In 1980, I saw something new and spectacular: a guy walking in Amsterdam, carrying a portable heavy battery over his shoulder with a 2 meter antenna, talking loudly through a phone. With hindsight, I saw “my” first mobile phone. I remember thinking that would never be popular. I was dead wrong. We love complex technology for simple problems, like communication.
Technology often offers a simple functionality through increasingly complex solutions:
- light: from moss soaked in animal fat to oil lamps to electric lighting;
- sound & communication: from drums, ram’s horns, smoke signals to mobile phones;
- transport: from running to horses to ships to automobiles to airplanes to spaceships;
- warmth: from campfires to an HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system;
- water: from camps near water supply to qanats to canals to plumbing;
- weapons: from spear to trebuchet to guns to nuclear bombs to military robots.
The Daft Punk song below summarizes the increasing complexity of technology: harder, better, faster, stronger. From a macro perspective, the functionality of technological solutions does not change and remains simple (eg, weapons are designed to kill).
A remote control might be a good example for showing the delicate balance between complexity and simplicity. These gadgets were designed to save us some time and energy. Nowadays, we have a RC for each device, which created a market for universal RC’s (eg, CNET). For many people, these rather simple gadgets have become annoyingly complex.
The delicate balance between complexity and simplicity in machines might be the very reason that machines need to become artificially intelligent through machine learning. The end result are robots that mirror ourselves: humanoid sapiens.
Essentially, our fear for robots equals the fear for the deeds of our own species (ie, we kill rather easily). Hence, the importance of moral protocols, like Isaac Asimov‘s proposed set of rules in the Three Laws of Robotics, which even dates back to 1942 !
The survival of our own species may well depend on our ability for maintaining the delicate balance between complexity and simplicity.
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (2001) by Daft Punk
artists, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.
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