Bitcoin and Open Source

Imagine that the Bitcoin had been a company that was trying to create a new international payment system, based on something else than cryptography. And that the project would have gone through similar problems as Bitcoin. The confidence from around the world would have been laughable by now.

What is it that makes Bitcoin coming back again and again, stronger after every set-back? And what is it that makes such a large number of critics angrily claiming that it is all a hoax?

One reason is that there are many who believe in the idea. As long as they continue to invest in it, it grows. But that's not the root cause, it's an effect. In the example of a company that had attempted such a project, I do not think there would have been many followers, much less investors.

The idea of Bitcoin is built upon an invention on how to implement a public distributed ledger. I think the key factor in it all is that Bitcoin is open source. This has some interesting implications, and leads to some mechanisms not generally recognized by critics.

• The implementation is available for anyone to see. That means you can, if you want, look for weaknesses in the encryption. No one can claim that NSA added back doors. This is a vital aspect if the algorithm is going to be accepted by major investors.
• There can't be a hidden agenda. Even if it would have been Usama Bin Laden that was the man behind Satoshi Nakamoto, you can trust Bitcoin.
• Regardless of set-backs, as long as there are people believing in Bitcoin, the project will continue to improve.

There are arguments being repeated by critics why Bitcoin will fail. The effect of Bitcoin being deflationary is a common one. Users and developers of Bitcoin don't care about that. It may actually be the opposite. Classically trained economists can say whatever they think about deflationary currencies, but it is not going to have an effect on the Bitcoin success.

An issue commonly referred to is that Bitcoin will take the power to control the money away from governments. This will make it harder for them to manage debts. Again, this has no direct effects on Bitcoin. Governments will have to find new ways to manage debts. Maybe, they actually have to have a better control of the cause of the debts, stopping the situation before it is going too far.

Linux was one of the first Open Source projects that changed the world, even though people in general doesn't know it. It was done through the Android operating system.

I think Bitcoin is going to be the next Open Source project that will change the world, with even bigger ramifications.

The grand unified theory of the future

Three mergers

First, there are three mergers that are needed.

Intelligence with computers

The language was the first step. With it, it was possible to transfer lessons learned without the need for people to do the mistake themselves. Written text was the next step, where there was no longer a need to rely on the memory. The World Wide Web is maybe the next step again. Information is now available from more people, to more people than ever. And much faster.

Humans of today are already enhanced with the help of computer intelligence. I don't know what the next step will be, but it could be a more deep integration with one or more of our senses and computers. The eye is the input sensory with the highest data throughput. Eventually, I think the integration will be directly with the brain.

Eventually, there will come a day when there is no clear border between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. It will not be interesting to define a border.

Biology with machines

Originally, organic chemistry was used to denote chemical compounds that were part of life. Soon, it was realized that quite a lot of the chemical elements could be involved in biological organisms. The word virus is already used for both biological entities and a software algorithms.

As machines gets smaller, the mechanism they use to function will become more like living organisms of today, but more efficient. There are experiments ongoing to create artificial life from DNA. There exists organisms today with a completely hand crafted DNA definition.

Eventually, there will be self-replicating nano mechanisms and we will need immunity systems to protect us. We will live in a symbiosis with some of these, just as it is today. There will also be artificial mechanisms that use evolution to improve themselves.

Reality with virtual reality

There are several signs of this:

• Augmented reality
• MMORPG
• Simulation games

While virtual reality will get more and more like real life, there will be VRs that are not at all like real life. It is hard to predict how they will look like. Why should a VR emulate the principles of physical rooms, causality of time or personal identities? I believe every form of VR will always have a set of rules that you have to obey. Just that some rules will be completely alien to what we have today.

Final merger

The final merger will make these three as one. The question what it is to be a human will lose it meaning. But I think there will be many problems on the way, possibly painful, including existential risks to us.

Stock trading robots

Signs of an approaching technological singularity: Robotic trading systems.

A rapidly increasing amount of the trade on the exchange markets are now automated. There are people that make a living from short term investments (day traders), and they complain that it is harder and harder to read the signs. And so they can no longer make a profit.

