Class:
Informatics, Computing, and the Future
Instructor:
Dan Berleant
Transcriber:
Brooke Yu
Date:
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Professor: Okay, so it looks like we're still waiting for
a bunch of people. It's just about half
the class here. Do you think others will
show up?
Male
Student: Well, maybe. It's cold.
Male
Student: Joshua Jenkins is sick.
Professor: Yeah, the whole network is down, but oddly
enough, it works on my laptop. This
laptop usually doesn't work very well, but it seems to be working just fine
now.
Well, let's
go ahead and get started. How many
people are new here today? Or maybe they
were new last Tuesday. I know the number
of people in the class has gone up to about 18.
Any questions
about homework one which is due today?
Yeah, I mean,
technically you have until midnight.
So let's go
to the course website to recall how to get there. You just click on the homepage and you go to
the blog which contains the course, and so homework one is due today. It's not major or huge, but it is a homework,
and today I'm just going to pass out homework two.
I did get it
online, so I thought I'd roughly go though it first. You can always get it online.
It'll have
two questions. First is based on last
time's lecture.
Remember, we
talked about the exponential curves.
It'll be a chance to try out some of those things yourself. If you run into problems, let me know. If you're not from a quantitative background,
we'll figure out something else, but many of you can, so we'll have a chance to
try to guess or use a spreadsheet to figure out the doubling times of a couple
things.
For example,
[On board.]
There's a few
questions like those on the board.
Again, I want
this course to be accessible to everyone, even if they don't have technical
backgrounds.
Then question
number 2 is... to get started thinking about the term project. We're not going to wait until the end of the
semester when there's an enormous crunch.
With every homework you'll do more of it.
You'll come
up with topics you're considering in 150 words or more.
Topics can be
anything having to do with the future.
The format could be like a paper, or it could be a creative writing
project or you class write a song or make a computer program. Whatever you want to do.
Most people
do a research paper, but all of these other things are options and they usually
work out great. People love to see skits
and hear music. You can work as a team
or individually
You're not
committing yourself with this assignment.
You can choose another assignment later.
Any
questions?
So again, the
reason we're talking about the term project so early is simply so you don't get
stuck at the end faith semester with a big project. By the end of the semester you'll just have
to glue a few pieces together and it'll be done. Alright.
Oh, here's an
announcement. If you're interested in
getting a job as an entry level web programmer, let me know and I'll give you
some information.
Tell your
classmates about it and let me know if you're interested.
Okay, now for
today's topic- last time we talked about how many things in the future fit a
model of an exponential or S-curve.
Today we're
going to look at a different approach to predict the future. Do you all know what crowd-sourcing is?
Male
Student: Getting people together to
solve one problem.
Professor: Right, you have a bunch of people
contributing their knowledge and the composite of their knowledge is better
than what any one individual could do.
Crowd sourcing is has proven itself everyth from Amazon which has all
those book reviews done by readers is a way of compiling information.
Movie reviews
are the same- they tell you how many viewers rated things. There's a way to try to predict the future
using a crowd source method. It's called
the Delphi method.
Maybe we'll
take two or three classes to talk about this.
First, I'll
tell you about the Delphi method and then we'll use it in class to try to
predict some things using you as the crowd to source your wisdom to make
predictions.
So I'll
lecture and then we'll do an exercise.
So today
we'll start to learn the Delphi method, then we'll use it in class to extract
wisdom from your classmates.
So before I
talk about sort of what the Delphi method is, figure out a question that you'd
like to crowd source from your classmates the answer.
The format is
"when will ______ happen."
So take a
couple of minutes to think about and jot down the answer to this fill in the
blank. Okay?
I know you
don't want to just listen to me talking all the time, so we'll do an exercise,
but do to the exercise, you have to fill in that blank. So I'll give you 3-4 minutes to do that, and
then we'll go on.
[Students
writing questions for exercise]
Professor: How many people have thought of their
questions? So some of you are still
thinking.
Professor: Okay, so later on and next time you'll ask
these qestions and we'll get the class to use the Delphi method to come up with
an answer. Let's see what that method
is.
Delphi is
actually a town in Greece. I don't know
if you know these letters- delta, epsilon, lambda,....
An oracle is
a entity which can predict the future, okay?
And it was
the site of the Delphic oracle, which in the religion of ancient Greece was the
oracle of Apollo- a Greek god, and also the name of a spaceship that landed
astronauts on the moon.
When I was a
youngster, we actually watched on TV as a person landed on the moon. Very exciting.
Here's the
symbol of the Apollo space program, and it's named after that Greek god,
Apollo.
