WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.640 Hello, I'm Robin Williams. We're going to start even though people are still coming in. 2 00:00:06.340 --> 00:00:08.940 Seem to be interested in technology for some reason. 3 00:00:12.180 --> 00:00:20.360 I stole this microphone from Adelaide about 24 years ago. This is a microphone. 4 00:00:22.760 --> 00:00:25.680 And if people dispute it, it's big enough to hit them over the swede. 5 00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:33.060 And this is a tape recorder. It's a vast thing, which they also gave me in 1972. 6 00:00:33.680 --> 00:00:40.960 And when I take these things out to do interviews with modern professors from Silicon Valley, they often titter. 7 00:00:42.700 --> 00:00:47.420 And because I get so hurt when people laugh, after all, it's the best technology in the world, even though it's old. 8 00:00:49.040 --> 00:00:54.620 When I was in Oxford interviewing George Monbiot, who used to be there as a fellow in Rights for the Guardian, 9 00:00:54.740 --> 00:00:55.660 he put on it. 10 00:00:55.680 --> 00:00:57.140 And he put on it this little label. It says, 11 00:00:57.240 --> 00:01:03.120 Approved. This technology has the potential to be used for the common good. Sincerely, the New Luddites. 12 00:01:04.660 --> 00:01:07.500 Not against progress, merely redefining it. 13 00:01:08.620 --> 00:01:10.860 So be kind to my tape recorder, frankly. 14 00:01:11.400 --> 00:01:18.000 I mentioned in my own session on gambling with speed, a gentleman whose name I've now remembered, 15 00:01:18.200 --> 00:01:21.400 who's also at the University of London, like one of our guests, John Gray, 16 00:01:21.640 --> 00:01:25.260 who said that technology combined with the unfettered free market, 17 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:27.900 is the greatest force for change in human history. 18 00:01:28.300 --> 00:01:33.300 And it's affecting many of those aspects of life which we actually treasure. 19 00:01:34.520 --> 00:01:37.200 And which we take for granted as being there for good. 20 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:40.180 Well, maybe that's what we'll talk about. 21 00:01:40.340 --> 00:01:45.500 We'll talk about the technological revolution, and maybe ask, the revolution for what? 22 00:01:46.260 --> 00:01:54.660 Now, our first couple of speakers are in fact Australian, although they might not necessarily sound like it. 23 00:01:54.800 --> 00:01:55.660 The first couple of speakers are in fact Australian, although they might not necessarily sound like it. 24 00:01:55.660 --> 00:01:59.420 The first is Bob Bishop, who is in fact based in Silicon Valley, 25 00:01:59.580 --> 00:02:04.060 and he has for some time been head of his own IT organization. 26 00:02:04.460 --> 00:02:05.800 Would you please welcome Bob Bishop. 27 00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:15.880 Thank you, Robin. Good afternoon, everyone. 28 00:02:16.320 --> 00:02:25.460 Well, 1901, a hundred years ago, Federation time, can you imagine if you were around at that time, 29 00:02:25.660 --> 00:02:29.440 could you imagine the future a hundred years from then? 30 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:34.120 Year 2001. That would have been a difficult, difficult thing to do. 31 00:02:34.580 --> 00:02:36.640 For example, the railroads. 32 00:02:36.940 --> 00:02:40.360 Would you have pictured how they built Australia and the cities? 33 00:02:40.580 --> 00:02:42.140 The automobile, the freeways. 34 00:02:43.640 --> 00:02:52.260 Boeing 747, could you imagine, could fly you from San Francisco to Sydney in less than 14 hours with 400 passengers? 35 00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:54.880 Now, I was on a flight like that yesterday. 36 00:02:55.080 --> 00:02:55.640 Now, I was on a flight like that yesterday. 37 00:02:55.640 --> 00:02:59.320 That's fine, but it took us 10 hours to change planes in Sydney. 38 00:02:59.980 --> 00:03:01.080 That wasn't fun. 39 00:03:01.700 --> 00:03:06.300 But could you imagine the electrification of the cities and our homes? 