Derek, On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:27 PM, Derek Zahn <[email protected]> wrote:
> Steve Richfield wrote: > > > Any ideas for a good solution? > > Of course. Lots and lots of people get their ideas implemented, and many > of them are not rich or overly privileged. Emulate them. > Nearly all of them are getting "me too" products funded. Having watched startup funding for decades, I have concluded that there are MANY potentially successful propositions, and MANY things that can get funding, and almost no overlap between these two sets. Having studied the underlying reasoning, people want to invest in what HAS been successful, and do so, without realizing that by the time others have made money on a proposition, it is much too late to start a parallel operation. > > You either get a good solid start on building something useful yourself, > This is a little difficult in VLSI, where new product investments often exceed a billion dollars. > or you make a convincing case to people who have resources they are > willing to invest in new ideas. > This is usually impossible, because you must first get through a no-pass filter, that consists of people with a vested interest in the status quo. > If such people are not convinced by your case, find out why and address > those points in the way they need you to address them. > In those rare cases where you can get in front of them, there is rarely time to explain what you want to do, let alone refine any points of confusion. Unconvincingness is not a problem with the uncaring world, it's a symptom > of a defective case. > No, it is a symptom of people already THINKING they know the way, when there are much better ways. Just look here. Kurzweil is obviously taking some missteps, but there is no quick way of explaining how seemingly old, obsolete, klunky analog technology could ever blow the socks off of present-day digital. Kurzweil long ago gave up on analog filtering and signal generation, so he presumably "knows better" than to ever look back at such things. The present discussions regarding super-Turing architectures would seem to be sophomoric and obsolete lunacy to him. Sure, a couple of days of discussion might well convince him, but how would you ever convince him to invest a couple of precious days discussing such apparent lunacy? I have been in a similar battle with those in charge of various FPGA conferences. I know how to build gigantic FPGAs without producing rejects, despite a large number of expected defects. With these large FPGAs we could build whatever architecture processors we wanted, could build processors that are orders of magnitude faster than anything that now exists, etc. However, to accomplish this I must merge ~10 seemingly worthless technologies that were all abandoned long ago, because separately they ARE worthless. No conference wants to host anything to do with this, because they are committed to presenting "new" and "proven" technologies, not old technologies whose combination has yet to be proved. I just got yet another such rejection just today, from ERSA. Without seeing the light of day at a conference, no manufacturer will include the infrastructure needed to support such capabilities. Without the infrastructure, it cannot be proved to work. Without proof, there will be no large FPGAs, so all of computer development just sits there and stagnates, because as things now are, FPGAs are all too small to emulate modern processors. What a waste, just to please the conference goers. If your points are not penetrating, it does no good to blame the audience; > sharpen the points! > You obviously haven't been out there and doing it. I have. Perhaps you saw the picture of Bill Gates and Paul Allen as children with a Teletype between them. I raised the money to build Remote Time Sharing Corporation that was on the other end of the phone line. I also loaned them the Teletype to them and showed them how to use Remote Time Sharing. When they announced that they were going to "do less with less", the thing that they were going to do less than was Remote Time Sharing Corporation. What they did NOT know was that the CPU they were connecting to had about the computing power of a Commodore 64. In effect, the "Microsoft Revolution" was really about doing less with more. Since then, I have been VP of Engineering for countless startups looking for money, and have made countless pitches to prospective investors, so far with minor successes but no major successes. The world out there is very different than your vision. I'm not saying it is impossible, but without understanding the standard pitfalls, you don't stand a chance. Before charging onward, it is good to find a path that doesn't include the standard pitfalls. I initially had GREAT hopes for this forum, but hope is rapidly fading. I figured that astute investors would be watching, and would throw a little money at good looking ventures. Not only have I not seen this, but I noticed considerable resistance to my presenting my scanning UV fluorescence microscope proposal at a conference, apparently (from comments) because I would be competing with other more "mainstream" AGI efforts for what little money there was. When the dogs start fighting over scraps rather than looking for the big game, there won't be any big game. I really like your enthusiasm. I used to be more enthusiastic - before reality struck. The challenge is preserving your enthusiasm while learning about the many standard pitfalls. I still have plenty of enthusiasm, but charting potentially productive courses IS a challenge. Further, "they" often sense enthusiasm and mistake it for foolishness. They are NOT "out to get you". They are doing the best they can. The problem is that their best usually doesn't include the likes of us, regardless of what we do. Steve > > ------------------------------ > Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:57:20 -0700 > > Subject: Re: [agi] Analog Computation > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > > Sergio, > > This entire debate reminds me of the late pre-micro era. I had my own plan > to build the first microcomputer. It was to be a bipolar chip that > implemented a bit-serial architecture. It would have been about the same > speed as the early MOS micros, but would have modern-day word lengths and > hardware multiply/divide. In short, it was a better way that was never > built. > > Since then, I have met two other people who had their own plans to build > the first microcomputer, each of which was quite different from the others, > and all of which were MUCH better than any of the early micros. > > So, why did they waste good silicon building garbage like the 4004 and > 8008? Because we were on the OUTSIDE. Our proposals were being rejected by > the same sorts of folks who were working on the 4004, and so they had to be > killed lest they compete. We failed because we couldn't get past the front > door. However, the 4004 succeeded because they had easily avoided the > greatest barrier of all - the front door. > > Here we fail because we are outsiders to all of the corporations who > desperately need what we know how to do. Of course we can always throw > proposals over their transoms, only to find their way to the very people > who would be threatened by them. > > In short, this is a people problem, and not a technological problem. > > Any ideas for a good solution? > > Steve > > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/4027887-e37ac021> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. 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