So an oracle
is a source of wisdom or prediction.
This word has the same root as the words oral and oration.
An oracle
says a prediction.
An example of
an oracle is the sort of concept of a crystal ball. You've heard of fortune tells who take a
crystal ball, look into it, and tell you your future.
A crystal
ball is a sort of oracle. I think it's a
mirrored ball.
Actually,
it's a piece of art- somebody drawing what would appear as a reflection in a
crystal ball or a mirrored ball.
This is
actually a painting by a guy named Escher who is known for this weird
artwork.
Here's
another crystal ball oracles. Here's
another showing- I don't know what that is.
Maybe clouds?
If you look
into a crystal ball it's kind of weird.
So who uses
the Delphi method? Government agencies
sometimes use it.
In Japan, and
this and kind of complicated structure, there's a science and technology
foresight center which was a part of [all things [On board.]
So you can
see how governments work- very complicated.
There was an office in the Japanese government that used the delphi
method to figure out when technological things would happen.
The US
government cares too about when technological things are going to happen. They want to fund research in these fields
where their country will reap economic benefits of these products. So it's good for the economy.
All major
countries have these agencies- the US has some centers dedicated to
foresight. I'm doing research now where
we're looking at the robotic strategic plans of various countries.
We look into
the future to try to guess what will happen with robotics to figure out how to
keep up.
I mentioned
the Japanese team because in 1995 they had a team touring the US talking to
people, and I was working in Fayetteville at the time and we had a chat about
the future. They must have used those
results somehow in their report. It uses
the Delphi method.
That was the
whole point of that agency- to determine the future
I'll show
you... this is the kind of thing that they came up with.
They asked a
bunch of people questions about when something was going to happen, and the was
a range of response- some people said sooner, other things later.
This is the
median or average response.
For this
technology, it was 2025, then they take this middle 50% and then they take sort
of the more extreme cases- this is 25% of the answers, and another 25%
after.
Okay, so.
So that's
sort of a graph they came up with for the results of the delphi method.
So let's see
how the Delphi method works.
It's a way of
extracting wise predictions from groups.
There's
variations on the method, but basically you start with a question. When is something going to happen. It should be a sharp and answerable
question.
I've taken
this from a book- Jerome Glenn is a big name in technology foresight. His book suggests that questions used in the
delphi method should be sharp and answerable.
Then you
present... you take a vote. You say
"when is purple cotton candy going to cost 10 cents." Then everyone writes down the year, you
collect the estimates- that's without discussion
Then people
discuss and talk about why they picked the date they did.
After a bunch
of discussions, you have another vote.
So the point
is to... you sort of take a naive vote and then the people learn more about
what everyone else thinks, and then you have another vote. To kind of get the discussion going, they
recommend paying particular attention to the extreme opinions. Not because they're likely to be right, but
because people have informative reasons.
One of the
problems with this method is that if someone loudly proclaims something, other
people might just sort of jump on the bandwagon, and you want to avoid
conformism because you want independent estimates.
Similarly, if
someone sort of campaigns on their estimate, that can distort group wisdom as
well. That's why people write down their
answers before discussing first.
Anyway,finally
people do discuss and people reconsider their answers in light of discussion
and give a final set of answers which can be graphed showing the median, the
description of the spread. This spread
shows the middle 50%, and the total range as well maybe- the minimum and
maximum.
So why do I
specify the median and not the mean?
Who knows
what the difference are those?
Male
Student: The median is the middle, the
mean is the average.
Professor: Okay, so you have 9 people, then the 5th
person will be the middle or the median estimate.
What's wrong
with the mean in a problem like this?
What could be the... a risk of taking the average of people's
estimates?
Well, is the
mean always the same as the median?
Okay, why not?
Male
Student: The average can be skewed by
someone who is far on one side or far on the other, but the median kind of
better represents where everyone stands.
Professor: Right.
The median is 2. The mean here is
4 and a third.
So the mean
is skewed because one person said something really high.
People talk
about average income of an American, and most people don't make that much. Turns out there's a small amount of people
who have enormous incomes so that the average income is quite a bit higher than
the median or the income at which the most people fall close too.
So it's a
skewing issue.
That can
happen when you're estimating dates because someone might say something won't
happen for 300 years, and that will skew your average if you decide to take the
mean.
Means can be
skewed by extreme data points.
That's why I
use the median here. So how many people
are there in the class?
There's 14 people
in the class today, so the median would be... if you all estimated a date and
we sorted them lowest to highest, then I guess the median would be midway
between the 7th and 8th person in the class.
