lunaru | weblog | thoughts

I came across this article while looking over tech news: http://special.msn.com/msnbc/technologywireless.armx?GT1=7204

I find it just re-iterates what people have always had a trend for: technological replacement in a parallel fashion. The opposite of this is replacement in a direct fashion, such as replacing casette with CDs, VHS with DVDs, Desktops with laptops, fossil fuel with hydrogen, where the replacement is clear, obvious, and most importantly, intended. While the latter strategy works in most cases, there are just many instances where people hesitate to “upgrade.” For example, tablets haven’t replaced laptops, computers haven’t yet replaced books, and PDAs haven’t replaced anything.

I think it comes down to core usefulness. People can smell gadgetry. When you try to sell things like PDAs at hundreds of dollars, people expect a fundamental improvement in the way they perform some fundamental task, which the PDA can’t offer for most of the world’s common people. On the other hand, people flock to technology that touches the fundamental aspects of our lives. These are the billion dollar products, like the mp3 player, the car, and heck, even bottled water. (Yes, bottled water is an invention, though now a commodity.)

Enter the cell phone. It’s not a gadget (though some companies would like to stuff them with gadgetry), and it really provides a change in the way we conduct our daily lives, because of the way it has bridged what was a gap in social connectivity. With connectivity, we have information. With information, we have knowledge. Of course, this is sounding awfully familiar to the same basic service a computer provides. When two fundamental tools, in this case cell phones and computers, start finding areas of commonality, we begin to see what I refer to as technological replacement in a parallel fashion.

Replacement in a parallel fashion happens slowly and steadily, but surely. It is how word processing, a software innovation, replaced the typewriter, a hardware innovation. It is how the internet has replaced libraries. It is how cell phones have basically replaced wristwatches (actually, more like displaced wristwatches to a true accessory). And in the future, it will be how cellphones will replace mobile computing.

Because the two functionalities are so similiar, my prediction is that we will start to see the conquering of the PDA first. Slowly, “smartphones”, with software headed by Microsoft, will begin to meld with what we know today as the PDA. Then, as the smartphone gets beefier in function and as the laptop begins to get smaller/thinner in size, I think we’ll start to see the merging of voice and computing into a single, consolidated solution for humankind.

Will it replace the desktop? It’s hard to say. Deep down, I just don’t see the desktop as a fundamental paradigm that is inherent to humankind. It’s just not natural the way we sit down in front of a monitor and consume/produce information via a keyboard. Humans were meant to be mobile, and I think that’s where computing ought to be headed.

AJAX. That’s the buzz around the web these days. So much a buzz, in fact, that some people are pointing it out as a major part of “Web 2.0″ or “The second coming of the web.” Regardless of where you stand as a developer - webdev, desktop, server-side, what-ever, you will probably need to keep an eye on this emerging trend as it is a real desktop killer. Never before has software deployment been as easy as typing “www…” with all the rich benefits of desktop applications. It’s like the browser is becoming an operating system on its own, and many companies are lining up their developers, hoping to bank on the concept of rich applications delivered via the browser. It opens up a whole new gateway to the SAS (Software as a Service) business model for salesforce.com wanna-be start-ups and even established companies as well. And the biggest company of them all, Google, seems to be at the forefront of the AJAX campaign, leading the way with apps like Gmail. With such promise, what concerns can there be?

Well, for one, there are still drawbacks to browser apps. Latency will always be there, and you can bet desktop-based apps will continue to one-up the browser apps with snazzy GUIs and rich features hard to deliver over a text medium. One thing that really irks me personally is the lack of the right mouse button. I know, this is probably some trivial matter, but as a society, we’re so used to using the right mouse button for quick access, that sometimes, I find myself right clicking away in Gmail to no avail. Without the emersive feel of rich-clients, AJAX apps will find themselves as merely a mean to the “zero-footprint” end. In many ways, there are just some things, some processes that can’t be taken from “my desktop” to “your server.” The hope here for Microsoft is that rich-clients continue to be a viable business - and thus Windows continues to be a viable business. The only way this hope becomes a reality is if the desktop outpaces the browser somehow (if that is even possible).

