across Northeast
This is pretty amazing. I just found out about a huge power outage encompassing a number of cities from New York to Toronto. Apparently the subway is out in NYC, and people are all walking and driving out of the city.
Update:
MSNBC reports that the outage is, as far as we know, due to natural causes, not terrorism. They are showing live streaming video at the moment here.
They are showing that the streets are teeming with people attempting to find a way out of New York. All New York flights are grounded.
creativepro.com - QuarkXPress 6.0: A Safe Upgrade in Dangerous Times
Found this link from Keisuke, a friend of mine from when we worked at Quark together. He's still there, as is evidenced by his design of the splash screen for XPress 6.0. As I've mentioned before, I also went back earlier this year to help them in the rush to release 6.0 for a few months.
I can't say too much (in detail) about Quark, since I recently worked there again, but I can say this: they are actually improving the code significantly, after years and years of talking about it. This is a good thing, and was spurred on partially by the need to support OSX.
On the other hand, they are moving almost all development to India, which may make sense for the bottom line, but doesn't make sense for American programmers, or for American dominance of the software industry. It is pretty clear that this sort of outsourcing will eventually cause us to lose our long-held lead in software development knowledge, which I still think is very unfortunate.
Scientific American: Nanotech for New Organs
This is pretty amazing. Applying fractal computational models to the creation of an artificial vascular network to support the growth of artificial human organs.
Kaazempur-Mofrad and his colleagues used fractal computational models to design networks mimicking the intricate branching pattern of actual blood vessels. They then etched those nano networks onto silicon surfaces, which in turn served as molds for biocompatible polymer films. The next step was to sandwich a microporous membrane between two films and seal them together.
I've been frustrated by the seeming naivete of the "Slashdot Crowd" when it comes to making a living with software. (Well, actually, with regard to a large number of issues, but...)
The software developers in this country have really given up a lot. They've given up the chance to make a huge amount of money, and given up a large number of jobs to India and China, due to lack of labor organization and open source. I have seen a major desktop software company where I used to work lay off over 90% of their programmers, and build a huge facility in India instead. This could have been prevented. Geeks can often be far too idealistic and far too lacking in practical self-interest. Oops.
Open source doesn't have a great deal to do with this trend, but it certainly doesn't help. Giving away the stuff that could make your living for you is never a smart thing from a self-interest perspective. Sure, it works in individual cases, but think about the broader effect -- free software is available for people to use, removing the need for many of those with the desire and knowledge to write software and make money at it, and also removing some of the potential for improving on that software, because only those with free time can work on it. I use free software because it's free, but I'd pay for something that did the same job if I had to, and that might employ one of my friends. It's as simple as that.
On the other hand, those running the companies have shown almost no appreciation for skill. I know that most of the Indian coders are still not very good at the moment. Sorry, it's a fact, Jack. They lack the skill because they lack the background and the environment to develop it easily. They are able to do simple tasks, but they cannot handle even some of the easiest architecture jobs. This will certainly change as they get more work and more experience, and I have nothing against them personally -- who wouldn't want to improve their lot through education and hard work?
This is simply a question of self-interest. Do we as Americans want to give up our technical domination of this field? Do we want to allow a competitor to learn enough to compete with us qualitatively, while undercutting us royally due to the low costs and low standard of living in their country...? Most of us would say no. Maybe I'll feel differently once I'm out of this field, and can look at it more objectively -- see it as more of a macroeconomic issue...
But, probably not. It's just too personal an issue to me when so many extremely intelligent people I know have been out of work for periods due to this phenomenon. Globalization does many good things, and everyone talks about how the world is moving more and more quickly... But how quickly (or easily) can a software engineer learn an entirely new profession and change careers? At some point, we run into the temporal limitations of human beings with regard to learning new information. We just can't learn another career in the time it takes for investors to move their money, and this is going to create great social problems.
I think, it is inevitable that globalization will proceed for economic reasons. But we can and must institute safeguards to allow workers to keep up with investors. Change cannot be allowed to proceed at a pace that could leave an entire industry of extremely smart people unemployed for years, and expect them to go to school again to boot. There needs to be a slower transition, or there need to be other methods of managing this sort of change, just as there are safeguards and checks on global stock market trading...
There have been a lot of stories about these trends lately... I hope that we can find a good solution to these problems without people resorting to traditionally one-sided liberal labor philosophy. It's not a workers vs. companies problem. It's not a "class" problem. It's an engineering problem: How do we manage inevitable change in a reasonable way?
It frustrates me that no one seems to think like this in approaching these problems.
Sweet.
I finally got an iPod, and the new models rock house. I'll post some glamour shots when I get a chance... ;) My only problem is that I have to go to my mom's house to rip CDs on her iMac yet.
I was psyched when I saw that it came with an adapter to allow me to plug it into my Vaio. But I've been nursing this old Vaio for years now, and it's still running 98 — iPod no like 98...
So, I'm planning to get a new laptop to use in law school anyway, and I'm really thinking that the TR1 is the sweet package. ;) Hey Albi — maybe I'll ask you to snag me one of these puppies in Akihabara... ;) A sony would be nice, since they all have built-in firewire. Apple will also be coming out with a software update to allow the new iPods to use USB 2, but I'd have to buy a separate cable...
They're also supposed to come out with a version of iTunes for Windows later this year, so maybe I can finally use iTunes and resize the grid control fields by clicking on their edges (one of my pet peeves about OSX).
But as for the iPod, I got the 10gig version as a gift, and it's extremely cool. I've got about 3.5 gigs on it so far; awesome. I put a writeright screen protector over the screen, cut to fit. Those things are great as well. Yuki and I both have them on our palms, and she had one on her phone screen too. I recommend that if you have any electronics with a screen, just slap one of these on and cut it to fit. They last a very long time.
