
Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II - d_r
http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/11/02/garry-kasparov-the-last-revolutionary-technology-was-the-apple-ii/
======
simonsarris
It's rare I want to call someone with conservative technological estimates
unrealistic. Usually I see the opposite. But I don't think Kasparov is on the
mark here.

The cellphone was invented after that and has forever changed the way we reach
people and _fundamentally_ how they are reachable.

Do you remember life pre-cellphones? When you left your house you literally
dropped off the map. There was no way of anyone knowing where you were or
where you were going. Unless you let them know beforehand, there was no way
for people to catch-up with you when you got there. All sorts of tiny events
required massive planning.

Now when you leave the house, should you so please (and the vast majority do)
you can be reached. Climbing a mountain? In another country? Nobody knows
this? They can still contact you! You can be at a place you've never been
before and your friend can contact you and meet you there!

I actually think this disrupts my zen a little bit; I'd rather not be
reachable at all times. I rarely pick up my phone - _maybe_ for my father, my
brother, or my girlfriend. Everyone else can leave a message.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Ubiquitous cell phones are definitely a revolutionary development. This
becomes obvious when you read or watch fiction of any sort. How many story
lines would be completely disrupted by the presence of a cell phone? As it
turns out, a great many, even for stories being written today, as many writers
haven't fully absorbed the way things have changed.

~~~
gaius
Haha yes, even Star Trek, they can travel at warp speed but the away team
can't send an MMS back to the ship, the captain has to beam down personally
and see for himself...

~~~
InclinedPlane
This is even sillier in the case of Star Trek since they could use even a
Polaroid or film camera and beam the film/photos back up to the ship (or, of
course, a data crystal or what-have-you).

~~~
gaius
Beaming Polaroids back to the ship would be _amazing!_

~~~
rbanffy
That's silly. Everybody knows the transporter messes up Polaroid film.

------
gjm11
Kasparov complains that there aren't enough revolutionary technologies that
push the world forward, as opposed to incremental improvements driven by
wanting to please consumers. And then he says the last genuine technological
revolution was ... the Apple II? Huh?

The Apple II was a fine product. But it was an incremental advance on its
predecessors like the Commodore PET and, er, the Apple I (whose existence
Kasparov might perhaps have been able to guess from the Apple II's name).

And: Mobile phones (as already pointed out by _simonsarris_ ). GPS. Affordable
laser printers. The internet. Functional magnetic resonance imaging. Compact
discs. Digital cameras. Etc., etc., etc. There's no shortage of things at
least as revolutionary as the Apple II since 1977. (Some of them are based on
fundamental developments a few years earlier, but none of them as much so as
the Apple II.)

~~~
kraemate
The internet is older than the Apple II. Apart from GPS and FMRI, i dont agree
that the other consumer-products are revolutionary at all. CDs are notoriously
unreliable data storage mechanism which are already obselete; laser printers
haven't done much other than enable people to waste more paper ; digital
cameras are just dense CCDs, nothing great or new about that.

~~~
gjm11
Are you serious?

> The internet is older than the Apple II.

Depends on what you mean by "the internet". The core protocols are older than
the Apple II, but e.g. the linkup between ARPANET and NSFNet wasn't until the
1980s.

> CDs are notoriously unreliable data storage mechanism which are already
> obsolete

CDs were revolutionary because they were the first widely used digital music
format. And they may be "notoriously unreliable", but my CDs are holding up
better in terms of sound quality than a similarly-aged collection of LPs would
without heroic measures. Sure, they're certainly obsolescent now, if not
actually obsolete, but so is the Apple II.

> laser printers haven't done much other than enable people to waste more
> paper

Laser printers made it possible for anyone to produce near-publishable-quality
documents. This is a Big Deal, even if for whatever reason you don't like it.

> digital cameras are just dense CCDs, nothing great or new about that.

