SNS: The Pattern Computer Interview

 

In This Issue Week of 1/28/2019 Vol. 24 Issue 3

The Pattern Computer Interview Quotes of the Week Upgrades o   The Apple Call o   The INVNT/IP Digest Takeout Window o   Russians in Africa Ethermail Inside SNS Upcoming SNS Events o   Future in Review 2019 o   Where's Mark?

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We look forward to returning to our FiRe roots on the beautiful California coast, October 8-11, 2019, at The Lodge at Torrey Pines in La Jolla.

Our growing roster of 2019 speakers and moderators includes:

• George Church, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School; and Director, PersonalGenomes.org
• Dmitri Alperovitch, Co-Founder and CTO, CrowdStrike
• Kimberly Prather, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry, UCSD
• Rob Knight, Founding Director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation and Professor, Pediatrics and Computer Science and Engineering, UCSD
• Kim Stanley Robinson, Hugo-winning Author of Science Fiction
• George Dyson, Technology Historian & Nonfiction Author
• Larry Smarr, Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and Harry Gruber Professor of Engineering, UCSD
• Kimberly Dozier, Global Affairs Analyst, CNN; and Daily Beast contributor
• Don Norman, Author and Founder, The Design Lab, Calit2
• Ed Butler, Senior Correspondent, BBC
• David Brin, Founder, Futures Unlimited; and Sci-fi Author and Physicist
• Jack Gilbert, Professor, UCSD School of Medicine and Scripps Institution of Oceanography; and Group Leader for Microbial Ecology, Argonne National Laboratory
• David Ewing Duncan, Author and Independent Correspondent; and CEO, Arc Programs
• The Pattern Computer Team (www.patterncomputer.com)

And more to come ---

Register Now!

 

Although Pattern Computer Inc. (PCI) officially moved out of stealth mode on May 23, 2018, it has remained quite secretive about its plans and achievements. This began to change with an onstage interview of PCI CEO Mark Anderson at the SNS Annual Predictions Event, hosted by the Technology Alliance Group (TAG) in Bellingham, Washington, on January 11.

The interviewer is Paul Grey, longtime SNS member and past chair and board member of TAG.

Paul Grey: Mark, you're the CEO of this company called Pattern Computer. Why don't we start by you explaining what those two words mean when you put them together?

Mark Anderson: Sure. If you think of the entire history of what computers have done for human beings until now, it's really simple: we ask the computer to do something, it does it - payroll, whatever - it does it better, faster, bigger. It's always something we ask for. It's limited by our knowledge. It's limited by our request. It's limited by our hypothesis. We took the crazy idea of, 'What if the world were more complicated than we thought, than we could conceive? What if we don't use hypotheses at all? Could we build a computer system that wouldn't rely on us to make the 'ask'? It would just give us all the patterns in that information.' That's what Pattern Computer does.

Paul Grey: Kind of an out-of-the-box concept there, Mark.

Mark Anderson: It's brand-new.