Comments on: The best way to predict the future is to prevent it http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/ a blog about information Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:37:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: ETSI 2.0 | Someone http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-618679 ETSI 2.0 | Someone Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:35:47 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-618679 [...] All good stuff, but it was Roland Montagne who really piqued my interest in a great presentation around broadband adoption and observations from rolling out fibre to the home (FTTH). Experience from trials of fiber in Hong Kong has revealed people tend to upload more data than they download, which is in direct conflict to the premise of ADSL. It’s a vision I’ve heard Kevin Marks and JP postulate many times, so great to see it’s coming true! I was therefore amazed to hear someone joke: “if everybody’s uploading more than they download, what happens to all the packets?” as if data was subject to double entry bookkeeping, or there was a law of data entropy: packets cannot be created nor destroyed! This made me realise not everyone is on the same page, anticipating a world of people uploading high definition home movies, streaming telemetry data to aggregation services, hosting video conferencing and participating in peer-to-peer data sharing such as a distributed cloud, along with a multitude of other innovations only possible in a symmetrically connected world. I was reminded of the old, apocryphal quote from a Kodak executive dismissing digital cameras and their poor quality with “people love photos”, when in reality it’s the taking of photos that people love. Sometimes it’s hard for an incumbent with large sunk costs and a vested interest in business as usual to foresee and embrace change. Indeed for a telco or large commercial software vendor the best way to predict the future is to prevent it. [...] [...] All good stuff, but it was Roland Montagne who really piqued my interest in a great presentation around broadband adoption and observations from rolling out fibre to the home (FTTH). Experience from trials of fiber in Hong Kong has revealed people tend to upload more data than they download, which is in direct conflict to the premise of ADSL. It’s a vision I’ve heard Kevin Marks and JP postulate many times, so great to see it’s coming true! I was therefore amazed to hear someone joke: “if everybody’s uploading more than they download, what happens to all the packets?” as if data was subject to double entry bookkeeping, or there was a law of data entropy: packets cannot be created nor destroyed! This made me realise not everyone is on the same page, anticipating a world of people uploading high definition home movies, streaming telemetry data to aggregation services, hosting video conferencing and participating in peer-to-peer data sharing such as a distributed cloud, along with a multitude of other innovations only possible in a symmetrically connected world. I was reminded of the old, apocryphal quote from a Kodak executive dismissing digital cameras and their poor quality with “people love photos”, when in reality it’s the taking of photos that people love. Sometimes it’s hard for an incumbent with large sunk costs and a vested interest in business as usual to foresee and embrace change. Indeed for a telco or large commercial software vendor the best way to predict the future is to prevent it. [...]

]]> By: Thoughts on Computing » Blog Archive » A Moore’s Law for Software - Part Two http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-242401 Thoughts on Computing » Blog Archive » A Moore’s Law for Software - Part Two Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:59:49 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-242401 [...] month or so ago JP Rangaswami (confused of calcutta) mused on a challenge thrown out by Alan Kay - why isn’t there a Moore’s Law for [...] [...] month or so ago JP Rangaswami (confused of calcutta) mused on a challenge thrown out by Alan Kay – why isn’t there a Moore’s Law for [...]

]]> By: Bob Lozano http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-236734 Bob Lozano Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:21:54 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-236734 David- I agree with your line of thinking, and think that the real metric for software is whether or not it's able to utilize the capacity provided by the infrastructure. At any rate, I'm proposing this sort of thing as "Blaise's Premise" here: http://www.appistry.com/blogs/bob/architecture/a-moores-law-for-software-part-two/ I'd be real curious as to what you (and others in this thread) think of this notion. I tend to think that naming something, calling it out (so to speak), helps us focus on that as a goal. David-
I agree with your line of thinking, and think that the real metric for software is whether or not it’s able to utilize the capacity provided by the infrastructure. At any rate, I’m proposing this sort of thing as “Blaise’s Premise” here: http://www.appistry.com/blogs/bob/architecture/a-moores-law-for-software-part-two/

I’d be real curious as to what you (and others in this thread) think of this notion. I tend to think that naming something, calling it out (so to speak), helps us focus on that as a goal.

]]> By: A Web That Works » Blog Archive » Domain knowledge http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-228324 A Web That Works » Blog Archive » Domain knowledge Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:47:19 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-228324 [...] The best way to predict the future is to prevent it [...] [...] The best way to predict the future is to prevent it [...]

]]> By: Thoughts on Computing » Blog Archive » A Moore’s Law for Software - Part One http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-224970 Thoughts on Computing » Blog Archive » A Moore’s Law for Software - Part One Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:49:34 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-224970 [...] Rangaswami reflects on a recent talk by Alan Kay here. Things get interesting when Kay wonders aloud He asked something very simple: How come there [...] [...] Rangaswami reflects on a recent talk by Alan Kay here. Things get interesting when Kay wonders aloud He asked something very simple: How come there [...]

]]> By: Dave Brown http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-222551 Dave Brown Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:18:15 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-222551 JP, If you take the long view I'd argue that there is an equivalent to Moore's Law in software. This law is that each year it becomes slightly easierto create a service that does something for a customer. Progress is slow - not exponential, and is driven by improvements in software design methods, increased modularity, introduction of internet standards like XML, development of the techniques behind Web 2.0, sharing of functionality and in the future is likely to be driven by improvements in semantic technologies and AI. It's easy to miss the improvement unless you stand back. But slowly, year by year, developing new services for customers is getting easier. A new start up can now create software for a service using a few people in weeks. When I first started in this industry we had huge teams working for years to provide pretty poor levels of functionality. And yes, I'd argue that this change it is highly disruptive to much of our existing industry. We're seeing traditional players like Microsoft worrying about the newer and more flexible companies that have emerged from the Web 1.0 era. And we'll probably see some of the survivors from Web 2.0 challenging the Web 1.0 giants. JP, If you take the long view I’d argue that there is an equivalent to Moore’s Law in software. This law is that each year it becomes slightly easierto create a service that does something for a customer. Progress is slow – not exponential, and is driven by improvements in software design methods, increased modularity, introduction of internet standards like XML, development of the techniques behind Web 2.0, sharing of functionality and in the future is likely to be driven by improvements in semantic technologies and AI.

