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RainbowsEnd

Rainbow's EndThe first bit of dumb luck came disguised as a public embarassment for the European Center for Defence Against Disease. On July 23, schoolchildren in Algeria claimed that a respiratory epidemic was spreading across the Mediterranean. The claim was based on clever analysis of antibody data from the mass-transit systems of Algeria and Naples…

So begins Rainbow’s End, by VernorVinge, “A novel with one foot in the future.”

The first chapter of the book, which is about the central problem that frames the remainder of the book, seamlessly intertwines:

This is only the beginning. The book is loaded with ideas.

The entire text of the book is now available online, for free: http://vrinimi.org/

The book assumes the SoftSingularity? scenario. That is: Technology is developing at accelerated rates, but not so accelerated that human beings can’t co-develop in time.

Some of the technologies and issues of the 2020’s:

This is just a small sampling of the ideas; there are far more.

The book delves deeply into the interactions between the technologies; it is NOT guilty of the single advancement problem. “Oh, look, we have spaceships,” but people do intelligence ye olde fashioned way. C3PO and R2D2 can’t communicate by wireless. [7]

The book hinges on both the undeniable, powerful, and crucial strengths, and the weaknesses, and pettiness, of ThePublicWeb.

It also has a lot to say about age; The interactions between younger & older. Talent, and mentorship. As we develop into the future, the intellectual advantage of being older declines.

Everybody is on the same page, regardless of age; Something I personally have learned and confirmed, as a programmer. Even deep wisdom is communicable and communicated, a la the DesignPatterns? movement, and wealth of publications on various general systems theories.

And yet, there are things that can only be known, and only be had, through age. History and path dependency are forces of their own.

The book has a lot to say about intelligence, as well. The AutomaticTranslationFiction shows up in the story as JITT, or just-in-time-training, which is illegal, but also, …

The book is just full of ideas. It’s idea-dense. They’re just spilling out, all over the place.

This is, undoubtedly, a reference book, until at least 2010. Science fiction authors who need to write about the 2020’s will, for a time, be writing straight into VernorVinge’s concept of the 2020s. It’s simply too well put together, and too well articulated, to be ignored. It will take a lot of effort for someone to deviate, and make a convincing story. It can plausibly be done, but it’ll require a lot of intelligence to do, and VernorVinge has a very elite pool of analysts, industry sensors.

See Also

Elsewhere

2008-07-02

  • 15:03 UTC What a mix! Yes, what a mix in this post! You can read about books, sunburn and read a newsarticle! A very strange combination! The  three books are books 3 people living/working/travelling in London, are busy reading. How do I know that? Well, I like watching people and in particular what they read when they’re reading… whilst travelling on the tube today…three people near me were reading…books…many people read newspapers on the tube to be ”busy”….as it is an “unwritten” rule that you don’t really look
  • 01:51 UTC NHS 60 years on would seem like sci-fi in 1948, Last of the March of the Penguins and How to make you watch commercialsSci Fi Pool Highlights for 2nd July Include: NHS at 60 look how far we have come - If you live in the UK you have probably complained about the countries state run "FREE" medical service, from local GP's to Hospitals and care ... but have you ever stopped to think just how much it has helped over the years or how much it may have pioneered? Some of the things they do now would have seemed like sci-fi back in 1948 Penguin decline latest evidence of climate downturn - Who doesn't love penguins? Th

2008-06-14

  • 18:43 UTC Find Luck At The Rainbow’s End You certainly don’t have to be Irish to appreciate the Rainbow’s End Video Slot from the Microgaming company…but it sure will help! A new advanced video slot game, Rainbows End is a five-reel 25 payline game that has an engaging leprechaun theme. With a Free Spin and an Expanded Pot of Gold Feature, you don’t need the luck of the Irish to win big with this one! Rainbow’s End default coin size in the game is 0.01 and the highest is 0.25, making it suitable for players of all levels of betting e

2008-05-15

  • 09:12 UTC Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge Yet another book I heard from Christian. Rainbows End (buy it from Amazon.ca) was nominated for the Hugo Awards last year (Edit: Oh wait, it not only was nominated; It won the award!), and was also on my wish list for a little while when I heard that the ebook version was now available for free on the author's web site. I downloaded it to my PDA and read it over a somewhat long period of time. Rainbows End is a science-fiction book of a near future where enhanced reality is widely availab