And the Apple II was just a slightly better personal computer. Digital cameras
have made traditional film cameras obsolete. They have completely changed the
way in which people take pictures by drastically shortening the feedback loop
from initial capture to inspection, and by making it essentially free to take
large numbers of pictures. They have greatly increased the role of photography
in most people's lives. (Still more as they have become commonly integrated
into mobile phones.)

Now, if you wish to define "revolutionary" very strictly, then of course you
can say that none of these things is really revolutionary -- but then the
Apple II will come out also not being revolutionary. Kasparov is wrong either
way.

------
dholowiski
The next revolution is happening right now- it's consumer level 3d printers
(cupcake, reprap etc) and they're going to change everything, more than
computers and cell phones combined did.

~~~
ggchappell
The 3-D printing industry now, looks a lot like the computer industry around
1976, doesn't it? We have the equivalents of big expensive mainframes, as well
as cheaper, but still pretty pricey, minicomputers. Cupcake & RepRap strike me
as being analogous to something like the Altair 8800 or the Aim-65: fun for
seriously geeky hobbyists, but not really ready for prime time.

So the 3-D printing industry doesn't have its Apple ][ / Pet / TRS-80 yet. In
the computer industry, back in '76, those were only a year away. And then in 5
years there was the IBM PC, in 6 years the Commodore 64, and in 8 years the
Macintosh, and suddenly these little machines were everywhere.

Is 3-D printing going to advance that quickly? I doubt it. The technical
challenges, and especially the price issues, look pretty tricky. I do think
we'll get there before too long, though. It should be interesting to watch.

------
johngalt
We went from basic monochrome computers that could barely hold the text of a
single book in memory to having instantaneous access to the sum of human
knowledge from a device that fits in your pocket.

Perhaps my definition of revolutionary is different than his.

~~~
rbanffy
The Apple ][ had color, you insensitive clod.

~~~
johngalt
Oh sorry, before my time. The general thrust of my point stands. You could
always look back at the first breakthrough and call it revolutionary and every
subsequent innovation derivative. Even when the "breakthrough" device was
mostly useless in comparison. Evaluating innovation in this manner will always
make the large advances appear to be in the past.

Good current example would be sequencing the human genome. As of right now its
mostly useless, but 30 years from now it may be seen as that revolutionary
spark. Then some other critic will talk about how nothing big has happened
since.

~~~
rbanffy
Sorry for the "insensitive clod". It's a slashdottism that's hard to leave
behind.

------
mattmaroon
This clearly shows that being very wise and being very intelligent are not the
same thing.

~~~
astrofinch
I'm not sure that being the best chess player in the world is evidence that
Kasparov is _very_ intelligent--any more than being the best poker player, the
best piano player, or even the best marketer. Chess is a learned skill just
like any of those.

Put another way, looking at all of the world's very most intelligent people,
the fraction that care enough about chess to become the world champion if they
had the aptitude is very slim.

~~~
geidden
Point of fact: chess is learned but only to a point, probably around 2100-2150
ELO. That is the limit of what most people can accomplish with a lot of study
and hard work.

Pushing beyond that and into the Super to Elite Grandmaster range (2550-2800)
requires extraordinary levels of memory, concentration, calculation and
pattern matching. Levels that can't be instilled in someone through any amount
of training. A person either possesses them or (s)he doesn't.

I lack the evidence at hand, but I'm certain I've seen it before that aptitude
in those areas correlates strongly to high intelligence.

~~~
rozim
I think Kasparov disagrees with you via "...working hard is also part of an
individual’s talent"

though to be fair he follows with

"I think working hard is sometimes just as important to having a talent."

<http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6069>

------
hsmyers
The only industry left that might fit Mr. Kasparov's prescription is the
aerospace industry. There are still cowboys with calculators if not slide-
rules and things moving from cad space to real space that are more than
revolutionary and a damn site more than an incremental improvement...

