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Home > Magazines > Forbes ASAP |
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Cover Package: Feedback
Welcome to Feedback Universe Surrender to the self-correcting system.It is emerging as the defining metaphor of our time. Like other great scientific phenomena discovered over the past two centuries--natural selection, genetics, relativity, nuclear fission, DNA, digital--feedback is about to burst out of the theoretical stage and into everyday life. "Feedback is what has been missing from science since Newton," says British scientist Steve Grand, who is trying to develop artificial life forms. "We thought it was a rare phenomenon--now it's hard to name anything in the universe that isn't feedback. Life itself turns out to be feedback."We are starting to rethink science in light of feedback. It is at the heart of the most compelling new inventions. And now we are seeing the first signs that it is beginning to reorganize both corporations and national economies. "We don't even have the words yet to describe this," says Grand. "We don't yet have the names. Before this is over, we're going to need a new mathematics, a new physics, and a new ontology of the world." Welcome to Feedback Universe. Thinking Machines When we speak of feedback, we don't mean strictly the squeal from a microphone placed too close to a speaker, or customer comments to a corporate service center. Rather, the term is shorthand for "feedback loop," which is a closed system by which the consequences of an event send back data that in turn modify that event in the future. For example, hunger followed by eating to assuage that hunger, is a simple feedback loop we all experience. Only a few people have experienced the power of fast feedback loops. Most are either early riders of the Segway scooter or Formula One race car drivers. But they are the vanguard of millions. Already, an estimated 100 companies, from Microsoft and IBM to tiny startups, are pursuing a vision of high-speed information feedback systems among the departments of corporations, their employees, suppliers, distributors, and end users. This vision, called real-time enterprise computing, offers the potential for companies to instantly identify changes in orders and then quickly respond. But the corporation isn't the only sector of modern life about to be transformed by the use of feedback loops. Automobiles already have demonstrated feedback technology's effects in engine computers and automatic transmission settings; now computer-controlled feedback is moving into the drive train, suspension, passenger compartment environment, and collision avoidance. Two high tech legends are also in pursuit of new ways to use feedback. Federico Faggin, co-inventor of the microprocessor and a founder of Zilog, has been working with neural networks for more than a decade at his current firm, Synaptics. For Faggin, the ultimate chip would be a processor that continually reconfigures itself through interconnects and software to become the application--word processor, adding machine, cell phone, fax, microcontroller--needed by the user at that moment. "I see reconfigurability as an essential ingredient in learning and in the construction of intelligent machines," says Faggin. "By giving machines more self-control, we are freed to express our higher goals and desires." Sidebar The ASAP 4 - Table Major Barriers Have Been Overcome To Clear The Path To Feedback Universe -
Millennium Pushes Velcade Out Of Nest - 1/22/03 3:30:00 PM ET The biotech attempts to get its cancer drug approved for multiple myeloma based on midstage data. Tyco's Clean, But Who Cares? - 1/22/03 2:39:35 PM ET CEO Breen is getting operations in order, but the numbers don't seem to make investors happy. FASB's Stock Options Blunder - 1/22/03 2:00:00 PM ET Here are some alternatives to the way firms are told to calculate the value of employee stock options. Tom Gores' X-Ray Vision - 1/22/03 12:00:00 PM ET The telecom buyout maven is turning his thoughts to health care and the future of radiology. 2003 Mutual Fund Guide - 1/16/03 6:30:00 PM ET The most challenging market in decades also offers tremendous opportunities.
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Market data provided by Reuters. Disclaimer Stock quotes are delayed at least 15 minutes for Nasdaq, at least 20 minutes for NYSE/AMEX. U.S. indexes are delayed at least 15 minutes with the exception of S&P; 500 which is real-time. Forbes 40 Index powered by Telemet. News may include latest headlines from Reuters. |
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