2008-04-18

  • 10:32 UTC Some gristle from Print is Dead, GomezSome gristle from Print is Dead, Gomez P58.5 mentioning the loss of book reviews published in newspapers, Gomes points out that these discussions are happening online…but doesn’t mention Amazon here? I think … Continued here: Some gristle from Print is Dead, Gomez

2008-04-17

  • 20:34 UTC Day 13: Synthetic Life and the Singularity Goal 87: I have a ‘bad’ habit of reading 3-6 different books at the same time, cycling between different ones, depending on my mood. I refer to it as bad as I would probably finish each one sooner if I only focused on a single volume; however, I enjoy the juxtaposition of many different characters, plots, and ideas. Tonight, I started reading Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge, the Hugo award winning novel from last year (2007). Although I am reading the analog version (I still prefer paper books),

2008-04-15

  • 23:26 UTC Three New Games For Online Casino Online casino MummysGold.com has announced the launch of three new games that it said would keep players coming back for more. The first new game from the Malta-licensed online casino is the Tomb Raider: Secret of the Sword bonus video slot. Players follow heroine Lara Croft on her international quest to recover fragments of the Hidden Sword with the aid of free spins, multipliers and interactive bonus games featuring generous sub-features. A jackpot function can increase a player’s take-hom

2008-04-02

2008-03-30

  • 04:19 UTC Remembering the FutureThe BBC's Horizon programme was about memory last week. I found it personally fascinating as I am at that age when 'senior moments' do seem to be on the increase. By the way, our memory skills peak at 25 and decline thereafter - so 'welcome to my world' those of you past the quarter-century mark ... I am an avid user of Google Desktop and it has often struck me that an 'implanted' version of same would do wonders for my memory (and for those can't-quite-put-a-name-to-the-face moments). Not unli

2008-03-14

2008-03-10

  • 01:14 UTC Top 10 augmented reality demos that will revolutionize video games Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to do something parents can’t: free gamers from their couches and usher them into the real world, to play. Here is my countdown of the top 10 best AR demos poised to revolutionize video games: 10. Human Pac Man When Dr. Adrian David Cheok (NUS) wanted to create an exciting augmented reality game, he chose to remake the first video game to ever introduce a character - the legendary Pac Man. Cheok literally stepped into Pacman’s shoes in this first-pers

2008-03-04

2008-03-03

  • 17:14 UTC Top 10 augmented reality demos that will revolutionize video games Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to do something parents can’t: free gamers from their couches and usher them into the real world, to play. Here is my countdown of the top 10 best AR demos poised to revolutionize video games: 10. Human Pac Man When Dr. Adrian David Cheok (NUS) wanted to create an exciting augmented reality game, he chose to remake the first video game to ever introduce a character - the legendary Pac Man. Cheok literally stepped into Pacman’s shoes in this first-pers

2008-02-26

  • 19:21 UTC Where Rainbows End From the author of PS, I Love You, Cecelia Ahern weaves yet another tale of love and all its trials. Upon the opening of the first page, once may gain a confused look as they stare upon what may seem like notes and letter from one person to another - Until the realization kicks in: the story is told in that form. Yes indeed. Unique from most stories I’ve read, Cecelia Ahern takes the approach which is not commonly used by most authors, telling the story from a compilation of e-mails, letters

Discussion

Incidentally, I have no idea how you’d deliver (alone!) a full 1024x768 displays worth of data at 60 Hz to a contact lense, much less the far greater resolution that would be demanded of a full augmented reality system. If anybody has a clue how that could conceivably work, please leave a note here.

The size, weight, and power of computers and their displays continues to plummet. The smallest and lowest-power display I am aware of (as of 2006) is the “virtual retinal display” (VRD), which scans a small, low-power beam of light across the retina. Microvision ( http://mvis.com/ ) is apparently commercially selling VRDs, based on research at the virtual retinal display group ( http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd/ ). I’ve been told that someone (?) is trying to build something similar into cell phones, so that cell phones can get even smaller, but have a screen that looks larger and is easier to read.

