Thinking about future technology, even that of the near future, will always include a life that is augmented by robots. Robots, up to now devices somewhere between automated production and science fiction will be ubiquitous helpers men of the future won't be able to live without. So a recent prediction by futurologist Ray Hammond hits the news and he's predicting lots of useful things: the rapid change of our lives since the 1980s will continue and even accelerate; people will get implemented sort of geo-tagging in order to send help if they feel ill, personal DNA mapping, gene-therapy drugs, and stem cell research will extend people's life up to 130 years and more. The environment will go somewhat to the extreme, but mankind will handle this by using more energy-efficient measurements, the Internet will be even more connected, and robots, to come back to this article's topic, will become important helpers in everyday life by caring for the old and the young.

But it's not all about robotic nannies. Let's have a look besides our everyday lives. Noel Sharkey, CS Dept. of the University of Sheffield has written a thoughtful article in the November issue of IEEE Computer magazine, that deals with autonomous weaponry that will change the way men will conduct war and the ethical implications.

For Sharkey it's obvious that autonomous robotics research projects have been harnessed to manufacture killing machines. Almost every leading nation is increasingly using semiautonomous robotic devices for military purposes, the US Future Combat Systems projects will have spendings estimated to exceed $230 billion. More than 4000 robots are already operating in Iraq and Afghanistan (ideal recent testbeds for evaluating weapon systems and new kinds of warfare).

Ethical questions arise for engineers and computer scientists: while robotic systems so far have been mainly used for clearing explosive devices, thus saving lives, the US Army introduced the first three Forster-Miller Talon/SWORDS (Special Weapons Observations Reconnaissance Direct-Action System) armed combat robots into Iraq.

Usage of semiautonomous weaponry usually is covered under current ethical warfare discussion. In the end, a human being decides when to kill. This is comparable to usage of traditional weaponry where a pilot might press the red button and ethical responsibilities can be loaded on him and the chain of command. But these developments will change fast according to a prediction of James Canton, CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, that within a decade detachments with 150 soldiers and 2000 robots will be possible. It is just a matter of time when fully autonomous systems will be applied: cheap manufacturing, fewer support personnel and being able to send less human soldiers put them on the agenda.

However, there are no ethical guidelines in place for the inevitable collateral civilian deaths autonomous systems pay responsible for. Though a lot of developers, engineers, scientists, and technicians are involved in the development process, there is no real chain of responsibility defined if autonomous systems one day are going to decide to kill a human being. The idea of robot consciousness and thought are just subject of the academic debate and this terrifiying scenario where machines are killing people is a new territory that isn't even rudimentally discussed by society. Then, possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are often overrated; all the worse when it's about decisions about death or life.

Military's promise to save lives by reducing the body count is a mere proposition since nobody has ever fought a robotic war. A possible side effect would be a lowering of the hurdle to fight a war because less soldiers would be involved (but this doesn't tell anything about civilian deaths) and costs could be reduced. But even the possibility of an artificial conscience would emerge new problems because an autonomous system faces a lot of difficulties when trying to find it's way. Under no circumstances such a complex AI will be ready before deployment of the first systems. We have to consider if we want handle with questions about the responsibility for potential war crimes caused by machines that are just executing killer codes. (Source; IEEE ComSoc members or pay per view)

The author is member of ACM and IEEE and thus bound to their codes of ethics.

Seems that we have to redefine the definition of "hacker": when gouvernments start eavesdropping on their own people, it's just being consequent to init cyberattacks against other countries. (Source)

"It breaks my heart that I went into this f---ing computer field. I could've done anything else."
Ted Nelson, creator of hypertext and a different idea of the Internet as we know it now. (Source)

To "ensure a secure, safe and free Europe" the European Union digs deep into its pockets: 1.4 billion Euros (more than $2 billion), 15 times more money than in the budget before, will be spent for security research. This is independent from Germany’s three-year plan to spend 123 million euros - $177 million - on security R&D.

Well, at least that means "Aufschwung" (boom) for the involved companies and universities. All others will have to live with ubiquitous surveillance and expensive security measurements. Kind of collateral damage, it seems. (Source)

Still looking for inspiring examples of successful women who dared to become engineers? Eleanor Baum is but one of many; here's her story.

In order to attract skilled IT workers, European Union prepares a "Blue Card" program that will be a direct competitor to the US's H1-B visa. American officials suspect that it will be harder for the US industry to attract foreign people to fill the skills gap and encourage a refinement of H1-B.