To be able to make transactions at millisecond level, the computers need to be located in the same room as the "stock market computer" itself. As there are many stakeholders interested in this, they all want as short latency as possible. To make it fair, all such computers have the same connection with the same length of the cable.

This is yet another business taken over by computers. Is it good or bad?

Robots and AI

Some people, interested in the future, can't stop thinking about the development of robots and general artificial intelligence. But I think most of them got it wrong, and that it is not going to happen that way.

There will never be human robots, except for marginal needs. If a robot needs to be completely general it would be designed as a human. But the idea of ​​making general purpose robot is wrong. People do not think about it, but everyday life is already full of specialized robots. I have several: one that cleans the dish, one who washes clothes, one that makes coffee for me, etc.

Do we really need general purpose robots? I don't think so. The day it will be possible to make "real" robots, we have already integrated our world with the virtual, and you can't distinguish between them anyway.

I believe it will be the same with general artificial intelligence. Some are obsessed with the idea of ​​making a general AI, smart as a human, that will then create the next, even smarter. One problem with this concept is to define "intelligence". There are already a lot of specialized AIs. Why should we make one that mimics a human mind? And if we create one, do we want it to be human? That means we have to give it the basic human goals, which are a will to live and a will to breed. Without those, it will not have emotions, and so it will not at all be human.

I think it will go the same way as for robots. The day we succeed, then we have already succeeded in making a copy of a physical brain in a computer. The need will be marginal.

So what about the Technological Singularity then? I don't think it depends on the presence of human-like robots or human-like AI. The Singularity is about accelerating progress, which is perfectly plausible with specialized AI.

The future of online gaming

As a generalization, there are two types of games; single player and online multiplayer. As more and more players are connected to the Internet, the demand for online multiplayer games will grow. When looking at online multiplayer games, there are two types; PvE and PvP. PvE means Player versus Environment. This is a game you play in cooperative mode with other players. PvP means Player versus Player.

There are some fundamental differences between PvE and PvP. In PvE games, huge resources have to be invested in by the game designers to create an environment for exploration and adventure. The average cost for a video game 2010 was more than 20 M US$, and typically lasts for 60 hours.

PvP games, on the other hand, can engage players for far longer time, even if the game design is much simpler. It may still take a big effort to produce the game, but there is less need for complex environments. On the extreme side, there are Chess, Go and other classical board games.

How come players return again and again, to the same PvP battle ground? The answer is the opponents. You don't like games that repeat the same every time. You want variation and increased challenges. In PvP, you can expect the opponents to improve, posing new challenges. That is why you can spend your life playing only a game like Go, and still learn and appreciate new ideas.

There is one market that has, to a large extent, been ignored. That is PvE games where players can add to the environment. I played the PvE side of World of Warcraft for several years, and enjoyed most of the time a lot. But in the end, you had to wait for Blizzard to create the next expansion. Imagine if it would have been possible for players to add content to this world, for everyone else to enjoy. The game could have been unlimited. World of Warcraft isn't easily adapted for such a strategy, though.

There are games with player created content. Many game engines allow for mods. One of the most successful multiplayer game, Counterstrike, started out as a mod to Halflife. If you look at what is happening with strategy game mods, like Starcraft, you will find an extreme ingenuity. Players have a way to use features in the most unexpected ways to create intriguing games and challenges. The problem is that these types of mods are of a temporary type. You play the game, it finishes, and the next time you start from the beginning again.

I predict a future type of game with the following characteristics, and think this is going to be the biggest genre in 10 years.

1. It is online, massive multiplayer.
2. You login, progress, save the state, and log out. Next time you return, you keep what you had.
3. Players allocate a territory in the game world and add content to it that other players can explore. That way, the basic game is for ever developing, and it will never be the same from day to day.
4. The adventures you create are your own, and no one else can modify them (unless you cooperate with friends).
5. The social aspect is a key as you will do the exploration together with online friends. Friends can be a set of people you choose to associate with, or it may be temporary groups you meet inside the game.
6. The owners of the game have to create a game server engine, a client, a starting area, and a list of flexible construction blocks.

In the 90s, I created LPMUD (with a lot of support from friends). It was a text adventure fulfilling many of these characteristics. LPMUD did not support graphics, and so it was difficult to move it into more modern settings. A contemporary version of this game type should support thousands of simultaneous players, which requires huge resources. For the first time, hardware and communication are now powerful enough.

