Ten Random Ideas

It's been a while since I posted a new blog entry. Since I don't have any specific subject on my mind today, I thought I would just share ten random facts, theories, or ideas that I find fascinating:

1. Dark matter and dark energy – We have no idea what 96% of the universe is made of. Physicists confirm that only about 4% of the universe is composed of the familiar matter that we're accustomed to. Another 24% is made up of dark matter (which only interacts with regular matter via gravity), and 72% is made up of dark energy (which is a repulsive force that causes space itself to expand). But we have no clue what dark energy or dark matter are.

2. Toba Catastrophe Theory - Approximately 70,000 years ago, a supervolcano erupted on Lake Toba, on the island of Sumatra in present-day Indonesia. This eruption was so unimaginably enormous that it blanketed all of South Asia in 15 centimeters of ash, and put enough ash into the atmosphere to cause a volcanic winter, which abruptly changed the entire planet's climate for several decades. At this time, humanity nearly went extinct - the entire human population may have been reduced to just 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution. We are all descended from the few survivors of this apocalypse.

3. String theory - Why don't the rules of physics that apply to macroscopic objects (i.e. the theory of relativity) seem to apply to particles (i.e. quantum mechanics) and vice versa? Since macroscopic objects are composed of particles, it would stand to reason that they should. String theory attempts to reconcile these two sets of laws by postulating that at an extremely tiny scale (much smaller than subatomic particles), the universe is made up of tiny vibrating strings. Different vibrations produce different kinds of particles. It also calls for the existence of 6 or 7 extra dimensions, which we don't notice in our every day lives because they are so tiny. So far there is zero evidence that string theory is correct, but it has widespread support among physicists due to its mathematical elegance. This is one of the first serious scientific hypotheses to be considered not because the evidence necessarily suggests it is correct (at least not yet), but because physicists believe that the universe “should” be simple. If it proves to be right, it may call for us to reevaluate how scientific theories should be developed.

4. Happiness Economics - For the last 200 years, economists have mostly measured wellbeing in terms of money, such as measurements like GDP. While this is often a good approximation of human wellbeing, it's a crude tool. Consider that Russia and Mexico have approximately the same GDP per capita, yet Mexicans consistently report being much happier than Russians do. Maybe the next big shift in economics is to determine the policies most likely to improve a population's happiness, rather than assuming that more GDP growth will do the trick.

5. Self-driving cars - The transportation industry is about to see its biggest game-changing revolution since the invention of the automobile itself. Self-driving cars are being tested by Google, Stanford University, Carnegie-Mellon, and every major automobile manufacture. They're already on the road being tested, but aren't commercially available yet. They should be by 2017-2020. This will radically change the way we live our lives. It will eliminate most of the 40,000 annual traffic fatalities in the United States, which are mostly caused by human error. It will free us from the stresses of daily commutes, and allow us to do things other than watch the road. And for many people it will eliminate the need for car ownership entirely, as it will be easy to simply summon a car to pick you up whenever you need one.

6. Biology causing mass extinctions - It turns out that we humans are not the first species in the history of the earth to single-handedly wreck the planet's climate. We share that distinction with at least two others: Cyanobacteria and Azolla Ferns. 2.4 billion years ago when life was very primitive and microbial, there wasn't much oxygen in the atmosphere. Therefore, nearly all species were anaerobic - they had evolved in conditions of very little oxygen. Over time, a species of cyanobacteria began to proliferate which excreted oxygen as a waste product. This changed the composition of the earth's atmosphere and poisoned nearly all of the anaerobic species, resulting in the extinction of most types of life on earth. More recently, a mere 49 million years ago the earth had an extremely warm climate, in which ferns were able to grow as far north as the arctic. They began proliferating around the Arctic Ocean, sucking up lots of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and then sinking to the bottom of the ocean when they died. This sudden reduction in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere caused global cooling, which eventually turned the entire planet from a greenhouse into an icehouse.

