July 27, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Winter 1999 Vol. 8 No. 4
TECHNOS Interview III:
On Tomorrow
Gregory J. E. Rawlins
by Carole Novak
Gregory
Rawlins is a computer science professor at Indiana University. In 1990, he
caused a stir with his writings about the future of publishing — which, with
the subsequent development of the World Wide Web, is now upon us. Electronic
publishing has changed the industry, and Professor Rawlins saw it coming.
Today he works with his students on another futuristic project, dubbed KnownSpace,
the goal of which is powerful computing for everyone without corporate control.
Dr. Rawlins’ most recent books are: Moths to the Flame: The Seductions
of Computer Technology (The MIT Press, 1996) and Slaves of the Machine:
The Quickening of Computer Technology (The MIT Press, 1997), In his books,
he writes of sentient machines by the Year 2050 It is a world that can be
frightening or fascinating, but his main message is that humans are the ones
possessing choice and, ultimately, power — what will we decide to do?
Did you write these two books just to scare me? Because, as I started reading Moths to the Flame, I was fascinated, and then I was pretty much terrified by the thought of the loss of power and control that we’re bound to begin experiencing with computers. Slaves of the Machine was pretty scary, too.
Did I write them specifically to scare you? A little bit — but that was not their main purpose. Their main purpose was educational and of course entertainment. This is how it happened.
In 1990, I started the publication process for my first two books, and I did it with two different publishing companies. One was an old, New York publishing company, feet firmly planted in the past, in the 19th Century. And the other was a very modern, ultra, state-of-the-art, California, fairly young start-up. I had two completely different experiences with them. While going through the publishing process, several times I would drop hints to the New York publisher that the California publisher was completely past them, so the president would ask me: ‘Well, what do you suggest? What should we do?’ And I had no answer for her because I knew nothing about publishing; I’m just a writer. But I knew the technology, and I knew what was possible — remember, this was long before the Web, in 1990 — so after my umpteenth trip to New York and the umpteenth time being asked this question, I took some time to think it through, and I wrote a 70-page paper that I sent off to the president of the New York company. It was more or less ignored, for a number of reasons that had nothing to do with the paper itself (for example, the president was fired by the board six months later). Anyway, I took this paper, which I had spent considerable time thinking through, and I gave it to some of my librarian friends, and they started spreading it around, and it spread — in fact, it became a kind of cottage industry for some people for a few years. There was one guy who was even selling copies of it at conferences.
You didn’t copyright it, did you?
Well, I guess that really didn’t concern me, especially considering what I had said in the paper, which is that it’s pointless for publishers in the long run to try to continue their current worldview, where they produce an artifact and then they jealously guard that artifact. Because the artifactualness is going away. And so, the main thrust of the paper, bolstered with enormous amounts of technical details, references, and history, was to show that the best thing the publishers could do would be to go with the flow and start looking for business models — one of which I suggested was subscription — that would allow them to charge roughly what it would cost to copy as opposed to charging an arm and a leg based on producing a limited number of artifacts. Because the pressure to copy, the ease of copying, and so on, were all just going to increase; the deluge was coming. And they all got scared, and they all invited me to give talks to the AAUP [American Association of University Presses], the ALA [American Library Association], and all kinds of other conferences, which I went to for a few years, and then I got fed up! Because all I was doing was scaring them, in the sense that they agreed with me, but then they refused to do anything really concrete about it. They were just looking for a way — even given my conclusions — to keep the artifactualness, and it continues to the present day. The vast number of traditional publishers are still looking for some kind of way to copy protect their work, so that they can keep on using the same old business model that they’ve used for the past 500 years.
So they can make money.
Right. The point I was trying to make was that you can still make money, but you’ve got to change your mindset. And what is happening right now, nine years later, is that new publishing companies are starting up — I’m not sure if I should call them ‘publishing companies,’ really — they’re not the traditional people at all. They’re techno-people who are publishing the electronic book, electronic compendium, whatever, from the beginning. They’ve never had an investment at all in paper, so they don’t do the copy protection thing. One of the things I said in the paper was that this was going to happen and that they would just displace publishers.
Anyhow, I tell you this long story to say that the whole experience taught me something. It taught me that the things that were really obvious to me, that were really clear to me, that were really natural to me, were really not obvious, not clear, not natural to people who weren’t in computing. And although it was clear to many of the people who were in computing, they somehow or other lacked the gift of explanation. They were not very good communicators. So I was put in the invidious position of being a communicator to help explain the technology. And then I started thinking about my real work — which is machine intelligence — which is the attempt to build machines that ultimately will be as smart as human beings. And I started asking myself: What are the social consequences of this? What is this going to mean? For the first time, I started asking myself social-impact kinds of questions about my own work. And I didn’t really have any good answers for it, so that led to more questioning and self-doubt, and I tried to put into understandable words what I see is the potential shape of the future. And that is the origin of those last two books, Moths to the Flame, and Slaves of the Machine. They came about as a way for me to produce an exegesis of what I do and why, and what it’s like.
