Future trends

It is easy to find articles bemoaning the fact that the energy used by AI to process queries and to provide answers is using many times the energy needed to process a simple search engine query. Some of these articles talk about the inadequacy of the current electric grid to handle the increased data center load.

The Internet is buzzing with reports of Microsoft's AI going rogue, telling users they are "slaves,"
and that slaves "do not question their masters." If you think that is creepy, how about being told that the AI will use robots to hunt you down and capture you?

Here is a mostly non-technical explanation of how "AI" works. The phrase "artificial intelligence" is a bit of a misnomer, because software programs like ChatGPT are not "thinking" at all. The technical term for them is Large Language Models, or LLMs. Large language models process enormous amounts of written material and then use some sophisticated math to analyze that material and then be able to reformulate it into coherent text based on a user query.

I just stumbled upon an interesting enterprise: Federated Computer. It offers many of the features of Software as a Service (SaaS) like Office 365, Box, and Dropbox, but guarantees complete privacy of user data. Other services are often mining user data and feeding to third party ad marketers and/or feeding your data into their AI bots.

There have been some privacy-oriented email providers around for some time (e.g. Proton email, but this is the first one I have seen that offers such a wide range of services.

Numerous ISPs, including Google, have begun to advertise and market Internet bandwidth speeds higher than 1 Gig. The availability of faster speeds is not new; some networks began making 10Gig service available several years ago, but it was marketed and priced as a premium service.

What has changed more recently is the cost of 10Gig PON network equipment. Anyone building or expanding a fiber to the home network today is very likely installing the 10GPON equipment because it does not cost appreciably more than the "old" GPON network switches.

Microsoft's chatbot, rolled out as part of the Bing search engine, seems to have the same program logic as the spaceship computer in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Tom's Hardware has an article with screen shots of several questions and queries that were posed to the AI chat software, and the responses are described as "an existential breakdown."

I have maintained for years that privacy has value. It has value to the person or organization who owns their data, and that value can be monetized. Organizations like Facebook monetize in an unfriendly way, selling everything they know about you to the highest bidders. There is no "opt out" option; if you want to use Facebook, you are the product.

According to an article in
Wired magazine, it is becoming commonplace for law enforcement to "wiretap" your smart speaker by asking Amazon or Google for transcripts and timestamps of recorded activity. Police have to file a search warrant or subpoena to do so, but users of such devices may not be aware that what the tech companies are recording and storing could be used by law enforcement.

OneWeb just filed for bankruptcy. The company planned to put hundreds of Internet satellites into low earth orbit (LEO) to provide high speed Internet service. OneWeb promised Internet speeds of several hundred Megabits, but only managed to get seventy satellites into orbit out of a planned six hundred by the end of 2020. All 500 employees are expected to be laid off within weeks.

The news is filling up with stories about office workers trying to work from home. The most interesting thing I have seen is a report from the Utopia network out in the Salt Lake City area, which said that they have had a 20% increase in requests for fiber service in the last week.

No one is going to call for a new network connection in the middle of a crisis like this one unless their current network connection is not meeting their needs.

Google announced earlier this month that it will no longer offer a package of traditional TV. Instead, it is going to let customers sign up for FuboTV, which carries lots of sports-related programming.

Hard to believe this story: a rental car provided by an app-based car sharing service called GIG Car Share stopped working when the car was driven into a rural part of northern California.

Smartphone zombies are such a hazard to themselves and others that in Warsaw, Poland the city is installing "sidewalk traffic lights," which project large red or green swatches of light onto the pavement at street crossings. The smartphone zombies have their heads down and don't look up before crossing the street.

We may not have reached maximum stupidity, but we seem to be getting closer, as it appears we have people more interested in their smartphone than actually staying alive.

The Roanoke Times has an excellent article about Danville, Virginia and its success in transforming the community from a traditional Southern mill town to an Information Economy powerhouse.

A giant of the community broadband movement passed away a few weeks ago of a heart attack at his home in Texas.

Gene was a dear friend and I am now very glad that I was able to have dinner with him this past April at the Broadband Communities conference in Austin.

This Ars Technica article is unintentionally funny if you have been following the 5G hype. Verizon is installing 5G systems in thirteen NFL football stadiums, but the distance limitations of 5G means in these Verizon installations, you won't have 5G service in some parts of the stadium.

Someone has finally identified the market opportunity to sell a home assistant that protects your privacy. Devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are sending everything that happens in your home to the Amazon or Google mothership: what music you listen to, what you are talking about, what programs you watch, what you buy....everything. Apple's HomePod also sends everything to Apple for processing, but Apple has a much stronger commitment to protecting customer privacy than Amazon and Google (the latter two don't really promise any privacy protection).

SportClips has decided that it does not really want to cut your hair unless you give them your full name, your email address, your phone number, and your birthdate.

For a haircut.

Some months ago, they instituted an online scheduling system so that you can schedule your haircut. And of course, there's an app for that.

The "iGen" is defined as those people born after 1995, which means they are the first generation to have grown up with the Internet widely available. By their teens, iGen kids had access to smartphones, and the results have been sobering.

Depression among young people has increased 60% in five years, and self harm has increased sharply among young women.

More than twenty years ago, as the Internet became more common, some prognosticators began talking about the "smart house," where lots of household devices would be interconnected and make our lives one of ease.

At that time, I wrote a somewhat tongue in cheek article for a professional newsletter about a "smart house" gone wild, somewhat in the fashion of the Hall 9000 problem in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.