Ask HN: Anyone willing to speculate on 'software in 100 years from now'?
Or is it just so far out that it's too ridiculous to even guess? Arthur Clarke made a few good guesses.
40 comments
AI writing code and discover millions of new breakthroughs every day for the good of mankind. While people living in alternate reality satisfying all there pleasures.
I predict context-aware spell correction.
I don't see humanity surviving this long and if it does I think it would be pretty close to what we have today or even older
I beg to differ but slightly : humanity will probably still exist in 100 years but probably less numerous and less technological than now.
At one point natural resources depletion and the effect of climate change will reduce human population to a fraction of what it is now. The remaining ones will have to make do with less technology and more manual work.
I'd encourage every HN reader to read the Archdruid Report, eye opening.
At one point natural resources depletion and the effect of climate change will reduce human population to a fraction of what it is now. The remaining ones will have to make do with less technology and more manual work.
I'd encourage every HN reader to read the Archdruid Report, eye opening.
Shrugs, people have been saying this for the last 400 years, if you say human civilization will go backwards for long enough you will eventually be right.
Since it's impossible to know one way or the other I chose to think that our descendants will be sat somewhere in space watching the Sun go nova.
Fundamentally as a species we have two problems, energy and resources and both of those are for the taking in the solar system, We just need to stop screwing about and go get them.
Since it's impossible to know one way or the other I chose to think that our descendants will be sat somewhere in space watching the Sun go nova.
Fundamentally as a species we have two problems, energy and resources and both of those are for the taking in the solar system, We just need to stop screwing about and go get them.
The historical trajectory is for energy to get cleaner and cheaper/more available. This is more likely to continue than not (wind, solar and nuclear power are all abundant and not particularly expensive using present day technology (and I think many opponents of nuclear would still prefer it to not having magic holes in the wall)).
The historical trajectory is for energy to get cleaner and cheaper/more available.
I beg to differ. At least for heating, which is necessary for a lot of climates, and also often for cooking, wood is actually arguably the cleanest, easiest to establish, most universally available and most sustainable.[1] The historical trajectory is that it has been becoming impossible to obtain for most people because they are being progressively squeezed in to some sort of megacity of apartment boxes designed for worker drones, cars and mass-consumption. Some of them have never even seen a forest.
[1] http://woodheat.org/why-heat-with-wood.html
I beg to differ. At least for heating, which is necessary for a lot of climates, and also often for cooking, wood is actually arguably the cleanest, easiest to establish, most universally available and most sustainable.[1] The historical trajectory is that it has been becoming impossible to obtain for most people because they are being progressively squeezed in to some sort of megacity of apartment boxes designed for worker drones, cars and mass-consumption. Some of them have never even seen a forest.
[1] http://woodheat.org/why-heat-with-wood.html
Wood has some carbon cycle advantages, but it absolutely isn't clean (especially in the stoves available historically, modern stoves do better), and it obviously isn't sustainable for human civilization as we know it (prior to the widespread use of coal, forests were shrinking).
(I say as we know it because some civilization that hasn't existed might tend to slow growth prior to achieving a high standard of living)
(I say as we know it because some civilization that hasn't existed might tend to slow growth prior to achieving a high standard of living)
Yes, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than anything else from virtually any angle for local heating, at least. Cooking too, in most cases.
Basically, wood is a huge win because it doesn't rely on having a vehicle, a credit card, a petrochemical distribution system, a bank, electricity and bureaucracy to manage all that, etc. Once you tally up the pervasive bullshit (transport, regulation, real state of reserves, enabling technology, overheads for the above) around most energy sources, you realize they're a hell of a lot more expensive and less long-term reliable than wood.
One axe, some land, a bit of time: sorted.
Basically, wood is a huge win because it doesn't rely on having a vehicle, a credit card, a petrochemical distribution system, a bank, electricity and bureaucracy to manage all that, etc. Once you tally up the pervasive bullshit (transport, regulation, real state of reserves, enabling technology, overheads for the above) around most energy sources, you realize they're a hell of a lot more expensive and less long-term reliable than wood.
One axe, some land, a bit of time: sorted.
You are romanticizing the axe something powerful.