So I'm walking around feeling cool now with this iPod. You know, I thought I'd see more people with them... I guess it's still more popular among students than among businesspeople.
It's also nice to note how well it supports Japanese and other Asian languages. I have some song names in Japanese, some English, and some Icelandic. ;) No problem for this device. hehe.
Another thing — you don't really need the remote for the iPod, because the new one is so small anyway. I like to browse around it and see what I'm going to listen to next.
As for my other gadgets, they're rapidly approaching obsolescence. My Palm V has served me since '98, and my Vaio, while reliable, seems to be getting slower and slower, while in reality other machines have just gotten faster. I'm running into things I can't do with it, since it can only run Win98. My phone is ok, but I can't expect to get a really cool phone here in the U.S. Service is always spotty and we won't be getting 3G anytime soon. My second best gadget now (after the iPod) is probably my Japanese dictionary.
I have a new job this week, at the Department of the Interior. :) It should tide me over to when I start law school in mid August. I may work part time after that, but I'm not sure yet how things will turn out. I figure I'll have to devote most of my focus and time to school...
The other day I decided to go get a wireless PCMCIA card and see if I could find a cafe with free wireless... Well, upon installing it in the car outside CompUSA, I noticed that I could see the store's network and tried to load CNN's page -- when it loaded, I was so surprised. The feeling of being totally free from any physical connection, yet having access to the vast resources of the net is amazing. I know it's been around for a while, but I've never needed to use it until now, so this is the first time I've really experienced it...
So I'm in a cafe now where the net is free, and I just can't describe how cool it is.. :) I just chatted on IM with a friend in Florida... sometimes, you just have to sit back and let it blow your mind. ;)
Keisuke, a friend of mine who has a blog as well, took this picture of me in my cube the other day with his new Sony-Ericsson phone and digicam attachment. ;)
I met Kei when he came to Denver a few years ago to work for Quark... I hadn't talked to him for a while after moving back to D.C., but he actually found my blog through a post I had made to Prof. Takemura's blog, because Takemura was his professor for a long time... I found Takemura's blog through Joi Ito, because we both went to Nishimachi International School in Japan... ;)
It's amazing when we find these hidden connections that we never knew were there... :)
Welp... I’ve decided to start going back over some of my 大学の教科書... in anticipation of becoming a 特許弁護士... I may have to get back into doing some EE stuff, so linear algebra と differential equations をちょっと復習してる。結構おもしろいんだけど、I've forgotten so much ちょっと残念... まァ~ しょうがねーなー... If you don't use it at work とか、多分 you'll start to forget it だろ？ 特に languages も math もそうだな...
Hmmm. What is this lad thinking, you might ask... Yes, I was/am a programmer by trade, but more and more, I'm thinking that 'programming' as it was is going away.
Give me one good reason why I might need to use a text-based programming language to produce a program. You might say the most obvious answer, which would be that that's the only way you can do some things. Sure. But it doesn't have to be this way.
You may need to enter formulas or mathematical functions for special applications, but since VB everyone knows that UIs don't need to be coded. 99% of other tasks are similar. They can be handled by machines. The user need only manipulate a code-generating application.
I am constantly frustrated and dismayed by the sight of numerous programmers writing complex buggy code to access a SQL database. Doesn't this strike anyone else as a total waste of time? Anything as simple as a database should simply communicate automatically through a protocol to other software components. The code-generating application should handle all details of the protocol, unless tweaks need to be made, in which case they should be made as settings in the code-generation app.
Money is wasted whenever humans do something that machines can do, regardless of how well the machines do it. I could hand-code assembly routines to do a number of things, or let a compiler do it worse. In the end, it really is a waste of my time unless the difference between my code and the machine's code is significant to humans. Currently, it's not.
Is the difference between human-coded and automatically generated data objects that hide a database layer significant to the end user? Absolutely not. Must we hack macros and templates in C++ to avoid all runtime calculation, making our programs scream? Almost never.
Humans should only be coding the things that machines still cannot do at all. Once they can, and no one can tell the difference in the end product, we should move on and apply our expertise somewhere else.
Programmers don't want to think this is true. Unfortunately, the trend is undeniable. The future of programming is VB, Cold Fusion, Flash, etc. 99% of the work in a design app, 1% in code. This is the only way to leverage our knowledge and stop rewriting algorithms. We let the machines do it. I want to say it's really a shame, but I'm not sure exactly what will happen to all the programmers out there today... Maybe all the good ones will just end up writing games, doing research, writing code-generation apps, or doing something else...
Good luck, amigos...
So my Mom bought an iMac after I suggested it. She had been using an ancient PC up to then, and it was thoroughly hosed. Here is my impression so far:
Store experience: Quite good Out of box experience: Good Using digital camera: Good OS Stability: Awesome Installing printer: Crap Using external floppy: Fair Appleworks: Absolute Crap
Fairly mixed, isn't it... Well, let me tell you the whole story...
<more...>I've been thinking a lot about blogging recently, since I started this project a couple of months ago. A story on Joichi Ito's blog gave me a lot of food for thought recently, as well. (BTW, he also went to Nishimachi ;)...
I have begun to want to blog everything cool that I see in my life, and I don't have nearly enough time to do it. I can't imagine how all these bloggers out there of working age manage to find the time to post stuff every day... I guess a lot of it is not that interesting, but it still takes time...
My plan is basically to get this blog working the way I want it before I start law school next year, so I'll be able to write about all the issues I encounter. It should be pretty interesting... I just hope that I can manage to get on the Uberman's sleep schedule prior to law school. Having 4 extra hours each day would seriously ameliorate my need for time to fuel my obsessions... :)