Today I’ll address two questions that continue to come up.
First: with secure natural communications people can walk around the streets not holding any computing device and look up some piece of data or request a computation from the computing cloud, and it gets performed by an intelligent infrastructure. I’m asked - how realistic is this? People struggle to understand the vastness of the infrastructure needs to achieve this lofty goal. Are parts of this “vision” beyond our grasp?
Here is how I think about it. There are more and less demanding variations on secure natural communications. Enough technology exists that a proof-of-concept could be built, today. Over a long period of time technology and infrastructure advances will make more of this possible. Key to making this happen, however, is to set a stretch goal so we can plan the required physical infrastructure and motivate the necessary innovation.
Second question: Information infrastructure, as in today’s wireless infrastructure, Internet or World Wide Web provides more than communications. Most of the value is in the applications - e-commerce, auctions, advertising, document interchange, compute intensive applications, storage. How does our focus on communications relate to the larger computing applications.
Here is how I think about this issue. At the moment, this blog is focusing on the core infrastructure rather than the compute tasks because for each of these tasks, there is a dominant common communications infrastructure need. To be sure, communications takes place at every level: from physical transmission of bits at the lowest level to the interpretation thereof by applications that have application level protocols.
In particular, when we discuss “the player’s semantic experience”, we will ultimately support the semantics for every type of computing task. However, with the existence of millions of applications this blog will not address application specific protocols herein – although some require substantial infrastructure of their own. That work must proceed in parallel with the core communications infrastructure.
Next blog posting I will next move to a detailed description of the five constructs mentioned in the introductory posting.
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1) "Most of the value is in the applications - e-commerce, auctions, advertising, document interchange, compute intensive applications, storage. How does our focus on communications relate to the larger computing applications."
ReplyDelete-Advertising: Just as google shows ads for the gmail, similarly automated systems can be developed which display relevant ads based on the data exchanged over the Secure Natural Communication channel. Example: Suppose me and my friend are discussing going out for dinner to some place, the automated system listens to the data, and suggests some good places(if we request the system).
- Document interchange: Concept of teaming/ google wave extended to another level.
- Auctions: Secure natural communication everywhere, I can participate in the auctions example amazon. Also, I can be notified on the various auctions taking place for the items I am looking for. More transparency, repugnant markets and better auctions.
- Compute intensive applications: The infrastructure will need lots of computation intensive applications which will support the mapping/transformation/processing of the data. Concepts like parallel computing will be used extensively by the infrastructure.
- Storage: Infrastructure again will need to process and store large amount of data+ backups.
So in a way focus on secure natural communication requires the support of existing(or better) computing applications.
"with secure natural communications people can walk around the streets not holding any computing device and look up some piece of data or request a computation from the computing cloud, and it gets performed by an intelligent infrastructure"
ReplyDelete- Having a device actually helps and make the job easier. Example: I use a cellphone, if my cellphone gets lost/stolen, I can ask my telephone operator to just block my SIM card. You may argue that with secure natural communication, losing a device may be dangerous, as it will give access to all the information(conversation threads etc.) about a person. If I lose a device which is as important as the one we are talking about(Secure Natural Communication Device), then it will make anyone go mad. Usually, it takes time for me to realize things like I have left my cellphone somewhere, or my cellphone is stolen. In this time frame, anyone can misuse the information. Now we can have a password protection for the same to avoid a possible misuse.
- Now suppose I do not have a device, but instead we have the infrastructure talked about earlier. How will a user login to such a system? We can use biometric for authentication purpose. But suppose a user is unable to logout of such system, then that will make any other user who is just passing by have total access to my information(Its the same problem while checking the emails from the public computer). Infrastructure will have to be intelligent enough to figure out the identity of the person example: using video cameras + sound recognition etc. Now when I think about this, there is some infrastructure which IBM was working on which used the video surveillance to detect/reduce crime in New York(not sure about the city).
Chiku,
ReplyDeleteYour insights are terrific. While I've been focusing on the infrastructure - and expecting that applications will exploit the infrastructure to improve what they do today - you point out that this new infrastructure will fundamentally change the nature of applications.
Earlier I talked about five constructs: semantic experience, physical experience, decoding, core infrastructure, and information intelligence - all at the infrastructure level. But you are dragging me in! I think we'll need a sixth construct to develop the notion of natural applications.
I'm not sure I agree with your concerns about a deviceless world. To be sure, having an infrastructure that works without devices does not preclude people from using devices if they want to. You are right that we need to make sure that we can secure it with the right biometrics, but I see that as a problem we can solve.
"with secure natural communications people can walk around the streets not holding any computing device and look up some piece of data or request a computation from the computing cloud, and it gets performed by an intelligent infrastructure"
ReplyDeleteYou are right in saying "having an infrastructure that works without devices does not preclude people from using devices if they want to".
Can you elaborate more on the intelligent infrastructure that you have in mind?
One Possibility : Is the infrastructure like telephone booths present at every street, where you can go on communicate without need for any device. The infrastructure combines with something like satellites and Radar technologies. The satellite camera can use powerful cameras to figure out a position of a person, or small radars/video surveillance can be located at various strategic positions. These two can be combined along with intelligent infrastructure which signals to the telephone booth that the person is nearby and can be contacted.
Chiku,
ReplyDeleteThe elaboration on intelligent infrastructure will come in subsequent posts.
Jeff
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