Have you ever cooked and heated for an extended period of time using wood that you fell with an axe? I haven't, but the little bit of axe work and wood splitting I've done is enough to dissuade me from being excited about it.
Have you ever cooked and heated for an extended period of time using wood that you fell with an axe? I haven't, but the little bit of axe work and wood splitting I've done is enough to dissuade me from being excited about it.
Heated, yes. Cooked, no. It's not that hard.
Anyway the points I was arguing were 'get cheaper' - clearly not the case when discussing a transition from free (grows on trees) to paid (to a private utility, often a monopoly, and one upon which you are dependent) - and 'get cleaner', not the case when moving from wood to other-system-plus-transmission-and-bureaucracy-overheads.
I agree with 'more available', though we've paid dearly for that in environmental damage.
PS. To thread originator, thanks for thearchdruidreport meme, I was skeptical but there are some really interesting thoughts there.
Anyway the points I was arguing were 'get cheaper' - clearly not the case when discussing a transition from free (grows on trees) to paid (to a private utility, often a monopoly, and one upon which you are dependent) - and 'get cleaner', not the case when moving from wood to other-system-plus-transmission-and-bureaucracy-overheads.
I agree with 'more available', though we've paid dearly for that in environmental damage.
PS. To thread originator, thanks for thearchdruidreport meme, I was skeptical but there are some really interesting thoughts there.
Human beings always overvalue their importance. Every generation thinks of the previous as a bad one, of itself as the last one. Truth is, we are not at the tip of any curve, no unique snowflakes, we are each just one of billions that already were and billions that are to be.
This little-known factoid might change your mind: an all out nuclear war has less than 1 in 10,000 chance of wiping out mankind[0].
[0] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/11/nuclear-winter-and-hum...
[0] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/11/nuclear-winter-and-hum...
I did not specially talked about nuclear warfare, many other known events can wipe out humankind but what I wanted to point out is that future discoveries and major science advancement will be our downfall
I didn't assume you were talking about nuclear warfare. Sorry for not being clear.
I was point out how difficult it is to wipe out ~7 billion people, even with extremely advanced technology. Nuclear winter is just a convenient benchmark of that. The same resilience mankind has against nuclear winter is also applicable against genetic engineering, climate change, and nano-tech disasters.
I was point out how difficult it is to wipe out ~7 billion people, even with extremely advanced technology. Nuclear winter is just a convenient benchmark of that. The same resilience mankind has against nuclear winter is also applicable against genetic engineering, climate change, and nano-tech disasters.
nuclear war may not wipe out mankind, but superintelligent AI intent on wiping out mankind can probably do it.
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Honestly, this isn't that far out to guess, and it probably won't be nearly as futuristic as we might imagine.
For example, in 1967 Dennis Ritchie began work on the c programming language, still highly used today only almost 50 years later. In 1962 the Chinook helicopter when into service. Almost 35 years ago the US Space Shuttle went into service, and we still haven't seen a huge amount of new innovation there. Though maybe it will come.
Anyway, the point is, 100 years brings amazing innovations (before 1967 there was no c, after all! So it was amazing). But, progress happens a lot more slowly than I think most realize in our science fiction laden society. We probably won't have any strong AI Robot Overloads in 100 years. Most likely we'll still be writing software to solve our day to day challenges while sitting around and complaining about how poorly other software engineers write their code.
For example, in 1967 Dennis Ritchie began work on the c programming language, still highly used today only almost 50 years later. In 1962 the Chinook helicopter when into service. Almost 35 years ago the US Space Shuttle went into service, and we still haven't seen a huge amount of new innovation there. Though maybe it will come.
Anyway, the point is, 100 years brings amazing innovations (before 1967 there was no c, after all! So it was amazing). But, progress happens a lot more slowly than I think most realize in our science fiction laden society. We probably won't have any strong AI Robot Overloads in 100 years. Most likely we'll still be writing software to solve our day to day challenges while sitting around and complaining about how poorly other software engineers write their code.
At some point in less than 100 years, the contemporary equivalent of today's software will then be a type of telekinetic programmable matter. But you don't really program it. Its more like a number of beings work closely together via wirelessly connected direct neural interfaces to imagine what might be possible, while AGIs work behind the scenes to implement and integrate these fantasies. These are then realized by some type of physical particle arrangement at some resolution.