~~~
ggchappell
Your comment is interesting, in that I don't see how it can possibly be true.
From my POV, aerospace is the quintessential example of an industry that
showed great promise and was revolutionizing our world, and then ... just
stopped. The planes I fly on today are basically indistinguishable from the
ones my father flew on back in the 1960s -- except for the TVs, but that's not
really aerospace. Meanwhile, no one has been beyond LEO since 1972. NASA has
produced lots of nifty unmanned spacecraft with cameras, true, but the only
thing they've done recently that I would call _revolutionary_ is the Mars
rovers, but that's more robotics than aerospace.

So, could you explain? (Or were you perhaps being sarcastic, and I missed it?)

~~~
imperator
In a way you are both right. There are currently two aspects of the American
space industry.

One, the moribund aerospace giants that are largely just making the same old
rockets, entrenched in their job creation programs.

And two, the new space companies, which are making suborbital rocketplanes and
cheap boosters. At present, they may not look impressive because of small
steps they are taking, but you just have to look at Scaled's Space Ship Two to
realize that radical innovation in their design is not dead.

This has been a long time coming, and there has been a dark age in aerospace.

If you are interested, in my view the seminal event in the new space industry
was the Delta Clipper Program
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X>).

And now there are some really impressive companies trying to make space truly
viable for everyone. Some of those companies are.

XCOR Aerospace: <http://xcor.com/> Scaled Composites: <http://scaled.com/>
Masten: <http://masten-space.com/> Armadillo:
<http://armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home>

Aside from aerospace. While I agree that there have been game changers like
the cell phone, I do agree with Kasparov that there is an atmosphere of risk
aversion. For instance I don't see any daring research programs like when
DARPA funded Engelbart's augment research that led to Human User Interface
objects like the mouse. And that disturbs me. Often visionaries look very
crazy or at best very hard to understand because they are operating out of the
scope of our context. I don't see people having the patience for these
visionaries. And the people who do claim to be visionaries seem to have very
conservative imaginations.

------
iuguy
Some very smart people here have mentioned mobile phones. Some other smart
people have made the point that the original mobile phones predate the Apple
II. Indeed, car phones go back way far in history but have more in common
(historically) with radios.

There are three revolutionary things about mobile phones that came after the
Apple II:

SMS (1984/5)

GPRS (1997)

The ubiquity of mobile phones (late 90s to mid 2000s) with data services.

The technology itself is rarely revolutionary (although developers of HIV
treatment drugs may disagree - this also came after the Apple II). The thing
that makes it revolutionary is what happens when it reaches ubiquity. Mobile
phones with data used to be amazing things. I still remember using a Nokia
Communicator for the first time, over an incredible 9.6k link from almost
anywhere with GSM coverage. These days your average person in the street
probably couldn't tell you whether they were on GSM, HSPDA or Wifi (my wife
certainly can't, other than sometimes her phone goes 'slow'). That's what's
revolutionary about mobile phones, that they're no longer magical and part of
everyone's day.

------
devmonk
Well said! I agree with all of it. I'd only add that the U.S. isn't the only
country that can innovate, and that innovation needs purpose beyond energy
production. I feel that purpose should be:

\- Colonizing space.

\- Making better use of our land for sustainable agriculture to feed the
hungry and the children of our future.

~~~
vl
While I understand dream aspect of it, in practical terms, why and how would
you colonize space?

~~~
mpk
The how is of course the tricky part, but as to the why - well, to quote
George Mallory,

    
    
        "Because it's there"
    

That's good enough for me, but there are plenty of other reasons why. Species
survival would be one of them.

There are plenty of possibilities for extinction events right here. Super-
volcano eruptions, radical climate change, polar shifting, airborne super-bugs
(hello zombie apocalypse!), nuclear mayhem, etc.

Our local environment also has plenty of hazards. Asteroid impact, engulfment
in a large solar flare, orbital shifts are the ones that spring to mind.

Our little niche in the galaxy might also have to deal with wandering black
holes, gamma-ray bursts from a supernova that is just near enough, the long-
term problem of the collision with Andromeda, etc. We won't overcome any of
those by colonizing Mars, but still some things to keep in mind.

On a more practical note, extreme endeavors like colonizing space require some
radical thinking (and re-thinking of existing concepts). Colonizing means
establishing a foothold outside Earth that is self-sustaining (i.e. can do
without a lifeline to Earth). We can't actually do that right now. If we set
that as a goal we're going to come up with some very interesting stuff, a lot
of which is bound to be useful down here.

Life expands or dies, that's the way it works over here. What the universe
really seems to abhor (apart from vacuum), is an equilibrium.

