World: r3wp

an application is not just a program, its the logical use of a process. 
 the processes change, the needs change, but the act of applying 
a process to a need will always remain.

wether its sifting through an audio library with your fingers and 
cardboard with vinyl inside... or browsing on your ipod...

both are applications.

in one case an ordered collection within a box or shelf, in the other 
its virtual... but the box, really is just like a mechanical software.

Sometimes it's good to remember that the terms "computer" and "database" 
predate electronics, or even electrical devices.

I know I'm not saying anything revolutionary... but "programming" 
has always been around us.  and since we will foreseeably continue 
to use machines... we'll always do so in the future... I only guess 
that in 50 years, we'll be making AI apps which learn concepts.  
and the interface to these systems will be more easy to use... but 
there will always be people who do work for others...

I myself am working on a concept which would significantly change 
the perspective on how "intelligent machines" computers and what 
have not... are used.

I saw a cheesy post-apocalyptic scifi movie recently where there 
were people that were essentially witches. They were called "programmers" 
:)

I hope to finally start working on prototypes later this year.

hehe

I look forward to your ideas. Later!

Reichart, about AI, if the AI does the programming, then the AI is 
the programmer. Note, that I don't see any reason why we should not 
consider the AI a "person". (if we don't, and the AI eventually kills 
all of us, I won't blame "it")

persons

 (whether running in an organic brain, or not) will still create informations; 
 that creation we can call "programming" (or "painting" or "composing" 
 etc, except that they become all the same thing since we get to their 
 deeper meaning of "information")

But, this is about "people", no?

its funny (or rather not) cause I see no point in developping AI 
within the confines of an economy.  once a true AI "conscience" will 
be feasible. we suddenly loose the need for "employes".  just like 
the romans soldiers, at one point, didn't have any new lands to conquer, 
so basically a big social rift was caused.

Reichart, I wouldn't worry too much. What you're talking about require 
true AI, and we're not even close to have that. First we need computer 
technology based on quantum physics, then we need someone to build 
the system. I don't see this happen any time soon.

I'm not worried at all, and I'm privy to project in AI that are already 
demonstrating very impressive results.  


Systematic automation of a large quantity of currently menial jobs 
will occur in dramatic proportions in the next 50 years.


Where are the secretaries of yesterday?  The banks and rooms of young 
ladies typing away?


Several years ago the FDIC (American banking overview group), mandated 
Electronic fund transfer over paper.  Who suffered?  10,000 pilots 
lost their jobs.  Since they were not union, no one made a fuss in 
the news.  They used to fly boxes of receipts from place to place.


Instead of asking what jobs will be lost, think of it in terms of 
what jobs are people currently doing that simply don't need to be 
done a person.


It is so odd to me how people (even smart people) hold on to the 
past like a dog with an old bone.


No AI was needed to replace these jobs.  Are these young ladies without 
work?  Are all these lads no longer flying.  NOPE.


There are more jobs for people that can type than any time in history. 
 And pilots are in huge demand, as the prices of private planes have 
dramatically fallen (Honda is releasing a plane!) the private executive 
sector has grown.

but real AI has the potential to replace a majority of jobs.  that 
is the issue... not just a type of job.  AI means downloadable and 
infinitely replicatable things you purchase once and abuse forever.

obviously one will say that you will have more AI tech and robot 
techs... but  when you look at the textile industry... in america, 
the places which make profit have very little employes.  apply this 
to the whole manufacturing process... where you don't need to build 
costly custom equipment but rather a generic worker bot.  then it 
start getting a bit scarier... my guess is that the countries with 
the most to loose with AI are places like india and china... which 
the west is using as an equivalent to AI.

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft - and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
- Wernher von Braun (1912- 1977)

What I can see is world going to sh*t.

I am not fearing real AI, but other aspect around it. It is job - 
dehumanisation as a result of globalisation.

humans not having to work is good. what is bad is making us pay for 
things that are not scarce.

In the past century, so called "capitalist" knew his people. His 
motives and intention was to make a money, but he needed those ppl. 
In today's world, we suffer badly from globalisation. Only numbers 
are important. CZ is often so called off-shore development country. 
So, one of last built factories here is factory built by Citroen, 
Toyota, Peugeot (http://www.tpca-cz.com/cz/) They produce 1 car 
in 1 minute? My friend from IBM, visiting the factory told me, that 
he got really strange feeling about it. The autiomatition is so hig, 
that ppl do what robots can't do effectively. Actually those ppl 
do look like robots. Imo even worse situation is with Ahold and similar 
global companies, where TV helped to uncover some unhuman treatment 
of employees.