There's no one person in the middle.
You pick the two middle and take the midpoint.
Okay. So any questions about how this is going to
work? Because we still have some
time. We're going to use your questions
and do this.
Okay, well a
little bit of nuts and bolts before we begin.
I'm going to
ask each person to give their questions.
Someone will have to write all of this down.
For each
question, we need a recorder to write down the estimates to give you after
class. So you'll have the data for
later.
Alright? So for every question, each person will have
a chance to ask a question, and we need a recorder to write down the data to be
analyzed later. Who wants to go first?
Okay, well,
that's an interesting question to discuss.
When will
nanotechnology happen.
Do you all
know what that is?
Male
Student: It's really small particles of
things you use for all different kinds of things.
Professor: Okay, yeah.
Technology of really tiny things.
The problem- remember, these questions have to be sharp and
answerable.
So this is a
good example of a question that could be made more specific. We need to sharpen this up a bit so we can
have a more specific answer. Can you
think of a specific, you know, type of nanotechnology.... a nanobot.
So when will
nanobots be sold? How about be
sold? Things like nanobots have already
been shown in labs as partial demonstrations, but none have been sold.
Okay. Now I'll give everybody a chance to think of
your answer- a date or a year. Don't
tell anyone yet. So independently think
of a year, write it down, then after a minute or two we'll crowd source your
wisdom on blackboard.
I'm recording
the answer.
Okay, I have
a recorder. I have our first victim
2040
2020
2023
2020
[On
board.]
This is kind
of a big class- bigger than what we had last year. Let's analyze it. Let's look for the median.
I'm going to
sort of put them in order now [On board.]
Median,
2028. That's our first guesstimate of
when nanobots will be sold. Now let's
discuss some of your reasons. Anyone
want to explain why they picked a certain date?
Male
Student: It just seems, as much as
technology is growing it shouldn't be too far away.
Professor: What was your estimate?
Male
Student: 2025
Male Student: I said 2035 because I figured it had to be
before 2046 before singularity. You'd
have to have nanobots that are pretty prevalent. Plus, it's growing now in colleges.
Professor: Yeah, we have a nanotechnology building.
Male
Student: I picked 2032 and I picked that
because the more we see in society and research, the more it will expand in the
next 20 years. I mean, given the fact
that we put enough research into building it.
Professor: Okay, now you've all heard some of the
arguments and so maybe you'll want to change your answers. Let's start at this end.
[On
board.]
Professor: I'm guessing that if we took mean it would
skew the data. It looks to me like
there's a bit of a difference, but let's see.
The recorder is writing all of this down.
So it's
exactly the same. We have the same
estimate. So everyone has to take
turns. Let's get a recorder.
Male
Student: When will humanity's extinction
happen?
Is the
question reasonably sharp and specific enough?
Alright. Let me give you a minute to think of your
answers and we'll write them down and do the same thing again.
Professor: Okay.
Anybody need a few more seconds?
Let's start again.
3065
7063
5 billion
2,013
6040
6000
3250
4500
15,000
4025
2400
6666
Anyone not
have a chance to go? Okay. A couple of comments. Like, effie these folks, why did you pick
that number?
Male
Student: Around 5 billion years is when
the son is going to turn into a red giant.
And who
picked- let's see. who piked 2400? Okay,
why?
Alright.
Okay, any
other comments? Anyone? Who picked one of these?
Male
Student: I don't know, I guess at the
rate we're going, we'll kill ourselves off before too long. So recorder, have you gotten all this
data? Let me go over here and we'll redo
this.
Let's start
with you again. Just call them out.
7063
5 billion
2013
5 billion
2013
5 billion
2013
5 billion
2013
2400
2400
7000
5 billion
2013
4025
2400
Typically
people start to converge, but the middle looks like American politics now.
So 4 2400s,
five of these and that leaves these two [On board.]
That's the
middle.
Oh, we never
really analyzed the middle here. So
let's see what it is.
So 6040. There was a change here. It went from 6040 to 7000.
Okay. So recorder, have you got that all down? Alright.
Why don't you
give that data to him now and I'm going to pick another.
Why don't you
be the recorder this time and you ask a question
Female
Student: I don't have one yet.
Professor: Well, think of one because you'll need it
eventually.
Male
Student: He stole me question- what year
will the world end.
Professor: Is that the same question.
Male
Student: Humans could be extinct once
the world ends.
Male
Student: Actually, it'll probably be
better once we are extinct.
Professor: I'm torn between doing the question because
maybe enough is enough. You'll need some
data for your assignment. Do you want to
go with that question or think of another question? You don't have to think of a question
instantly.
