Ask HN: What is now on the fringe?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12640248

by ninjamayo • 10 years ago

34 29 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I was watching a video of Steve Jobs the other night talking about the experience of the Homebrew Computer Club and how these guys were working on the fringe rather than mainstream. Steve Jobs was looking at the fringe for new ideas and innovation so I was wondering what do we see at the fringe these days? What are those ideas that are not mainstream today but could become the "personal computer" level of idea in a decade or two.

Dowwie• 10 years ago

Open source architecture, as in real estate.

idid• 10 years ago

Just curious, why do you think this? And what would it take?

I am personally working on open source tools for architectural design data communication, hence my curiosity.

ninjamayo4• 10 years ago

Can you send a couple of links to get an idea?

KasianFranks• 10 years ago

Vector representation of symbols, concepts, terms, image chunks, thoughts or words along with the unique ways to construct the feature attributes for these vectors and calculations for similarity between them. Essentially, new ways of mimicking human cognition without built-in rules. See also Computational Theory of the Mind (CTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind

bwackwat• 10 years ago

THIS is a great idea. THIS is how brain-wave-mapping should be approached. THIS is actually how AI will become anything.

BjoernKW• 10 years ago

Interesting: yes. Fringe? Not so much. Vector representations of linguistic entities (tokens, types, concepts) have been the foundation of information retrieval for many years. There are new ways of finding better feature definitions but vectors for encoding natural language information isn't a new idea.

Mz3• 10 years ago

Affordable housing solutions. We are increasingly pushing people out into the street. If you can really solve this, there is a huge market for it.

internaut5• 10 years ago

It could already have been solved at least in theory.

A Tiny House on Wheels or THOW can be built for between 5000 and 50,000 dollars depending on specifications. I have even talked to two people (on HN and on Reddit) on the verge of homelessness who are building small transports for shelter (several hundred dollars) which they can haul by bicycle. These can be very effective in the colder months.

The sticking point is Land, or rather, Parking. Tiny Housers are very political active and slightly devious but for people in cities in particular this is tough.

There is a nice technical problem to solve for here if you could build a closed loop system for each input and output for a small house. I don't know that the technology exists for getting it to work properly even on a small scale at reasonable cost.

Because if one could solve that, then lots of problems go away.

Mz3• 10 years ago

I am well aware of the tiny house movement. They were put on wheels to get around the fact that it is illegal to build a house that small. It is a legal loophole. It also means they are relegated to being glorified trailers, which means they will never be on even footing in many important respect with a house with a foundation.

Furthermore, because it is "cutting edge," it isn't yet accessible to most poor people. A lot of tiny houses are insanely expensive per square foot, containing quite high quality materials. They are basically aimed at eccentrics, not nirmal people with a limited income. For $50k, you could build a house that is 600-1000 sq ft on a foundation without a lot f bells and whistles.

The average new home today is nearly 2500 sq ft -- more than twice the size of the average new home in the 1950s -- and contains fewer people than the average house in the 1950s.

We don't need eccentric high quality trailers. We need normal houses with actual foundations that aren't trying to compete with the Taj Mahal for grandeur.

This isn't remotely solved and the primary areas that need to be addressed have nothing at all to do with construction technique. They primarily have to do with policy reform and financing mechanisms.

ZeroFries2• 10 years ago

How are tiny houses better than small apartments? Being able to vertically stack things sounds hugely more efficient.

xj92• 10 years ago

Mesh networking has captured a lot of my attention lately. It isn't that new, but it isn't exactly available to people. Given that we overcome some of the existing challenges with meshes, we could have deep Internet penetrantion without having to deploy a lot of infrastructure.

There are some communities on the net who are working on homebrew cybernetics. I've seen experimental designs for transdermal data/electric ports, health monitoring implants, and implanted secure elements, &c. CyborgNest recently started taking pre-orders for a "north sense" implant[1]. Definitely my favorite fringe.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778249

mbrock• 10 years ago

How does one attach the north sense?

xj92• 10 years ago

Two surface piercings[1][2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_piercing [2]: http://www.cyborgnest.net/north-sense-faq

mentifex• 10 years ago

Strong AI at http://www.nlg-wiki.org/systems/Mind.Forth was on the fringe for a long time.

internaut5• 10 years ago

What about Cyc?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc

I think it could work, and best if paired with an application project. Not everything is scalable and a long, hard march may be required to create some kinds of systems, especially with respect to Agent based computing.

Personally I think Agent based computation is the next big thing after Social, but it is hard to tell what form it may take. I am far from convinced that Apple or Google have the chops to do what is necessary, because it would surely require them to violate their own interests and probably legal obligations.

Talking of that sort of thing, you should look into Urbit.

Urbit is a network computer that could hypothetically allow Agent based computation to actually work.

https://urbit.org/

Urbit is definitely fringe science stuff, I'm sure Walter would approve.

ninjamayo4• 10 years ago

I did research in Multi-Agent Systems and always believed that they are going to be the next big thing but in the end realised that our technological capabilities are not there yet. The urbit is probably a good idea towards that kind of computation, still a long way before that.

internaut5• 10 years ago

You could very well be right, it could take decades.

I think Augmented Reality will abruptly allow a lot of non-geeks to suddenly be aware of certain realities (imagine seeing a calorie counter on your food, or the fact their data flows are going off somewhere outside of their control), so I hope that will accelerate progress in an Agent based direction.

Agents will be easier to build if they are visualized, they may allow for metaphorical understandings across millions of people.

pieterhg2• 10 years ago

Polygamy, polyamory, short-term relationships throughout life, coliving communities, not settling down, minimalism, no ownership.

veddox• 10 years ago

Sounds like life in '68?

pieterhg2• 10 years ago

Good point and I think tech is making us neo-hippies, getting us away from conformity (in some ways) and closer to our desired

AnimalMuppet• 10 years ago

Editing your own genome. (Note well: I am not suggesting this!)

joeclark77• 10 years ago

Honestly I would look toward manufacturing, particularly if you can incorporate ideas from the world of the digital -- for example crowdsourcing, mass customization, or continuous delivery of updates/modifications. I read an article in WIRED oh, I guess about five years ago now, called "Atoms are the new Bits" that talked about companies using 3D printing, crowdsourcing, etc, but to make real world products.

Part of the reason I think this area is hot is that it's harder to do than apps. Every "app" I can think of has already been done, and in fact there's probably a dozen versions of it languishing in app stores. Manufacturing is harder, and is often geographically local, so there are fewer competitors and more niches.

Another leading indicator for me is the general rebellion of young people against the fact that "shop class" has been taken out of schools. Lots of kids are trying to find ways to be "makers". In my state, when I was in school the "dummies" were pushed toward taking vocational classes in plumbing, welding, etc. Now (20+ years later) the vocational classes are the most competitive, prestigious classes that students fight to get admitted to.

If I had to guess, the new manufacturing is going to be smaller scale, extremely high quality, locally sourced materials, with some kind of digital "twist" on the business models.

ZeroFries2• 10 years ago

VR, AR, and AI (not ready for strong AI yet, IMO)

ninjamayo4• 10 years ago

Aren't these mainstream areas of research though?

Ask HN: What is now on the fringe?

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