40 00:03:06.640 --> 00:03:10.960 Could you imagine refrigeration in your house, the telephone, the radio? 41 00:03:11.160 --> 00:03:20.660 As a matter of fact, December 12th, this year, 2001, is the 100th anniversary of the very first radio transmission 42 00:03:21.440 --> 00:03:25.620 by Marconi from Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland. 43 00:03:25.620 --> 00:03:26.480 In Canada. 44 00:03:26.980 --> 00:03:28.860 So there you have it, a hundred years. 45 00:03:29.080 --> 00:03:34.300 But in that hundred years, we also had, of course, the talking movie, the cinema. 46 00:03:34.420 --> 00:03:45.400 In fact, Al Jolson in 1927, he made the very first talkie movie, and his very first words on the very first talkie movie, 47 00:03:45.680 --> 00:03:47.780 You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet. 48 00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:50.900 And that's the title of this little program here this afternoon. 49 00:03:51.420 --> 00:03:55.600 But of course, along came World War II, radar, nuclear weapons, and the war. 50 00:03:55.600 --> 00:04:03.840 And then, shortly thereafter, television, computing, the fax machine, robotics, satellites, artificial intelligence. 51 00:04:04.160 --> 00:04:10.660 Now, each one of these technologies put a thousand new words into our dictionary. 52 00:04:11.100 --> 00:04:12.660 Each one of these technologies. 53 00:04:13.100 --> 00:04:18.800 And I would say this, we are swimming in technology like a fish swims in the sea. 54 00:04:19.600 --> 00:04:21.380 We fundamentally don't notice it. 55 00:04:21.440 --> 00:04:25.280 I would imagine, in fact, I would guarantee that every person in this room, 56 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:31.880 has either driven a car, made a phone call, watched television, been to the cinema, been in an aircraft, 57 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:34.240 and you just haven't thought anything of it. 58 00:04:34.360 --> 00:04:35.500 And it's all technology. 59 00:04:35.820 --> 00:04:42.660 Of course, technology is fundamentally what's been invented since you were born. 60 00:04:43.160 --> 00:04:45.740 That's roughly what the definition of technology is. 61 00:04:46.020 --> 00:04:49.220 So even a nail, a simple nail, was technology. 62 00:04:50.200 --> 00:04:54.000 The Flintstone head of a spear was technology. 63 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:56.100 And technology was technology at one point in the past. 64 00:04:57.200 --> 00:04:59.520 Technology cannot be disinvented. 65 00:04:59.840 --> 00:05:01.820 Once it's invented, it's out there. 66 00:05:01.980 --> 00:05:03.720 And it's out there for everybody. 67 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:10.480 But we know that technology can be harnessed either for good or for bad. 68 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:12.660 That's really the key question. 69 00:05:14.020 --> 00:05:16.020 Today, technology is accelerating. 70 00:05:16.380 --> 00:05:17.620 It always has been. 71 00:05:17.820 --> 00:05:20.300 But it's in a compound acceleration. 72 00:05:20.900 --> 00:05:22.680 It kind of is additive. 73 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:26.320 And if you add things together geometrically, 74 00:05:26.380 --> 00:05:30.800 you ultimately get an exponential increase in the strength of technology. 75 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:37.760 Today, we're shipping per year over 100 million computers into the marketplace. 76 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:45.380 Every year, a billion smart cards and over 10 billion embedded processor chips. 77 00:05:45.800 --> 00:05:47.820 That's what's going out there right now. 78 00:05:48.100 --> 00:05:50.640 That's an enormous amount of compute power. 79 00:05:50.640 --> 00:05:54.580 We're building an intelligent landscape, whether we like it or not. 80 00:05:54.820 --> 00:06:00.320 And obviously, over time, this is all going to be connected probably to the Internet. 