Chapter 4 Tools and Technology for Human Information Database

I have discussed the need for capturing human history as it is being made for the future generations. Fortunately the technology innovations have provided multiple options to accomplish this task. Most big tech companies such as +Oracle, +IBM, +Microsoft boast of database software that can store large amounts of data. Hottest tech term today is bigdata. Facebook, twitter and google are showing how to capture current a large number of events in a way that is instantly searchable. Analytics software makers are churning out new capabilities for analyzing big data everyday. In short, we have all the tools we need to start building the human information database. All we need is the team spirit and coordination, the ability to rise above political divisions and biases.

We need an initiative at an agency such as UN, which will start creating an electronic record for every new born. The agency will be responsible for enforcing security and privacy of the data. Details of what data and how to secure it will have to be worked out in detail. The power of UN is needed to enforce it in all countries. The other option is for an innovative company like Goole or apple to come up with a way that is voluntary and secure to build this database.

In the end, it doesn't matter who does it and how it is done, it is essential that we build this for the future generations. In my opinion, this will be possible when human team building skills are more developed than the current state of affair. I will discuss this in detail in the next chapter on team building. Today the biggest successful companies are the biggest and best teams we have. Government are bigger teams but we all know they are not efficient yet. UN is a bigger forum but it is a weak form of what we need to build the human information database.

Let us all do our part in working to capture as much information about our lives as we can. Even if it is not organized, it will still be very useful. Keep a diary or write blogs or an autobiography, but don't let your existence be meaningless by going through life and not leaving informant for the future generations. That is one action that can make all of or lives meaningful for now.

How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil - A review

Ray Kurzweil has written a masterpiece combining hard cold facts about biological structure of brain and its functioning with his own theories for everything that is still to be discovered. He makes a convincing case for advent of human like intelligent machine by 2030. It is natural to not want to believe all his predictions because that would mean accepting defeat from our own creation.

Ray explains that brain is made of 300 million identical processing units, each with several inputs and one output. The processing unit, when triggered evaluates a combined score of all its inputs and if the combined score is higher than the threshold for output, the output is triggered. Each input has a certain associated weight. The strength of each input combined with its weight is used for calculating the combined score. The output of most of the 300 million processing units become inputs for one or more of other processing units. Ray calls these processing units as pattern recognizers with the input output connections making a hierarchical structure. Pattern recognition is a general word for any task that the brain needs to do: reading, conversation seeing or whatever else. The book postulates that everything we know and do is stored as patterns in these processing units, organized in a hierarchical manner. When we hear something, the chain of patterns starting from the smallest component of that sound are recognized by the processing units, feeding into the higher level combinations of sounds( words), which in turn feed into still higher level pattern(sentence) and so on to meaning of what was said. All these patterns are learned by the brain over time. In other words learning is the process of programming the 300 million processing units and building the hierarchical relationships. 

Ray claims that with IBM Watson and Apples Siri, we are starting to build computers that operate in a similar manner. These are generic information processors that learn and than use their knowledge to answer questions. They are not programmed with all of their knowledge but learn a large amount of their knowledge just like humans do. With these fundamentals in place, Ray addresses a host of questions about consciousness, creativity, feelings, innovation and ultimately the singularity of man and machine.

It was certainly a very informative experience for me to listen to this book. My brain certainly stored a lot more patterns in the process. I cannot say that I buy all the theories that are presented in the book, but they sound plausible and force you to think about ways to contradict or support them. I would recommend this to everyone. Anyone who has experience in the field of computing and is moderately curious about the brain will enjoy the book for sure.

Chapter 3 Human Information Database Need

The struggle to discover our history is not a legacy we should leave for future generations. With the tools and technologies available to us today, it is our responsibility to capture a rich data set for the future generations. This data need to be highly detailed and include all aspects of "all of our lives". Not just a sample of humans from each kind, whatever be the definition of kind, but for each human that ever lived, including the relationships between people. I do understand that there is a,lot of concern in a large number of people about " Privacy". This would certainly go against there wishes. It will not be cheap or easy, but it is vital for survival of human race. 

Why is this necessary? One day in future, this will be one of the most valuable resources for research and will be used in ways we cannot even imagine today. Capturing as much data as possible and organizing it in a database will provide for discovering trends and knowledge today and in future. As the data completeness improves, so will the complexity to analyze and discover trends, but also the potential for discovering life threatening issues and their solutions. We have several intractable problems today: cancer, AIDS, climate change or global warming , terrorism and many more which would benefit from a such a rich data set. 

What should be included in this database? The simple answer is everything. Practically, it would evolve over time as we start developing it. All official records would be a good starting place: birth records, residential information, criminal history, medical history, financial history, social interactions. 

The data needs to be secured and used in such a way that it can be used for good endeavors only. It is not in scope of this blog to detail the means of ensuring the misuse of this data. I recognize that a lot of work will be required to make it happen and it needs to be done in a responsible way.