Book: Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World!
Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 10:31 am
Sept 2012: Just finished a recent book Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World by Steiner.
As a computer programmer since the late 1970's, I found this book interesting and frustrating!
Interesting?
A highly recommended read!
As a computer programmer since the late 1970's, I found this book interesting and frustrating!
Interesting?
- In how Lebniz (1700's) predicted binary computing centuries before the digital revolution (and as a Sir Issac Newton devotee who still believes the credit for discovery of Calculus goes to Newton, whereas the credit for making it useful for everyday usegoes to Lebniz, Steiner gives them joint credit for the discovery, but I digress...).
- Books by Euclid (300 BC), Fibonacci (1200's), Guass (1800's) and others were used to build algorithms to manipulate and exploit the market, to help hedge funds WIN!
- And interestingly those same books are behind flash crashes (improper handling of outliers in Guassian distributions)
- They are also behind the Credit default Obligations (CDO) debacle: Guassian copula's were used to determine relationships between two or more variables but if the variables were based on humans, and subject to human errors, it built the house of cards that came crashing down).
Of course this is nothing new. He also relays the story of Rothschild in the 1800's:- Rothschild used carrier pigeons to bring news faster than by horseback which allowed him to corner the bond market during the Napoleonic wars of 1815 (Knowing victory happened he started the day with a selling spree which caused panic in the market (he must know something!) and then he bought all the bonds up at rock bottom pricing! Then when the couriers arrived (via horseback) and announced the real results of the wars, voila! those bonds bought at rock bottom prices rose exponentially in value and the Rothschild's wealth also rose exponentially!).
- The main purpose of the use of bots has been mainly to make money, not necessarily make for a better world: Bots eliminate jobs by taking the human element out of things, rig the system so those with the biggest, fastest, smartest bots can make billions of dollars. If you ever read the Wired article by Joy "Why the future doesn't need us' this book is a good argument for the future world where humans are no longer needed. Computer programmers become the most powerful people so we automate the programmers and then what do you have? A world where people aren't needed!
Of course Bots also are responsible for the elimination of millions of jobs. Does that make the world better? Depends which side of the money you are on! As a programmer who has worked his life in using algorithms in the field of highway safety with my father for over a collective 80+ years, and having been a witness and participant in the phenomenal and astounding breakthroughs in computational power and accessibility, particularly with respect to the field of highway safety, I guess it is frustrating from a selfish point of view: WHY wasn't I in the right field to make billions from my utilization of algorithms??!!
A highly recommended read!