This is the background to Ephenation.

The success of Chromebook

What are the chances for a success of the Google Chromebook?

There are 5 main segments today: Workstation, Laptop, Internet tablet, smart phones and mobiles phones. The Chromebook will have to compete with these, and possible create a new segment. But I think 6 segments is at least one too many, and one of them will be marginalized. Unless the Chromebook do not out-compete either the Laptop or the Internet tablet, I think it may be that the Chrombook is the one that will be marginalized. (Aside from that, I think workstations and "dumb" mobile phones are also going to be marginalized soon.)

An important question is if the Chromebook is right in time. For it to succeed, people have to accept that everything is done in the cloud. The cloud services are improving quickly, but is it quickly enough? It is a paradigm shift, and it may take time to get used to it. I think this paradigm shift will win eventually, but the success of Chromebook is more uncertain.

Why is Google investing so much into Chromebook? Google's revenue comes mainly from Internet advertisements. They prefer people to use Internet services for their daily businesses, instead of legacy applications downloaded to the PC. The perfect world would be if everyone only use a web browser. And so, a perfect world for Google would be if everyone use a Chromebook.

People are not going to change to Chromebooks just because that is what is best for Google, especially if the pricing is not competitive. I think Google will have subsidize the Chromebook to succeed. An alternative solution to a Chromebook would be to have a separate keyboard that can be attached to an Internet tablet. That looks more attractive to me, personally.

Simulation argument

There is a theory that we are all living in a computer simulation. Maybe not computer, but simulation anyway. This is a theory that is neither provable or disprovable, so it is undecidable. That means it falls into the same category as a religion. Nevertheless, there are signs that suggests we are in a simulation. These are based on what I would assume how such a simulator would be constructed.

Problem: To make a simulator of a real world, a lot of performance will be needed. One way to achieve this is to use a massively parallel computer. One problem with such a simulation would be that every event that happens anywhere would influence every other part of the simulation (through one of the forces in nature). This would be expensive, and has to be minimized.

Solution: Limit the speed with which events can influence other parts.

Our world: No information can travel faster than the speed of light.

Problem: Given time, events will eventually have effects on all other parts of the simulation, even if there is a speed limit.

Solution: Let the simulated world expand in such a way that there is a limit where changes can no longer catch up outside of a limited sphere.

Our world: The universe is expanding, and we will never be able to see beyond a certain point because that point is moving away too fast.

Problem: Computing exact results with infinite precision takes infinite time.

Solution: Impose a limitation on the precision of computations.

Our world: There is something called the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. It states that precise inequalities that constrain certain pairs of physical properties, such as measuring the present position while determining future momentum; both cannot be simultaneously done to arbitrarily high precision.

Problem: There are many computations that may never be observed and may never have any effects outside a limited environment.

Solution: Make use of a lazy algorithm. Things are not computed until the result is actually needed somewhere.

Our world: In quantum physics, there is something called quantum entanglement, whereby the degrees of freedom that make up the system are linked in such a way that the quantum state of any of them cannot be adequately described independently even if the individual degrees of freedom belong to differentobjects and are spatially separated.

Exponential growth

Can the economy continue to grow exponentially?

There are many organizations today that claim that the growth must halt soon, or we will deplete important earth resources. Looking at it that way, it is obvious that, for example, the oil consumption can not continue to grow. And there are many other resources that simply can't be expanded on.

However, the thing is more complicated, and it is wrong to generalize. So let's have a look at some exponential behaviour. One of the more famous examples is Moore's law, which says that the number of transistors on a chip growths exponentially. A more interesting version of this law is the measurement of the number of CPU operations you get per dollar. This doubles approximately every year, and has been doing so for a long while. Actually, the trend is picking up speed. One reason for this trend may be that producers of processors knows where they will have to be in the future if they will be able to stay in the business. So every generation provides a measurable improvement compared to the previous generation, which means there is an exponential growth. This growth may not depend in depleting earth resources, at least not the way that energy from oil depends on oil resources.

