Scott Adams' Blog

Perfect Moment

Posted May 1st, 2013 @ 1:31pm in #General Nonsense

Robot Killer App

Posted April 29th, 2013 @ 1:43pm

In an earlier post I asked which topics you prefer me to blog about. I was surprised that the topic of robots wasn’t popular. I say that because interest in anything is usually based on how much we expect it to influence our own lives. And I can’t imagine anything that will change all of our lives as much as the coming Robot Age. We are the last generation that will remember life before robots. In about five years, shit is gonna get real.

So how will the first big push into residential robotics happen? If you break your daily chores into categories, which of those categories do you see as the first killer apps for robots?

We already have robots that vacuum carpets. But armless robots that scoot along the carpet don’t impress me. I’m wondering when I’ll buy the first robot that can move through my home, manipulate things with its arms, and communicate by voice.

The other day, I was clearing the dinner table and putting dishes in the dishwasher. It occurred to me that technology has already reached the point at which a robot could clean your kitchen and dining table after a meal. A robot could collect plates, scrape the debris into the trash, and load a dishwasher. If you saw the Youtube video of a robot doing ironing, or pouring a glass of water, you know why I think the technology is already here.

I could also imagine a robot walking the family dog when everyone else is working or in school. You’d need the robot to train the dog with treats, just as a human would. But that seems doable. And the robot would need to have a DVR function in the cloud to record whatever is happening and discourage pranksters and dog thieves. Perhaps you, as the dog owner, could watch the entire walk on your smartphone or computer at work. You could even talk to passersby through the robot, just so they know they are being watched and video-recorded.

I also have a vision of a Transformers-like robot designed specifically for childcare. At night it turns into a bassinet with video feeds to the parents. If the baby cries, the parents can have the robot bring the baby to their room, or try to soothe it by rocking. When it’s time for a walk, the bassinet becomes a self-moving baby carriage. For meals, the robot morphs into a high stool. If the smoke detectors in the house go off, the robot carries the baby to safety automatically. And I would think it could sniff out a diaper problem and alert parents. A robot won’t replace adults for childcare anytime soon, but I can see childcare getting a lot easier with a robot helper. In time, the robot can even teach the kid language skills.

I think it will be a while before robots can cook gourmet meals or clean your bathroom just right. But I’ll bet we’ll have commercial robots that can clear a dinner table, take the dishes to the dishwasher, do laundry, and help with childcare in five years. And I think the price tag will be around $5,000, with a monthly maintenance plan of $100.

The first company that cracks the residential robot market has a good chance of becoming the most important company on earth. The robot revolution will make the industrial revolution look like practice swings.

By the way, if there are any college robotics majors looking for a fun project, I have one for you. I need a small robot that can find and pick up tennis balls from anywhere on the court and throw them in a hopper (a basket) on its back.

When a human takes a tennis lesson, or uses a ball machine to practice, the unpleasant part of the process is picking up the two hundred balls that are left all over the court. A tennis teacher could save ten minutes of tedium from every hour-long lesson.

I would think the technology for a tennis ball robot is already here. Let me know if someone already built one.

Spy in your Office

Posted April 25th, 2013 @ 1:28pm in #General Nonsense

Does Skype have an auto-answer feature that only activates for certain users calling in?

I couldn’t find it, but I assume it either exists or will soon. With that feature I could dip in and out of meetings all over the world just to gather fodder for Dilbert. Just plug in my Skype user ID and leave Skype open.

I imagine Dogbert as my image for the account. You’d be sitting at a meeting with your laptop or smartphone on, Skype open, and suddenly Dogbert would call in and automatically connect. My video would be off. All you need to do is let me listen in.

The downside is that you could get fired for exposing confidential company information. But think of how cool your story would be. Totally worth it.

Over the course of my cartooning career, the comment I hear most often from readers is “You must have a spy in my office.” I always wished that were true. And now it seems technology has made that an actual option.

