Transcript Title

Joe F. Thompson, Ph.D.
Mississippi State University (Retired)
What’s Wanting to Happen
of Demons and Mules
CASC 20th Anniversary Symposium
September 23, 2009
Washington, DC
William Faulkner, of course
I think that a man tries to be better than he thinks
he will be.
I think that that is his immortality,
that he wants to be better,
he wants to be braver,
he wants to be more honest than he thinks
he will be,
and sometimes he's not,
but then suddenly to his own astonishment he is.
Walter Massey, NSF Director
Building Dedication - May 1991
CASC Mar 2005
You know HPC has made an impact
when it shows up in popular fiction
Business Week Riding the Bull
Decadal Rhythm
The 70s had the oil crisis and escalating
interest rates.
The 80s had the Savings & Loan debacle.
The 90s had the wild ride of the dot.coms.
Now it’s the credit mess.
Demons of our own design.
Faulkner on that
A mule will work for
a man faithfully for
ten years –
for the pleasure of
kicking him once.
The Second Law of Thermo:
Disorder is the norm
Thomas Hardy, in Far from the Madding
Crowd:
Wet weather is the narrative,
and fine days are the episodes.
Ten Years: the 90s.
Ten more, and now it’s raining again.
Decreasing Response Time
in our fundamental infrastructure
•Never without risk – Faulkner's mule is going to
kick.
•We survive by damage control.
•Time available for damage control is shrinking
drastically.
•Dependent on the infrastructure’s own capacity
for response to failure.
Who knows what evil lurks in the software?
Hardy’s astronomer and the lady –
looking into the night sky:
A size at which dignity begins
A size at which grandeur begins
A size which solemnity begins
A size at which awfulness begins
A size at which ghastliness begins.
Sophocles had expressed this terror in classical times:
Nothing that is vast enters into the life of mortals
without a curse.
They might have been thinking of information
technology.
Paradigm Shifts
Experimental: A club from one tree delivered
more blows without breaking.
Theoretical: Newton invented the calculus in
the
17th century.
Computational: Transistor invented, followed
by the
integrated circuit.
The computer can act as a microscope and a
telescope.
Automation of design:
total customization and optimization
•Infinite variety of products to meet all
human needs.
•All human desires satisfied with no
human involvement.
•So effectively creative as to no
longer
require creativity.
Masters or slaves?
Ted Lewis in the
1995 issue of Computer
Civilization is reaching a terminal velocity a rate of change so voracious that it is
limited by the human capacity to absorb it.
And, of course, there’s Hardy:
Time changes everything except
something within us which is always
surprised by change.
Faulkner again
It is because a fellow
is more afraid of the
trouble he might have
than he ever is of the
trouble he's already
got.
He'll cling to the
trouble he's used to
before he'll risk a
change.
Same Old Software Song
PITAC in 1999: Make fundamental software research
an
absolute priority.
PITAC in 2005: Create a new generation of wellengineered, scalable, easy-to-use software.
PITAC (PCAST) in 2007: Identify the critical issues in
software design and development.
NITRD FY 2010 Supplement to the President’s
Budget:
Requires breakthrough innovations in
engineering of software.
Links to that 1999 PITAC Report no longer
work.
Diamond’s Collapse
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel)
in Collapse:
How societies choose to succeed or fail:
Failure to anticipate a problem.
Failure to perceive it once it has arisen.
Failure to attempt to solve it after it has been
perceived.
Failure to succeed in attempts to solve it.
Barbarians at the Gates
PITAC in 1999: It is often the case that the
implementation of IT has a considerably different
set of consequences than were originally intended
or anticipated.
Donald Rumsfeld:
There are unknown unknowns –
things we don’t know we don’t know.
Software Engineering Code of Ethics
and Professional Practice - 84 items.
Any technology so beset by malevolence as is
IT?
The Software Demon
•HPC hardware is rooted in physics – no
malevolent electrons.
•Software is totally a human creation – a demon
of our
own design.