~~~
jesus
Earth serves as an effective spacecraft, we're just running low on supplies
and making a mess of it; the economically and ecologically optimal move is
migrate mining and industry to heaven.

~~~
rbanffy
Still, if we can get a couple more spacecrafts, the chance of everyon dying
gets much smaller.

Not only that, but the skills and knowledge we gain with it make us even
harder to kill. One of these days we may even surpass cockroaches.

~~~
jesus
Human migration hinges on sustainable interplanetary resource acquisition and
processing; infrasttucture seems the priority first.

------
DLWormwood
I’m not sure that Kasparov (or anybody) has a right to criticize the rate of
progress for the last few decades or centuries. Since the Renaissance, human
progress has grown leaps and bounds at such an astonishing rate, compared with
before, that we may have outpaced the ability for the human animal to adapt
without negative repercussions. (Some might argue that this already happened
all the way back to agriculture.)

Even if things have slowed down for the last few years, so what? Humanity may
naturally have occasional refractory periods to catch its collective breath.
Complaints like this make me think that such people regard light speed as too
slow and try to push humanity to “ludicrous speed,” right past “ridiculous
speed.”

~~~
Detrus
We already have huge negative repercussions. Climate change, mass extinction,
overpopulation thanks to industrial agriculture.

Now it might be more dangerous if tech slowed down, because we need new tech
to fix disasters caused by the old.

In some industries, like energy, automotive, people have been catching their
collective breath for decades and now we're in trouble.

~~~
bad_user
IMHO, that's exactly the thinking that got us into trouble in the first place:
that we have the capability to change nature, however we want, and yet we
can't even predict earthquakes or give accurate weather forecasts.

Heck, we even have problems estimating the ecological footprint of anything.

E.g. that proof of concept electrical car that's extra efficient might require
some rare metals to produce, and the manufacturing itself could have a bigger
impact on nature than its usage. Only in the US there are tens of millions of
drivers that will wait in line to buy such a car. And that electricity has to
come from somewhere, like a nuclear power plant (which according to many, is
less destructive to nature as wind or solar power).

This is a social problem that cannot be solved by technology. If you want to
change the world, find a way to make people consume less.

~~~
nitrogen
Consuming less (I mean at the consumer level, not raw resources) is hardly a
way to promote the progress of our civilization. Finding a way to
_sustainably_ consume ever more will yield much greater outcomes in technology
and happiness.

~~~
bad_user
When the consumption rate is increasing exponentially, I don't know how you
can even imagine that we'll ever be able to _sustainably consume_ more.

Unless you're talking about StarTrek where food can materialize at the push of
a button, or after a "warp maximum; engage" they can arrive at an inhabitable
planet in one minute.

