 is senior researcher at the
Institute for the Future,focusing on the
implications and technologies of a geospatial
web. He previously worked on semantic web
frameworks at Intel Labs; as a senior scientist
at Apple, where he led an investigation of
cartographic and location-based hypermedia.; as
CTO for Times Mirror publishing; and as a senior
consulting architect at Netscape. He was also a
principal investigator for a National Science
Foundation project to bring Internet2 broadband
IP networks to 70 rural, low-income communities
in the US.
What is your
greatest fear for the future of networked
technologies? There are dual fears. On
one side, there's the kind of intrusive
regulation that our national security agencies
and the Chinese government are injecting into our
open network – very pervasive surveillance
at all levels … On the other hand, the
continued growth of digital crime and malware on
the network are irritating. What is your most
fervent hope for the future of networked
technologies? I am looking forward to a
world where digital data is layered across the
physical world, so that every object, every
place, every thing will have all of its
information and associated media available in
place as we move through the world. The static
internet has done wonders for providing a library
for humanity; it's now time to build a
digital atlas for humanity, so wherever we are we
can have detailed information about that place
and then later on that can be used as a platform
to build new proactive contextual
computing. What technology
will have the greatest impact on our everyday
lives the next 10 years? In my field I
really think about pervasive information
available with mobile devices, but you can't
underestimate the impact of nanomaterials –
programmable nanomaterials are also going to have
a huge impact. (These are) molecules that can be
operated under computer instruction, so that the
molecules can behave just like software elements,
so you can program matter to assemble itself in
different forms at a molecular level. Dramatic
new materials for every imaginable application
– the integration of human intelligence
with programmable matter could mean abundant
power, cheap solar power, clean-filtered drinking
water, durable materials and lighter materials,
light-scale infrastructure that can be deployed
easily a renovation of our cities. That's on
the materials side. It has powerful medical
applications. Custom pharmaceuticals can be made
on the spot. What do you think
policymakers should do to ensure a positive
future for networked technologies? The
first is to invest heavily in education –
to really continue the innovation online and in
digital technologies and digital medium to get
really gifted, talented, and creative people. The
U.S. is falling way behind on developing the
talent it's going to take to continue
innovating on the network. The other thing is as
much as possible Congress and the FCC and
everyone should preserve network neutrality to
let an open-ecosystem of services develop, and to
avoid consolidating power vertically. Really,
essentially the network operators are moving up
into the service area and constricting the
ability to provide open, new, creative,
entrepreneurial network services. Looking out more
than 10 years, what development will have the
greatest impact on society? In about 10
years we're going to have massive computer
resources available to everyone. The shortage of
computing cycles is going to diminish. It's
not only an improvement in microscale computing
but the emergence of nanoscale computing,
biological computing, and the development of
something I call metacomputer – that's
really network computers like the SETI@home
screensaver or the Google grid. It's also
called cluster computing, grid computing –
where all the computing on the network is
harnessed to single tasks. All of this computing
power is going to require a new kind of computer
programming – parallel, concurrent,
multithreaded programming – and we
don't have the skills and I think it's
going to take us about 10 years to master the
programming and development skills to utilize the
enormous computing power that we're going to
have available. |