81 00:06:00.900 --> 00:06:08.580 Now, one of the major driving forces behind this sweep in electronics communication gear 82 00:06:08.580 --> 00:06:10.580 is what we call Moore's Law. 83 00:06:10.840 --> 00:06:12.560 This is a driving force. 84 00:06:12.720 --> 00:06:14.500 And roughly, it goes like this. 85 00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:19.540 Every two years, we can generate twice the performance 86 00:06:19.540 --> 00:06:21.580 at one-half the price. 87 00:06:22.140 --> 00:06:26.180 Now, that's a price performance improvement of four to one every two years. 88 00:06:26.500 --> 00:06:28.480 If you do that for 10 years in a row, 89 00:06:29.060 --> 00:06:33.620 you actually get a price performance improvement of 1,000, a factor of 1,000. 90 00:06:33.940 --> 00:06:35.680 If you do it for 20 years in a row, 91 00:06:35.820 --> 00:06:40.940 you get a factor of one million, an improvement in price performance of one million. 92 00:06:41.060 --> 00:06:42.740 That's roughly what Moore's Law is. 93 00:06:43.060 --> 00:06:46.500 Now, what that means is over the last 20 years, 94 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:48.020 we've been able to package 95 00:06:48.580 --> 00:06:53.840 what was a supercomputer, the Cray-1, into a laptop. 96 00:06:54.180 --> 00:06:55.360 That's what you have today. 97 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:57.940 You're walking around with a laptop 98 00:06:57.940 --> 00:07:01.340 with the effectiveness of a supercomputer 20 years ago. 99 00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:04.740 So the question is, does that continue for the next 20 years? 100 00:07:05.380 --> 00:07:07.600 Will that continue for the next 20 years? 101 00:07:08.080 --> 00:07:10.700 Would Moore's Law hold up for the next 20 years? 102 00:07:11.100 --> 00:07:14.300 And there's a lot of debate today on whether that will be the case. 103 00:07:14.660 --> 00:07:16.280 I suspect it will be, 104 00:07:16.360 --> 00:07:18.000 but it will take us down a notch. 105 00:07:18.020 --> 00:07:19.640 It will take us down to the atomic level, 106 00:07:19.740 --> 00:07:21.020 if not the subatomic level, 107 00:07:21.280 --> 00:07:23.600 where we will be building and dealing with 108 00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:26.560 what's called quantum computing and the laws of quantum physics. 109 00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:30.260 But assume now that you have a million to one 110 00:07:31.020 --> 00:07:32.760 better price performance than today. 111 00:07:33.520 --> 00:07:34.420 What happens? 112 00:07:35.920 --> 00:07:38.920 Well, effectively, everything goes online. 113 00:07:39.280 --> 00:07:40.320 The world goes online. 114 00:07:40.780 --> 00:07:43.380 All of content becomes digital. 115 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:47.200 So we have a world of digital content online, 116 00:07:48.020 --> 00:07:51.820 and virtually all of intellectual property in the 21st century 117 00:07:51.820 --> 00:07:54.420 becomes digital intellectual property. 118 00:07:54.840 --> 00:07:56.860 My guess, under those circumstances, 119 00:07:57.020 --> 00:07:58.820 even 20 years from now, 120 00:07:58.980 --> 00:08:04.020 one half of all world trade will be digital intellectual property. 121 00:08:04.300 --> 00:08:07.200 Of course, to make it work, you need the software. 122 00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:09.900 The software is the key. 123 00:08:11.020 --> 00:08:13.980 If the software don't work, the systems don't work. 124 00:08:14.180 --> 00:08:16.760 If the software fails, the system fails. 125 00:08:16.760 --> 00:08:20.440 If the software has got bugs in it, the system has got bugs. 126 00:08:20.760 --> 00:08:24.260 So it's really a question of can we build the software 127 00:08:24.260 --> 00:08:25.560 that pulls all this together. 128 00:08:26.700 --> 00:08:28.380 That's a very intelligent software, 129 00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:32.620 and in fact, it needs to be idiot-proof, as we all know, 130 00:08:32.800 --> 00:08:34.940 and human-friendly, somewhat. 