Bye bye Lieberman

I am not a big fan of Lieberman. I don't think he represented the people of CT effectively post 9/11. People I know from CT (I know this is unscientific) tend to be quite liberal, the forgive and live harmoniously types. Though he was liberal on social issues he was very hawkish on the foreign policy front. May be if he supported the Health Care reform he would've done better in my eyes.
I have a lot of problem with his unconditional support of Israel and U.S. policy towards it, the Iraq war, and general support for expansion of executive power during the Bush-Cheney years. However, I can understand where he might be coming from. I admired his resolute support of Gay and abortion rights. Even more reason for me to be confused about his opposition to Health Care Reform.
I was very angry when he appeared at the RNC convention in 2008, supporting McCain. But, I do believe he was supporting a close friend with whom he shared much against an opponent he didn't know much. That shows more character than betrayal to his roots that I wanted to dismiss it as. I think I have come to accept and even admire that stunt.
I had more issues with his opposition to universal health care. Any U.S. house member who is opposed to extending the same quality care they get to everyone in the country has some major misunderstanding about public service and entitlement. I would love to call him a puppet of the insurance industry (CT is the major hub and they are constituents too) but his net worth is a measly $2M, hardly an evidence of him being in the pockets of the Insurance companies.
So, yes he should step down if he doesn't believe his principles will allow him to represent his constituents effectively. But I wouldn't vilify him. He was a man of principles even though I disagreed with him on occasions.

Kurzweil Part 2

Ray Kurzweil's Slippery Futurism was the title of the cover article in IEEE Spectrum's December issue. I wrote about Ray Kurzweil's prognostication gaps back at the beginning of 2010, so this article for me brings some level of vindication. The former editor of Scientific American John Rennie complains that (and I quote):

• On close examination, his clearest and most successful predictions often lack originality or profundity.
• Most of his predictions come with so many loopholes that they border on the unfalsifiable.
• His unambiguously correct statements are wedded to others that sound close to reality…but are also somewhat off. They're like descriptions of the world as seen through a fish-eye lens.

By his own account the would-be tech prophet reckons that in 1999 he made 108 predictions for 2009, some 102 were either entirely correct (89) or essentially correct (13); only one was just wrong. Indeed Kurzweil followed up Rennie's article with a 148 page exposition in support of these conclusions. It was entitled "Why I am so marvelous"... no just kidding.

Here are examples of rather humdrum predictions:

Cables are disappearing. Communication between components uses short-distance wireless technology. High-speed wireless communication provides access to the Web.

A $1,000 personal computer can perform about a trillion calculations per second.

These were things that everyone was predicting. Yes we all know that things are getting smaller, faster, cheaper and more unplugged. These were trends that were evident even to casual observers in 1999.

As an aside I would point out that the average person today owns and uses more gadget wires than they did a decade ago, thanks in large part to the proliferation of every possible kind of power adapter plug, voltage and form factor combined with the fact that we are using more gadgets than before. Have you ever kicked yourself for forgetting to pack a particular wire on a vacation or business trip?

Nonetheless, I am not going to quibble. That wireless technology has taken off is undeniable. Many of us have wireless networks in our homes and carry smart phones that allow us to remain 'plugged in' (although dead spots do abound). Demand is growing for cellular bandwidth which has prompted 4G and spectrum soul-searching at the FCC.

Sometimes Kurzweil is just plain wrong and it is frustrating that he refuses to admit it much less try to engage in some constructive analysis about why things turned out differently and what the implications of that are. He was wrong that (his analysis in parenthesis):

• The majority of text is created using speech recognition (partially correct)
  
• Language user interfaces are ubiquitous (partially correct)
  
• Business transactions often take place with an animated virtual personality (partially correct)
  
• Translating telephones are commonly used (essentially correct)
  
• Technology advances have lead to continuous economic growth (no comment)
  
• Human musicians routinely jam with cybernetic musicians (correct)
  
• The neo-Luddite movement is growing (correct)
  

One thing he has done is to inflate the number of predictions he made so as to make it near impossible to go through all of them. But I posted the definitive list of 12 predictions on this blog, which he had set apart in his book. Of these, most of them were wrong.

Kurzweil admits that the majority of all text is not created using voice recognition. But he still rates this prediction as "partially correct" since two iPhone apps were released at the end of 2009. Of these the Google Mobile app is not really relevant. Although the Dragon Mobile app has achieved popularity in the app-world, I would eat a hat of your choosing if it accounts for the majority of all text created.

He gives his translating telephone prediction a higher "essentially correct" rating. "I suppose one could argue how common its use is today". The Jibbigo iPhone app is his main argument here. Apple advertises that there are over 300,000 iPhone apps. The existence of an app does not mean it is common or routine.