Screaming Penguin

Evidently MIT's Michael L. Dertouzos needs to get a little bit more Oxygen to his brain. When I received this month's issue, I was eager to see what the vaunted MIT Laboratory for Computer Science felt was the future of computing. I am disappointed. Here are a few of the bones I have to pick with Mr. Dertouzos' view of the future... RANT MODE=1.To make his argument that the computer should adapt to the human, not vice versa, he says:

"First, we must bring new technologies into our lives, not vice versa. We will not accomplish more if we leave our current lives, don goggles and bodysuits, and enter some metallic, gigabyte-infested cyberspace. When the industrial revolution came, we didn't go to motorspace."

Evidently, history is not his forte. Actually, both the agricultural and industrial revolutions completely changed how people worked. Consider the industrial revolution. Instead of performing a wide variety of tasks throughout a given day, suddenly people began doing the same task, over and over again, on assembly lines (mechanical or otherwise). The standard work day concept grew up during this time. It fundamentally changed everything about how and when we did work. In effect, we went into "industryspace." In the process, each person adapted to the machine they worked. The machine wasn't built to your specifications. If you were too tall, you stooped. If you were too short, you stood on something.Next, he provides us with an example of how easy computers should be with his, "Take us to Athens," example. Sheesh! The machine should be smart enough to know that "us" means two people? What if there are three? What if last time you meant two and this time you meant three? I think this fellow misses the fundamental point that it takes time to train systems to make educated guesses, and even then it can be wrong. A human manager talking to a human administrative assistant has to provide those details or risk mistakes, so how can he expect the machine to make the leap flawlessly? Will people be patient enough while the machine repeatedly makes mistakes (perhaps costly ones) and learns from them? Or will they have to answer a questionnaire of 3,000 questions to configure the machine? Will they put up with that?His next point is that there are lots of disenfranchised people in this information age. This is not really news to anyone. The Handy 21-Enviro 21 solution (called Oxygen) offered does not address this at all. Who's going to pay for all the Handy 21 handsets for people who can't afford to buy groceries? Somehow a handset that acts as FM radio, cell phone, TV, two way radio, and pager does not seem to appear on the lowest rung of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, last time I studied psychology. Who pays for the setup and administration costs of Enviro 21 in public areas?The last thing that hacked me off about this "vision of the future" is the Information Marketplace concept. This fellow is talking about completely destroying the economies of the Western world. "Imagine 1,000 accountants from Beijing doing accounting services for General Motors at $1 per hour." Jesus, what a scary thought. Isn't it bad enough that GM is shipping the lower paying manual labor positions overseas? The United States, Canada, the U.K. and Europe are migrating towards service based economies since manual labor is cheap in other parts of the world. Companies will choose the cheap supplier whenever they can. Goodbye service sector. What's left for us?Now, don't get me wrong. The technologies that enable Oxygen are vital to the continued progress of the information age. The work is good and I think it will benefit society, but certainly not in the way Mr. Dertouzos predicts. Perhaps an information marketplace like the one he describes will exist someday, but I am confident that fundamental changes in the world economy must occur before it happens. Those changes must be conducted in a controlled, gradual fashion or most of the West will be destabilized. By the time the technology is mature, in place, and culturally accepted, Oxygen will be old news.RANT MODE=0.