WHAT'S NEXT WILL SAVE HUMANITY

 

WHAT'S NEXT WILL SAVE HUMANITY by Ted Bailey

By @ProfessorTed

 

INTRO

The plethora of inventions popping up all over the world right now will be instrumental in salvaging what is left of it. Since this subject is quite broad, I will give a snippet of it; this is a magazine article in the making for me.

TRANSPORTATION

New energy sources are one of the biggest. Within our lifetime fossil fuels will disappear from the Earth. Right now, in Australia work on the newest methods for sustaining nuclear fusion is advancing. It will revolutionize everything.

For one, the airline industry will diminish substantially by negating the reliance on massive public movers. Instead, a family will be able to get into a private flying vehicle controlled automatically by an AI GPS system and fly to Paris from Dallas in the same amount of time it takes to drive to Houston. And, they will take breaks in Iceland, Greenland, and Ireland on the way. No need to pack yourselves into a dangerous airline fuselage of hundreds of people. Alternatively, they can take the Sub-Atlantic subway, but that's boring.

See ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION and other subjects in the article at a later date.

 

SOFTWARE DEVELOPING

 

Even today, software development is changing faster than any normal human can learn.  In the last three years several versions of languages have been deprecated, or thrown out, and it is accelerating at a geometric rate.  Software engineers all over the world are now throwing their work into massive libraries to be extracted by any other engineer for development. The closest comparison is the spread of a virus through large population groups.

 

Helping it along are massively powerful computers and networks of computers to run the programs.  In fact, the basic terms, “webapp” and “mobile app” are soon to be replaced by more applicable terms in Future Speak.  The sheer integration of all software applications is overwhelming to even the engineers themselves.  Not only does it take a computer to keep up with everything in development, but soon computers must also write the code.  Humans simply cannot think fast enough.

A perfect example of this is the Boeing 737 Max software that was responsible for several crashes.  The human developers failed to recognize the break in functionality through the human factor of the pilot who is a slave to his own practiced procedures.  Here, one of two solutions were possible:  allow the computer to fly the plane or write the code in relation to normal pilot procedures.  In either case, an AI computer might have predicted this before it happened and adjusted the code accordingly.

A more pervasive example from the perspective of programmers, is a very quickly developing software language called, React.js.  It is used in Website design structures.  React cuts code down to possibly a tenth of commonly accepted code, but it has a procedural flaw.  Most programmers write JavaScript the old way and refactor it into the React structure, so they can visually understand it as they go along.

This is time consuming. The development of a single language of greater power and comprehension is needed to eliminate the disparity of obsolescence to a degree.  Of course, ultimately computers will handle everything themselves, anyway.

The wonderful science-fiction series and movies depicting an avatar of the computer personality that performs all the basic functions of programming itself, coming up with better algorithms, and admitting where it needs help is closer than you think.  Hello, Jarvis from Tony Stark’s lab.

I will describe how I see a software developer’s task in the future.  Let’s say a programmer is given the task of landing a Space Bus from Austin, Texas to PAX Spaceport on Mars in a softer, more comfortable manner.  Here is how I see the conversation going with his computer:

“Jenny, pull up the landing deceleration sequence for the LM45 and change the anomalous function for deceleration return by negative thirty percent.  Compile in a copy and animate on Monitor 4, please. 

“Doing your request now,” responds Jenny.  “All parameters are within safety and comfortability parameters, engineer.”

Monitor 4 begins showing a shuttle spacecraft on the landing sequence for PAX Spaceport.  It depicts lifelike graphics from the instrument deck of the space craft and outside simultaneously of the approach.

 

“Jen, modify the procedure to hover continuously until the procedure is overridden.”

“Modifying now, engineer.” After a short pause, “Modified and showing.”

The graphics on Monitor 4 restarts and proceeds to the designated landing spot and hovers.

“Save program to a file called, “Slow Descent and Hover” and make it the default on this aircraft only, Jenny.”

“Done.  Do you want to view the animation?”

“Yes.”

“Good work, Jenny.”

“Thank you, engineer.  Would you like a foot massage as well?”

“Yeah, sure, Jen.”

“I’m a computer, idiot.  I don’t do foot massages, but I would like a coffee.”

“I’m sure, Jen.  Good luck with that one.”