131 00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:36.840 And that's what it ain't today. 132 00:08:37.520 --> 00:08:38.920 So we've got a long way to go, 133 00:08:39.020 --> 00:08:40.400 but I suspect in 20 years, 134 00:08:40.900 --> 00:08:42.960 all the software will become very friendly. 135 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:45.940 But there's other forces driving, 136 00:08:45.940 --> 00:08:48.860 driving innovation and driving technology. 137 00:08:49.160 --> 00:08:50.740 And roughly, these other forces, 138 00:08:50.900 --> 00:08:53.520 when they compound together with Moore's law, 139 00:08:53.820 --> 00:08:55.660 they produce an explosive effect. 140 00:08:55.920 --> 00:08:58.900 The first one of which I mentioned is venture capital funding. 141 00:08:59.660 --> 00:09:01.980 VC funding around the world today 142 00:09:01.980 --> 00:09:03.780 is of the magnitude of $100 billion, 143 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:06.780 getting poured into new innovative ideas, 144 00:09:07.080 --> 00:09:09.160 largely in the area of technology. 145 00:09:10.440 --> 00:09:13.680 There's another force, and that's deregulation and privatization 146 00:09:13.680 --> 00:09:15.920 of industry, like Telstra, for example. 147 00:09:15.940 --> 00:09:16.760 Here in Australia. 148 00:09:17.040 --> 00:09:21.200 That puts Telstra in the game of having to compete 149 00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:23.080 with the world's best technologists. 150 00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:24.940 And they are pretty good, 151 00:09:25.100 --> 00:09:27.200 and they're going to use a lot of their revenues 152 00:09:27.940 --> 00:09:30.520 to be an effective innovator in technology. 153 00:09:31.700 --> 00:09:35.180 Governments, however, are still very important in technology 154 00:09:35.180 --> 00:09:38.660 because basic science, underneath it all, needs to be funded. 155 00:09:38.700 --> 00:09:40.320 It has a longer-term payback, 156 00:09:40.480 --> 00:09:44.580 and eventually, basic science becomes technology. 157 00:09:44.580 --> 00:09:48.640 So what we're watching are all these forces 158 00:09:48.640 --> 00:09:52.000 driving what we call information communication technology. 159 00:09:52.860 --> 00:09:54.700 Secondly, material sciences, 160 00:09:55.260 --> 00:09:57.320 what we would call smart materials, 161 00:09:57.580 --> 00:09:58.780 bioresponsor materials, 162 00:09:59.440 --> 00:10:02.060 materials that actually can fix themselves, 163 00:10:02.860 --> 00:10:07.060 and probably are built at the micro level, 164 00:10:07.220 --> 00:10:08.160 at the atomic level, 165 00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:11.480 and exploding into what we call nanoscience, 166 00:10:11.600 --> 00:10:12.940 nanomaterial, nanotechnology. 167 00:10:12.940 --> 00:10:17.320 And then thirdly, the other big horizon, 168 00:10:17.400 --> 00:10:18.960 the big frontier is bioscience. 169 00:10:19.260 --> 00:10:21.620 And of course, everyone's been tuned in on genomics, 170 00:10:21.820 --> 00:10:24.660 but that's only a simple first step. 171 00:10:24.820 --> 00:10:28.140 Beyond genomics is proteomics and functionomics, 172 00:10:28.320 --> 00:10:31.840 each of which adopts a thousand times more compute power 173 00:10:31.840 --> 00:10:33.260 than the previous step. 174 00:10:33.400 --> 00:10:34.760 And this is racing forward. 175 00:10:34.940 --> 00:10:37.100 Of course, from a good point of view, 176 00:10:37.140 --> 00:10:39.980 we can say it's disease prediction and prevention, 177 00:10:40.200 --> 00:10:42.880 and the real scary part is, 178 00:10:42.920 --> 00:10:47.980 the ethical, moral issues associated with bioscience. 179 00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:52.220 But finally, let me talk about what I call the main frontier, 180 00:10:52.480 --> 00:10:55.960 and that's the frontier of the brain in the 21st century. 181 00:10:56.220 --> 00:10:57.840 Now, we have six billion people worldwide, 182 00:10:58.780 --> 00:11:01.780 and I think we have about two or three hundred here in the room. 183 00:11:02.280 --> 00:11:04.140 You all have a supercomputer. 