7. Simulation Hypothesis - Is our reality a simulation, like The Matrix? Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom thinks so. Consider the following argument: If we assume that it is possible to create simulated worlds, and that at least one species somewhere in the universe would like to do so, then we are almost certainly living in such a simulation. Why? Because such a civilization would be likely to create multiple simulations (some of which might be running simulations of their own), and so probability would dictate that it's far more likely we are living in one such simulation than in the "original" universe. You can be the judge as to how compelling you find this argument...but I can't find any obvious flaws in the logic.

8. Post-scarcity - Assuming that we don't blow ourselves up and that we don't encounter civilization-wrecking climate change in the next few decades, we will soon enter into an age of abundance where virtually everyone has access to the basic necessities of life. This is due to a convergence of several trends. As genomics improves, we will soon be able to grow meat in laboratories and grow crops hydroponically, eliminating the need for most farms/ranches, ensuring a stable food supply, giving the environment a much-needed breather from the damage we've done, and freeing up freshwater to be used for humans. As solar energy improves (the capacity is growing exponentially), it will soon be able to compete dollar-for-dollar with fossil fuels...and soon thereafter leave fossil fuels in the dust. Education will become much cheaper due to effective online tools that are finally becoming available, and the subsequent end of the 19th/20th century model of education. Health care will become much better due to effective personalized medicine, which will proliferate as it finally becomes affordable to have your genome sequenced.

9. VY Canis Majoris - The scale of some of the objects in our universe is so unimaginably vast that it's difficult for us to comprehend. The largest known star is called VY Canis Majoris, and it's located about 4,000 light-years away from us. It's so big that if it were placed in the middle of our solar system, its surface would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn and it could hold over a billion suns (or 11 quadrillion earths). Wow. That's big.

10. The hidden potential of the human brain - Some people (usually with autism) have a rare mental condition called synesthesia, where the senses get mixed up due to neural connections in the brain getting routed to the wrong place. This may take the form of associating numbers with specific shapes or colors, or associating certain sounds with textures or smells. Synesthetes are often capable of amazing feats, such as memorizing pi to tens of thousands of digits or creating beautiful works of art with little training. It is thought that we all have these astounding abilities somewhere within our brain, but we can't access it because we don't yet understand how our brains work enough to unlock those neural pathways.

Update on Driverless Cars

A few months ago, I wrote about self-driving cars. At the time, the last information publicly available came from 2007, in which the DARPA Urban Challenge demonstrated the possibility of cars that could safely navigate through a city without human interference. At the time, only 6 of the 11 autonomous cars that competed in the challenge were able to complete a course in a makeshift "city" on an unused military base. The vehicles traveled extremely slowly (about 13 miles per hour) and the course was only 50 miles long. There were no tricks, surprises, or unusual circumstances...the vehicles just had to drive themselves and react to normal traffic.

I was excited at even this rudimentary amount of progress in 2007, so I was even more delighted when the New York Times provided an update on self-driving cars yesterday. The technology has progressed immensely in the last three years, much more quickly than I would have guessed. Google has secretly been testing autonomous vehicles, working with none other than Sebastian Thrun, the lead engineer of the Stanford Racing Team, which took second place in the DARPA Urban Challenge, and first place in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. The cars have been driving on actual highways, city streets, and rural roads in California, navigating their way through real traffic. There is always a human sitting behind the wheel who has the power to override the self-driving computer, just in case something goes wrong. In the last year, the Google Cars have driven over 1,000 miles on the streets of California without any assistance, and 140,000 miles with only minimal human assistance. They no longer travel at crawling speeds; Google has programmed the speed limits of all the relevant streets into the system and the vehicles are capable of traveling at the speed limit. In the Google Car fleet, there has only been one minor mishap in the last year: when another driver rear-ended a Google Car at a stoplight.

The New York Times article implies that it will be about eight years before self-driving cars are publicly available. Given the unpredictable nature of technological roadblocks and legislative paralysis, I'm opting to be a little more conservative, standing by my previous estimate: they'll be on the roads no later than 2020.

