
Charles Stross YAPCA keynote: The world in 2034 - captaincrowbar
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/yapcna-2014-keynote-programmin.html
======
yakuzan
This is a very self-aware piece, and worth taking in. But here's the buried
TL;DR:

* It's going to superficially resemble 2014.

* However, every object in the real world is going to be providing a constant stream of metadata about its environment — and I mean every object.

* The frameworks used for channeling this firehose of environment data are going to be insecure and ramshackle, with foundations built on decades-old design errors.

* The commercial internet funding model of 1994 — advertising — is still influential, and its blind-spots underpin the attitude of the internet of things to our privacy and security.

* How physical products are manufactured and distributed may be quite different from 2014. In particular, expect more 3D printing at end-points and less long-range shipment of centrally manufactured products. But in many cases, how we use the products may be the same.

* The continuing trend towards fewer people being employed in manufacturing, and greater automation of service jobs, will continue.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
What got me was advertising is still the monetisation of the internet / of
things.

I would assume that because the next major product is going to be data (from
pavement slabs !) that it is data that will be monetised - somehow. But I
would assume that IP rights become DP - Data Property. And I charge people for
use of my data (from my underpants) and they charge me for the analysis of the
aggregated data - if we are sensible in a similar manner to internt exchanges
now - mostly up balances down.

Hmm. Nice to have some new thoughts

~~~
pjc50
A "data property" system that gives the majority of people rights over their
personal data is never going to be built. We're far more likely to see "data
feudalism" _, in which the systems you require to get by in the world extract
your data as a toll for living in the modern world. In return, you get a
certain limited amount of security against_ other*, nastier, agents trying to
get at your data. See
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.html)

(there's an excellent book called "Information Feudalism" on related IP
issues)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I produce data, data is produced about me - data seems more like a crop - and
crops tend to belong to the owner of the ground they grew in - in the modern
case it will be the nation state not the feudal lord - it owns the roads that
have the sensors that watch the cars and the underwear. We the taxpayer argue
now that our tax money that goes to produce our maps should get our map data
for free.

Why should the same open data ideal not apply to data produced from tax funded
roads?

I am more optimistic that having achieved democracy we will not throw it away
so easily.

------
hershel
"The continuing trend towards fewer people being employed in manufacturing,
and greater automation of service jobs, will continue: our current societal
model, whereby we work to earn money with which to buy the goods and services
we need may not be sustainable in the face of a continuing squeeze on
employment. But since when has consistency or coherency or even humanity been
a prerequisite of any human civilization in history? We'll muddle on, even
when an objective observer might look at us and shake her head in despair."

He wrote very little about that subject, although there's decent likelihood
that will be the issue(together with AI,VR and possibly medical innovation)
that will make 2034 very different from out time.

~~~
araes
I'd guess because Stross tends to be a very pragmatic / utilitarian sci-fi
writer.

We suspect its going to be a thing, but nobody really knows what the death of
human employment will mean, or if it will really happen. If it does, its
probably much more of a black swan than "the internet of things", but as he
noted with cars, sometimes things you discount end up revolutionizing the
world, and stuff you thought was a killer, because of short range performance,
ends up bland in the long run. Its kind of like stocks, everybody wants to buy
FB or Google after they change the world, but its a whole nother story to
figure that out beforehand.

You can guess that the death of employment for pay will be a huge event, but
to say much more you have to start committing toward one of many possible
paths beyond your event horizon. Maybe a revolution as robots steal our jobs,
maybe boring and mostly like today, maybe endless freedom to create, or kind
of pointless (cause we're all VR slaves or some other such thing)). The
slope's there, but we can't see over the hill.

 _Aside_ : I dig that the later half reads like a love letter for one of my
favourite, and one of the more durable languages out there. Almost 30 years
and Perl's still quietly chuggin along.

------
VLM
"Half the shouting and social upheaval on the internet today comes from
entrenched groups who are outraged to learn that their opinions and views are
not universally agreed upon; the other half comes from those whose silence was
previously mistaken for assent."