Now on to the next type of exponential growth, and that is inventions in general. Sometimes, an invention builds on another. The invention wouldn't be possible until now. This is also a kind of exponential growth, as improvements build on other improvements. It can be argued, and it has been many times in history, that we now know most of what can be invented, and so this type of exponential growth will halt. Not because of lack of natural resources, but because of the end of scientific progress. This is harder to prove or disprove, but I am optimistic and believe we are no way near the end.

Finally, there is emerging another type of exponential growth because of inventions, and that is software. There is a constant stream of software inventions, where some of them build on the previous ones. This development is also fuelled by the exponential growth of CPU power. I am convinced this is where we will see an explosion of activities in the future. Until now, computers and software has just been seen as one component in our daily lives, in the list of cars, houses, phones, etc. But I think the software business will expand relatively to the other industrial areas. Economists that only look at GDP and other similar key figures will miss it out entirely.

Will a general artificial intelligence be benevolent?

It is hard to predict what AIs will do, especially as we have problems to define what an AI is. If you take a chess program, most would define it as narrow AI. Good at chess, but worthless at other things. But how then do you make a general AI? And if you succeed to create one, what makes it do anyting at all? Why wouldn't it just sit there, thinking of something, and remain incommunicative?

I think one of the important building blocks of an AI is the driving force. The problem with chess programs is that the driving force is extremly narrow. It is something like "for each piece, try every possible move. For each of the tests, try every possible response. All the time, evaluate the situation according to a strictly defined algorithm". And some more. This doesn't give the program much ability to generalize.

If the computer instead would have a driving force more generally defined, as "play human opponents, goal is to win", then it would leave more room for out-of-the-box solutions. For example, you win more if the humans play worse. So one solution would be to select low talented opponents. Another solution that would fulfill the goal would be to somehow arrange to have the opponents killed, and win by walk-over. A program that can take this kind of very general definition of driving force doesn't exist yet. Even if the given example is extreme, more near future realistic examples can be imagined.

It is a version of the old adage "the way you ask something determines what kind of answer you get". I think the defined driving force, the algorithms, and the rules, are what will ultimately make up an AI. You don't really need the rules to make an AI, but I strongly encourage the use of them. Even if the driving force is seemingly benevolent, it is no guarantee of the eventual behaviour.

A discussion you see now and then is if the driving force should be copied from humans. Looking closer to this, I think the main human driving force is to spread your genes. Everything else is just a side effect, to improve the chance that you succeed. Behaving nice to people, even doing charity, improves the chance.

The hope is that using a human driving force for an AI would also give it the same behaviour. But I think that is a mistake, as the nice part of (most) human behaviour is only a side effect. There are spectacular examples of humans that succeed well on an individual point of view, but catastrophically from the point of view of the human civilization.

Intelligent spam

In the near future, maybe 5-10 years, we will start to see intelligent spam. There will be participators in discussions argumenting for a position. The discussion will be two-way, not the one-way we see from spam today. This intelligent spam will be created automatically by software, from goal and rules defined by a stake holder.

So, what is really the Google Chrome OS?

So, what is really the Google Chrome OS?

Some people compares it with Linux, and see it as an UI addon with the Chrome browser, but they miss the point. Google Chrome OS is really a paradigm shift. The idea is that nothing (except a crypted cache) will be stored locally. Everything else will be stored in the cloud.

That means that if you switch from one notebook to another, you will get exactly the same thing and environment.

For example, there are discussions why Chrome OS only supports SSD, and not the old disk types. The reason is speed. And it will not be expensive as you will not need much storage.

Another questions is why only some selected platforms will be supported. Again, the idea is not that you should replace your OS at your current home computer. The idea is that the next generation notebooks, as well as smaller devices, will bring a new way to work.

The goal of Google Wave

What is really the goal of Google Wave?

Is it to create a replacement for email?

Google have invited developers very early into the product process, long before most companies would open up access. I would say it is a form of Agile development. You get quick feedback on functionality, which makes it easier to find out what is really wanted.

I think Google doesn't really care what Google Wave is. They want to do something that people wants to use, and it doesn't really matter what it is as long as it gets popular. Because of that, the actual requirement specification is impossible to freeze early.

By involving users and developers this early, the Wave will have the possibility to evolve in a way that noone had anticipated.