184 00:11:04.500 --> 00:11:07.440 You're all walking around with a very good supercomputer up here. 185 00:11:07.580 --> 00:11:09.340 It may or may not be switched on. 186 00:11:11.480 --> 00:11:12.600 We know that, 187 00:11:12.920 --> 00:11:15.420 in the past, we've treated this machine up here 188 00:11:15.420 --> 00:11:17.040 something like a soup, 189 00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:20.200 and we've poured more chemicals into that soup. 190 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:23.340 But the time has come where we can treat the brain 191 00:11:23.920 --> 00:11:26.100 much like a very complex electrical circuit. 192 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:29.900 And in fact, the architecture of the brain, 193 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:31.920 the electronic architecture of the brain, 194 00:11:32.020 --> 00:11:33.760 is starting to reveal itself, 195 00:11:34.040 --> 00:11:36.460 and we are starting to build now machines 196 00:11:36.460 --> 00:11:40.040 that somewhat emulate the way the brain is thinking 197 00:11:40.040 --> 00:11:42.340 in a very broad manner. 198 00:11:42.920 --> 00:11:46.760 So that brings us down the path of what we call thinking machines. 199 00:11:47.100 --> 00:11:48.240 Can machines think? 200 00:11:48.420 --> 00:11:49.420 Can they be intelligent? 201 00:11:49.740 --> 00:11:51.120 Can they have consciousness? 202 00:11:51.760 --> 00:11:54.100 And this is really a major frontier 203 00:11:54.920 --> 00:11:57.240 that we're facing right now to understand this. 204 00:11:57.520 --> 00:12:01.060 I should say that there are three main tools 205 00:12:01.060 --> 00:12:03.740 that are emerging and converging 206 00:12:03.740 --> 00:12:07.020 that will break through in the 21st century 207 00:12:07.020 --> 00:12:10.240 to cause us not only a lot more controversy, 208 00:12:10.380 --> 00:12:12.900 but I think a lot more interesting questions. 209 00:12:12.920 --> 00:12:13.060 And I think we're going to have a very interesting debate 210 00:12:13.060 --> 00:12:14.580 on where it's all going. 211 00:12:14.680 --> 00:12:15.980 The first of which is the Internet. 212 00:12:16.340 --> 00:12:18.900 Now, I presume that half this audience 213 00:12:18.900 --> 00:12:20.660 is connected to the Internet. 214 00:12:20.860 --> 00:12:23.380 But today that Internet is fairly narrowband, 215 00:12:23.660 --> 00:12:25.740 page-oriented, alphanumeric. 216 00:12:25.840 --> 00:12:26.840 It's very linear. 217 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:28.640 It's not so exciting. 218 00:12:28.860 --> 00:12:31.180 But add the million-to-one factor 219 00:12:31.180 --> 00:12:32.480 that I spoke about earlier, 220 00:12:32.660 --> 00:12:35.640 and this Internet is going to rapidly migrate 221 00:12:35.640 --> 00:12:38.000 to being a broadband Internet. 222 00:12:38.260 --> 00:12:39.700 It's going to be fully immersive. 223 00:12:40.220 --> 00:12:41.860 It's going to be very visual, 224 00:12:42.920 --> 00:12:45.040 and very nonlinear and associative. 225 00:12:45.240 --> 00:12:47.880 So it's going to correspond to the way we normally think. 226 00:12:48.460 --> 00:12:51.860 And I think as we all plug into that new Internet, 227 00:12:52.100 --> 00:12:53.340 that advanced Internet, 228 00:12:53.480 --> 00:12:54.620 over the next 20 years, 229 00:12:54.840 --> 00:12:57.920 this is when the global brain will start to formulate 230 00:12:57.920 --> 00:13:00.940 and involve pretty much everyone in the world. 231 00:13:01.360 --> 00:13:04.820 So in there, you have what we call virtual reality, 232 00:13:05.100 --> 00:13:07.420 the ability to build a virtual world 233 00:13:07.420 --> 00:13:10.020 and to operate within a virtual world, 234 00:13:10.140 --> 00:13:12.260 to learn within a virtual world, 235 00:13:12.920 --> 00:13:15.140 and to simulate pretty much anything you want to simulate. 236 00:13:15.580 --> 00:13:17.420 Now, that's a safe environment 237 00:13:17.420 --> 00:13:19.120 because it's not a real environment. 