Secondly, what’s up with Adobe/Macromedia? Ever since the merger announcement, the company has been laying low. AJAX is Flash’s competition, because there can only be one standard for cool rich browser application development platforms. When you consider the ubiquity of SWF on modern browsers, you realize there is still room for flash to move in and take away some mindshare in terms of developer loyalty. The combined force of PDF + SWF can make for a whiz-bang client-side development platform even considering the fact that on the server-side, ColdFusion is almost non-existant in deployment.

While I couldn’t call these concerns “challenges”, they are probably the only roadblock for massive AJAX adoption. That and the fact that AJAX development requires understanding a huge array of languages and concepts including CSS, HTML, JavaScript, XML, PHP/Perl/Python, etc. Given that I am partial to LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) development, I won’t hesitate to mess around with AJAX on my pre-existing websites. But as I’ve already experienced, the programming environment is not as cozy as the ones well-supported by bigtime vendors like .NET and Microsoft for example.

Only time will tell, but my guess is that within the next few years, our idea of what a web-app can be is in for a fundamental shift. The next paradigm is the rich web and it looks like the industry of computing is in for a ride.

- LW

I often ask myself what technology means to our lives at a fundamental level. Is the human thirst for ease, innovation, and knowledge a never-ending quest? Is computer technology, especially software technology, a means to some fundamental end necessary for the growth of humankind?

Our current line of progress seems to indicate that our global society is obsessed with making data available faster, more transparently, and in readily available forms. To understand our problem, let’s take a look of the root of knowledge collection and our advances in this area. Take the digital camera – a device with which our world can now capture visual data and translate it into persistent binary – and compare it with traditional cameras where the output is a physical object with all the negative properties associated with it, like the properties of decay. The gain we’ve had in the “language of binary” is that data forms are readily transferable and forever preserved. These advantages and the impacts that these advantages afforded by digital media have on our society are probably not immediately apparent to most people. With time, I think people will realize that the amazing rate at which digital media aggregates in our modern civilization yields output to rival our physical ability to archive this everlasting data form.

I’m confident that no official estimate on the volume of data that people put into our networks has been measured. In fact, such a measurement might not be possible. With the increasing popularity of data collection devices like digital recorders, digital cameras, camera phones, PDAs, smart phones, even sensor nodes, etc. it’s easy to imagine our collection of data growing exponentially as time goes on. Even the minute fraction of digital media that gets published publicly is a great deal of data moving into our human collective. As this data is pushed into the web (humankind’s ad hoc Library of Alexandria), our technology must scale to sort, index, analyze, categorize, and archive the never-ending stream of input.

“But isn’t the situation controllable for now?” some may ask. After all, according to studies, the rate at which web pages are appearing is slowing down almost to a point of manageable convergence. Well, the truth is, while textual HTML pages may be growing at a manageable rate, other richer media forms are emerging as the mainstream content of the web and the net. As these media forms, like music and movies are immortalized in the prism of binary, our society is burdened (or blessed) with the duty of maintaining the work of all of human history. For now, this duty seems to have been picked up by the oh-so-popular search engine market. Companies like Google have understood the fundamental role that software technology plays in humankind’s everlasting quest for organizing knowledge.

And yet, to think of this possible future granted to us, it’s almost regretful that we’ve already lost so much. Think of all the knowledge that humankind has lost up to this date for the trivial problems of physical space and physical delicacy. Think of the books or articles that have been unpublished up to this due to economic reasons. Think of all the art that has been lost due to lack of appreciation or lack of interest. Then think of how our digital network affords authors and artists of today the many ways to preserve their works, from the insignificant to the needle in the haystack.

Fifty years from now, due to our recent well-treatment of digital media, I may just be able to look up “Friends” season 5 episode 4 on some media network and be offered the chance to buy it a la cart. But in order for that to happen, our society has to realize the importance of this data and its challenges in space and time. Fortunately, it seems that this is just what is happening on the hardware (space) front, as hard disk technology advances to the point where we can stuff gigabytes of data into a few square millimeters. Even as I write, scientists work diligently reducing the space/size requirement evermore. Going back to the digital camera case, can consumers continue to be offered free space for their ever growing collection of photos? The size at which mailboxes grow for Gmail accounts gives great hope – it seems hard disk space technology is outpacing our ability to produce media for now. But on the software (time) front, our media indexing technologies are lacking. There is no standard for media indexing to speak of, other than what search companies deem to be a reasonable web indexing schemes. These textual schemes like the popular “inverted indexes” were not designed to handle richer media forms, nor are the many algorithms that crawl for data. Instead, we have to turn to companies like Apple and products like iTunes who have a vested interest in only providing spaces for the most popular tunes.

