Archives: February 2010

Sat Feb 27, 2010

A First Pass at a Design for The Singularity

Human relationships have progressed through six orders.
The seventh is upon us. I forecast that the revolution will be in 2014.

	2^0	| 1 self
x2
	2^1	= 2 partnership (one-on-one)
x4
	2^3	| 8 family
x16
	2^7	= 128 team
x256
	2^15	| 32,768 tribe\hierarchy (B)
		- with a person at the top
x64K
	2^31	= 2,147,483,648 civil society (F)
x4B
	2^63	| 8*10^18 cyber society - 8 quintillion people - 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (J)
		- At 1 billion people per planet, that's 8 billion planets.
		- At 1 billion agents per person that's 8 billion people
		- with the person at the top
x2^64
	2^127	= what would this be?, it's not even imaginable to me (Network)


Here is the same progression again focusing on the expected number of people for each order, showing group size:


1	self	|
2	pair	= each interacts with 1 - (1 other) - God is a friend
8	family	| each interacts with 2 - (1 mother, 1 father) - God is the father
128	team	= each interacts with 8 - (2 chiefs, 4 members, 2 others) - God is the captain - there is only one God, the 

creator of the universe
2^15	tribe	| each interacts with 128 - (2 hierarchs, 4 above above, 8 above, 16 below, 32 peers, 64 others) - God is 

the top of the hierarchy, bad: there are many gods
2^31	civil	= each interacts with 2^15 - (2K competitors, 4K vendors, 8K customers, 16K market) - God is the most 

important, bad: god is everything
2^63	join	| each interacts with 2^31 - (120M deciders, 250M organizers, 500M services?, 1B people in the world) - God 

weaves the spread, bad: I am the center?
2^127	network	= each interacts with 2^63 - (2^127 agents)


What if every person in the world had a separate intelligent agent (an artificial person) to interact with every other person in the world as part of the next order. How would that do?



How out of a billion agents do you rise to the level of attention?

- to conceive, select, grow, implement an idea
- to work/create together
- to alert each other
- to broadcast a message to many
- to converse
- to help each other
- to understand each other
- to know each other so that we can know the significance of the contact
- to 1 build a partnership
- to 2 marry each other
- to 3 build a team
- to 4 build a hierarchy
- to 5 build a civil market
- to listen to many
- and the agent would make decisions
- and the agent would interact with other agents in order to determine priority
- the agent would become an entity
- sales vs honesty (fix this problem)
- therapy/support
- navigating the spread

- and the agents would have 2^127 interactions 'links' - but you need to develop the agents first

- what can an entity do? create, analyze, decide, interact, learn/grow, love, attack, ignore, search/find, follow/obey



Here is the history structure within which each of these orders has/will occur:


----1	226B yrs
-W-
-V-
-U-
-T-
----2	14.1 B yrs
-S-universe/stars
-R-planets
-Q-quickening/life
-P-oxygen
----3	881,942,216 yrs
-O-animals
-N-land
-M-massive/size
-L-flowers
----4	55,121,389 yrs
-K-lemurs
-J-jungle/monkeys
-I-apes					64 ice ages
-H-hominids				32 ice ages
----5	3445086.8 yrs
-G-humans				16 ice ages
-F-family				8 ice ages
-E-stone				4 ice ages
-D-killing/language			2 ice ages
----6	215317.92 yrs
-C-consciousness/minds/cold		1 ice age
-B-teams
-A-artifact/technology
 @-merging
----7	13457.370 yrs
+A-agriculture/cultures	age		hexadecade	quartade	4096ade
+B-barbarian		-------		-------		-------		-------		-------
+C-civilized		1792 years	112 years	7 years		160 days	10 days
+D-dark/decycle/alphbet	897 years	56 years	3.5 years	80 days		5 days
----8	841.08564 yrs
+E-enlighten		448 years	28 years	640 days	40 days		sleepless
+F-federal		224 years	14 years (era)	320 days	20 days
+G-generator		112 years	7 yrs		160 days	10 days
+H-holocaust/computers	56 years	3.5 yrs		80 days		5 days
----9	52.567853 yrs
+I-internet/agents	28 years	640 days	40 days		sleepless - whatever was before does not impinge
+J-join			14 years	320 days	20 days
+K-krobotics		7 years		160 days	10 days
+L-loss			3.5 yrs		80 days		5 days
----10	3.2854908 yrs = 1200 days
+M-			640		40 days		sleepless - whatever was before does not impinge
+N-network		960		20 days
+O-			1120 days	10 days
+P-			1200 days	5 days
----11	75 days
+Q-queen of ?		1240 days	sleepless
+R-return?		1260 days
+S-			1270 days
+T-			1275 days
----12	4.6875 days = 112.5 hrs
+U-
+V-
+W-
+X-