… time passes…

Okay, I decided to go ahead and set up a Skype ID called Dogbertiswatching. Add that to your contact list and Skype me if you’re in a particularly ridiculous meeting. I’ll usually be looking for comic fodder between 6:30 AM and 8:30 AM Pacific Time. But please don’t expect me to be chatty because I’ll be working. I’ll just send a “hi” message and listen in.

And start lining up your next job now. You might need it.

Waiting for the iWatch

Posted April 23rd, 2013 @ 12:46pm in #General Nonsense

Few experts seem to think Apple has another megahit product ahead of them. But I think the iWatch might be bigger than anyone imagines. You should keep in mind that I’m the oracle who predicted that no one would want an iPad. I repeated that prediction with the oversized phones from Samsung - the so-called phablets - and those are flying off the shelf too. So we know I suck at predicting consumer demand for gadgets. And while you might think I would be too embarrassed to make another prediction about consumer electronics, apparently I don’t feel shame like normal people.

So let’s get to it.

I’ve been holding off on buying a normal watch for the past several months because I’m fairly certain I’ll get an iWatch if it ever hits the market. And when it does, ordinary watches will start to look the way flip-phones looked six months after the iPhone was announced. You’re probably thinking an iWatch would be too geeky for any fashion-conscious consumer. But I think your old-timey standard watch will look like a butter churn in a few months. Fashion will require you to get an iWatch.

I see the iWatch as the next phase in our evolution to full cyborg status. I want my Google glasses, iWatch, smartphone, and anything else you want to attach to my body. Frankly, I’m tired of being nothing but a skin-bag full of decaying organs. I want to be the machine I was always meant to be. That prospect excites me.

But what excites me most about the iWatch is all the potential apps. Let’s assume that the iWatch will be connected to your phone by Bluetooth. And let’s assume the watch can measure movement. If you wave your arm in a figure eight, the phone senses it.

I’m also assuming the watch has a camera or two. I’d like one camera on the underside facing forward and one on the top facing forward, sort of where a wind-up stem would be on a standard watch. If you want to take a picture, just point your arm toward the scene and snap your fingers to operate the camera.

You’d also be able to control your environment with hand motions, like an orchestra conductor. Control the lights by pointing your arm toward the fixture and giving, let’s say, the thumbs-up motion.

Likewise you can control everything from the television to video games to your heating and cooling just by hand motions, as if using magic. You would walk through your home like a wizard, with all of your electronics responding to your arm motions.

Your hand would also act like a computer mouse. Just move your fingers over the desktop to move the cursor on screen.

To make a phone call, just put your hand in the “call me” position as if holding a fake phone to your ear.

If you walk too far from your smartphone, the watch gives you a quiet alarm. That way you never leave without your phone.

If you want to wake up without bothering your spouse, the watch could have an alarm vibrator built in.

If you can’t find your phone in the house, the watch would sense its direction and show an arrow on screen. Just follow the arrow to your phone’s general direction. Ask the iWatch to find your phone and it sends a signal to the phone to make a continuous beep until found.

The watch could have sensors on the underside to monitor blood sugar, heart rate, and oxygen levels.

When I’m working in the kitchen, I often want to see an incoming message but I don’t want to dry my hands. The iWatch would let me see messages even with wet hands.

When I want to add something to my to-do list, I can use my smartphone, but I generally don’t because that means fishing it out of my pocket, and frankly that takes longer than I can hold most thoughts. But I would speak a to-do note into my iWatch just because it would be so accessible.

Imagine an app that lets you find compatible mates in public places. You fill out a dating questionnaire and your watch glows a certain color when someone compatible and available is in your public space. There are already a number of apps like that for your phone. The watch would add a level of fun because your friends could see your watch glowing too and be part of the fun.

Your watch could act like an emergency backup battery for your phone. Just plug a power cord between phone and iWatch and keep texting.

I would say my family misses 75% of all incoming phone calls even when our phones are nearby because they tend to be on vibrate. I even miss calls when my phone is in my pocket. The iWatch would be a huge improvement in not missing calls. I would buy the iWatch for that one feature.

Okay, that’s my wish list. What apps would you want in an iWatch?

