Yale scientist David Gelernter has always been a step or two ahead of the industry, publishing the book Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox…How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean in 1991, which predicted the rise of the World Wide Web among other things.  In his 2000 work, The Second Coming: A Manifesto, he predicted the rise of cloud computing, as well as the rise of the Semantic Web and advanced search, which he called “lifestreaming:”

“A lifestream is a sequence of all kinds of documents — all the electronic documents, digital photos, applications, Web bookmarks, rolodex cards, email messages and every other digital information chunk in your life — arranged from oldest to youngest, constantly growing as new documents arrive, easy to browse and search, with a past, present and future, appearing on your screen as a receding parade of index cards. Documents have no names and there are no directories; you retrieve elements by content: “Fifth Avenue” yields a sub-stream of every document that mentions Fifth Avenue.”

Gerlernter’s career hasn’t always followed a smooth, predictable path, however. In 1993, he was a victim of a mail bomb delivered by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” who sought in a twisted, violent way to protest the rise of technology. The incident, which severely injured Gerlernter, brought him to the attention of the mainstream media.

In a new and powerful interview from Edge Foundation, Gerlernter was joined by John Markoff and Clay Shirky in an inspiring discussion of where we’ve been, and where we’re going with technology.

Gelernter said that early on, he had reservations about the idea of searchable information across interconnected computers:

“This is a very pretty idea. This is a beautiful elegant idea. It’s stupid because it’s impossible. It will never work. It is grossly inefficient. There is no way that you can take information, just float it out there, and expect people to search this whole vast collection, or somehow or other find what they want. And, you know, how are you going to find out what computer to put it on? How am I going to know what computer to look for it on?”

He says as he gained experienced and continued to research the problem, he determined that “In the final analysis, “the question is not, what can software engineers build? It’s the question, What do users need? If we identify our user need, the software technology will come along — in combination with hardware, obviously, and interconnect technology.”

These ideas were further expressed in Mirror Worlds. Gerlernter said he was inspired by the ponds within the villages he saw around Cape Cod, reflecting the surrounding churches and buildings:

“The idea began with the idea of delocalized information floating out there so that I could look into my computer and without knowing where to look, what file on which computer, I can sort of tune in the information I wanted the way I tuned in CNN on a TV. I don’t have to know where CNN is and I don’t have to know on what operating system my TV is running, or the software on my cable box — I just tune it in and I assume it’s there.

“So this is going to the cybersphere and the real world will be mirrored on the surface of software essentially. Instead of having to penetrate the real world, go places, deal with institutions in their real-world manifestations, which involves a lot of trouble and a lot of time and a lot of energy, in some cases necessary and desirable but not always, I’ll be able to tune in any part of reality I want.”

The original work of Mirror Worlds may be 18 years old, but, as Markoff put it, “the world is just now catching up with that…. It’s clear now with cloud computing that that’s the direction the world’s moving in. But only now.”

Gelernter says the only major fault with the book, looking back on it, was that it was “too conservative.”

Ultimately, people don’t care for fiddling with computers — they care about the content and information that computers bring to them, Gelernter also said. “Easily half the world doesn’t like playing with machines. It’s not something they enjoy doing. It’s not something they take to.” He added these perspectives:

“They don’t care about the gadgetry and they don’t care about the network. They care about the stuff. When I buy a TV, I care about the movies that I’m watching, not about the details of the scanning and the interleaves. But the computer industry itself, and partly as a reflection of the absolutely astonishing technological achievements of the IC- industry, has kept the focus on itself. And this is still a really controversial issue in computers. What are we looking for and should we have computers in mind, or should we have software in mind, or should we have actual users in mind?  I think the average programmer still doesn’t understand that he is not a typical user. The average programmer still thinks that insofar as people don’t find his software easy to use, it’s because they are childish, or ignorant, or just obtuse.”

Thanks to JP Rangaswami (”Confused of Calcutta”) for surfacing this interview.