Archive for the 'Progress2' Category

Frank Redux

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on March 1, 2012
in Bad Reasoning, Economics, Policy, Progress and Progress2
. 24 Comments

Thirteen years ago, in 1999, when I wanted to illustrate the astonishing march of progress, my Exhibit A was a new $250 stereo system that held 60 CD’s and could play tracks in random order.

My new Exhibit A is the fact that it’s been only thirteen years since this was a great example.

That was in an essay focused mostly on Robert Frank’s hypothesis that people care largely about relative position as opposed to absolute wealth. I was reminded of that essay following yesterday’s post, and I managed to dig out a copy, which I’ve posted here. Despite the dated examples, I still think it’s pretty good.

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We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on May 12, 2011
in Progress, Progress2 and Technology
. 22 Comments

I haven’t been able to find the exact quote, but unless my memory is playing tricks, Martin Gardner once posed the question “What modern artifact would most astonish Aristotle?”, and concluded that the answer was a Texas Instruments programmable calculator that could be taught to execute simple series of instructions. That was, roughly, 1975.

Here is what my iPhone does: It listens to the radio and tells me the name of the artist, song and album. It scans bar codes and tells me where to get the same item cheaper. It gives me step by step directions to anyplace I want to go. It points me to the nearest public bathroom. It recommends restaurants, based on cuisine, price, and proximity. It plays any music I want it to play, and it recommends new music based on what it’s learned about my preferences. It shows me a photograph of the entire earth and lets me slowly (or quickly) zoom in on my (or your) front porch. It takes pictures. It takes videos. It lets me edit those pictures and videos. It photographs 360 degree panoramas. It plays movies. It plays TV shows. It displays pretty much any book, newspaper or magazine I want to read. It reminds me where I parked my car. It lets me draw rough sketches of diagrams with my fingers and makes them look professional. It allows me to accept credit cards. It takes dictation. It checks the stock market or the weather with the push of a button. It reminds me of my appointments. It lets me browse the Web. It shows me my email. It locates and summons nearby taxicabs. It turns itself into a carpenter’s level. It turns itself into a flashlight. It makes phone calls. It makes video calls. And, oh yes — it has a calculator.

Now who would have been more astonished? Aristotle confronted with Martin Gardner’s calculator, or the Martin Gardner of 1975 confronted with my iPhone? I’m going to say it’s a close call.

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These Are the Good Old Days

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on February 10, 2011
in Personal, Progress and Progress2
. 9 Comments

This morning, I set my laptop computer and my Kindle down, one on top of the other, on what I thought was a sturdy tabletop, where they stayed for a minute or so before crashing to the floor. The Kindle is totaled, and the laptop hard drive is definitely wonky.

So I called Amazon, which will deliver me a replacement Kindle by this morning (approximately 20 hours after my call) at a heavily discounted price, even though my warranty was expired, and I called Dell (where I do have a warranty) to confirm that the hard drive was the probable locus of my laptop problems. Dell thought it surely was, and offered to have a technician on my doorstep this morning, but I preferred to pop in one of the three clones that I update once a week or so and keep in three separate locations. My computer’s working fine, and I’m using it to read my Kindle books while I wait for the new Kindle to arrive (which will probably be before you read this).

Sometimes the modern world works really really well.

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Living In the Future

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on August 26, 2010
in Books, Progress and Progress2
. 29 Comments


My treasured copy of the humor classic Science Made Stupid, copyright 1985, contains a Wonderful Future Invention Checklist. Who in 1985 would have thought that just 25 years later, I could check off a third or so of the entries?

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O Brave New World!

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on August 16, 2010
in Math, Progress, Progress2 and Truthseeking
. 8 Comments

complexitySomething momentous happened this week. Of this I feel certain.

A little over a week ago, HP Research Scientist Vinay Delalikar claimed he could settle the central problem of theoretical computer science. That’s not the momentous part. The momentous part is what happened next.

Deolalikar claimed to prove that P does not equal NP. This means, very roughly, that in mathematics, easy solutions can be difficult to find. “Difficult to find” means, roughly, that there’s no method substantially faster than brute force trial-and-error.

Plenty of problems — like “What are the factors of 17158904089?” — have easy solutions that seem difficult to find, but maybe that’s an illusion. Maybe there’s are easy solution methods we just haven’t thought of yet. If Deolalikar is right and P does not equal NP, then the illusion is reality: Some of those problems really are difficult. Math is hard, Barbie.

So. Deolalikar presented (where “presented” means “posted on the web and pointed several experts to it via email”) a 102 page paper that purports to solve the central problem of theoretical computer science. Then came the firestorm. It all played out on the blogs.