Male
Student: I'll do it.
Professor: Okay, when will the world end?
So while I'm
erasing you can think about whether or not you want to change your answer and
we need a recorder, which will be you.
I think we
can run through this one pretty quickly.
How many
people need another moment to think of an answer?
Female
Student: What does the world consist
of?
Male
Student: Planet earth.
Professor: Right, the question has to be clear. Okay.
Alright, let's call out the dates again.
6065
5 billion
2014
5 billion
2014
5 billion
2013
5 billion
2013
5000
2399
1 million
5 trillion
5 billion
2013
568,000,213
70,000
6666
Would anyone
like to think of a reason as to why they changed their estimate?
Well, the end
of humanity is in 2400, so in 2399 so we move to mars and then a year later we
all die.
Professor: Because I didn't convince you in the last
lecture when we talked about the colony on mars.
So the group
wisdom here is that the human race will outlast this. Any other discussion on this?
Okay. Let's see if anyone changed their mind.
Let's start
with you again.
6065
Never
4000
5 billion
2013
[On
board.]
Male
Student: You skipped me. I guess 2399
Professor: Okay, same kind of analysis
So this is
our median- [On board.]
Somebody
didn't vote.
Male
Student: I gave the world an extra year
after we leave.
Professor: Anyone else? if you want to say never, I can
write never.
I was reading
a paper about when the sun turns to a red giant, they think it won't quite get
to earth's orbit, but it'll probably survive.
Male
Student: My extra year is for the orbit
change.
Professor: Okay any other comments about why you picked
these numbers? Who is the recorder for
this one? Let's see what the median is.
Okay, so the
recorder, do you have the information?
Pass it back to the questioner.
Then we'll go on to the next.
Who wants to
ask the next question.
Male
Student: I will. When will underwater colonization
happen.
Professor: Is this question explicit enough?
Male
Student: We're talking like cities
underwater.
Male
Student: It doesn't matter. Anywhere underwater.
Professor: Well, let's go through this again. Think of your answers.
How many
people need a few more seconds? Do you
all have a date in mind?
Let's hold
off on discussion until we get to the next point. So let's do the same thing. Just call out the answers.
8010
2050
2080
2045
2150
2030
2070
2070
2030
2100
2125
2050
2100
Professor: Okay.... let's see. Let's start analyzing this. Have you got this all done?
So let's
see... [On board.]
Professor: Wait, 1313, this has already happened.
Okay, low...
high.
So 2027. Any time people talk about colonizing mars,
an interesting question people ask is what about weird environments on
earth.
If we're not
going to colonize the oceans before 2070, why should we expect to be able to
colonize mars?
Okay, any
comments about why people picked the dates that they picked?
We need to
have some discussion, or there wouldn't be a reason to change your mind.
Male
Student: We're already trying to figure
out how to settle in space. We have to
expand somehow, and the oceans are the next best thing.
Male
Student: We have more land mass
underwater than we have above water. So
there's more land to be had down there
Professor: Well yeah, the sea level is rising. Maybe rather than move people just waterproof
their houses. Any other comments about
why people picked the estimates that they picked?
Okay, well
let's do a revote then. Let's to the
same thing.
[Teacher
reading: [On board.]
Let's do the
analysis again. The answer is 2070
again. And it's the same as it was. Alright.
So it's an
interesting discussion. I think the
numbers changed a bit, I think.
How many
people changed their minds? A few
people, but the answer is still 2070.
Well, with that data recorded, give it to the person who asked the
question.
Who's
question was this?
Okay, can I
erase?
We have three
minutes. Should we go for another
one? Who wants to go home? Alright, we'll go for one more.
Male
Student: When will land lines not be in
homes anymore?
Professor: Is that reasonable? When will there be no more landlines?
Okay, I'll
give you 40 seconds to think of an answer.
Professor: Do you all have an answer?
2050
2013
2025
2014
2035
2018
2030
2020
2020
2020
2021
2016.
Did everyone
go? Okay.
Okay, so 2020
Any arguments
for why this is too low or too high?
Female
Student: I say the army is always going
to have them and they're always there for emergencies.
Professor: Okay.
Any other points? Comments or
arguments?
Male
Student: Homes you hardly see them. Most families just have cell phones, and companies
are just switching to that too.
Let's hit it
again.
2021
2013
2025
2014
2035
2030
2031
2020
2020
2020
2020
2035
2035
2030
So let's see
what we have. So we went up by a year
based on this. Interesting.
Okay. Well, we're done for today. We'll finish next time
No comments:
Post a Comment