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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1997 Beyond biology LIVING on the technological edge for over a decade has, for me, become both an operational necessity and a way of life. As far as I can estimate, my work output has gone up tenfold during that time through the judicious use of the latest technology, management and working practices. But I have hit the end stop: I just cannot do, achieve, or output more. By my reckoning I am getting the most out of the combination of me and computers. At home, office and on the move, I always have access to a machine and I'm seldom offline. This being the case, I ask the obvious question: what next? How do we continue to ride the wave of exponential change and increased productivity that all generations have sustained since Adam? Well, there are marginal gains to be had by fine-tuning my technology and time management, but nothing significant. I have explored my abilities to the edge, the onset of nausea through information flow, physical and mental exhaustion. My recent computer hardware upgrade, and simultaneous software downgrade, has resulted in huge performance improvements. More or less all delays between hand, screen, and eye have been removed. Applications open instantaneously once booted up and files save in a second. My network connection has been upgraded too, so email, Web, and other connections are also very fast. I now need something more fundamental to augment my limited biology. A truly intelligent technology is the only hope I can see of being more productive. Of course, fundamentally changing the nature of companies and civilisation is another possibility to explore. So, here is my wish list for the next lurch forward. Beyond machines we can converse with and wear, plus an ability to communicate autonomously with everything, I rate increased intelligence most highly. Instead of searching for data, and graphics, I need systems that search out, select, refine and then push me. The Daily Me would be a real boon - personalised news and information tailored to my needs and interests. On the people front I would value recognition systems that automatically capture the image, name, organisation and meeting details of everyone I interact with. Given a vague description along the lines, "balding professor of computer science from the US I met at a conference four years ago in Paris", my system should be smart enough to bring him to the fore, including all the relevant information. This would counteract my increasing forgetfulness. Beyond this, I would endow machines with the ability instantly and automatically to analyse data and situations. At this stage an artificial imagination is perhaps asking too much, but a generic modelling ability to help cope with the complexity of business, technology, and life in general would enhance me significantly. Any travel substitute and communication technology that enhanced all human communication would, I suspect, see the biggest saving of all. But beyond all this it would appear that the fundamental limit is us, our biology and sociology. So I suspect our society has yet to see even more radical and significant change. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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