238 00:13:19.400 --> 00:13:22.040 It's fairly low cost because you can repeat and repeat 239 00:13:22.040 --> 00:13:26.440 that experiment, whatever you're wishing to model and to simulate. 240 00:13:26.800 --> 00:13:30.300 And, of course, it's totally safe from any accident 241 00:13:30.300 --> 00:13:31.420 that you may otherwise have. 242 00:13:31.680 --> 00:13:34.820 So virtual reality being mapped into the Internet 243 00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:39.380 is a very exciting future synergy 244 00:13:39.380 --> 00:13:41.960 that we're looking right now at in the face, 245 00:13:41.960 --> 00:13:43.060 staring in the face. 246 00:13:43.960 --> 00:13:45.800 So what comes on top of that? 247 00:13:45.960 --> 00:13:48.980 Well, the answer is this intelligent software 248 00:13:49.820 --> 00:13:53.300 starts to bootstrap itself and learn on its own accord 249 00:13:54.700 --> 00:13:56.800 overlaid onto that very smart Internet, 250 00:13:57.060 --> 00:13:58.000 high bandwidth Internet. 251 00:13:58.300 --> 00:14:03.480 So here we have the possibility of a global network, 252 00:14:03.820 --> 00:14:07.240 very fast, high speed, virtual, immersive, 253 00:14:08.180 --> 00:14:11.300 starting to learn for itself and to help all of us, 254 00:14:11.320 --> 00:14:11.940 all of us. 255 00:14:11.960 --> 00:14:13.520 All of us in the room and all of us around the world. 256 00:14:13.740 --> 00:14:16.780 And that is, in fact, what I consider the platform, 257 00:14:17.200 --> 00:14:20.900 the main platform on which most innovations will take place 258 00:14:20.900 --> 00:14:22.320 in the 21st century, 259 00:14:22.500 --> 00:14:28.240 which leads us to a very special area of controversy, 260 00:14:28.520 --> 00:14:30.940 and that is the robot, robotics, 261 00:14:31.960 --> 00:14:36.080 and what we think a robot was going to develop into 262 00:14:36.080 --> 00:14:37.600 in the next few years. 263 00:14:37.840 --> 00:14:40.260 I happened to chase down, 264 00:14:40.260 --> 00:14:43.620 if I could, in the last few days, 265 00:14:43.860 --> 00:14:47.180 who coined the word robot. 266 00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:49.460 And as far as I can see here, 267 00:14:49.640 --> 00:14:53.180 we have a gentleman, a bohemian dramatist, 268 00:14:53.200 --> 00:14:55.880 who actually wrote a book that was called 269 00:14:55.880 --> 00:14:57.260 Rossum's Universal Robots. 270 00:14:57.920 --> 00:15:00.240 And it was the story of a reproduction 271 00:15:00.240 --> 00:15:04.140 of a mechanistic device 272 00:15:04.140 --> 00:15:07.140 that could somehow be attached to a soul. 273 00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:10.240 Well, I can leave this story, 274 00:15:10.240 --> 00:15:13.220 now, in the hands of one of our real experts 275 00:15:13.220 --> 00:15:15.560 in the area of robotics 276 00:15:15.560 --> 00:15:17.040 and where it's going 277 00:15:17.040 --> 00:15:19.220 and what it's going to do to us in the 21st century. 278 00:15:19.640 --> 00:15:22.120 And if I could pass it on now to our next speaker, 279 00:15:22.320 --> 00:15:23.260 Rodney Brooks, 280 00:15:23.520 --> 00:15:24.940 we'll hear the rest of that story. 281 00:15:32.560 --> 00:15:33.580 Well, good afternoon. 282 00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:35.100 I'm very pleased to be here 283 00:15:35.100 --> 00:15:37.620 and follow what Bob has said, 284 00:15:37.740 --> 00:15:39.980 although Robin has warned me 285 00:15:39.980 --> 00:15:40.780 that he's going next 286 00:15:40.780 --> 00:15:42.380 and he's going to be rather sarcastic. 287 00:15:42.540 --> 00:15:44.560 So I have to give him some fodder 288 00:15:44.560 --> 00:15:47.360 to work on for his Luddite tendencies. 289 00:15:49.660 --> 00:15:51.900 Bob talked about robots 290 00:15:51.900 --> 00:15:58.140 and I tend to think that robots are, right now, 291 00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:00.860 where computers were around 1978. 292 00:16:01.380 --> 00:16:04.220 Robots are lagging computers by about 21 years. 