Like bottled water?

economy

 works around scarcity. once things are no more scarce (or they can't 
 be - eg information), what we call "economy" makes no more sense.

or diamonds :)

Management sitting in some distant country, not really carring for 
anything else than - numbers ...

diamonds are artificially scarce.

you see, humans currently do live inside the Matrix. it was created 
by sellers, not by machines, to extract money, not electricity. but 
the principle is the same.

but if you know that, you won't want one.

AI is a radical change, and as such, it could shake things enough 
to let people out of the Matrix.

It is so odd to me how people (even smart people) hold on to the 
past like a dog with an old bone.

True, that's not very clever, because everything is changing all 
the time. I'll give you, that the traditional typist will be replaced 
by something smarter, but talking about programmers, I think more 
in the term of system developers. And as I see it, there will be 
greater demands for good developers in the future.

It's grwat that AI is replacing

oh sorry

It's great that AI is replacing jobs. We don't live in 19th century 
where our grand-grand-fathers destroyed machines because they took 
their jobs away. But, please, can somebody write some AI to replace 
middle management? I don't think it's hard to write something that 
does forward emails, produces lot of useless *.XLS and *.PPT, does 
not understand a bit of what the team is doing and in the end collects 
bonus for the team's work.

Oh I see, there's the problem. The AI couldn't probably collect the 
bonus and paying to people who actually did some work is not in the 
interest of succesful, young & dynamic company.

19th century? AFAIK, the phenomenon was known already back in the 
17th century. This is absolutely nothing new. I'm pretty sure that 
no matter what jobs are going to fade out over the next 50 years, 
2-3 new jobs will come in to replace them, because productivity grows 
to entirely new levels, increasing 10-fold or more. The Japanese 
are really good at this.


I think the biggest problem is how unwilling people are to adapt 
to radically new technologies, that they are not able or willing 
to foresee that their job may be obsolete soon due to technological 
advances.

There are so many technological fields opening up as more things 
are made possible. I imagine one could apply for a job as an astronaut 
in 50 years, if you are fit enough and remember to eat your daily 
slim-fit foodpill. What about the stabilization and development of 
poor countries in 50 years?  If they are going to be as consuming 
and as productive in 50 years as an industrial country is today, 
then there is going to be millions of new jobs available. Technology 
and progress make far more jobs than they destroy.

Technology and progress make far more jobs than they destroy.

Technology and progress make far more jobs than they destroy.

sorry, the updates of Altme set the send-button back to return ....

Technology and progress make far more jobs than they destroy.

I don't think so. I don't see where this (mis-)conception comes from 
(as I have friends telling the same). Of course there will always 
be new technologies and these need people developing them and the 
like. But since we started the industrial revolution and especially 
since the information-age, people get (luckily) less and less important 
and needed. Also we just need so many programmers nowadays because 
the state of the industry is still in its infancy and there is still 
no real solution to the complexity problem very much apparent here. 
In a more ideal world there wouldn't even be so much progammers needed, 
just to fix bugs and do all kinds of things which should be automized.

In the past the majority of people fed themself. So many people were 
kind of self-employed, just to live. In the industrial age we still 
didn't have his much automation, so people were needed to fill this 
gap, even though they were getting more and more fed by less farmers. 
But this need for man-power is declining now, it's just not that 
obvious because there are so and so many countries where labor is 
still cheaper than the machines, but that's not gonna last.

Moving this convo to Chit Chat....

Firefox3: Web Apps Game changer. Firefox3 is going to deliver support 
for offline applications. http://www.drury.net.nz/2007/02/03/firefox3-web-apps-game-changer/

LWJGL - Java game library 1.0 released - http://www.lwjgl.org/

Remember PA Semi? The company has just released, as promised, its 
first chipset. "They are full 64-bit PPC, support virtualisation, 
and would do Alitvec but that name is copyrighted by Freescale. Instead 
they do 'VMA'. The three parts run at a max wattage of 25, 15 and 
10W for the 2.0, 1.5 and 1.0GHz parts respectively, with typical 
wattage listed at 13, 8 and 6W. The individual cores are said to 
have a 7W max and 4W typical power consumption at 2.0GHz." PA Semi 
was one of the prime reasons why Ars's John 'Hannibal' Stokes doubted 
Apple's reasoning for the switch to Intel.

http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=37426

https://jogl-demos.dev.java.net/- another java-opengl lib. with 
webstart and applet-demos.  Needs a little bit polishing, but i am 
not sure the flash-runtime has thatmch advantages.  Tested with firefox/linux.

It would be really nice to have possibility to interact with Rebol 
and hardware like in these java examples one day:) But the examples 
are quite huge. I have to download 7.7MB to see one demo. I'm looking 
forward, what it will do:)

all leads to the conclusion this will be possible (and possibly even 
easy :-) with R3

this  stuff was intended to come with the os. yourvendor choosed 
not to include it^^