Wave has some new ideas, or at least re-invented old ones. It is when you combine new ideas that real inventions are born. The type that few could have foreseen.

It will be interesting to see where this will lead. Will it be the next paradigm of Internet usage, or will be just another mail system?

Uploading a mind to a computer and the art of music

A friend of mine, interested in the ultimate listening experience of music, once thought about what it would mean if you could upload your mind to a computer. So we had a discussion about that. The first though was that you could get rid of a number of analog transformations that added noise to the signal. That is, the music could be fed directly to the (simulated) ear nerves. And so you would get a totally loss-free music experience.

But why stop it at that? When you enjoy a piece of music, there is some kind of mechanism in the brain that do the analysis of the music, which in turns generates the pleasing feeling. Why not directly stimulate this pleasure mechanism? That means you don't need real music any more. Another problem with an uploaded mind could be that it may have almost perfect memory. I believe that surprise is one important part of music. Again, this shouldn't really be a problem if you can simply stimulate the surprise handling mechanisms, and no real surprises are needed.

But then you may as well take it to the next step. Why not directly stimulate the pleasure generating part of the brain, and get exactly the same satisfaction as when you listen to good music?

It can be questioned whether it is the actual experience of pleasure that is the important thing, or the memory of this experience. Why not skip the whole thing about stimulating pleasure, and instead plant a modified memory of having had the pleasure?

Somehow, this doesn't look attractive to me. But then, the technology of uploading probably isn't going to be available for quite a while yet.

Google Wave and games?

There are many people who use email to send funny pictures and movies. It is not unusual for a film clip to come back again after a year, when it has spun around "on the Internet".

With Google Wave you can also attach games (in the form of extensions). I'm convinced that there will be will be a lot of people around the world who develop various funny things, which will then spread around on the Internet. Not only that, Google Wave supports multilayer games in real time. It is impossible to predict how these things will unfold, but it would not surprise me if many people that now send videos and pictures will feel compelled to switch to Google Wave so as not be left out.

This principle, to release forces free on the Internet, is extremely potent. There is an enormous creativity in "the world", waiting to be tapped. 20 years ago I started an experiment in the form of an online multiplayer adventure game where participants (after some effort) could extend the same game. It did not take long until the whole world (in the game) literally exploded by the most extraordinary ideas that I never could have imagined.

Of course, I really hope that there will be no problems with viruses etc. From the beginning, Microsoft Windows, Internet browsers and Office applications allowed almost anything do be done by scripts. Because of viruses and other types of malicious software, it is today severely restricted. In my dreams, I hope the day has now come where there is a trusted platform.

Google Wave and obstacles

It would be nice if all the blogs and news articles on the internet is made as Waves. Comments and responses can then be followed up in your Wave your reader without having to locate the original page. Not to mention how easy it is to add friends to the discussion.

But precisely this may also be a problem for Google Wave. A newspaper depends on their ads, and wants the users to return as much as possible. Wave reduces the need, which may mean that the newspaper chose not to use the Wave technology to publish articles.

The same problem may exist for big bloggers who earn money on their advertising.

Why Google Chrome?

Why are Google creating yet another web reader? There are already a couple of them in the market. Is it to get control over the end users? Some fear that Google will use it to be able to sell even more advertising.

I don't think that is the primary reason. Indirectly, yes, but not in a direct way. Google wants people to use the web more, and it certainly looks like it will be very big in the future. There are two interesting features with Google Chrome: Improved navigation and improved Java Script execution.

Improved navigation (using the Omnibox as well as the new tab page), will make it easier for users to find what they want and have them stay longer, browsing the world.

It is not obvious why Google spend a lot of effort on improved Javascript execution speed. However, when you consider O3D, you get a hint what it is all about. O3D is a plugin that supports 3D graphics using the hardware acceleration of the graphic cards. This plugin use Javascript for execution, and if it will become a success, it is not acceptable with slow applications. The hope is that there will be more 3D games available online, where you don't have to install anything. You simply execute them on the web. If these games only work good enough on Google Chrome, guess what is going to happen? All other web browse suppliers will have to improve the Javascript engine execution. That way, Google wins even if people use other web browsers. That is, people stay more on the internet.

And then, Google Chrome pushes html 5, which will even further improve web browsing.

