There are those who promise that computers will double their processing power in a few years, but there are those, like Neil Gershenfeld, who do not settle for this minutia: he assures that the tables, the walls and even the sinks will be intelligent and will be able to process information and send it via Internet. He himself explains to us how his research group has achieved the first successes in such an ambitious goal.
–Is it true that you want to make ubiquitous computing a reality, but without computers?
-I pretend that, in a way, there are no computers anywhere. I don’t want to see screens, keyboards or buttons in my environment; I want to be surrounded by beautiful things and help solve environmental problems. My goal is to integrate computers into all objects in such a way that, in the end, they end up disappearing.
–How do you get that?
-Those who research ubiquitous computing focus on miniaturizing chips; we do more fundamental research on the mechanisms of physics that affect computing. For example, we work on computer programs that interact with biological expressions, so that they can synthesize molecular machines. Thus, anything can be a computer. At the same time, we do research with unusual PC users to understand their needs.
–You don’t seem to like computers very much, at least the ones we use today.
-I would put it another way: I know enough about engineering and physics to know what is wrong with them. When someone says: “I don’t want to read on a computer, I prefer to read a book”, they have very deep reasons for it. Many old technologies work better than what we call new. This is my pocket computer (shows a thickly scrawled piece of paper). There are many people and computers that have been involved in producing the information written here but I finally take it that way because the paper is much better than any current PDA: I can annotate much faster, it adapts to my body …
–And what do we do with computers?
-They are like a small child: they can be everywhere but not be of help in almost any place. To solve many needs in people’s lives, computers are totally irrelevant. And I’m not talking about mine, but about those of those people who don’t know how to use them: the most interesting. My technology is aimed at children, the elderly and the population of developing countries.
–Could we define PCs as an old technology?
-What is going to be outdated is the computer we know, with its screen, its mouse, the Intel processor and the Windows operating system. This concept has only been what until now we have defined as a computer. Now they will be everywhere but they will disappear as an object, they will cease to be that box distinguishable by a user. And this evolution is due to the fact that the needs of most people are not covered by that box placed on a table that is the PC.
–And in practice, how do you come to integrate computing into everyday objects?
-An example, we developed a project with a mutual to reduce one of the main costs of the American health system: the collapse of consultations and hospitals by the elderly population that needs medicines, or does not know how to use them and wants to consult with the doctor, or who has not taken the prescription properly. Our invention is some identification labels that communicate with other labels on the medicine containers, so that, when the person enters the bathroom and has a drug on the shelf to consume, it begins to launch a flash that remember to take it. In turn, the shelf where the medicine is located communicates with it to know when it has been used up and, through the Internet, transmits it to a pharmacy for replacement. These communicative labels that we have developed will cost pennies.
–It sounds a bit futuristic.
-Don’t believe, this development is the direct product of a real need, and not the other way around, as is often the case in computing, where the products are intended to create new needs. And, technologically, you have two important aspects in mind: first, the computer is not visible, it is hidden, the bathroom I am talking about seems normal, your intelligence is inside. Second, it is an application that solves a social problem in the use of technologies: the fear of losing privacy. In this case, the user agrees to share information about their health because the compensation they get is too great.
–But the computer is still necessary in many environments.
-Yes, but there are many others in which we do not want to see it. For example, in a museum. With the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York we worked on an exhibition full of electronic information, video projectors and remote controlled lighting systems, which visitors could control and activate from … a table! We put a very big and beautiful one in the center of a gallery, and we fill it with sensors. It could follow the course of your hands and also of certain objects that allowed to activate the devices that projected the information. When we presented it, one of the MOMA patrons came and said: “This is great, I love it because I hate computers and there are none here.” And it was only apparently so: inside the table there were 400 processors and more than 20 Internet nodes. There was more computing together than he had ever seen in his entire life.
–What will this new computer you advertise look like?
-The interface of this new computer will be the world. In computing, we have gone through the textual and graphical interface and now we are talking about voice recognition, but they are partial efforts, as if you asked me to answer your questions without moving your hands; When we communicate, we use all the senses and this will be the case with computers. Returning to the MOMA table, it is a single but distributed computer interface: one part is on the ceiling, another on objects, another on the sensors that capture the user’s touch pressure. As in this example, we will use computer networks, internal and optical sensors inserted in the whole of the physical world in which we move.
–Have you published a book in the US called When things start to think? Do you think that moment will ever come?
-In the 50s, the goal of Artificial Intelligence was to build a robot that would act like a person. It did not work, because machines not only need sensors to capture what is happening in the world but life experience to interpret it, and they do not even have that of a child. However, computers have a great capacity to capture certain needs and emotions from outside and, through massive information processing, respond to them appropriately. We are in this, but with a crucial nuance: we will not integrate the intelligence of the machine in an anthropomorphic body, but in many and varied objects of daily life.
–I can’t resist asking if my shoes will ever be smart.
-Of course. There are a few good reasons to appreciate shoes from a computer point of view: they are a source of power, since when we walk we generate a lot of energy; they are very well placed to transmit information from the body to the environment; In them there is space to store that information and, unlike many devices, they always go with you and you do not have to remember to carry them
Jose Angel Marto
This interview was published in December 2001, in the number 247 of VERY Interesting.