With enough engineering we could accomplish a crude approximation of this magic today. To really guess about 100 years from now is impossible. Chimps couldn't predict the evolution of computers and we can't predict ASI technologies.
With enough engineering we could accomplish a crude approximation of this magic today. To really guess about 100 years from now is impossible. Chimps couldn't predict the evolution of computers and we can't predict ASI technologies.
Moore's law continued, all of Earth 2015's data could fit on the head of a pin. However, operating systems continued to get "smarter" with built-in features and AI that always require more storage and processing power than is available, causing everything to be slow and buggy, and everything gets more buggy the longer you use it.
No software is allowed release on the mass market unless it fits Apple's TOS (Apple is now the world government as well). All apps will be politically correct and use no porn, swear words, violence, or mention anything hinting at a competitor to Apple.
AI that can fix bugs and manage its own size will be a mere 10 years away.
No software is allowed release on the mass market unless it fits Apple's TOS (Apple is now the world government as well). All apps will be politically correct and use no porn, swear words, violence, or mention anything hinting at a competitor to Apple.
AI that can fix bugs and manage its own size will be a mere 10 years away.
> AI would rather use Android phones and takes over the world.
Seriously though, I'd rather speculate on the risk of the super AI a company has developed until then turning against the company itself. Not from a 'destroy the world' type of scenario but from a 'marketing desaster' scenario.
Seriously though, I'd rather speculate on the risk of the super AI a company has developed until then turning against the company itself. Not from a 'destroy the world' type of scenario but from a 'marketing desaster' scenario.
I don't think it'll look that different as far as technologists are concerned. There'll be software engineers who write code that interfaces with hardware and other software APIs. The languages will change, the ideas might change, but the jobs will still exist.
What will really change is the sophistication of people who interact with software - the end user. They'll start writing code (within the confines of an application suite) in a big way. At the moment I imagine only a single digit percentage of users can write a macro or use a scripting language in an application, but that will change immensely. Everyone will use 'code' to manipulate data in their job. There will be a fundamental shift towards understanding things on an abstract 'everything is just data' level. The real question is whether that's 100 years away or 20 years away. I suspect it's going to be much closer to 20.
What will really change is the sophistication of people who interact with software - the end user. They'll start writing code (within the confines of an application suite) in a big way. At the moment I imagine only a single digit percentage of users can write a macro or use a scripting language in an application, but that will change immensely. Everyone will use 'code' to manipulate data in their job. There will be a fundamental shift towards understanding things on an abstract 'everything is just data' level. The real question is whether that's 100 years away or 20 years away. I suspect it's going to be much closer to 20.
I have to remind you of Excel. A large fraction of office workers today use it to 'code', transforming data given the rules they wrote.
Humans try hard to be smarter than their "software" counterparts. Start-ups emerge with a problem to solve "How to make a normal human smarter than any machines". Economics would be decentralized, and ultimately survival of the fittest. If only I could live to see all this.
100 years from now and still nothing is better than emacs
Half Life 3 released.
I think that won't exist "coders" or "programmers" or "developers" anymore. From the core, machine will be programmable by natural language.
The basic rules for "talking to machines" will be teach in schools as a subset of the regular language learning.
As today there are no more monastic scribes, there won't be coders anymore. "Writing code", ie, talking to machines will be easy enough for universal reach.
As today there are no more monastic scribes, there won't be coders anymore. "Writing code", ie, talking to machines will be easy enough for universal reach.
The commonplace luxuries of tomorrow will be the rich persons luxuries today. Personalized service will become mainstream. We will have fashion designers, interior decorators, mentors, tutors, financial advisers, constantly at our disposal. Cars will do the driving. Nearly the entire world will become bi(tri)lingual, with deep contextual and instantaneous translation (and history) for all travel and business dealings.
I liked Vernor Vinge's idea that a programmer will be called "software archielogist" and his main job is unearthing existing pieces of code created over the past hundred years and putting them together. Sometimes it feels like we're already at that point.
But you'd think with 130 years of software behind us we'd have code for everything.
But you'd think with 130 years of software behind us we'd have code for everything.
