Hi Everyone. Happy new year! How are you doing?
2016 was dramatic year, Brexit in U.K. to Trump in U.S.A. While, to me, Japan seemed to be pretty stable compared with other countries. I believe Japan has chance to contribute a lot to the world in this challenging era for next few years. I hope I can do something too. Also, 2016 was the year I felt strongly we are on the edge of information revolution. I could see stream of technological innovations lead to future of humanity for next few decades.
Throughout 2016, one thing stuck to my mind was “making decisions”, this is partially because my purpose of my life is ceaseless contentious improvement of my personality. So what are goals and how I set goals are my personal interest all the time. As an experimental physicist, I am supposed to make rational decisions based on observations and analysis otherwise we fail to discover new. This is also because by seeing from Brexit, Trump to also my personal life, I have wondered why people can’t make rational decisions. Then, of course, AI and singularity are coming, which I finally could see how it is coming so I have been thinking we have to teach machines our philosophy of life.
By looking back my life, I also have thought this is a big issue to me, making right decisions. So I started doing research on what being rational and making decisions were. So I have read back a number of books I have read and read a number of new books I was interested in, from economics, phycology to philosophy, and of course physics is always my main source of learning and observation.
I still remember when I read the book “predictably irrational” in 2009. And by learning back Game theory and so on, finally I realized why Dan Ariely put “Predictably” because we should have been able to predict it based on the game theory and economic behavior by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern published 1944. Now, I understand little bit more why people make irrational decisions. I hope I can write some what I have learnt in near future, I can start from Game theory.
And yes, now I could see information revolution is a big revolution after agricultural and industrial revolutions. So I think we have to take this seriously, it might last for 200-300 years at least. By just looking back decades, we can think about 80’s = computer, 90’s = software, 00’s = web, and 10’s = mobile. You can guess which company had won these times, can’t you? So, what is coming 20’s? No one knows yet. But I believe AI should be coming after the IoT at earliest. IoTs might be, some people are betting on it.
If IoT was next big thing on 20’s, who would be going to win this 20’s? This time innovations might not be competition but more like co-creation. I believe Japan is now ready to lead these areas. As you know, American companies have won last 4 decades but I hope one of Japanese company could lead in next decade.
This is really exciting in history. Lot of things had been invented before 20th century has been reinvented. Media was reinvented, commerce (shopping) was reinvented, and now finance is being reinvented, then health care will be reinvented soon. If you see this as information revolution, it keeps going and going on so a lot of things will be reinvented, a lot of problems human could have not solved in the past will be solved.
Mobile to IoT has given us a lot of hints already. Think about smart phone and watch, they are collecting enormous information from your place to your blood pressure. In near future, this will expand exponentially, if there is a IoT, there is at least a sensor which would produce structured data. The number of sensors will expand much faster than that of smart phone. Estimation says the data produced by IoT exceed that of smart phone in 2 years and expand exponentially in 20 years.
This will become revolution for AI since they are fed large amount of structural data. The sensor of IoT will become their eyes. This is revolutionary because getting eyes has educated brains of animals and humans. That will happen for AI.
So we human and animals have all done sensing – recognition – learning – inference – action – sensing
i.e., see – know what is happening – understand situation – decide what to do – action – see, is learning process
for the science with human
measure – analyze and understand data – hypothesis –prove – measure – learning new
So huge amount data feed AI and making them to think, that would lead to singularity.
Sorry, I am talking things everyone knows. But for me, by seeing great change of people who are working for technology, I felt strongly I would love to contribute to scientific discovery too. I have realized I have to more focus on what no one else (even machines) can to contribute to future of humanity. Especially, I have been distracted by political or personal problems these days. Haha.
As measurement techniques and computations developed, we can detect phenomena previous generation hasn’t done, we are reaching stars again. We could recognize or understand better the problem we are having. So we and AI would work on the solution.
As for physics, I have found few new findings possibly great contributions to physics. Maybe they are just my mistakes. But, the reasons why I could find are one is because experiment techniques have advanced and the other is because I didn’t stop doing research while the other is not doing anymore. Of course, the finding problem is not goal at all. I have recognized the problems, but I just can’t still figure out to solve these problems yet. I am pretty excited to observed physics I have never seen while it is not easy job to solve the problems.
I must solve these problems. Otherwise, no one else would do. (If someone else did, I would be in big trouble. Haha.)
This year, 2016, I would like to challenge what I have done in 2016. I will have to beat easily me2016. Me2017 will do faster what me2016 had done with more efficiently and more focused. I will keep improve myself toward my goals along my purpose of my life which is ceaseless contentious improvement of my life.
- I will solve a few big problems in condensed matter physics I have now. I will focus on these throughout 2017.
- To know more about making decisions and apply to my life.
- To know more about solving problems and keep improve skills to solve problem
- Write up and think throw to understand these above two better. I had been careful what to write in public but I want to write more this year.
Thank you for reading. I hope you all have nice 2017, may the force, love, passion, happiness and health be with you. No one has seen 2017 looks like yet because we will make it.
Shinichiro Yano on 1/26/2017 in Sydney, Australia.