The NYT is quite bullish on their prospects, implying (via technologists and futurists) that "they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has." That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but only because the Internet has transformed so much of our society. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that self-driving cars will fundamentally alter the way in which we design cities, will reduce the annual automobile fatalities nationwide from approximately 40,000 to approximately zero, will greatly reduce traffic and pollution, will help alleviate poverty by eliminating the need for most people to own a personal car (instead you could summon one to pick you up like a taxi, but available in non-urban areas and without the high fees), and will allow us to enjoy our commutes more by freeing up our time to do things other than watch the road.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2020 - Driverless cars are commercially-available and street-legal somewhere in the United States.
By 2027 - New driverless cars outnumber new cars requiring at least some human control, in the US market.
By 2035 - Driverless cars are widely perceived as safer than human drivers. Somewhere in the United States, it is illegal for humans to drive.

Moore's Law and Ubiquitous Computing

The amount of computing power in a single iPhone is greater than the amount of computing power in the supercomputer that controlled the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. It is also greater than the total amount of computing power used by all the militaries of all the nations in World War II. It is no exaggeration to say that a single iPhone dropped into 1940 could have dramatically altered the outcome of the war.

The co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, made a stunningly accurate prediction in 1965. He noted that the number of transistors per integrated circuit had been doubling every year, and expected that trend to continue for at least ten more years. Moore’s Law, as it is now known, is still going strong 45 years later. This exponential acceleration of computer hardware has proven so consistent that we have grown to expect it. Moore’s Law has continued unhindered through booms and busts, war and peace. Approximately every 12-18 months, the amount of computing power that a person can buy for any given amount of money doubles. This has been accomplished by making transistors smaller and smaller, to fit more of them on a single integrated circuit. Just as Gordon Moore predicted way back in 1965, we can safely expect this trend to continue for yet another ten years.

But after about 2019, we will hit a wall. This is because by that time, our transistors will be so small that they will be just a few molecules across, and quantum effects will make it impossible to effectively shrink them any further. Fortunately, computer engineers have already found a way to keep our computing power accelerating beyond that. At the present time, most computer chips are flat, but there is no reason they have to be. After we can’t cram any more transistors onto an integrated circuit, we will still be able to expand our computer chips outward into the third dimension. However, this will introduce another problem. Three-dimensional chips will produce far more heat than flat chips do. If computer engineers cram too many tiny transistors on top of one another, they could fry the computer chips. Although there are some clever solutions in the works to address this problem, there are many skeptics, including Gordon Moore himself. While we can expect the raw power of computer chips to continue to increase beyond 2019 as they expand outward, it remains to be seen if we will still be able to double the power every 12-18 months in accordance with Moore’s Law.

With our computing power doubling every 12-18 months for at least the next decade, we can expect the computers of 2020 to be 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than equally-priced computers today, just as today’s computers are about 1,000 times more powerful than computers of ten years ago. This will profoundly transform the world. A thousandfold increase in computing power means far more than search engines that run a thousand times faster. It opens up a wide array of new applications that no one would have even attempted before.

The Information Age can be roughly divided into three epochs: mainframe computing, personal computing, and ubiquitous computing. The era of mainframe computing lasted from roughly 1946 to 1977. This era was dominated by enormous computers staffed by many people. The era of personal computing was the second epoch, lasting from roughly 1977 until the present. In this era, individuals were finally able to afford their own computers. We are now entering the third epoch: the era of ubiquitous computing. In this epoch, there will be many computers for each person. In addition to our PCs, many of us already have smartphones, portable music players, and e-readers. Computers will soon be woven into the fabric of our world so much that we will rarely even notice them. Virtually every machine, every wall, and every article of clothing will contain computers.

Although this constant connectedness will certainly have a negative impact on our privacy, it also has many benefits. Computers that constantly monitor our health will be able to automatically alert 911 whenever we are having an emergency, possibly before we are even aware of it ourselves. Ubiquitous computing will finally enable driverless cars, which offer the potential of saving thousands of lives per year, reducing traffic and pollution, and reducing the need to personally own a car. If we would like to have a change of scenery, we will be able to have interactive displays on our walls that could cycle through a preselected assortment of posters to display. It will enable truly smart homes, in which all appliances are connected to one another and to the internet, and can alert you when it is time to repair or replace them. Just as we have come to expect any building we enter to have electricity and plumbing, we will soon expect any building we enter to have internet access and to be connected to the outside world via computers woven unnoticeably into the walls, ceilings, and floorboards.