Ordinary Super Powers

Posted April 19th, 2013 @ 2:24pm in #General Nonsense

I define an ordinary super power as any useful ability that very few humans possess. For example, having a spectacular voice that commands attention is like a super power. So is being ridiculously attractive, insanely smart, highly energetic, artistic, and so on.

I don’t have any of those super powers. I’m an example of someone who has good but not great skills that work well together. I write okay, have a good sense of humor, draw better than the average person, and understand enough about the business world to pull it all together in the form of comics. No super powers needed.

But I often wonder what it would be like to have one or more of the ordinary super powers. And I also wonder which one I would choose if I had my pick. Knowing my shallowness, I would probably choose to be ridiculously attractive. But if I were to be more rational about it, and choose an ordinary super power with the greatest career utility, what would it be?

Realistically, attractiveness probably trumps most other super powers. So much so that in my opinion the men-versus-women way of seeing the world will soon morph into a political model in which attractive people of every gender and ethnicity are seen as advantaged while unattractive people are struggling. Gender and ethnicity will seem trivial compared to attractiveness. We’re about halfway there.

This is a long way of getting to my point, and yes, I have one. I would nominate for my preferred ordinary super power the ability to not feel embarrassment.

My observation is that people such as Richard Branson or Elvis, or just about anyone famous, has willingly taken on a career that promises a lot of raised eyebrows, shaming, humiliation, and ego attacks. Some people shrug off that sort of stuff. They have that ordinary super power. And it makes success more likely because they get to compete against a smaller field.

My hypothesis is that people who display a lack of embarrassment are seen by others as natural leaders. I suppose a lack of embarrassment looks like a form of bravery, and we’re wired to respond to it. When someone gives a speech to thousands, and shows no signs of nervousness, their confidence affects us. We assume good things about a person who is so cool under pressure. And when someone does something monumentally embarrassing, and shrugs it off with a smirk and a twinkle in the eye, we are in awe.

The good news is that one can learn to control embarrassment. You simply need to experience it so many times that you get used to it. In my case, my natural personality is shy, and as a kid I embarrassed easily. But I’ve learned through practice to power through most of my embarrassments. And that’s a good thing because embarrassment is a routine part of my job.

Take this blog. What I enjoy most about it is that there is no editor between you and me. The downside is that you see my spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and dumbass ideas in their raw form. I barely go a day without embarrassing myself in public. But at this point in my life, blog-related embarrassments don’t feel any more psychologically painful than looking in the mirror and seeing that I need a haircut. It’s just stuff.

I’m not totally immune to embarrassment, but I’m working toward it. Of all the ordinary super powers, enduring embarrassment is the one that an ordinary person can most easily develop. I will never have a radio-quality voice, or suddenly become tall and attractive. But I can learn to endure embarrassment, and that has a tremendous economic value.

Imagine being able to talk to anyone, and ask for any favor or resource, without fear of rejection or embarrassment. 99% of people you talk to could give you the stink-eye and you’d still become a billionaire because of the few that cooperated.

So I put the following unscientific question to you:

1.      Rank your fear of embarrassment from 1-10 with 10 being highest.

2.      Rank your career success (age adjusted) from 1-10 with 10 being highest.

I think there will be a correlation. That’s my hypothesis.

Our Moon Shot

Posted April 17th, 2013 @ 1:49pm in #General Nonsense

You often hear that the United States no longer has big goals, the way it did when President Kennedy challenged the country to put a man on the moon. And by big goals, I mean something that costs an enormous amount of money, focuses the entire country on the objective, takes years to accomplish, and delivers more in the way of psychological and technological benefits than it gets from actually accomplishing the goal. Walking on the moon was trivial compared to the emotional and psychological boost it provided, and the technology developed along the way.

I think we already had this generation’s equivalent of a moon landing, except it involved landing helicopters in Pakistan. And instead of astronauts sticking a flag in the moon, Seal Team 6 stuck a bullet in Osama Bin Laden’s skull.