The “Long Tail” of media grows ever longer as we speak, and it is doubtful that these companies have the spirit to keep up. So really, the question and challenge remains: as our space and media grow, can our software keep up? Google’s PR rhetoric seems to be optimistic in this regard, but I fear the perfect solution has yet to be discovered. - LW

I often find myself in the position of wanting to looking into thoughts I’ve had in the past and their relevances to here and now. Looking back at some of the sites I once frequented, I stumbled across an old article I wrote on a Xanga site about morality and its meanings in our society. I found it interesting that so many years ago, as an undergrad, my interests in human morality came to such a decisive conclusion - a conclusion I can still relate with even to this day (although I may not agree with it). Here is the article for the benefit of those who can understand it:

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While I’m not entirely partial to philosophers or their ilk, I’ve come to accept my fate as a student, and in having enrolled in Philosophy 6-Introduction to Political Philosophy, I have been subjected to the thoughts and minds of the “greatest thinkers of all time.” What have I come to find? That the common thread of humanity in thought and perversion and morals and even in persuasion are much less a thread than a rope, and in this metaphorical rope are tied society, history, culture, and other influences of environment are so closely gripping the conclusions of these minds.

Just my luck, as I happened to be taking a classes in Engineering History, its topic of course being the history of engineer from a moral and ethical perspective. What happens if the great philosophical standpoints on morals could somehow be merged into a coherent idea universally applicable to all of human kind? Well, let us first touch on the idea of egoism - the egocentric code of morals that states humankind should act upon their own passions (motives in 18th century english) without regard for the consequences it might bear upon their immediate society or perhaps even global society in general. Many philosophers suggest that such a state of existance would bear fruitless savagery that could not have lead to the great civilization that lay before us. Having this thought to hold, we embark on Utiliatarianism, the great teleological idea that humankind should act in favor of that which best benefits the greatest amount of people through various decision processes like that of “cost benefit analysis.” To this Kant responded by adding that humankind must act in a way that is universally acceptable amongst all of its kind, that is, to act deontologically.

Of course, I am no philosopher, (perhaps because I see that philosophy is more the politics of persuasion than the art of reflection) but I do sense a function of humanity that might somehow fit through all these historically accepted ideas, and to beast explain my idea, let me now suggest the following equation:

MORALITY = EGO = UTILITY

Who am I to bring up such a conclusion? I am one unit of a species of countless reflective creatures with the skill and authority of mind to be partial to any belief I will so, but not so to impose such an idea upon any other unit. This given, I here concede to objections but will not object to concession. To follow, let me draw a sketch for those who are adventurous.
(Here I follow what as been popularly done in classical works, but only briefly.) Suppose that in some natural state of order, (here I assume that nature is in order as most scientists would believe) man has found himself with the ability to live left to his own devices and as such is able to defend himself against the beasts of nature that are set to prey on him. Suppose that in this precarious situation, he were to stumble upon another of his kind in need of assistance, let’s say this one other were being chase by a wolf. In this situation there are two obvious possibilities: 1) He sees the wolf is stronger than himself but nevertheless risks endangering himself or the faculty of health that he is so reliant on to assist is fellow man. To this man we would deem the word “courageous,” in in satisfying his ego for courage, he benefits the weak and in a way deemed morally correct. 2) He is intimidated by the wolf and flees, hoping to spare himself of danger. Here, it shall be objected by most that in his passion for life, in his satisfaction of ego, he has sacrificed the well-being of another and has therefore forfeited any possibility of morality. To this I ask what would this fleeing man then do? Pick fruit and wander the forest as if the event were somehow inurgent? No. He would of course flee to the nearest village or gathering of his kind. (We know humankind is capable of society by experience and the chicken and egg question of morality and society will be avoided here.) In fear of another ambush by wolves, he would alert the village and in a cooperative effort, he would have slain the beast through the assistance of others. Here ego is satisfied, morality is so in the warning of others and utility of his society is then so reached.

Morality is acting on the premise of that which benefits man is that which benefits his society.

- LW