Just two thoughts: To keep pace with America's attractivity for foreign workers, the European Union will have to offer much more that just a bunch of documents for immigrants. A complex program like the Blue Card has to pass a resolution by the EU parliament, and that takes a lot of time. Additionally, Europe has no self-image as melting pot nor country of immigration like the US has. Things are quite static and apart from the big cities it's still exceptional not to come from the same place. I think the Blue Card will just repeat problems of H1-B. It just does this the European way. (Source)

"You all know our adversaries will stop at nothing to destroy the infrastructures we all work so hard to protect. ... We're all at risk, we're all responsible. and there's much more we have to do to protect our critical systems."

Greg Garcia, US's Homeland Security assistant secretary who heads the national cyber-security division (Source)

I have absolutely no idea whether Homeland Security is doing a great job in improving the nation's cyber security situation. But I appreciate officials who are talking about enhancing safety and not just claiming for additional wiretapping measurements. I would like to listen to German politicians who were telling us that security for data, especially private data, and networks would be a major case and has to be addressed. I'd just like to hear the words, even if they would mean nothing at all. My wish for the next year. I'm getting humble.

A combinatorial approach to better detect bugs in software - please surprise me! If it works well, I'll definitely give it a try. Otherwise, I'll stick to lint.

To be honest: I don't like nowadays' Christmas fairs. Especially the markets scattered about the lovely city of Düsseldorf attract masses of shopping tourists from many different countries (especially the Netherlands) that diffuse all around the city. This is true for the weekends, but also for all other weekdays and most of the time streets are crowded with people. There's no fun with this, and I don't understand why people will travel hundreds of miles or kilometers just to drop in here.

It's time to escape. To keep it simple, we'll just use our imagination and the web. There are plenty of places, real or virtual, where you won't meet any pro-shopper. So let's get started.

We're beginning with Australia's western coastline, a very remote place that has been discovered by Dutchmen in the 17th century, but now they're gone and chances are big that you'll meet virtually no human being at all. This coastline stretches several miles north from Kalbarri to the Shark Bay and it looks like it was broken away from a past counterpart. Huge dunes. This is the place where 700 ton VOC ship Zuytdorp (or Zuyddorp), captained by Marinus Wijsvliet, was wrecked on the coast of New Holland (now better known as Australia).

You might notice that I was initially searching for Dirk Hartog island, Australia's biggest and most western island, situated at Shark Bay. It's eastern coast is one endless beach. See? No Christmas market here.

Recent headlines about loss of massive amounts of personal data (Missing pensions in Japan, scandal at HM Revenue and Customs, three million learner drivers' data lost) make obvious that officials who handle with complex systems and their data are unable to guarantee their safety.

I'm afraid this is just the beginning of further misfortune: if the friends of data retention will have fullfilled their wiretapping / surveillance / retentions plans, they not only will waste a lot of tax money but won't be capable of handling these data in a responsible manner as well. We're harvesting the fruits of incompetence: elder people, who invented things like computers, databases, operating systems, the Internet, and stuff are approaching retirement and will pass away. Most younger people who are in their fifth decade, like me, often refused to grapple with this technical thingies, for many of them computers were just a toy for nerds and only few of them took the risk of studying computer science. These folks become more and more important in the companies / bureaucracies they're working in and become project leaders. Having no clue about leading projects, having no experience with tech-savvy people and problems nor being capable of thinking in a structured way, these people are completely overchallenged with the requirements of modern systems design. No wonder why software built in these projects so often fails! They're clueless but at least responsible, or, as Mark Twain said: "With ignorance and confidence success will come true!"

There's no end of this situation in sight. Because there is hardly any self-esteem among technical people that would have risen their social position, younger people just see no reason why to invest precious life time into jobs that won't result in social prestige. I just doubt that job decisions are done solely just because of personal interest: of course people want to get reputation and status. You don't get this when you're just sitting at the console in comparison to healing people, judging criminals or even drawing paintings. So the younger will continue to refuse technical jobs - and who are we to blame? It would have been a task of the fourtysomethings to continue the work of the past decades and to become an inspiring example for younger people. But what happened? We were doing business as usual and became service providers. This is not enough, there are great things that we have already developed and even greater things to come. But we technicians have to realize our social importance! Our profession is too precious to be controlled by fools.

Ooooh-kay, this is the first article I've found mentioning a "Web 4.0" (the connection of intelligence, whereas Web 3.0 means the connection of knowledge).