For a SF story, it would be plausable enough to say that the contact lens contains (VCSEL) surface-emitting lasers.

DLPs and LCD projectors are competing technologies that are also pretty small and shrinking.

I’ve worn the NOMAD visor display, which I believe makes use of the VRD.

The path of bandwidth for the NOMAD is clear: You have a big fat cable from the device to the visor, and the visor is the thing emitting the laser that bounces off a reflective semi-transparent plate.

What I’m baffled by, is how we’ll get display data to the contact lens of the future.

Options, it seems to me:

  • Generate the complete image on the contact lens itself, taking cues from the environment.
  • Wirelessly send the complete image to the contact lens.
  • Somehow route data to the contact lens through the body.

I doubt that the first and second are plausible, even with sophisticated nanotechnology. I don’t know what the bandwidth carrying capabilites are of the human body, and the eye: I suspect it is much less than radio.

I think it’s important to remember that computer chips are already nanotechnology. The smallest feature size (I still don’t know exactly what that means: Are they saying the complete width of a transistor? What exactly is a “feature?”) is 65 nanometers. It’s plausible we’ll make it to 15-20. It’s not plausible that transistors as we know them will get down smaller. The ITRS believes we’ll be petering out in miniaturization around 2018, unless we figure out something dramatically different. We probably will, but it’ll probably only get us another 1 or 2 more halvings (Carbon Nanotube, or whatever.) It’s pretty bleak, from then on.

Our 3-D processors have already gone past the CPU, and moved to specific hardware encodings of specific algorithms. So I don’t see that as “a way out” either.

So, in short, I don’t see how we’re going to put a 3-D rendering & visualizing system-on-a-chip onto a contact lens.

But glasses? That’s practically a given! We can be near-certain that people will be wearing AugmentedReality glasses by 2025. I personally believe that 2015 is very likely. There are basically zero obstacles, and several people are already doing limited forms of it. Commoditization, new desire, all the factors behind it are on the way.

I would give more likelihood to direct neural interface, or cybernetic manipulation of the eye, than contact lenses. “Messy?” Yes, but, clearly possible.

Or perhaps we’ll have the contact lenses, but you’ll have to have a cap as well, and the lens will be more of a display, receiving and rerouting data directed to it from the cap.

I recently saw that Vernor Vinge confessed that the contact lenses are probably impossible. See roughly half-way through the interview with Vinge; He thought the same thing.

So, there are only 3 problems: Getting the information to the contact lenses, processing the information, and getting the information from the contact lenses into the optic nerve.

Silly me, I thought you were stumbling over the contact-lens-to-optic-nerve path.

Standard IrDA? devices already communicate at 4 Mbit/s. You may have already had one pointed right at your eyeballs and never even noticed. Just a couple of orders of magnitude faster (and/or some video data compression), and it could transmit full-motion video.

… OK, let’s go with glasses. That gives us nearly all the benefits of the contact lenses, and makes them far easier to build.

“The smallest feature size”

A person doing VLSI layout looks a lot like a person doing pixel art. Often she’s zoomed way in on a tiny piece of the whole image, making everything look jagged because it’s made of visible squares. (The size of every square is called “L”, or in the really prestigious schools, “lambda”).

The “smallest feature” on a chip is the width of the poly “wires”, which are 2 squares (“2 lambda”) wide.

“a MOS transistor can be viewed as the overlap of a diffusion primitive and a polysilicon primitive (see Fig. 2.1a).” – http://www.rulabinsky.com/cavd/text/chap02-1.html

Whenever a chip fab is built with better resolution equipment, designs can be shrunk down. Then you can squeeze more chips onto the same-sized disk of silicon, making each chip cost less. This also makes the newer chips run faster.

Some more pictures of VLSI layout: http://rer.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/RER/cadence/manual/man_advance2.html

Some VLSI layout easter eggs: http://www.microscope.fsu.edu/creatures/

Does that answer your question?

EditNearLinks: MeatballWiki VernorVinge AugmentedReality PatrickAnderson UserInterface

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