The exponential growth of computer hardware associated with Moore’s Law has been the single most important driving force in technology for the last half-century, and it still has at least another decade to go. As computers continue to become more and more powerful, things that seemed virtually impossible just a decade ago are beginning to look mundane. It begs the question: What seems virtually impossible today that will look mundane in 2020?

PREDICTIONS:

By 2015 – Effective smartphone applications exist which can turn lights on and off, and start or stop home appliances.

By 2016 - Personal health monitors, which are ingested or worn, can automatically call 911 whenever a person's vital signs indicate an emergency.

By 2017 – The average American carries at least ten computing devices on (or inside) his or her person.

By 2018 – Smart walls are becoming popular, which can display any image the user wants at any given moment, or can cycle through a series of posters.

By 2022 – Silicon computer chips are no longer flat. They are now three-dimensional because it is impossible to shrink transistors any further.

Augmented Reality Will Change How We See The World

Augmented reality is the technology of superimposing virtual images over top of one’s view of the real world. One of the earliest examples is the yellow first down line in televised American football games, which has existed since 1998. The technology typically works by recognizing a certain object in the real world, which triggers a computer to impose a virtual image into the viewer’s line of vision. In the case of the first down line, it operates through a television screen, but any type of screen will do. Augmented reality applications already exist for computers, smartphones, special-design glasses, and airplane windshields.

General Electric has a very cool interactive demonstration of augmented reality with which you can experiment on your computer. In this demonstration, an ordinary computer webcam scans the room. GE’s program detects a certain symbol (on a printed piece of paper), and displays a virtual image over top of it. You can hold the paper from almost any angle. If you move the paper or change the angle, the virtual image will follow your movements so that it constantly appears that the virtual image is on top of the symbol.

But although this is certainly a cool trick, does augmented reality have any useful applications beyond keeping us mildly amused? Any good augmented reality application has at least two components: 1) Recognizing a real-world object to "trigger" the application to do something, and 2) Superimposing a virtual image into the user's line of sight. Imagine you are walking the streets of an unfamiliar city looking for a place to eat lunch. As you walk by restaurants with your augmented reality glasses on, you see the restaurants’ average Yelp rating (and the most recent reviews) hovering just above the buildings. Based on this data, you select the restaurant you want to eat at. This would certainly be more convenient than looking up each restaurant individually as you walked by.

Augmented reality software could be installed in the windshields of automobiles (as it already is in airplanes) to dramatically improve safety, according to General Motors. The technology could scan the car's surroundings for possible hazards. Any object deemed dangerous, such as a deer on the side of the road, could flash on the windshield to draw the driver’s attention to it. In conditions of poor visibility, an augmented reality windshield could help point out the edges of the road, the lines on the road, and any important road signs.

BMW has another example for how augmented reality might work in automobiles in the near future. Suppose that you wanted to repair something in your car, but knew very little about how to go about it. Rather than take it to a mechanic, you could put on your augmented reality glasses, and get step-by-step instructions for how to repair it yourself. The software in your glasses would recognize the parts of your car as you looked at them, and create a detailed illustration showing you exactly what you needed to do in real-time.

The tutorial applications of augmented reality are endless. In addition to repairing a car, augmented reality could help teach people how to perform a wide variety of tasks, from processes as simple as cooking to those as complex as open-heart surgery. Eventually, even augmented reality glasses will become obsolete, as computing power becomes cheap enough to fit inside regular eyeglasses or contact lenses to project virtual images directly onto the user’s eye.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil envisions a future in which contact lenses come with several different viewing modes, depending on what the user wants to see at any given moment. There would be a “normal mode,” which simply displays the real world as we currently observe it. There would be an “augmented mode,” in which the user’s augmented reality applications superimpose virtual images over top of the user’s regular view of the world. Finally, there would be a “blocking mode,” in which the real world was not displayed at all, allowing the user to become fully visually immersed in a website, book, movie, or computer game.

Some of the earliest applications of augmented reality are already being rolled out on the iPhone and Android. This technology seems poised to explode into mainstream use over the next 10-15 years, and will quite literally change how we see the world.

PREDICTIONS:

By 2013 – Useful augmented reality applications exist on PCs and/or tablets to allow shoppers to virtually try on clothing before purchasing it online.