In the meantime, this planet doesn't grow any larger and its resources are
limited.

~~~
nitrogen
I'll provide an example of what I'm thinking, as it may be that we disagree
less than it appears.

I believe that one of our goals as a species should be ubiquitous travel, so
that any person can afford to travel anywhere within a reasonable amount of
time. The current approach of burning highly refined fossil fuels to power
airplanes is obviously unsustainable, but that doesn't mean we stop flying.
What we should be doing (and this is a very long-term view) is developing
alternative energy storage mechanisms dense enough to power airplanes. One
approach that seems reasonable to me is using nuclear power to store energy as
biofuel, then switching to solar/wind/hydro power once it is possible to do
so. Hypothetically we could design fuels and engines that result in zero
harmful waste entering the atmosphere, and direct any byproducts from
combustion into the next batch of fuel.

I will concede that Star Trek's unlimited energy universe is a bit like
playing Sim City with the money cheat, though.

------
8ren
I recall some Google engineers complaining that brute force was so much more
effective than their cleverest algorithms. Work data not smarter.

------
Reclix
Though I agree with some of the above comments that the technological
innovations since 1977 haven't been altogether uninspiring, I do wonder: Who
right now is funding innovation that doesn't directly have a business model
tied to it? i.e., innovation for the sake of innovation, without the startup
pitch, killer ceo, etc - the scientist pushing the limits for the sake of
science?

Is NASA a place where this happens? And is it frivolous to suggest that this
kind of innovation without an obvious money-making scheme is important?

~~~
tjmc
It's not frivolous because fundamental research often leads to unexpected
commercial benefits. One example - Japanese physicists doing research into
quantum tunneling led to the shrinking of satellite dish antennas from 2m to
about 30cm.

On some levels I think Kasparov is right. You could fly from London to New
York faster in 1977 (on the Concord) than you can today.

------
Detrus
As industries grow too large sweeping changes become more difficult. There are
too many dependencies in the current tech stack for computers. Processor
architectures, people used to certain UIs, lots of jobs dependent on the
status quo. Society may have caught up with the possibilities of yesterday's
computers, jumping on social networks, ubiquity of devices, but the tech stack
itself is stuck.

The most recent opportunity to move it forward are mobile devices. Companies
are finally rethinking the OS (iOS, ChromeOS), compilers (LLVM), processor
architectures (ARM, integrated graphics).

Kasparov probably thinks such steps should not be driven by market forces
alone, but by technologists interested in experimentation. The right market
conditions came about after decades of the same old more MHz, more HD space
rat race. The market is not fast enough, it has other priorities, like getting
the products to everybody.

Our biggest technological leaps came about when people with vision got others
to invest big. The Industrial Revolution in 1800s, World Wars, Manhattan
Project, Space race, PCs, GUIs, .COM bubble, GPS, CERN, LHC etc.. were all
obnoxiously big gambles. These have become less popular, people prefer
mindless market driven evolutionary change instead of vision.

------
grammaton
Maybe I missed something here, but...when did Gary Kasparov suddenly become
qualified to comment on technological and computing progress? No mention of
the internet, for instance, which kind of tends to undermine the ability to
take his comments seriously. For that matter, what makes the Apple II so
revolutionary compared to it's predecessors and successors? No mention of
that.

~~~
borism
umm, I dunno, maybe since the time he beat friggin supercomputer at chess?

~~~
grammaton
He beat it by being a better chess player. When he can explain how the
supercomputer works and talk knowledgeably about the algorithms underlying the
game software and it's design, _then_ he would be an expert on technology.

------
aidenn0
I think that it is wrong to say we aren't trying to innovate. I rather think
we are at a point where incremental improvements are yielding better results
in shorter time than revolutionary changes.

Examples: How many revolutionary replacements for DRAM have been proposed
since the 1103 was introduced? Yet what do we use today? DRAM, because it
could incrementally improve to be better and/or cheaper before competing
technologies could be introduced

How many revolutionary replacements for the ICE have been proposed? Various
jet engines have largely replaced it for aircraft, but the ICE is used just
about everywhere else.

How about von neumann computers? There have been many other architectures
proposed, but for general purpose computing it still wins out.

The fact that I am writing on this with something that is merely the sum of
many incremental improvements to the Apple II just demonstrates the huge
amount of untapped potential in the design when it was introduced, not that
innovation has stopped.

------
robryan
Apart from the internet itself I think digital content distribution is
revolutionary, it certainly has drastically changes the way we acquire games,
books, music, movies etc.

~~~
jesus
But has it drastically changed the games, books, music, and movies?

