FWD: Notes on recent Gates lecture

Notes below by Nathan Martin, Carbon Defense League
http://www.carbondefense.org
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"We're Writing Too Much Code"

Bill Gates Speaks About Context, Abstract Code, and
Software's Future
at
Carnegie Mellon University

Feb 25, 2004

11:30 AM

Fifteen minutes ago I was released from a lecture at
Carnegie Mellon by
the
super-billionaire Bill Gates. I thought it apt that I
compose this
series of
notes using Microsoft Word on my office copy of
Microsoft Windows XP
and
send it off as an email using Microsoft Outlook.
Unfortunately the
ubiquitous computing that Bill touted was all branded
Microsoft.



These are primarily a set of lecture notes I am
copying and expanding
on. I
did not bring a notebook or notepad with me to the
lecture so these are
being copied from a torn up CD sleeve I was given
outside the lecture
hall
containing a distribution of Knoppix (a bootable Linux
CD). They might
be
interesting to some of you since well Bill Gates
doesn't speak at
universities that often to the "future innovators of
computer science,"

Or better the future employees of Microsoft since his
visit comes the
day
after a Career Fair for CMU undergrads was held in the
same building as
Bill
's lecture.



Bill seemed most interested, as many of us are, in the
possibilities
associated with wireless. In particular he spoke of
experiments with FM
sideband, where signals piggyback off existing
frequencies. He talked
about
ad hoc networks, wi-mesh, and p2p configurations. He
spoke about the
potential for this use and rural areas and areas with
highly limited
access.
"Low cost computing is about empowerment," said Bill
in reference to
his won
discussion about issues of access. He stressed the
overall importance
of
productivity and talked of his own interest in
expanding opportunities
as
part of the global expansion that has been going on
the past thirty
years.
These were his social agendas that were mixed in
throughout the one
hour
lecture with showcases of new devices and explanations
of Microsoft R &
D.
Primarily he was touting Microsoft's philanthropic
efforts, which are
numerous but pale in comparison to the company's
profit margin.



He talked about p2p networks and file sharing in
particular. He spoke
highly
of them in fact and was in support of the potential
for amazing and
legal
use to further access and pervasive networking. He
spoke of the need
for a
system that supports the artists but creates a
filetype of usage that
is
across platform rather than proprietary. Bill focused
much of the
lecture on
ubiquitous computing being able to have your media on
demand on any
device
anywhere you are. He showed some new devices but spoke
of course of
bandwidth limitations being the biggest hurdle in that
field.



The other major hurdle stopping media from flying
through the air more
regularly are the issues around trustworthy computing.
Some of the
systems
he proposed to push ahead trustworthy computing are
obviously taken
from
many of the web experiments in friend schemes and peer
approval ratings
systems we have seen. He spoke of course of the
internet as a democracy
(do
people still believe this rhetoric?). He spoke of one
idea of search
engines
that would return content rated by a friend or a
friend of a friend.
That we
would all be willing to rate movies, media, web sites
is maybe a bit
far
fetched. This does relate to some smaller networks we
see emerging but
is
not a breakthrough. Interesting though to my own work
and much of what
I see
others involved in are these small communities and
primarily
experimental
databases. Bill spoke a lot about databases. He has
yet to look past
this
model, which admittedly neither have I so let's go
with it. Bill
exclaimed
that there is too much code. Programmers are producing
low level code
that
will never cooperate and that this is why there are
numerous similar
projects going on that cannot share as much as they
would benefit from
sharing. This does not mean he supported Linux or
FreeBSD or open
source
strategies with this statement since he did expand on
his statement to
declare the need for interesting and contextual visual
interfaces. He
was
calling for what he called "abstract code." He saw
this being supported
by
accepted standards.



The most interesting area of the lecture was around
this concept of
contextual information. He showed some UI experiments
done at Microsoft
around creating contextual information: images
searchable for faces,
choosing day or night photos, text searching in
movies, etc. This
information could be visualized in various 3D ways on
the screen. He
talked
about his continued support for eventual fruition of
good speech
recognition
and image recognition and spoke of the triumphs so far
in text
recognition.
This all related to his concept for software that
enables an
intelligent and
quick database. An intelligent database would be able
to relate and
organize
what he said within this decade would be a lifetime of
media for each
individual user depending on what we want and when. A
scheduler based
on
this system might know where we are and what device we
have and how
information should be ideally distributed to you
depending on your
habits -
your context. Humans understand context - software as
yet does not.
This is
where he saw the future of software coming from,
contextual software
and
data management. Creating programming environments
that are not about
code
but are useable graphically and based on some
standards as well as
interfaces to media that are across device, have some
intelligence, and
learn based on users habits, and human contexts. This
is reiterating a
lot
of the research I had seen in SF in 2000/2001 working
in a research
environment at a design firm. This was a reiteration
of the promises of
ubiquitous or pervasive computing which have yet to
fully come to
fruition.
However, what Bill was right about is the need for
existing management
systems that organize our expanding media collections
according to our
desires and preferences - not just date and filetype.
He spoke of
cameras
that would upload images to a server and stamp them
with time as well
as GPS
coordinates. He demanded software that was about
priorities and
contexts and
somehow Microsoft is the coming that will bring this
all to us, and the
world.



Bill talked a bit about the future of AI and its uses
and laughed
through a
description of the robotic vacuum cleaner, the only
commercial device
on the
market that uses AI (according to Bill and I have no
data to challenge
this). I only throw this in as a member of my own
collective is
involved in
research specifically about a community of hackers
that mod such
devices.



Most interestingly, Bill seemed most excited about the
connection
between
mobile gadgets, WiFi ad hoc networks, and friend
networks - not to
mention
blogs, Wikis, etc.. He talked about these things
working together to
create
a comment and approval system that would then solve
many issues with
trustworthy computing (as long as SMTP standards are
trashed as well).
Unfortunately for me, an artist who scammed a ticket
into the event,
Bill
explained that all of these innovations will come from
CS and EE. He
said
that the two areas of research that will improve the
world in this
decade
are CS/EE and Biology/Biotech. He laughed about how
these areas
determine
the focus of other areas like law practice, etc. He
also talked about
the
need for cross discipline working but several times
said that the real
innovations will come from students with a CS
background. Perhaps Bill
should sponsor some artist's grant programs? So all of
you interesting
people that I know and don't know doing amazing
research and
experimentation - beware Microsoft has similar
interests and they are
cutthroat. When I worked for Palm Computing two
Microsoft spies were
arrested on the 3Com campus. If they are going after
Palm, they will
likely
be showing up at media arts events. With so much work
in the media arts
or
tactical media or locative media or whatever you call
it relating to
friend
approval schemes, GPS, mapping, location, UI
experimentation, etc, we
are
likely to see that invasion soon if not already. Watch
your back - Bill
might steal your ideas!

Nathan Martin

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