By 2017 – At least one-third of all smartphone and/or tablet users have an augmented reality application to project virtual images over the real world, as seen through their screen.

By 2021 – Augmented reality is routinely used to train people how to perform process-based tasks such as cooking, dentistry, surgery, furniture assembly, factory work, and/or auto repair.

By 2023 – At least half of all new, non-driverless automobiles in the US have augmented reality technology in the windshield for safety and/or navigational purposes.

By 2028 – Augmented reality contact lenses exist which can place virtual overlays of the world directly onto the wearer’s eye, or block out the real world altogether if the wearer desires.

The Future of Automobiles - Driverless Cars

In 2007, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored an event called the Urban Challenge. Recognizing the utility of self-driving vehicles for military purposes, DARPA invited 11 teams from universities and corporations to build vehicles that would be able to navigate a course through a makeshift city without any human interference. Furthermore, the teams would have to obey all the traffic laws and avoid any collisions with other vehicles, buildings, or obstacles. Six of the teams were able to complete the contest, led by Carnegie Mellon University.

The most successful self-driving cars use cameras and lasers mounted on every side of the car to “see” their surroundings, and send the images to a computer in the car to process them in real time. The technology has already advanced to the point where computers can read road signs, detect other fast-moving objects (like cars), and generally obey the traffic laws. General Motors has announced that they will start testing driverless vehicles in 2015, and hopes to have them on the road by 2018.

The biggest technical obstacle that still needs to be overcome involves dealing with unexpected situations. The driverless car prototypes, such as Carnegie Mellon’s vehicle “Boss,” are fairly good at recognizing and obeying stop signs and traffic lights. However, these vehicles are built with the assumption that all other cars on the road will obey the laws as well. Most humans can hit the brakes if another car runs a red light or if an animal runs out in front of our car, but unfortunately the driverless cars are not quite there yet. However, with the speed at which driverless technology is progressing, it seems very likely that this problem will be overcome in the next few years, and self-driving cars will be able to react at least as well as human drivers.

The impact that driverless cars will have on society will be nothing less than transformative. The biggest revolutions will occur in safety and lifestyle.

In the United States, over 40,000 people are tragically killed each year in car accidents, 95% of which are due to human error. Driverless cars thus offer us the opportunity to save 38,000 lives every year. When the technology matures, the computerized systems in our cars will have reflexes thousands of times quicker than human drivers, and will be able to scan all around the car at all times to identify any potential dangers.

Driverless cars will also improve our lifestyle, by reducing commute times. Driverless cars will be able to identify any road delays via the internet, and plan an alternate route to avoid getting stuck in traffic. Furthermore, when driverless cars become ubiquitous, there will be no need for individuals to own cars. When cars can drive themselves, why would I spend thousands of dollars on a car that will sit unused in a garage or parking lot for most of the day? It would be much more efficient for cities to develop networks of public cars that could drive themselves to pick people up as needed. If I needed to go across town, I could use my phone to order the nearest car to pick me up. If I needed a car to pick me up at the same place and time every day (such as for my morning commute to work), I could schedule this as well. These networks of driverless cars could operate similar to taxi cabs, but much more efficiently, safely, and cheaply.

The biggest long-term obstacles to driverless cars are liability laws. While driverless cars could save up to 38,000 lives per year that would otherwise be lost due to human error, what happens if 1,000 lives are lost due to computer error? Under our present liability system, the auto manufacturers would lose their shirts. Unless these laws are changed, it will be extremely difficult from an economic standpoint for auto companies to roll out self-driving vehicles in the United States for commercial use.

I am optimistic that this problem can be overcome. As soon as the utility of driverless cars becomes clear (probably by 2015-2020), there will likely be a legislative push to limit the liability for auto manufacturers. When that happens, we will enter the era of automated transportation and the world will be forever changed.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2020 - Driverless cars are commercially-available and street-legal somewhere in the United States.
By 2027 - New driverless cars outnumber new cars requiring at least some human control, in the US market.
By 2035 - Driverless cars are widely perceived as safer than human drivers. Somewhere in the United States, it is illegal for humans to drive.