That seems to imply social media is going to quiet down a lot after things
shake out.

I facebooked real hard in '09 or so. Was high traffic but it was an utter
waste of time, like no positive effect on my life whatsoever despite a
spectacular demand on my time, so I stopped and didn't miss it. Restarted this
year because one of my kids is old enough to get an account and wanted to
"friend" his dad, so how can I resist? I created a new account (had deleted
the old one) and refriended a whole bunch of people and frankly FB is dying in
terms of traffic compared to 5 yrs ago. I donno if its paranoia at being data
mined or a lack of newness or its just had its time and is now done and over.

During Roman triumphs, a slave would whisper in the ear of the winner that he
was only mortal. Someone needs to whisper in the ear of all the social media
folks that in the late 70s, 10% of all cars on the road had a CB radio. The CB
experience is coming to social media, eventually, like it or not... Or going
back a few more decades at one time virtually 100% of home entertainment
electronics was based on radio reception...

------
mercurial
I must say that I'm almost enjoying more Charlie's blog than Charlie's books
:) If you scroll back a bit, there is also a very interesting piece about
Scottish independence, with extensive comments:
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/the-
scot...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/the-scottish-
political-singula.html)

~~~
arethuza
I thought his piece on the role of the UK "independent" deterrent was
particularly good:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-
the-u...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-uk-and-
nuclear-disarmam.html)

Having been a child in the 70s and 18 in 1983, the year of Able Archer, I
still have the same lurking existential horror (not helped, as Charlie also
mentions, by having seen Threads more often than is wise from a peace of mind
perspective).

~~~
gaius
Of course, we can look at North Korea, which has nukes and thumbs it's nose
with impunity at the West. And we can look at Ukraine which gave up the nukes
it inherited from the USSR in return for a treaty pledging that the West would
secure its borders. How's that working out for them?

De Gaulle had it right, which is not something I often say...

------
VLM
"remain in production for decades because there is no prospect of a faster,
cheaper better product coming along any time soon."

The future is already here, just unevenly distributed in tech.

My Dad did parallax "basic stamp" microcontroller dev work in the 90s, maybe
80s, that stuff is old... you can buy a pin compatible form today, admittedly
for about twice the cost of a ras-pi. The arduino and pi will eventually wipe
out the stamp, but people have been saying that for many years now, of course.

As an analog RF EE example, the ne602 chip has been around for decades (oh at
least 2 or 3 now) and people today are still shipping new ham radio kits using
it, despite its laughable IP3 large signal specs its still "good enough".

------
NoMoreNicksLeft
Only an author of Lovecraftian horror could give a keynote at a perl
conference.

------
kaonashi
Awesome talk, but I think he got the language wrong (and not for bad reasons).

------
jacquesm
I was with him until the perl bit. Otherwise, awesome piece.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Well, it is a Perl conf.

~~~
cstross
And according to Larry, Perl 6 will be along _any day now_.

And then all you skeptics will be sorry! Sorry I say!

Bwahahaha!

~~~
InclinedPlane
Hah. Well, Perl isn't a bad language, it's just past its prime and being
outcompeted by other languages. It had a moment where it could have remained
relevant but they missed it.

~~~
BugBrother
Sigh, here we go again. :-(

Better OO than the competing scripting languages, CPAN still beats any
opposition (check CPAN testers), extensible syntax(!) etc.

And... you don't lose a hype war if you didn't really play it.

~~~
acuozzo
All you need is the following if you want to champion Perl.

[http://dheeb.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/gbu.pdf](http://dheeb.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/gbu.pdf)

Perl does Unicode right. Look at page #3.

~~~
BugBrother
I'd settle for new subjects from the trolls, the present ones make tired
reddit jokes look good.

Anyway, I thought Guido told 'em to stop, since they're getting a bad
reputation?

------
eli_gottlieb
Ok, guys. STOP TRYING TO PREDICT 20 YEARS AHEAD OF TIME.

You're only giving people ideas. By giving people ideas, you literally make
your own predictions less true.