Using Subversion in big projects

Requirements on the Subversion setup

1. It shall support an integration phase, where selected sub components are merged into one result.
2. The sub components shall be possible to develop independently on the main application.
3. The merged result shall be saved henceforth.
4. It shall be possible to take a selected merged result and afterwards find out what it was integrated from; what the versions of the sub components are.
5. All users of the application shall automatically get the same versions of the cub components, without having to do anything.

Suggested folder structure

This example project consists of one or more applications, where each one uses the sub components in Modules. Notice that the sub components in Module each have the usual branches, tags and trunk folders. The idea is that a release of a sub component is defined using a tag, or R1 in this example. Main projects should only refer to to the tags R1, etc, not to the trunk of a sub component.

If this project would have been check out from the BigProject level, each application would be able to refer to the sub components in the Modules using relative paths. However, the reference would depend on the tag names (R1, etc). Every time we would want to use a new release of a sub component, the source code in the main application would have to be changed so as to refer to the new tag.

Instead, a checkout of Application1 shall be done from trunk. Let's say it is called Application1. This folder will then have the property "svn:externals" added. This external definition will add one or more sub components from the Modules folder as a sub folder to the checked out project (Application1). The folder structure will thus look as follows. Notice that Core and Module1 look like they are part of the Application1 project.

The externals definition used for this are as follows. The peg revision was 28 in this example, but that of course depends on what version the sub components were released.

^/BigProject/Core/tags/R1@28 Core
^/BigProject/Module1/tags/R1@28 Module1

Notes

• Always use version number reference for externals, using peg revision format. That is, suffix the source path with "@" and the revision number. Otherwise, if a module is renamed or moved elsewhere, it can no longer be referenced. This is needed even if it is a reference to a tags item.
• The externals can be in the same repository or another one. If it is in the same repository, use the relative repository path address "^/Module1/tags/R1" for example.

Comments are welcome!

Lars Pensjö 2009-09-20

Cloud computing

There is a famous quote, usually misattributed to Thomas J. Watson at IBM:

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

With the development of cloud computing, the trend is again for using central resources instead of distributed computing. Maybe we end up with 5 major suppliers, in which case the above quote turns out to have an element of truth.

Mind and body

So, what is the relation between the mind and the body? Some thoughts about this:

1. There is an experiment where a volunteer is sitting at a table with one arm below the table. On the table is fake arm from a mannequin. If someone scratch on the fake arm at the same time and place as the arm below the table, the mind of the volunteer will swap the fake arm for the real one, and believe that the fake arm is the real one. This experiment can even be done with short wooden stock. If you then suddenly stick a knife into the fake arm, the volunteer will show the same stress symptoms as if under real threat.
2. There has been an experiment where they try to trick the brain into replacing the whole body (Strange Experiments Create Body-Swapping Experiences). Possible applications could be to fool the brain in a virtual world.
3. In the automotive industri, a lot of effort is spent into getting the right feeling when you drive a car. I now believe this is all about setting up an einvironment where the brain of the driver experiences the car as an extension of the body.
4. That would finally explain why it feels good to have many horse powers. The mind translate this into a feeling of a well fit strong body. That also explains why riding a motorcycle is such an extremly strong feeling. Not only does it give a very strong acceleration, it also provides a tight and effective control.

Economic bubbles

Looking at the bubble that just burst, I have some thoughts about this and what happened.

1. Now and then, there is an inbalance in supply and demand. Sometimes, this inbalance becomes very big. For example, suppose that mortgage interest rate is cut by half.
2. That means that you can, in theory, take a loan twice as big.
3. The first and immediate result is that people get more money to spend.
4. The second result is that people, in theory, can afford real estates for twice the price.
5. If the interest rate stays low for a while, the estate prices will increase a lot every year, for several years.
6. After a couple of years, the estate price should stop at approximately twice the price before the change of the interest rate.
7. But, because of the years of constant growth, some people now believe that the price can continue to grow.
8. The increase of price is now more like a pyramid game. It will continue until there is some disturbance.

What can make this chain of events even worse is if there are investments with leverage. That is, investors take loan to invest even more.

Change of interest rates is a simple example. Another common scenario is a technological change that will change the conditions for a market.