This is simply a post that needs to go on the record..John Markoff, NY Times, tonight, bet $100 that within five years book scanning (such as that being started by Google) will all be done using MRI or a similar technology in such a way that an entire book (unopened) can be tossed in the machine and the OCR of its contents will spew out the other end. This is not a bet that this will be possible. It’s a bet that it will be actually in use within five years for the same purpose as the Google scanners. He suggested I blog the bet when I protested that the time frame was a bit long.
What this really means is now I have the impetus to blog for five more years.
I hope he’s right…
I’m totally against piracy but I’m so P.O.’d at the current virtually endless copyrights that I’m cheering this form of piracy on. (If the book is more than 35 years old.)
But… I wouldn’t take this bet just because of cost.
Seems like it would work, though. Couldn’t an MRI discern each page?
I’ll be surprised of this happens… I think the ink on the two facing pages will not be distinguishable when the book is closed. Perhaps appropriate interleaving tissue will help, but that is not the way the bet is worded. Even ink on opposite sides of the same page may not resolve properly.
Do-able.
But when?
What’s it worth?
The secret of Moore’s Law was that it was prescriptive. It said to engineers that they only had to look at certain improvements in certain increments. So it worked great.
This bet has no value. I mean that no one’s going to make a fortune scanning books, per se. (As soon as I say that there’ll be someone who’ll try to disprove it. More power to you. That’s what makes real progress.) So why would anyone pursue it.
Well, the universities have a lot of wise guys. What kind of wise guy (or gal, of course) might try something like this?
Oh, GE!
So that makes it do-able. You need an evaluation from a GE engineer who knows something about their product cycle and marketing strategy.
So, why not ask GE to put this forth as an engineering problem for employment applicants (that includes whole departments at some engineering schools). That would be the fast track.
The cultural status (reading books is a GOOD thing) would help.
Could be done. In five years. If GE does something like that. Or some twisted genius decides to try it.
I’m in for five bucks.
URL email: “-“
I’m not going to back down from my earlier post, but after reading this: Basics of MRI; I’m expecting the time factor to be critical.
But there’s nothing about that in the bet, right?
Nobody said anything about how long it would take, right?
Uh-oh. It’s a bet about common practice. That will take a considerable increase in calculating power. Maybe too much.
I’m still in, though.
“–”
You guys have got to be seriously bored to be commenting on this post. The bet expires in five years. I blogged it because there is no way to remember that I ever made such a bet five years from now. Normally I don’t make such long time frame bets because the other party will deny the bet or I’ll forget it. So this is a new use for blogs.
Yeah… I’m bored!
But you must be even MORE bored for blogging it in the first place! 😉
Alan
I have never seen a reporter say this before:
“Hey you bastards, stop reading and thinking about what I say”
Merry Christmas
Hey! Getting insulted by John is an honor. 😉
Twice I’ve sent emails to Tom Leykus which set him off on an on-air rant. Great fun.
Twice I’ve sent emails to Tom Leykus which set him off on an on-air rant. Great fun.
I bow in your general direction. 🙂
Now, if we can just set John off on an online rant…
Hmm, the missed Joke about the two Steves came close!
“Now, if we can just set John off on an online rant…
Hmm, the missed Joke about the two Steves came close!” -MikeVoice
*Close*?? I was ROFL!!!
One could have great sport getting a group of 10-15 people together to post spurious, well orchestrated comment scenarios. But there are two problems with that idea. In the first place, he already gets spurious posts! And in the second, he would– I am confident– have no trouble getting even. If nothing else, he might sell his e-mail list to spammers, or even start spamming on his own. (“Hi guys, want to buy a copy of PC magazine for 25 cents? Click here.”) Even worse, he might introduce a “log-in required” in order to view blog posts (“in order to serve you better”)….
It would be best not to “rouse The Bear.”