Vint Cerf Optimistic About Internet's Future, Continued Innovation 35
Anti-Globalism takes us to The Observer for an article by Vint Cerf on how far the internet has come, and how much can still be accomplished through its development. Cerf says,
"We're nearing the tipping point for mobile computing to deliver timely, geographically and socially relevant information. Researchers in Japan recently proposed using data from vehicles' windscreen wipers and embedded GPS receivers to track the movement of weather systems through towns and cities with a precision never before possible. It may seem academic, but understanding the way severe weather, such as a typhoon, moves through a city could save lives. Further exploration can shed light on demographic, intellectual and epidemiological phenomena, to name just a few areas."
One side effect. (Score:5, Funny)
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I suspect that they will call off that as being under the noise level.
And even then they will also need to detect not only if they are on, but also the amount of water they are removing. This is a more interesting thing to analyze since the friction between glass and rubber also comes into play.
One factor that may be more of concern is if someone has made a mistake with their lawn watering system, because then every car passing by will turn on their wipers - and you will have a local rain.
But even then I al
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*Activates windscreen wipers to make the scientists angry and mispredict the weather*
little willy from philly (Score:3, Funny)
My car did ONE little wipe and my mom got scared and said, "you're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air."
They'd better mandate it by law... (Score:2)
They will probably have to mandate that you cannot alter them in anyway, 'cause I fully intend to disable them all.
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Just remove the battery and you will be fine. Add a tin foil hat to be sure.
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Where's the fun in that?
Making them report totally bogus information, now that has potential!
TFA is BS (Score:4, Funny)
as if there really is someone named "Vint Cerf"
Even more obvious (Score:1)
Saving their lives is easy, tell them to stop driving in typhoons.
Rain sensing has been done (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the late 1970s, Bell Labs put several hundred direct-wired rain sensors around Murray Hill, NJ. (This isn't hard when you're the phone company.) They could then make "movies" of the patterns of rain when storms went through. This resulted in cute pictures, but didn't provide any predictive value, so it was dropped.
Oh well.
Re:Rain sensing has been done (Score:5, Insightful)
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... because it's not sarcasm if it isn't tagged as such.
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It's understandable for the point that it was on a very small area, but scaled up to a national area the idea isn't really bad.
But we actually have this today, but by using other kinds of technology - weather satellites and image processing.
I suspect that the real point there wasn't really the sensor network but the ability to actually collect and process the information in a meaningful way. Today we do that on a daily basis, but back then it was to test a concept.
Always bet against techno utopians (Score:1, Insightful)
People change technology. Technology does not change people.
Sounds like the same lambs being lead to bubbly slaughter after they read something in Wired that is going to transform the world. They just lose their money.
All these supposed benefits of ubiqituous monitoring will pale in comparison to the big brother aspects.
These gps systems will be automatically issuing speeding tickets before they save a sinlge life in a storm.
Monitoring "intellectual phenomena" will be used to track political opponents befor
Re:Always bet against techno utopians (Score:5, Funny)
Uh huh. I always use my gmail system to create a letter, print it to a PDF, print that on my laser printer, take it over to the roll top desk, light some candles, get the quill pen and ink bottle out, and calligraph my "me too" letter, which I then place in a parchment envelope, seal with some wax, get the horse out fo the barn and saddle him, kiss the family goodbye, load up for bear, and trek 15 miles through the woods to the nearest post office, stopping by the general store for a brew each way. Some guy, who doesn't look at all like Kevin Costner, adds it at the post office to his pile, hitches his spare horses in trail, and rides to the other coast, at great risk. There he hands the parchement off to the next outbound freighter, which eventually, through a myriad of events worthy of a Neal Stephenson length novel, eventually delivers said prose to a Mr. Michael Phelps in Beijing China
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Technology does not change people.
Yes it does, it's called the "greater internet fuckwad theory [penny-arcade.com]".
Quality vs. qantity (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just me or does the quality of the content seam to be spiraling down?
Whenever I do a Google search on anything, I find that I have to wade through pages of garbage, redundant pages and downright copies, advertisements, and pages authored by folks with very little, if any, knowledge of the subject. What is it that you engineers call it? Signal to noise ratio?
I think the next big web app is going to be a filter.
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I think the next big web app is going to be a filter.
What about a sarch engine that has an algorithm to sort the results and show the most relevant ones first?
Oh, wait.
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Bring back the old net (Score:3, Insightful)
Double edged sword (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't forget that easy transfer of information also implies easy transfer of disinformation.
Lies, propaganda, marketing, causing panics, etc. could all be caused by a well coordinated information hack.
The swift boaters and Fox news are two examples of this, but as information flow and connectivity increases I predict more vulnerability to this sort of attack on good information. Without good information neither democracies nor markets can operate effectively.
Tipping point... (Score:5, Interesting)
We're at a tipping point where our privacy is not only taken away completely, but gives way to complete, total control.
In this case, I think it's relevant to mention that Vint Cerf, despite all his legandary accomplishments, is now an ad broker who makes a living by selling your privacy. That billions are involved and that the company he works for prefers profit over privacy and human rights (e.g. China). And that Vint failed to mention this in his optimism.
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Self-contradicting article (Score:2)
33 comments? Gotta love it. (Score:2)
No one here is taking this man and his article seriously, and here might be why.
1. No one knows him.
2. ICANN is not something I'd brag about, considering how it created huge chaos, and profit motivated change at every step of every decision making process. Multilingual domain support is a joke, at least in Japan, where it basically NEVER HAPPENED. It was suppose to happen, they sold millions of domains, but it didn't happen, so they had to make a plugin instead. Now the plugin is standard on IE, but who car