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Technological Singularities Decades Away, Microprocessor’s Creator Says

"Frankly, I see no way in the next 60 years at least that we will be able to challenge the human brain in terms of complexity." —Federico Faggin, the architect of the first microprocessor

"Frankly, I see no way in the next 60 years at least that we will be able to challenge the human brain in terms of complexity." —Federico Faggin, the architect of the first microprocessor

Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil have postulated that one day, humans will be able to download their consciousness to a computer. Nonsense, replied Federico Faggin, the architect of the first microprocessor.

Faggin appeared at a small gathering of Intel’s top minds on Tuesday night, in part to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the microprocessor.

“If I look at the next 40 years, what I can see in the mainstream is more of the same: faster processors, more cores, blah blah blah, the same things we’ve been doing,” Faggin said. The real goal will be to build chips that emulate the brain, also known as cognitive computing, he said.

Faggin said he studied neural science for five years while at Synaptics, where he worked on its optical character recognizer chip and touchpad, and concluded that mankind is “far, far away from understanding the way the brain works”.

A brain, Faggin said, is a living thing. A computer is a zombie, an “idiot savant,” he said. “And its intelligence is the intelligence of the programmer who programmed it.”

In other words, the concept of the technological singularity, where mankind’s collective intelligence increases by way of generations of machines that become successively more intelligent, is still science fiction.

“Frankly, I don’t subscribe to that,” Faggin said, when asked about the singularity concept. “Frankly, I see no way in the next 60 years at least that we will be able to challenge the human brain in terms of complexity. Those same people are talking about downloading the brain into the computer. Who can do that? What is a brain? What is consciousness? They’re talking about things that they don’t really know what they’re talking about, in my opinion.”

“So I think there’s a long bridge to go before we understand how the brain work and the integrate some of these more salient characteristics, so I’m not worried about a singularity at all,” Faggin said.

[From the Mark Hachman article posted on PCMag.com, which can be read by following this link]

Steve Jobs’ death: Is the world overreacting?

Everyone agrees: He created great gadgets. But, some note, he didn’t cure cancer, end apartheid, or bring about the fall of communism

Since Steve Jobs’ death Wednesday night, emotional tributes have been pouring in, proclaiming how the Apple co-founder changed the world and revolutionized computing, capitalism, and the way we consume media. But while fanboys weep and the media pontificates, some are wondering if we’re going overboard and mourning a CEO as if he were a saint. Are all the tributes and tears too much?

He wasn’t Jesus: ”Calm down people,” says Hamilton Nolan at Gawker. “A tech genius has passed on,” and it’s a “devastating loss to Steve Jobs’ close friends and family members, as well as to Apple executives and shareholders.” The rest of us need to get a grip and save the grandiose displays of public grief for those great figures who have unselfishly worked to cure disease, end wars, or fight poverty. Yes, Apple products are cool, but “they are not heroes, and neither is their creator, no matter how skilled he may have been.”

[Read more by visiting TheWeek.com]

An Open Letter to Chrome

Dear Chrome,

I love how you always offer to translate a website that isn’t in my native language, but I really do wish there was a way to set that to Automatic so that when I visit, let’s say, a German site, I have the option of bypassing your prompt for translation by allowing you to do so automatically, when detecting a foreign language site. Wouldn’t this improve the browsing experience overall, by retaining the natural flow of the experience? If needed, you could even allow for an option to have an icon appear in the address bar, much like your Bookmark Star already does. This would allow a person to revert to the original language of the site, for example a person who is comfortable reading that foreign language. The icon would allow for reversion, and offer the option of filtering that particular language form then on—if the user so chooses.

Anyhow, will you at least think about it?

An Open Letter to HP

Yesterday, word broke across numerous news sites featuring tech news that HP’s Touchpad™ tablet was being clearanced out at $99 for the 16GB model of the market failure for HP. The resulting “fire storm” sale of the Touchpad™ has demonstrated to every other company what most of us have known for a long time: Sell your tablets for $150 and under, and people will grab them. Then, make sure you have the apps available through your online store that will help you earn the losses you incurred on the initial sale. Even if that person sells the device later, the next owner will want to come through that market as well, and you’re repeating sales on down the road.

How long would it really take to pay for the loss incurred on each initial sale (tablet) through a properly envisioned app store and cloud storage service where your share is something any developer would jump at, while still earning the money to pay off the tablet?

Take it a bit further. You expect to release the next model right around the time that the first model is paid for through residual sales through the sale of apps and cloud storage. The person upgrades to tablet v2 and the cycle begins again. Better apps for the v2, enhancements of the cloud storage feature, and the v1′s pass to others to now earn you profits (the loss is now paid for, remember) and you’ve increased your revenue source by as much as your sales of the v2 fared.

Apple has used built-in obsolescence for years, and there’s no reason why the same principle cannot be applied to tablet PCs. By the time that you’ve brought tablet v3 onto the market, owners of v1 should be making the hard decision about whether to be stuck with their v1, which will no longer see updates or enhancements, or upgrade to a new model—ideally, the new v3, because the v2 group will also be looking to upgrade, and will themselves be looking for buyers among the v1 owners, and therefore you will be competing more for the v1 owners’ dollars than for the v2 owners’ dollars.

By the third year, you’re in the black and just in time for the next evolution in computing and technology.

That’s how it’s done. And any competing manufacturer of a tablet could do the same.