•Infrastructure of the information age.
Most complex of human-engineered
structures.
Bill Joy, way back in 2000
I have always believed that making software
more
reliable, given its many uses, will
make the
world a safer and better place;
if I were to come to believe the opposite,
then I would be morally obligated to stop
this work.
I can imagine such a day may come.
Joy refers to knowledge-enabled mass
destruction.
“Are We Forgetting the Risks of Information
Technology” Computer in 2000
New IT is used immediately after it is introduced, with risk
analysis to come later.
We continue to accept the economic and other myriad
benefits of IT without simultaneously conducting an
appropriate, comprehensive cost-risk-benefit analysis. This
constitutes a major societal failure.
If we don't begin to answer these questions in a systematic
and meaningful way, we will reap the whirlwind of
technology that has become indispensable but whose
reliability and trustworthiness have become questionable.
The Internet Demon
• Essential part of our infrastructure - not designed
for that critical role.
• Exposure to the entire range of humanity – bad
guys
everywhere.
• Tragedy of the commons – spam, DOS attacks.
Greatest entropy generator yet devised.
Allows everyone with nothing to say to say it to
everyone.
The Identity Demon
Nobody knows you’re a dog,
or a hacker in Estonia.
No definition of identity adequate for the
technology - faceless.
Security Needed - National Infrastructure
License
The Financial Demon
HPC increasingly a major factor in finance –
an arms race.
“The Battlebots of Wall Street”:
Stock trading accounted for by non-humans has
surged. Three quarters of all trading volume – up
from one-quarter five years ago. Best hardware,
smartest software,
computer servers as close as possible.
Like software, the financial infrastructure is
totally of our own creation.
The Ascent of Money
•
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•
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Wampum or coins.
Banks and paper representing money.
Bonds and mortgages representing debt.
Stocks and securities representing equity.
Insurance to protect against calculable risk.
Futures and options – the first derivatives.
Mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt
obligations, credit default swaps, structured
investment vehicles.
Derivatives
Total value of derivatives now exceeds six times the value of
all stocks and bonds. Added in just the last 30 years.
Complex mathematical theories of their operation,
strategies dependent on HPC.
Warren Buffet: financial weapons of mass destruction.
Hardy’s astronomer:
Horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered.
Impersonal monsters.
A Demon of Our Own Design, powered by HPC –
a demon built on a demon.
Present bubble is the first that is a result of the
demons of our own creation. Previous bubbles built
on human nature - Greenspan’s “irrational
exuberance”.
Nobel prize winning economist Myron Scholes:
Apparently, a lot of the models used for structured
products were pretty good, but the inputs were awful.
The Economist: vast majority of derivatives followed
their models, the exceptions were disastrous to the
system at large.
Correlations when none are assumed by the
“Hurdles in the Race to Zero”
Demolition by innovative new computing
techniques.
Law latency trading
Microseconds rule
Dagger, Guerrilla, Sniper, Sniffer, Iceberg,
et al.
The Reality Demon
HPC takes over
Cybernetically-enhanced Humans
Don’t give me no plastic saddle;
I want to feel the leather when I ride.
The Demon Mule
A race between ever decreasing
response time inherent in HPC and
our becoming willing to mount a
response.
Diamond’s factor for success:
courageous leaders willing to take
bold steps to address a growing
problem before it becomes an
explosive crisis.
The Challenge
Hardy in Far from the Madding Crowd:
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far
advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
Engineering creativity and government regulation must rise
to the challenge, ensuring that we are masters of the
information technology demons we create:
Software, Internet, Identity, Finance, Reality
May Faulkner Be Right
Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
I believe that man will not merely
endure: He will prevail. He is
immortal, not because he alone
among the creatures has an
inexhaustible voice, but because
he has a soul, a spirit capable of
compassion and sacrifice and
endurance.
Not Faulkner, but not bad
Dewitt Jones, a National Geographic photographer:
Look for what's wanting to happen.
While we still have time.