Mathematics has evolved since Pythagoras, but still remains the same foundation.
Language hasn't changed much since Gutenberg invented the printing press.
Programming hasn't changed that much in 50 years since Lisp, Fortran, Pascal. We have more libraries, frameworks, tools, but it's still the same loops, conditions, functions.
I predict with total confidence things will be the same.
Language hasn't changed much since Gutenberg invented the printing press.
Programming hasn't changed that much in 50 years since Lisp, Fortran, Pascal. We have more libraries, frameworks, tools, but it's still the same loops, conditions, functions.
I predict with total confidence things will be the same.
IMHO to get our rising unbounded complexity under control, Turing completeness will come to be seen as a curse to be avoided. Untyped Lisp will be seen as a lowest common denominator "failure mode" (ala Greenspun's tenth rule), not as a language to deliberately program in.
Adopting this philosophy means that it will be a language designer's responsibility to incorporate as many compatible features as possible (not as macros!) to avoid the temptation of layering a lisp.
(That is if languages continue to develop, rather than the slop-on-slop mentality fully taking over).
Adopting this philosophy means that it will be a language designer's responsibility to incorporate as many compatible features as possible (not as macros!) to avoid the temptation of layering a lisp.
(That is if languages continue to develop, rather than the slop-on-slop mentality fully taking over).
Foundation of Physics hasn't changed either, but we have this question here.
As you mention Arthur Clarke I'll guess that some forms of modern magic will be made possible by technology of the future.
We'll still be stuck running everything on some iteration of Unix.
From this reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/338tx5/vim...
> Long after everything else you know has gone to dust, Vim will be there. Some version of Vim will be running on whatever computer triggers armageddon.
> Long after everything else you know has gone to dust, Vim will be there. Some version of Vim will be running on whatever computer triggers armageddon.
Armageddon gets caused by someone trying to quit Vim.
GNU Hurd 2.0 will be released and will be a major success.
We'll be writing software for the new Apple Watch
Prediction: There will be software in 100 years.
Neoglyphs, a new meta-symbology unifying mathematics, statistics and a broad swathe of human language semantics will emerge, drawing heavily from Chinese and early 21st century international signage: Japanese の will win out on Chinese 的 (for indicating possession). Grammar will be absent to simplistic, with a Chinese/Tai-Kadai/Austronesian rather than Indo-Aryan structure (ie. use of amorphous noun/verb concept ideograms and adjunct tense-particles where necessary rather than tedious verb conjugation). This new symbology (glyph library) will be the standard pedagogical language across the world, and the normal interface language for all software. It will quickly begin to effect semantics in the few major remnant human languages, the vast majority of which died out between the early 20th and mid 21st century. Long-form reading will become even rarer. The lyrics and snapshot-imagerie of the rock and instagram generations will give way to a resurgence in poetry, lauded for its vaguearies, which will be widely appreciated in a mix of classical Chinese and the neoglyphs. This will be automatically set to music by algorithms, in personal stylistic preference. Interface code itself (windows, scrollers, presentation systems, graph generators, etc.) will no longer be programmed by humans, instead they will be generated automatically against semantic and contextual preferences linked to the user, much as some advanced unix users enjoy customizing their shell. The challenges of code reuse (portability, parallelism, etc.) will be solved automatically in almost every case. Most software will derive from expert systems which translate human wants in to functional software using simplistic visual metaphor and iterative design in the lounge-room. Increased availability of pure and micro-dosed drugs of all current and yet to be discovered genres will play a big part the more creative outputs from these sessions, which will essentially complete the union of human/biological abstract thinking and the speed and technical prowess of the machines. In the 20th century, Frank Zappa said "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." At the dawn of the 22nd century, countries will have essentially become dormant anachronisms, but good drugs and revolutionary thinkers (no longer titled programmers) will by definition possess their own widely recognized neoglyphs. Many of the thinkers will be those previously considered disabled or challenged by society at large; the autistic, the handicapped, the psychonauts, the other-large-mammals - whose capacity for modes of reasoning apart from the mainstream will finally become valued. Finally, 0xDEADBEEF will disappear as a meme, since beef in real life will no longer exist except for the ultra-rich.