{"id":2569,"date":"2013-01-22T13:03:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T20:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=2569"},"modified":"2013-01-23T23:07:45","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T06:07:45","slug":"the-mixed-reality-setup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=2569","title":{"rendered":"The mixed reality setup"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"5197782583_714b06f34b_o\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the nineteenth century, the physicist James Clerk Maxwell conducted a famous thought experiment. He imagined a container filled with a gas at a uniform temperature. He divided this theoretical container into two theoretical compartments, with a little theoretical sliding door between them. He then imagined an itty-bitty Leprechaun-like fellow, a “demon,” as he came to be known, standing in the container and operating a switch that opened and closed the door. The demon watched as molecules came zipping toward him. He opened and closed the door in such a manner as to let molecules with a faster-than-average velocity go into the left compartment and to let slower-than-average molecules go into the right compartment. Through the demon’s superhuman efforts, the temperature of the left compartment rose while the temperature of the right compartment fell. The molecules in the container became more organized, in other words, and the uniformity, or entropy, of the container diminished.<\/p>\n

Ours is a world of demons. We’ve created all sorts of devices to impose greater order on society, to curb the chaos of human beings running around at different speeds like crazed molecules. Think of traffic lights. What are they but demons that regulate the flow of vehicles through intersections and other tight spots? As any engineer would tell you, we need traffic lights because our communication abilities are highly constrained. We can yell, or activate our turn signal, or make hand gestures \u2014 or do all those things at once \u2014 but for a bunch of cars to navigate a busy intersection smoothly and without accident, that method of communication is wildly insufficient. It’s way too slow, way too ambiguous. What you’d really need is instantaneous, realtime, non-ambiguous, continuous messaging, and that’s just not possible for a bunch of glorified apes prone to anger and daydreaming. So: demonic traffic lights.<\/p>\n

The traffic light is a lousy solution \u2014 really inefficient, when you think about it \u2014 but we had no real alternative. Traffic cops are no better, and because they’re human you have to pay them and give them time off to deal with all that meatspace crap. But the world and its possibilities are changing. Now, we’re close to having an alternative to the traffic light system: the self-driving car. Computers, unlike humans, are really good at\u00a0instantaneous, realtime, non-ambiguous, continuous messaging. They don’t get angry; they don’t daydream. When they’re connected to sensors and satellites and transceivers, and outfitted with the right algorithms, their superior communication skills actually allow them to navigate busy intersections smoothly and efficiently, without<\/a> any signals. The network is the demon! It’s all explained in this YouTube video:<\/p>\n