Michael Dertouzos writes in his book, What Will Be, about the wonders of the Information Marketplace (IM), which is a twenty-first century village marketplace w here people and computers buy, sell, and freely exchange information and information services. He developed this concept for a paper written in 1981 that also contained many predictions that later came true. His book focuses on how the IM will change just about every aspect of our lives for the better. He anticipated such things as sinks that can measure the chemicals in our saliva, kitchens that do all of our cooking and food ordering and stores that offer custom made products available on demand (like o rdering a special pair of shoes and having them be made within minutes). This is just a minor list of the innovations he thought would become commonplace over the next few decades. Most of these inventions rely heavily on computers being a part of every device that we own. Dertouzos was also a big proponent of virtual reality and he gave plenty of examples of how this will benefit our lives (role-playing examples to make future real life situations easier, taking a tour of ancient Rome, or being able to test drive a car from the comfort of your living room).
The book is divided into three main sections. The first section is the technical part; it is mainly about current and future inventions that will help to globally unite us all. It deals with hardware issues we must overcome before massive global unity will happen. He stressed five points in this segment about representing information. He believed we are only five steps away from understanding the true foundation of th e Information Age, which are the following five pillars:
(1) Numbers are used to represent all informationThe second section is Dertouzos’ predictions about devices of the future that will make our lives easier. Some are only a year or two away while others might not be possible for at least a hundred years or more. I personally found this section to be the most interesting because many of his prophecies of the past have come true and a lot of what he presented made sense. Some of it seemed completely absurd, but I’m sure if you told someone in the 1930’s that a man would walk on the moon in less than 30 years he would have a good hearty laugh at that tall tale. The third section explores how these things will impact our society and humanity in general. This is the more philosophical section and for someone who wanted to hear more crazy predictions, the ending was a big letdown.
(2) These numbers can be expressed in 1’s and 0’s
(3) Computers transform information by doing arithmetic on these numbers
(4) Communications systems move information around by moving these numbers
(5) Computers and communications systems combine to form computer networks. Computer networks are the basis of tomorrow’s information infrastructures, which in turn are the bas is of the Information Marketplace.
Dertouzos was definitely a man who knew what he was talking about. He was head of the MIT Computer Science Laboratory for over 25 years. He had helped to start up several companies, had numerous patents, had traveled all over the world giving speeches and attending lectures about all things technological. He had helped to advise leaders of Fortune 500 companies as well as many different governments around the world. Dertouzos was overall just a prominent figure in the world of computing until his death on August 27, 2001. He was so famous that the forward of “What Will Be” was written by the richest man in the world, Bill Gates.
Obviously Dertouzos’ bias is that computers are a really great invention. The whole point of his book was to share his predictions of how computers will make our lives easier. Computers were his livelihood; they were how he supported his family and gained international fame. His worldview was more difficult to pin down. This is a very stereotypical and generalization, but often those involved with computing tend to be compelled by reason, see the good things man has accomplished and see no need for God. By the end of the book I was about to think Dertouzos fit into this mold, for he seemed heavily bent on proclaiming how human beings have failed and how computers will ultimately save us. However in the final chapter he expressed his view that neither reason nor faith is better than the other. He believed that taken separately, both had extreme flaws and it was only when they were interwoven into one’s self that they formed a balance needed to live a healthy life.
The danger with writing about the future is that immediate predictions will be out of date by the time the book is able to be purchased. This was published in 1997 and there were a handful of things Dertouzos discussed that were supposed to happen and I’m not sure as to the accuracy of all of them. One example of this was a nationwide music service that acted like a jukebox wake-up service. A person would pay money to be awoken every morning to songs of their choice. I do not know if this is a real service. It sounds like it could be and Dertouzos had predicted its arrival in 2000. He had also predicted innovations that will take decades before they come close to being a reality. One such invention was surgery that takes place between different continents. It involves a surgeon wearing special gloves and goggles and with these mechanisms he would be able to perform surgery on someone who was on the other side of the globe who was hooked up to a sea of cameras, monitors, sensors and the like. Dertouzos thinks that this will someday happen but he did not anticipate it even within his grandchildren’s lifetime.
This book did not have much in ways of blatant controversy. There were some topics in the chapter Pleasure that could be debated. This section was about how entertainment will be enhanced due to technology and the possible controversies in this part were mainly how one could experience certain sexual acts with a computer. Dertouzos did not seem to advocate pursuing this subject; he simply presented some forecasts about what may one day be real. Other than that, the only main controversy was his ongoing subtle theme that computers are less fallible than humans. While this is true in some respects, Dertouzos seemed to indicate that computers are almost better than people in that it is less likely for them to fail us. He seemed to place too much faith on these “perfect” machines. However when it’s all said and done, one cannot escape the simple fact that these devices are made by human beings, who are akin to much fault.