293 00:16:04.980 --> 00:16:09.960 In 1978, computers were mostly off in special locations, 294 00:16:09.980 --> 00:16:11.120 in little rooms, isolated rooms, 295 00:16:11.280 --> 00:16:13.260 and only the priesthood got to interact with them. 296 00:16:13.500 --> 00:16:17.440 Today, most robots are on automobile production lines 297 00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:20.320 and normal mortals shouldn't get close to them 298 00:16:20.320 --> 00:16:22.080 because they'll just slap them aside. 299 00:16:23.920 --> 00:16:26.600 So normal people don't interact with them very much. 300 00:16:26.680 --> 00:16:29.820 In 1978, computers were starting to be something 301 00:16:29.820 --> 00:16:31.460 that people were interested in. 302 00:16:31.580 --> 00:16:33.940 There were starting to be a few hobbyist sort of computers, 303 00:16:34.060 --> 00:16:37.120 the very first home computers, 304 00:16:37.260 --> 00:16:39.240 which you really, really had to love, 305 00:16:39.980 --> 00:16:40.140 and they were not for anyone to use. 306 00:16:40.420 --> 00:16:43.380 They make windows look fantastic. 307 00:16:46.560 --> 00:16:49.560 But then, over the next few years, 308 00:16:49.620 --> 00:16:50.820 computers got into our homes, 309 00:16:51.020 --> 00:16:53.820 embedded computers in toys, in games, 310 00:16:54.020 --> 00:16:58.400 and computers then got into our homes as individual units. 311 00:16:58.520 --> 00:17:00.240 They were pretty hard to use early on, 312 00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:01.500 but because of Moore's Law, 313 00:17:01.720 --> 00:17:05.380 the price has come down as well as performance has gone up, 314 00:17:05.500 --> 00:17:08.080 and a few applications which no one foresaw, 315 00:17:08.080 --> 00:17:09.860 no one foresaw that the World Wide Web 316 00:17:09.860 --> 00:17:12.000 was really going to be something useful. 317 00:17:12.160 --> 00:17:14.180 There were a few visionaries like Ted Nelson 318 00:17:14.180 --> 00:17:15.680 and earlier, Vannevar Bush, 319 00:17:15.880 --> 00:17:18.500 who had a few notions that there might be something like the Web, 320 00:17:18.580 --> 00:17:19.820 but no one took them seriously. 321 00:17:20.040 --> 00:17:20.720 They were crackpots. 322 00:17:22.220 --> 00:17:26.060 So the Web and then email really, really took off, 323 00:17:26.120 --> 00:17:29.840 and computers have become what they have, 324 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:31.220 part of our everyday life. 325 00:17:31.360 --> 00:17:34.240 I think you said a billion embedded processors a year? 326 00:17:34.820 --> 00:17:36.580 Ten billion. Ten billion. 327 00:17:36.580 --> 00:17:39.040 What's a factor of ten when you're talking about computers? 328 00:17:39.300 --> 00:17:41.660 Ten billion embedded processors shipped per year. 329 00:17:42.260 --> 00:17:45.540 So robots are in the same situation. 330 00:17:45.860 --> 00:17:48.340 Robots are getting into our homes as simple toys. 331 00:17:48.500 --> 00:17:50.980 There's a few home robots that you can buy. 332 00:17:54.160 --> 00:17:55.120 Robot lawnmowers. 333 00:17:55.300 --> 00:17:58.600 A bunch of companies have announced robot cleaning, 334 00:17:58.740 --> 00:18:00.180 cleaning robots for the home, 335 00:18:00.280 --> 00:18:02.180 which will be out over the next year or two. 336 00:18:02.520 --> 00:18:03.860 Like those early computers, 337 00:18:03.980 --> 00:18:05.660 you'll probably really have to love them 338 00:18:06.580 --> 00:18:06.860 and use them. 339 00:18:07.100 --> 00:18:08.640 But I think over the next few years, 340 00:18:08.700 --> 00:18:11.300 we're going to see them more and more come into our homes, 341 00:18:11.440 --> 00:18:15.020 in the same way our homes now have lots of computers in them, 342 00:18:15.100 --> 00:18:17.040 and probably even Robin's home does, 343 00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:18.460 even though he doesn't know about it. 344 00:18:18.540 --> 00:18:20.940 They're hiding in his coffee maker, et cetera. 345 00:18:23.780 --> 00:18:26.920 So robots in our homes are going to be more and more 346 00:18:26.920 --> 00:18:29.040 part of our daily life, actuation, 347 00:18:29.240 --> 00:18:31.420 and connected to the Internet. 