Dozens of experts leapt into action, checking details, filling in logical gaps, teasing out the deep structure of the argument, devising examples to illuminate the ideas, and identifying fundamental obstructions to the proof strategy. New insights and arguments were absorbed, picked apart, reconstructed and re-absorbed, often within minutes after they first appeared. The great minds at work included some of the giants of complexity theory, but also some semi-outsiders like Terence Tao and Tim Gowers, who are not complexity theorists but who are both wicked smart (with Fields Medals to prove it).

The epicenter of activity was Dick Lipton’s blog where, at last count, there had been been 6 posts with a total of roughly 1000 commments. How to keep track of all the interlocking comment threads? Check the continuously updated wiki, which summarizes all the main ideas and provides dozens of relevant links!

I am not remotely an expert in complexity theory, but for the past week I have been largely glued to my screen reading these comments, understanding some of them, and learning a lot of mathematics as I struggle to understand the others. It’s been exhilarating.

Continue reading ‘O Brave New World!’

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The Internet to the Rescue

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on May 21, 2010
in Cool Stuff, Progress and Progress2
. 10 Comments

Two Russian girls arrive in DC as part of a travel exchange program for which they’ve paid about $3000. The program promises them jobs on arrival but fails to deliver. Instead, they are instructed to travel to New York City to do “hostess work” in a place called the Lux Lounge. Their American friend, currently in Wyoming, pleads with them not to go, but after some initial hesitation they board a Greyhound bus to New York, insisting that everything is fine.

Where can the panicked friend turn? To the Internet, of course. He posts a plea for help. Commenters jump into action, contacting police and social service agencies, pooling information to figure out what bus the girls are likely to be on, and arranging to have them escorted to a police station. A couple of hundred comments later, the girls are safe and sound. One commenter adds:

This is the best use of the Internet that I, personally, have ever seen. I’m so proud to be a member of this community.

Indeed.

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The Book With All the Answers

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on April 29, 2010
in Memories, Musings, Progress and Progress2
. 11 Comments

bunnyDo you remember Mister Bunny Rabbit?. He was a friend of Captain Kangaroo. One day long ago, when I still measured my age in single digits, Mister Bunny Rabbit announced that he owned a book containing the answer to every possible question. I was skeptical about that book, and so was the Captain, who scoffed mightily at the notion. By way of a test, he looked up the question “Where is Mister Green Jeans right now?”. The book’s answer was “In the attic”, which the Captain knew (I forget how) could not possibly be right. While the Captain was still gloating, Mister Green Jeans ambled in and mentioned that he’d just come from the attic.

The Captain was amazed, and so was I. Long into adulthood, I pondered how that book could possibly have known where Mister Green Jeans was. The best answer I ever got was from the journalist Chris Suellentrop, who speculated that it was probably one of those quantum mechanical things where the act of asking the question caused both the book and Mister Green Jeans to settle down from a cloud of possibilities into mutually compatible states. Others—not so very long ago—speculated that perhaps the book was controlled by a satellite operating a surveillance camera.

Nowadays, of course, we can all carry that book in our pockets. I wonder if today’s children would find anything particularly magical about a reference work that has the answers to pretty much everything, and updates them on the fly.

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Giving Thanks

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on November 26, 2009
in Philosophy, Policy, Progress and Progress2
. 6 Comments

After the philosopher Daniel Dennett was rushed to the hospital for lifesaving surgery to replace a damaged aorta, he had an epiphany:

I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say “Thank goodness!” this is not merely a euphemism for “Thank God!” (We atheists don’t believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.

Continue reading ‘Giving Thanks’

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The Times, They’ve Been a Changin’

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on November 4, 2009
in Literature, Progress and Progress2
. 8 Comments

I have recently finished reading Hunters and Gatherers, a (quite good) novel written and set in 1991, which includes the following plot elements:

1) A door-to-door saleswoman pitches (hardcopy) encyclopedias to customers who eagerly seek easy access to vast quantities of information.

2) A man is eager to read an obscure novel he’s heard about, so he scours used book stores, hoping to find a copy. In the meantime, he’s not sure what the novel is about, and has no way to find out.

3) A comedian stores his collection of jokes on notecards, filling two rooms worth of file cabinets.

4) A collector of sound effects stores her collection on cassette tapes, and has no cost-effective way to create backups.

5) A man is unable to stay in close contact with his (adult) children, because long distance calling rates are prohibitively high.

Continue reading ‘The Times, They’ve Been a Changin’’

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