~~~
robryan
It's changed the content that an average person has access to without replying
on what as being distributed locally. It has allowed those that would have
never been able to get wider distribution of their content, those producing
niche material to access a big enough market to make their projects viable.

So it may not have changed the content on the whole but it has certainly
changed the content that most people are actually able to experience.

~~~
jesus
Ability to experience mayn't align with actual experience; while radio
could've increased music diversity, it's effect seemed ultimately
homogenizing, and the same may be true of online content.

------
jleyank
Maybe Garry's limiting his discussion to computer-y tech, but for me, I think
biologics-as-drugs is pretty damn revolutionary. Having an number of
antibodies that can stop rheumatoid arthritis in its tracks is pretty amazing
in my book.

Tech? Portable music/video players have totally changed how I travel, flash
memory makes those little plastic thingies from Star Trek work and room-temp
color sensors (digital cameras, etc) are pretty amazing.

Then, there's gene sequencing... PCR, ...

------
astrofinch
I still think Google Maps is pretty cool.

~~~
jesus
As cool as pornography relative to sex.

~~~
gjm11
Could you explain your analogy in a bit more detail? Google Maps is like
pornography, and ... what ... is like sex? Physical paper maps? (I'm not
seeing the big difference compared with electronic ones.) The actual full-size
terrain itself? (OK, sure, but that's a bit tricky to carry around with you
and use for route planning.)

~~~
jesus
The ecstasy of Earth from heaven; yes, impractical for terrestrial route
planning.

------
throwAway_29
nice article! For those trying to do research, for research's sake... how many
path-breaking PhD's in Computer Science has US produced? (For that matter, any
country in the world-but let's stick with US) I feel that the entire culture
has been skewed towards incremental improvements. I bet, 90% of papers churned
out, would be having conclusions something like.. "improved the performance of
X by y% under the conditions L,M,N" where (L,M,N) might be near-impossible to
occur simultaneously in real life. You cant disregard/dismiss Gary's points-
sure,Apple II might not have been the last technological innovation, but
overall- he has raised a valid point.

------
technomancy
Rubbish. Everyone knows the last revolutionary technology was the MITS Altair
8800.

------
seanlinmt
A number of people has been saying that the US has not been leading
technologically. So if not the US, which country is doing better
technologically?

Japan? Even if it's Japan, its economy isn't doing that well either.

~~~
nikster
Innovation may be down in the USA, but it's definitely better than in other
places. The potential is there - the same cannot be said for anywhere else in
the world.

Europeans take their ideas to the U.S. because in Europe there's no money for
innovations. There's no infrastructure for it. China is trying the wrong
approach and producing nothing. Japan has incremental improvements ingrained
in its culture.

However I think he's right about the stimulus and money. The big government
approach doesn't produce anything innovative either. We're building roads in
the USA - that's good, but... not gonna change the world now is it? Printing
money is currently undermining the USA - it's surprising inflation isn't much
worse than it is but at some point something will have to give. It reminds me
a bit of the housing bubble - for years house prices were going up, way into
silly territory, and beyond. But eventually, the market corrected itself. Now,
we're printing US$ Tns every year and there seem to be no negative effects -
but that, also, is going to eventually hit home. It's going to make America a
country of cheap labor. Inflation will catch up.

~~~
gaius
A government will spent a trillion dollars on "innovation" before even
contemplating relaxing a law that's stifling it.

------
sorbus
"In the private sector, the energy industry collectively invested 0.3% of
sales in R&D."

Does anyone know what that would be as a percentage of profits?

------
fleitz
What about a computer that is capable for beating a Chess Grandmaster? I think
that's revolutionary.

------
tghw
I think Deep Blue was pretty revolutionary, but I can see why he might not
want to admit that...

------
8ren
Work in constructed bacteria is revolutionary.