It’s easy to miss the improvement unless you stand back. But slowly, year by year, developing new services for customers is getting easier. A new start up can now create software for a service using a few people in weeks. When I first started in this industry we had huge teams working for years to provide pretty poor levels of functionality.

And yes, I’d argue that this change it is highly disruptive to much of our existing industry. We’re seeing traditional players like Microsoft worrying about the newer and more flexible companies that have emerged from the Web 1.0 era. And we’ll probably see some of the survivors from Web 2.0 challenging the Web 1.0 giants.

]]> By: Provocative thoughts on innovation « eme ká eme http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-222041 Provocative thoughts on innovation « eme ká eme Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:10:35 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-222041 [...] linking to the page with comments and not to the plain article because they help put some of those provocations in perspective (i.e. [...] [...] linking to the page with comments and not to the plain article because they help put some of those provocations in perspective (i.e. [...]

]]> By: Abhijit Bhattacharya http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-221554 Abhijit Bhattacharya Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:05:29 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-221554 The impact of Moore’s law on computer hardware is tremendous; devices (built using integrated circuits) are more feature rich as you can have more functional logic built into a single IC and at a cheaper price. Integrated circuits are also more standardised, there is a data sheet that specifies exactly what each pin will do. I would say a very strong degree of standardisation and componentization. This is probably due to constant investment and effort on research and development and developments in solid state fabrication technology. A device designer will use number of such IC to do the design of a hardware device. In software we probably lack the level of standardisation and componentization that has been achieved in Hardware Industry. The emergence of development tools has reduced the time to develop software. However there are multiple ways how such components are integrated to develop a custom application. A simple example could be how to interact with a database; some tools provide custom built utilities that you can use to interact with a database whereas in some cases you can write lower level code to interact faster with a database. What is the best way?? The debate is open !! In software there has been research on developing various tools and methodologies but the focus on standardisation is perhaps less so it is always an issue of integration and making the software work faster and in a consistent way. A designer probably has a wider design choice in software industry because of the abundance of options and ways a particular thing can be done… this introduces subjectivity and makes software design and development more interesting but it probably produces something which might not scale in future... SOA promises to address this as we will move from custom application development into being consumer and provider of web services with a standardised interface. A service provider will then have to ensure that it can scale else it will lose revenue. We have to wait and watch.. The impact of Moore’s law on computer hardware is tremendous; devices (built using integrated circuits) are more feature rich as you can have more functional logic built into a single IC and at a cheaper price. Integrated circuits are also more standardised, there is a data sheet that specifies exactly what each pin will do. I would say a very strong degree of standardisation and componentization. This is probably due to constant investment and effort on research and development and developments in solid state fabrication technology. A device designer will use number of such IC to do the design of a hardware device.

In software we probably lack the level of standardisation and componentization that has been achieved in Hardware Industry. The emergence of development tools has reduced the time to develop software. However there are multiple ways how such components are integrated to develop a custom application. A simple example could be how to interact with a database; some tools provide custom built utilities that you can use to interact with a database whereas in some cases you can write lower level code to interact faster with a database. What is the best way?? The debate is open !!

In software there has been research on developing various tools and methodologies but the focus on standardisation is perhaps less so it is always an issue of integration and making the software work faster and in a consistent way. A designer probably has a wider design choice in software industry because of the abundance of options and ways a particular thing can be done… this introduces subjectivity and makes software design and development more interesting but it probably produces something which might not scale in future…

SOA promises to address this as we will move from custom application development into being consumer and provider of web services with a standardised interface. A service provider will then have to ensure that it can scale else it will lose revenue. We have to wait and watch..

]]> By: Bob Lozano http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-218431 Bob Lozano Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:35:36 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-218431 Andrew, good point, though I think the spirit of Moore's Law is more about capacity, rather than consumption. JP, this has me thinking a bit about what a "Moore's Law" for software would really mean. Really, what does it mean to double software capacity? Anyhow, I put up a first post here: http://www.appistry.com/blogs/bob/architecture/a-moores-law-for-software-part-one-2/ and will continue a bit next week. Thanks for starting the discussion. Andrew, good point, though I think the spirit of Moore’s Law is more about capacity, rather than consumption.

JP, this has me thinking a bit about what a “Moore’s Law” for software would really mean. Really, what does it mean to double software capacity?

Anyhow, I put up a first post here: http://www.appistry.com/blogs/bob/architecture/a-moores-law-for-software-part-one-2/ and will continue a bit next week.

Thanks for starting the discussion.

]]> By: Andrew Yeomans http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/comment-page-1/#comment-217969 Andrew Yeomans Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:12:56 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/11/03/the-best-way-to-predict-the-future-is-to-prevent-it/#comment-217969 There *is* a Moore's law on the size of software needed to do a function. In 1976 a word processor was around 20kB. 1984 2MB; 1996 500M B(1 CD); 2000 2.4GB (4 CDs for Office 2000). Pretty close to the hardware Moore's law doubling every three years. There *is* a Moore’s law on the size of software needed to do a function. In 1976 a word processor was around 20kB. 1984 2MB; 1996 500M B(1 CD); 2000 2.4GB (4 CDs for Office 2000). Pretty close to the hardware Moore’s law doubling every three years.

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