Killing Bin Laden cost the United States, oh, let’s say ten trillion dollars, if you include everything from the opportunity costs, to the interest expense, to the Iraq war, to homeland security, and of course the war in Afghanistan. And by the time we got Bin Laden, the objective itself was trivial compared to the effort. But man, did it feel good.

In the long run, the technology developed to fight terrorism will probably be as important to the world as the technology developed getting to the moon. And like the moon race, we didn’t choose the objective so much as it was chosen for us by international forces. The race to the moon was a message to the Soviet Union. The bullet in Bin Laden head was a message to anyone who thought attacking the mainland United States was a good idea.

Countries are like people in the sense that they develop personalities. Countries are the sum of their parts plus the sum of their histories. When a country does something notable, good or bad, that becomes its personality for a century. And getting the personality right has a huge economic value.

For example, Cyprus will probably have a century-long reputation as the unemployed uncle who rifled through your underwear drawer looking for your hidden sock full of money so he could buy beer. Russia is a well-dressed mobster. Canada is the guy who mows his lawn and then mows yours too because he was “…already out there, eh?”

The personality of the United States changes periodically. Sometimes we’re generous and inspiring. Other times we’re total dicks. It’s a complicated country. But no one thing defines the personality of the United States more than our willingness to spend ten trillion dollars - and kill anyone who gets in the way - just to put a bullet in one asshole’s skull. That gives me neither pride nor embarrassment; it’s just a statement of fact.

This brings me to North Korea. I don’t know enough about complicated international affairs to have informed opinions, so I’ll put this in the form of a question from a citizen: Why isn’t North Korea China’s problem?

The old United States, with its old personality, probably needed a strong military presence in the area to keep things from getting out of hand. And of course we wanted to be there for our allies.

But today the United States has a different personality, and that provides different options. Today we could pack up all of our stuff, slap China on the back and say, “It’s all yours, buddy. Call if you need anything. Glad to help.” And we’d totally mean it.

The best part of our new personality is that Kim Jong-un understands that if someday he lobs a missile at the mainland United States, we’ll spend ten years and another ten trillion dollars to put a bullet in his head. We’ll even shoot his kids on the way up the stairs. And realistically, if North Korea did attack the United States, China would either step out of the way or do some regime-changing themselves in North Korea, as a favor to their biggest customer.

My observation over a lifetime is that when it comes to a fight, the craziest person has a huge advantage because he’s not worried about his own losses. When Kim Jong-un’s father was running North Korea, he had the craziness advantage. Today I’m not buying their act. From my dim vantage point, it looks like acting crazy instead of the real thing. If they want to see the real thing, all they need to do is send a rocket a little too far toward California.

Boston

Posted April 16th, 2013 @ 1:03pm in #General Nonsense

Words unnecessary.

http://www.businessinsider.com/muse-singer-plays-national-anthem-for-boston-2013-4

Fact Checking: Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters

Posted April 15th, 2013 @ 1:12pm in #General Nonsense

I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher the other day. He had a professor on the show who said climate change can be fixed by making well-understood adjustments to how farmers raise cattle plus some other fairly ordinary changes. Apparently this is all explained in a documentary called Carbon Nation.

I’m skeptical of any claim so big and contrarian, but it does fit with The Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters. Simply stated, my observation is that whenever humanity can see a slow-moving disaster coming, we find a way to avoid it. Let’s run through some examples:

Thomas Malthus famously predicted that the world would run out of food as the population grew. Instead, humans improved their farming technology.

When I was a kid, it was generally assumed that the world would be destroyed by a global nuclear war. The world has been close to nuclear disaster a few times, but so far we’ve avoided all-out nuclear war.

The world was supposed to run out of oil by now, but instead we keep finding new ways to extract it from the ground. The United States has unexpectedly become a net provider of energy.

The debt problem in the United States was supposed to destroy the economy. Instead, the deficit is shrinking, the stock market is surging, and the price of gold is plummeting.

Social security was supposed to go broke. It might have some dents and scratches, but it looks as if it will be fine.

