What’s Wanting to Happen

of Demons and Mules

Joe F. Thompson, Ph.D.Mississippi State University (Retired)

CASC 20th Anniversary SymposiumSeptember 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

You know HPC has made an You know HPC has made an impact when it shows up in impact when it shows up in

popular fictionpopular fiction

You know HPC has made an You know HPC has made an impact when it shows up in impact when it shows up in

popular fictionpopular fiction

CASC Mar 2005CASC Mar 2005CASC Mar 2005CASC Mar 2005

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?

Civilization is reaching a terminal velocity - a rate of change so voracious that it is

limited by the human capacity to absorb it.

Ted Lewis in the 1995 issue of Computer

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

And, of course, there’s Hardy: 

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 well- engineered, 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 GatesPITAC 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

2000New 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.

• 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 Internet Demon

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

• 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.

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.

Derivatives

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 models.

“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.