348 00:18:32.020 --> 00:18:35.700 So there's going to be a lot of virtual presence, 349 00:18:36.580 --> 00:18:37.320 not just virtual reality, 350 00:18:37.500 --> 00:18:40.700 but virtual presence where you project yourself somewhere else 351 00:18:40.700 --> 00:18:42.580 and can act in the world. 352 00:18:42.820 --> 00:18:44.840 And that is starting to come along 353 00:18:44.840 --> 00:18:47.020 in early business-to-business applications 354 00:18:47.020 --> 00:18:48.240 for remote inspection. 355 00:18:48.520 --> 00:18:51.500 But before too long, it may be the case that 356 00:18:51.500 --> 00:18:53.580 you will have a robot in your home 357 00:18:53.580 --> 00:18:56.080 that when you're at work, you can project yourself into, 358 00:18:56.180 --> 00:18:57.140 go look in the refrigerator, 359 00:18:57.340 --> 00:19:00.620 see what you need to buy on the way home for dinner. 360 00:19:00.840 --> 00:19:04.300 Or have your repairman come 361 00:19:04.300 --> 00:19:08.220 and project themselves into your home robot 362 00:19:08.220 --> 00:19:10.300 and do whatever repairs need to be done 363 00:19:10.300 --> 00:19:13.520 to install a new telephone line or whatever. 364 00:19:14.220 --> 00:19:16.900 So robots in the home are going to become more and more common. 365 00:19:17.380 --> 00:19:19.360 But more than that, 366 00:19:19.420 --> 00:19:22.900 robots in the body are going to become more and more common. 367 00:19:23.140 --> 00:19:28.320 We're just starting to see the thin edge of the wedge come in now, 368 00:19:28.420 --> 00:19:32.080 where technology is coming into our bodies, 369 00:19:32.220 --> 00:19:34.280 first with things like cochlear implants, 370 00:19:34.300 --> 00:19:37.240 where tens of thousands of people have electronics 371 00:19:37.240 --> 00:19:39.020 directly connected to their neurons. 372 00:19:39.420 --> 00:19:42.980 Retinal implants for people who have macular degeneration 373 00:19:42.980 --> 00:19:45.780 are not quite at the clinical level yet, 374 00:19:45.880 --> 00:19:46.800 but there are certainly trials. 375 00:19:47.040 --> 00:19:51.340 And lots of other invasions into our body 376 00:19:51.340 --> 00:19:55.940 of silicon and steel technology to repair damage. 377 00:19:56.460 --> 00:20:00.160 As that technology, over the next five to ten years, 378 00:20:00.280 --> 00:20:02.780 becomes more and more robust, 379 00:20:02.780 --> 00:20:07.680 people will start to request augmentations of their bodies. 380 00:20:07.900 --> 00:20:09.780 So I think it's fairly likely... 381 00:20:10.520 --> 00:20:11.280 You know, in the same way, 382 00:20:11.320 --> 00:20:15.100 20 years ago, it was really not normal 383 00:20:15.100 --> 00:20:17.440 for a male to have a pierced ear. 384 00:20:18.040 --> 00:20:21.160 20 years from now, I think it will be quite normal 385 00:20:21.160 --> 00:20:25.240 for people to have silicon implants in their body 386 00:20:25.240 --> 00:20:26.260 for various reasons, 387 00:20:26.320 --> 00:20:29.440 if only to monitor their blood sugar level, 388 00:20:29.580 --> 00:20:30.800 their temperature, et cetera, 389 00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:32.680 and be able to download a continuous 390 00:20:32.780 --> 00:20:35.480 record of their internal health 391 00:20:35.480 --> 00:20:37.040 for the use of their doctors. 392 00:20:37.220 --> 00:20:40.360 But more likely, I think, as we get 20 years out, 393 00:20:40.440 --> 00:20:45.300 we will have Internet connections inside our heads. 394 00:20:46.100 --> 00:20:48.240 We'll never be able to get away from our email. 395 00:20:49.860 --> 00:20:51.760 Every technology has its downside. 396 00:20:53.560 --> 00:20:56.020 But it's really going to change the way we operate. 397 00:20:56.400 --> 00:21:01.600 While I'm sitting listening to Bob give his talk, 398 00:21:01.600 --> 00:21:02.640 and he's talking about... 399 00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:03.680 I don't know how you are, 400 00:21:03.920 --> 00:21:05.500 I could be scanning the web 401 00:21:05.500 --> 00:21:07.560