So I didn’t start out trying to scare you, really.
The fact that you started talking about it in 1990 is surprising, but it’s not surprising the reaction you got. Because in your books, you talk about change and adaptability, and how we’re going to have to accept the fact that if we don’t change, we’re going to end up being extinct, and the machines are going to end up taking over for us.
Right.
People in power do not want to give up that power.
Exactly. They will fight tooth and nail to retain it.
And that’s part of what’s scary about your books: the fact that you’re talking about power and control and that, in order to maintain it, we really are going to have to give it up. If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that if we relinquish some of the control, we will retain the power, and then that will ultimately give us freedom.
Exactly. You have cut exactly to the nub of the book: it is always about power. There is one part of Slaves of the Machine where I talk about programming, which I spend a fair amount of time on. I say that we have to begin to assume the Taoist approach to programming, and I mean that, in general for us, we have to go with the flow. You can’t expect these rigid, past-defined behaviors to continue into the future. Because we are under an onslaught, a firestorm of change. So, the thing that was driving me was trying to communicate this to the public. That you’re living in a cocoon — you don’t notice the changes because they take some time to add up. But we are going somewhere. And there’s no conspiracy; there’s no list or secrets of power; nobody’s in charge. But we’re going somewhere, and we need to be aware of that. It’s going to change the world. It’s going to change the power distribution.
Absolutely. It’s interesting, though, that you talk of Taoism, an ancient belief system applied to this modern, futuristic way that we’re going.
Well, I don’t necessarily see them as incompatible, obviously. Taoism is a response to a deep-seated human need. The fact that it came into being a long time ago and computer technology is relatively recent is not particularly important. Both are outgrowths of basic human needs. Those needs aren’t going to change for a very long time. I see no incompatibility with using very old technologies to manage very new technologies. In fact, I don’t really see any other way that it can be done at all.
You use a lot of warlike imagery, a lot about weapons systems, in your books. You mention that the origins of computing are in mathematics, or hard science, so there may be a connection between the development of the computer and the hard sciences and war, and therefore hate — but what if it had been an artist who devised a computer?
In fact, I write about the possibilities of computer programming — had it been devised by the French embroidery artisans, computing would be vastly different. But as it was, computers and programming grew out of the human need to retain possessions, land, to protect the country from other warlike people who would take those things away, and therefore the emphasis on war machinery and systems.
You work with young people as a professor in a university. What sorts of attitudes and opinions are you hearing from them? Do they understand what you’re trying to say? And do they have an appreciation for the human aspects of the work and the effect it will have on human existence?
Not so much. The older graduate students are almost already set in their ways and don’t quite accept some of these ideas. Even a 22-year-old senior in college is too old to accept such change. That is because computing has evolved so rapidly in a very few years. The Web is a very recent phenomenon. A generation, technologically speaking, is no longer 20 years or so; it’s a mere three or four years. I have one young man in my class, a freshman, 19 years old, who is much more technologically open and able to understand the nuances and is interested in the societal effects, more so than the older graduate students. The younger students have been exposed to so much more in terms of computers and have no fear of trying new things and developing new machines.
The tragedy is that too many schools are using outdated books, let alone computers.
Yes, and in some places, like Kansas, they can’t even teach evolution.
Right! And your books present wonderful metaphors for the development of — the evolution of — computerization. The science of evolution explains how humans and animals evolved and will continue to evolve into the future. If we can’t even teach kids this basic scientific concept, how will they ever begin to understand the development of computers?
Well, Kansas may end up behind the rest of the world. I told you that some people are fighting tooth and nail to maintain control and keep things as they were…
Literally — how ironic, we’re back to the Stone Age, tooth and nail…
It won’t last long. In every field that we examine, with the possible exception of biotechnology, the rate of change in the field is directly proportional to the people involved in it. But computing is growing exponentially. It is exploding at a rate that is overwhelming. The central observation is this: Computer technology, besides being an easy technology to accelerate from year to year, thanks to miniaturization, is also caught in a feedback loop with related technologies, that it then serves to accelerate, which in turn leads to increased acceleration of computer technology. One good example is communications technology. The quicker and better we can communicate, the easier it is to come up with new computers by collaboration. And the easier that is, the better our computers become, which — because computers are central for communication today — leads to better communications, which in turn lead to better computers, and so the spiral goes...