I just wonder why they always omit the decimal places (behind the dot). But a Web 2.1 wouldn't be glamourous enough, I guess.

Did I ever mention that "dot oh" versions of software often are the buggy ones.

Christmas is approaching and the city gets even more and more crowded by shopping enthusiasts, thus foiling the contemplative meaning of Christmas. Not that I'm that into inwardness, but masses of shopping tourists flooding our streets make me think about inhabitants of tourist paradises who become kind of decoration for welthy guests. I'm glad when this hype is over.

Including today, there are three days left we have to survive until the Christmas fairs close their doors. We're leaving the western coast of Australia, saying goodbye to the steep point and are heading towards the Pacific Ocean. Our target is a place with two small islands: Cheeseman and Curtis island, situated between New Zealand and Tonga. Curtis consists mostly of volcanic material, while Cheeseman - the smaller one - is a rock island. Both islands are uninhabitated and unfortunately there is just a few vegetation, so no jungle to explore here. Just consider the loneliness here: there's just the sea and the winds, a perfect place to escape from the crowds. And a perfect place to dive.

Congratulations! The one and only language that has a "bless" operator had its first release 20 years ago. It taught me Regular Expressions and a relaxed way to address programming problems. I still enjoy its freedom and love its flexibility. This web is done with Mason, a Perl framework mostly used for web applications, and so is Lollop, our home-grown CMS. Perl-based is the blog software I'm using here and many other small tools I developed over the last ten years. While this in mind: happy birthday and kudos for a vital community!

Watching the crowds doing everything to plunder the stores of Düsseldorf we immediately develop a demand to escape from this scenery, as we already did here (walking along the remote beaches of western Australia) and there (visiting the small islands Cheeseman and Curtis). (more...)

Wheter you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, or the like: the days at the end of a year are special and invite us to take stock of the bygone year. This blog is way below all thresholds of alertness. It's now one year old (and compared to the rest of the site quite young) and up to now it's pure fun. It's a possibility to practice my language, to keep an eye on the things I'm interested in and a chance to dedicate a certain amount of time and work in this website. Whether you want to comment on this or that or just lurk - come as you are and come back often! The rest of this posting takes you to the last island trip of this year: it's Kiritimati (Christmas Island) - not to be confused with Christmas Island!

Time for a new generation! So there's this study "Teens and Social Media" by the Pew Internet & American Life Project telling us that 64 percent of (American) Internet users between 12 and 17 years - the 'super-communicators' - are engaged in creating and posting online content. They are heavy users of social networking sites and Web 2.0 techniques. They prefer anything except email (which is considered lame). (Source)

Just two thoughts.

There's this term 'media competence'. We'll see if just using today's technologies will be enough to succeed in the information jungle, to tell the good from the bad, the bad from the evil. I don't know how much of these teens one day will be interested in asking how all this stuff actually works. A lot of posts in this blog draw a dark picture of this. Maybe I'm wrong. Let's hope they'll preserve their curiosity and dig deeper instead of just posting youtube videos. 'Super-communicators' - whew!

If email is going to die (and the youth is completely right in this), then spammers will react. Heaven forbid!

If you're following the development of robots, you might be aware that our mechanoid friends are going to become veritable weapons instead of just cleaning up the fields of war (or constructing cars or doing the dish at home). I've written a posting about this, lately.

A new report from the U.S. Department of Defense titled "Unmanned Systems Roadmap: 2007-2032" (download it here) examines the advances of unmanned technology over the next 25 years. Among obvious improvements (as better sensor technologies) the report also works out the need for continuing the development of artificial intelligence and autonomous 'thinking' unmanned systems. (Source)

This report is impressive. I guess there is no other list of autonomous devices as exhaustive as this one, so this is source number one. To get things straight: I don't even like the idea of robots killing people. I never would want to write software that would implement algorithms for deciding whether to fire a bullet at a man or not. (I'm no peacenik at all - I just don't want a machine to do the dirty work.) But it's neccessary to deal with this stuff. If less of 'our' soldiers will be involved then chances are high that public interest in critizising a war will diminish. Without a general public that is interested in the activities of its country war itself gets autonomous. This is definitely no option.

New Year is just around the corner. Make the best of it, don't get caught by the friends of data retention and enjoy your life and the web. Many things will stay as they are, many others will get worse, but the rest is worth living and writing for. See you 2008, all bright-eyed and fluffy-tailed!