Offshoring was supposed to suck the last bit of manufacturing DNA out of the United States. Instead, robotics and other market forces have caused the trend to reverse.

Illegal immigrants from Mexico were supposed to overrun the United States with crime, steal American jobs and burden the social systems. Instead, the economy of Mexico started improving and immigration reversed.

When I was a kid, it looked as if the country was heading for an eventual race war. Today that seems impossible unless angry white guys start shooting.

In the seventies it looked as if crime was going to keep increasing forever until the suburbs were overrun by street gangs. Instead, violent crime has steadily decreased.

On a smaller scale, the BP oil spill in the Gulf was supposed to destroy the Gulf ecosystem for the rest of our lives. And while the lasting damage was plenty bad, experts were generally surprised that it wasn’t far worse.

The Y2K problem was supposed to break computers and plunge the planet into an agrarian society. Instead, programmers invented shortcuts for finding and fixing the bugs with time to spare.

In California, predicted ongoing droughts were supposed decimate the state. Instead, it rained.

Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?

Pick a Topic

Posted April 12th, 2013 @ 12:49pm in #General Nonsense

I blog on a variety of topics. I’m wondering which ones interest you the most.

1.      Future (robots, technology, healthcare, etc.)

2.      New business ideas (apps, inventions, services)

3.      Management bullshit

4.      Success tricks and tips

5.      Personal health

6.      Psychology (hypnosis, cognitive bias, illusions, affirmations)

7.      Politics

8.      World events

9.      The startup I’m working on

10.  Humor (silly stories usually about my life)

11.  Metaphysics (hologram reality, religion, meaning of life)

I ask because I usually hear “stop doing that” more than I hear “do more of that” so I have an imbalanced idea of what people prefer.

Turning Point

Posted April 10th, 2013 @ 1:58pm in #General Nonsense

The other day I was practicing my two-handed backhand against a tennis ball machine. I’ve played tennis since I was a kid, but I started out with a one-handed backhand and it takes some work to switch. I set the ball machine to a narrow-random mode for some variety and started hitting.

Just so you can imagine the scene as I saw it, the ball machine has a black plastic exterior and it’s about four-feet tall. It swivels left-right at its midsection. On the random setting it seems as if it’s just messing with you. There is some variability in timing between balls because of the nature of the mechanical feeder on the top. When you add that to the programmed left-right randomness it gives the impression of being playful, just yanking you around for fun.

So there I am, hitting ball after ball, just me and the machine. No other human was anywhere near. I was having a great time, working up a sweat, improving my skills…

And then it occurred to me.

I … have a … robot friend.

The ball machine isn’t intelligent in a classic sense. It was merely random. But humans are fairly random too, or so they seem, because we can’t predict exactly what one might do next in any given situation. I don’t even know what sentence I will type next. It’s not random, but it seems that way because it is so unpredictable.

You all know my view that humans are simply moist robots, so for me, the difference between this tennis robot and a human was freakishly small. I was even responding to the robot in an emotional way. I felt a bit of a connection. Humans bond through shared activities and I was feeling it.

I imagine you’re all dismissing this as a stretch. We’re surrounded by machines that aren’t entirely predictable and they don’t feel alive. I’m typing this at my computer that surprised me half-a-dozen times already this morning. But my computer doesn’t feel alive to me. Nor does my toaster, no matter how surprised I am its results. Those machines don’t feel like the future. They are mere tools. The ball machine on the other hand registers in my lizard brain as a primitive form of life, in part because of its physical dimensions, and partly because of its relentless randomness. It makes humans seem a bit less special.

I saw a clip from TED (can’t find it now) in which a guy tosses tennis balls at a toy helicopter that has a tennis racket strapped to it. The toy adjusts its position autonomously and returns the ball to the human, over and over. At this point in history the only thing that prevents me from having a full three-set tennis match with an anthropomorphic robot is the expense. The technology has arrived.

My prediction is that within the next five years each of you will have your own Holy $#!t moment with a robot that registers as freakishly intelligent. It’s a cool feeling. It feels like the future.

Or have you already had the experience? Let me know in the comments.