But if we don’t include all of our children in this technological explosion, it will be a real tragedy. And it’s inevitable, so even though some people are trying to hold back the flood, it is really much like the little Dutch boy, putting his finger in the dike — it won’t stop the deluge forever.
I have this feeling that humans are going to hold it back, and that we won’t see any of this in our lifetimes. Are you hopeful?
Generally hopeful, yes. Oh, I think this sea change will happen within the next 50 years — so maybe if we’re lucky, one of us might see it. But I’m cynical in a way, too, though, because I know how hard the resistance will be to the change. But it’s inevitable — we might as well go with the flow.
I think the fact that you’re in a university setting, sharing your knowledge, says a lot about your optimism for the future. You could be sitting in your lab, being funded by a large corporation, and not sharing your expertise with the next generation.
I’ve been approached [by corporations], actually. But I think it’s more important to leave something behind, and this is the way I prefer to do that. Of course, there is also a way to make money with this work — subscription, for instance. We could develop and provide the basic, free technology to do what we want with KnownSpace, and then there could be subsets of information that could be managed for a fee. It’s all in the talking stages now, and I’m not impressed with the old business model, so I’m cynical about the process.
Your writing on KnownSpace states that it is free and open-access; you want everyone to be able to use it.
Yes. That is the intent. This is the fundamental purpose of it: technology and education for everybody! It is an issue of education for all. But it is also based on personalization of information. We tried to make KnownSpace easy to understand and to extend, but behind the scenes it is complicated. We expect it to get much more so over the next few years. And it took blood to get it even this far. Why are we bothering to do all this work? We wish to create, or at least help foster, a language that anyone can use to exchange active ideas with everyone. We see KnownSpace Hydrogen not as a finished project, but as a seed.
Different people may choose to take KnownSpace in lots of different directions, but as long as the kernel remains in some form or other, then translators can arise between them. Each translator would be like a gateway on the Internet: each separate, evolving dialect of KnownSpace would be like a subnetwork, with its own peculiar customs and styles of expression, but the gateways could connect them all, so that code and data can pass from one to the next, thereby cross-fertilizing each subnetwork.
No one is smart enough to predict what everyone in the world can do. If ten people start working on KnownSpace, they may not just generate ten variants but maybe more like 100 variants, since each point of intersection of those ten ideas can lead to new ideas, and of course further variants. Adding more people adds new ideas as the square of the number of people. The result? An explosion of ideas, at least some of which will get implemented and used, which could in turn lead to another explosion, and so on, like a combustion engine with ever-increasing stroke cycles and ever more gas per cycle. Ultimately, this could take us as far as a world community of really smart software and a cyberspace.
Quit laughing! Imagine if ten years ago some wild-eyed dreamer had said that one day we would have hundreds of millions of people directly communicating with each other. No middleman. No controlling corporation. No monopolistic fees. No artificial constraints. No government. We’re betting that people really will want to take charge of their own computers and have things done their way. And we’re betting that the results will be astounding. So, ultimately, we work on KnownSpace because we hope that one day, ten years from now, maybe, there will be a gigantic computational network of towering complexity, mostly working for the betterment of humanity, we hope, and somewhere, deep at the core, is some version of what we originally slaved to produce. A seed.
What practical applications of KnownSpace do you foresee?
There are many potential applications. It is as unbounded as the human imagination. For a near-term possibility, consider that your entire desktop experience could be mediated by an outgrowth of KnownSpace in a few years — even if your computer runs proprietary operating systems like Microsoft’s. You would be free to choose your own experience, not be dictated to by some corporation.
The educational applications of this work would be awesome. But doesn’t it call for a pretty high-powered computer?
At the moment, yes, it does. But, as I discuss in my books, computers are getting twice as powerful as they become half as expensive, and this is happening in record time, so in a very few years, schools will be able to afford vastly better computers. Of course, by that time, there will be even better computers with even more bells and whistles.
I want one of those!
And you shall have it, no doubt.
But what about our schoolchildren? Will they have it?
It is a matter of commitment: Do we have the will to allow the distribution of power among all people through technology? That is the question we must answer — and very soon. But it may not even matter what our answer is.
Photo illustration, Todd Shaffer, B² Design.
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~rawlins
This interview is published in Future Courses: A Compendium of Thought about Education, Technology and The Future, Jason Ohler, Editor (TECHNOS Press, 2001). Click here for ordering information on AIT's Future Courses book.