IEEE Spectrum May, 2010 - 28

reflections

By roBErT w. lucky

The Ephemeral Now

R

Dan Page

ight now, things are happening
out there. I know, because I can
hear the buzz of terabytes in the
ether. If I listen closely, I can hear the
singing of flying tweets, and if I squint
I can see the haze of raging blogs. There
is a melody and a dance there that I
might discern, and if I could, I would
know what is happening right now.
I confess that I used to be
a futurist. I would predict
things, and people would
sometimes pay attention as
if I really knew something
about what would happen
in technology. I was seldom
right. But in the futurism
business you're rarely found out,
because by the time the future
arrives, people have forgotten
your misguided predictions.
Still, I gave up on futurism.
Talking about the past, when
you've lived there as a kind of
technological Forrest Gump, is
a lot more legitimate and easier.
However, through the
years I have gradually come
to appreciate that the really
important predictions are
about the present. What is
happening right now, and
what is its significance? The
Internet's progression from
static to streaming-and
solitary to social-has not only
made predicting the present
possible, it has redefined
the whole concept of what
we mean by "right now."
A century ago, "now" lasted about a
week. There was a lot of lag in the system.
More recently, but before the Internet,
we were content with one or two daily
updates from the morning newspaper
or the evening news. Paradoxically,
our world of technology was even
slower-our leading magazines and
journals were often a year behind, and
even word of mouth from meetings
and conferences lagged by months.
spEcTrum.iEEE.org

How the world has changed! In the
few moments since you began reading
this, terabytes have flowed across
the global grid. If we listen we can
hear the cries from the void, the tears
and laughter, the sorrows and the
joys. All that noise can be processed
and distilled, and we can search for
keywords and phrases and apply

tools such as automated sentiment
and social-network analysis. We can
analyze query data and track locations
in real time. We can study patterns and
look for correlations. It's an immense
trash pile, but there's a pony in there
somewhere-lots of them, in fact.
What subjects are being discussed
most frequently? How is Twitter
feeling today? What Web links are
particularly busy? What videos are

going viral? What are the instant polls
telling us? What trends are appearing?
Which individuals seem to be the
opinion leaders at this moment?
Governments can look for signs
of impending revolution and social
unrest. Companies can track the realtime popularity of their products
and learn where their brands are
weakest. Analysts can use
query behavior as a leading
indicator of home sales. Social
experiments can be conducted
by changing a few HTML codes.
As the evanescent "now"
slides by and becomes the
recent past, all this distillation
is available for instant retrieval
and response. The feedback loop
gets tighter and tighter and the
delay in the system gets ever
shorter. As engineers, we should
be leery, perhaps, knowing what
can happen to systems with
feedback as the gain is increased.
But here we are dealing with an
immensely complicated system.
Some even believe that a "global
brain" is evolving, in which we
individuals serve merely as
neurons with no comprehension
of what the brain itself is
thinking. Some praise this
amassed heterogeneous input as
the "wisdom of crowds," while
others warn of a dangerous,
ever-growing herd mentality.
More than half of all U.S.
Web users are on Facebook,
for example, and they spend
an average of 7 hours a month on the
site. The connectivity of the global
network, its speed, and its instantaneous
nature continue to increase.
I've just been checking on some
of the Web sites that monitor what's
happening out there. So I know exactly
what is happening right now. Oops! That
knowledge just slipped into the past. I no
longer know what is happening now. Just
give me a minute here...
o
May 2010 * IEEE SpEctruM * Na

27
http://spEcTrum.iEEE.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum May, 2010