with 7.03125 hrs left over


Posted by: Jon Grover on Feb 27, 10 | 8:14 pm | Profile

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Sun Feb 21, 2010

GUI's Have No Formal Notation.

GUI's are not formal languages and they do not adhere to a formal language. Although they are as complicated as computer languages they suffer from the lack of formalization. When you work with a computer language there is a consistent format to what you are working with. These are called formal languages. Formal languages mean that you don't have to learn a different configuration for every operation. They mean that you can learn the formalism and then rely on what you've learned as you learn new part so the language. They mean that you know what to expect. Even with a new language you know there's going to be a formal language in there somewhere. GUI's are not like that. Every one is different. No formal notation exists to describe them. You can't learn one GUI and then expect to use your knowledge to learn others. You can't even take a step back and look at a formal representation of the GUI to see how it's structured.

There could be a formal notation for GUI's. It would help as we tried to learn the next GUI. We can do this.

Posted by: Jon Grover on Feb 21, 10 | 6:42 pm | Profile

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Sat Feb 13, 2010

GUI's make it hard to figure out what went wrong.

If I am going to complain about GUI's, it makes sense for me to probably come up with something better. The better UI would perhaps include the best of GUI, a little bit of file editing (code like) and a search feature beyond anything we now have. The search feature would be based on endemes and focused as its context on the application at hand. Anyway, here is this week's rant about GUIs.

Lets say you use the SQL Server Reporting Services Report Designer to build a report, then store it in SharePoint, then run it from either SharePoint or a C# program. Most of this is handled with GUI's. If something goes wrong, you get the useless message 'An error has occurred during report processing. (rsProcessingAborted) Query execution failed for dataset 'MyList'. (rsErrorExecutingCommand) For more information about this error navigate to the report server on the local server machine, or enable remote errors '. How do you tell where the error is? Is it in Sharepoint? SQL Server? Your Stored Procedure? Your Dataset? Your Report? The way the connection is stored in SharePoint? Your C# program? The browser? Because none of these systems allow you to use breakpoints you can't tell which failed. In this case it turned out to be permissions on my stored procedure. It could just as easily have been any of the others; but the error doesn't say anything about permissions problems. It doesn't say anything about a stored procedure. And yes I've tried enabling remote errors and it has never worked.

Another error I have had complains about not being able to connect to the database. How was I to know it was some checkbox or other in SharePoint? The error mentioned the database, not SharePoint.
--
Why don't GUI's have debuggers? Even if you can't change the code inside, seeing where things go wrong could be really helpful. We who build user interfaces can do this.

Posted by: Jon Grover on Feb 13, 10 | 7:23 pm | Profile

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Sat Feb 06, 2010

GUI's Lack Memory

GUI's have no memory. GUIs don't have the ability to retain the sequence of what you just did with them. When you click, and drop, and click, and drop, and type, and bring up, and close etc, there is no memory in the system of what you just did. How on earth can you figure out the long and convoluted series of actions you took with the GUI so six months down the road you can do it again? Then lets say you have to grind through a dozen of these complex sequences a week. How can you possibly remember all of them? Or even a few of them. GUI's are not easy. They are a pain in the brain. At least they are for me because I have a weak memory. Are computers really only for those people with great memories. come on!
--
GUI's could have traces so that you can repeat or at least re-read what you've done? You could go tho the trace page ad see what you have done and even copy it out and paste it into a user manual. We can do this.

Posted by: Jon Grover on Feb 06, 10 | 6:37 pm | Profile

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