Newsmaker: The best of times in science and tech

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So the teacher says, "Draw a parabola." Everybody draws a parabola and the teacher knows instantly what percentage of the students understood. Whereas today, he or she wouldn't know that, so they have to go around individually sampling the classrooms. So if 80 percent of the students got it wrong, then the teacher probably would want to go back and review what a parabola looks like.

That's an example of the kind of thing that we are working hard to develop with our partners like Microsoft, Intel, Scholastic, TI, Palm.

Scientific research has taken a hit in this country, with labs at NASA being cut and so forth. How does SRI fit into the landscape?
Carlson: I think the state of scientific research in America right now is still superb. The big corporate labs like RCA labs, where I was in my first part of my career, and Bell Labs are very different organizations today. That model which came from Thomas Edison, who created the central research lab, is not very productive in today's world.

The idea that you can do everything yourself in today's world is a prescription for getting into trouble fast. The key is to put together teams to first identify the major opportunities and then to assemble teams that can move really, really quickly to capture those opportunities. The people who take that perspective do very well, and it's not a centralized research model.

The idea that you can do everything yourself in today's world is a prescription for getting into trouble fast.

For example, we have a program here--it happens to be a government program, but it's typical of what we do--it is to develop the next generation of iPods that are intelligent. You'll be able to talk to it; it will able to talk back to you. It will be able to plan and help you navigate through all the choices you have to make every day.

We assembled a who's who of people in the United States; all the great researchers in artificial intelligence from MIT, CMU and Stanford and Harvard are part of the team.

In fact, this is one of the five disciplines of innovation that we teach: is how do you put these teams together...effectively, what are the criteria, how should we think about that?

What will the device be called, and when will it come out to the public?
Carlson: I don't know what it will be called; that's a bit of marketing. But it will be a true personal assistant. It's coming out incrementally right now. There is rudimentary speech recognition on devices, and in over the next five to 10 years, it will just become more part of available technology.

What are you working on in the realm of Internet security?
Carlson: In terms of information technology, we are the site for security research for the U.S. government.

The angle that we are pursuing is trust. So when we say trust we mean the users...don't have to be afraid that they are going to be compromised or taken advantage of or abused in any way. Technologically, there are ways to say, yes we can have security and yes the user can have a trust in the system. So with our partners (like Microsoft), we are working on a family of those kinds of solutions that we hope eventually will be embedded in the next generation of the Internet.

Some sort of a chartered network?
Carlson: Yes, but still allowing you the access that is represented by the Internet.

The Internet, even though it's not that old, was designed for a different era, and at some point, we need to either find a way to build things on top of this one or incrementally find a way to create a very different kind of Internet.

It could be a sub-service or it could be a completely new Internet. There is a lot of discussion right now about, let's call it, Internet 2.0. The Internet, even though it's not that old, was designed for a different era, and at some point, we need to either find a way to build things on top of this one or incrementally find a way to create a very different kind of Internet that would have all the new services and values that we want. Certainly anybody that gets 100 pieces of junk mail a day, they're not happy with today's Internet.

With the government wanting access to search records from sites like Google, how are you preserving privacy in any of these solutions?
Carlson: Well, privacy is part of trust. I mean, there are times when you want to be protective that way. So yes, I mean they all have to be baked into it. Again, there are all kinds of political issues with this. We are on the innovative side of this equation, not the political side of it. We are trying to develop good options for people so that everything doesn't become political.

What is the signature invention from SRI that you name-drop at cocktail parties?
Carlson: The mouse, because the mouse is such a ubiquitous name you know. It's a pretty universal symbol. But you cannot go a day without touching something from SRI, whether you mail a letter or you call up a friend or type in .com, .net, .org or use your cell phone.

What's on the horizon this year?
Carlson: Our goals are...these big issues and putting together the right team and solving them...things like direct hydrogen fuel cells, you know, something's that transformative.  

More Newsmakers

[Tom CyBold]

Abundance and Poverty

He's right about the world of abundance we live in, and his line about the media focusing on disaster and scarcity is correct. However, it could be argued that with our great national prosperity has come an unparalleled degree of spiritual poverty. I'm not just talking about people being religious--there's plenty of that. I'm talking about people whose clothes and homes and cars and iPods are shiny and sleek and clean and modern, but inside they feel lost, angry, lonely, purposeless, and hopeless. Capitalism has produced wonders of physical riches--So why do Americans take more antidepressants than any other people on the globe?

[yageroy]

more opportunity = less excuses

= less happiness