Tag: internet

  • Invasion der Herzchen

    Was einst mit schlichten Smileys begann, entwickelt sich zu einer neuen Weltsprache: Emojis fluten Chatdienste und soziale Netzwerke. Alles nur Kinderkram? Linguisten suchen nach Erklärungen für den Siegeszug der bunten Bildchen.

    von Philip Bethge

    Die Welt des digitalen Süßholzraspelns ist voller bunter Bilder. Ist die Stimmung gut, bietet sich ein gelbes Smiley in der Kurznachricht an, keck mit einem Auge zwinkernd – oder gleich mit Kussmund, die Wangen zart gerötet .

    Herzchen, rot, gelb, blau und grün oder von einem Pfeil durchbohrt , stehen für Verliebte bereit. Geht es dann um Sex, hat sich die leicht gekrümmte Aubergine als einschlägiges Symbol etabliert – als Pendant zum Pfirsich mit seiner samtigen Längsfurche .

    Der Abschied vom Liebesglück dagegen fällt schwer: ein rotes Ungeheuer vielleicht ? Oder gleich ein Bömbchen mit glimmender Lunte ? Ach ja: Bald ist eindeutig, was die Trennung besiegelt. Noch in diesem Jahr hält wohl der Stinkefinger Einzug in die Bilderwelt der Smartphones.

    Wer auf diese unfeine Weise aus dem Leben der Liebsten gekickt wird, trachtet nun seinerseits nach Vergeltung. Wie wär’s mit ” Du Miststück! “? Doch da versagt die Symbolsprache.  – das wirkt eher niedlich, zumal der Haufen lächelt.

    Emojis heißen die kleinen Bilder, die immer häufiger in Kurznachrichten, Tweets, Posts und E-Mails auftauchen. Schleichend sind sie zu einem inzwischen fast unverzichtbaren Teil der Chatkommunikation geworden – eine Invasion bunter Bildchen, die sich manchmal schon zu ganzen Sätzen formieren und damit die jahrhundertealte Herrschaft der Buchstaben infrage stellen.

    –> Original-Artikel auf spiegel.de lesen

    Rund 1000 Symbole der neuen Weltsprache sind schon im Einsatz. 250 weitere kommen in Kürze hinzu, unter ihnen so Kurioses wie der Vulkanier-Gruß von Mr Spock aus “Raumschiff Enterprise”. Und bald wird es möglich sein, ethnische Vielfalt abzubilden: Die kleinen Gesichter und Figuren soll es künftig politisch korrekt mit verschiedenen Hautfarben geben.

    Auf Smartphones und Tablets sind die Symbole allesamt mit wenigen Fingerklicks erreichbar. Ein Panoptikum des Lächerlichen, so scheint es auf den ersten Blick. Und die Flut der Babyengel , der lächelnden Katzengesichter und Comicgeister im Kurznachrichten-Kauderwelsch scheint jene zu bestätigen, die den Niedergang der Schriftkultur beweinen.

    Aber ist das wirklich so? Ersetzen die schlichten Emojis auf lange Sicht den feinen Ausdruck, die elegante Formulierung, den raffiniert gebauten Satz? Fachleute sind vom Gegenteil überzeugt. “Emojis zerstören keine Traditionen”, sagt die Sprachforscherin Lisa Lebduska vom Wheaton College im US-Bundesstaat Massachusetts. “Sie erweitern die sprachlichen Möglichkeiten und stellen damit sicher, dass die Kurznachrichten, die wir senden, auch richtig verstanden werden.”

    Die Wissenschaftlerin schwärmt von der “Verspieltheit” der digitalen Bilderwelt. Eine Sprachdegeneration vermag sie nicht zu erkennen. “Meine Studenten sind begeistert von der Emotionalität und Unmittelbarkeit von Emojis”, sagt sie.

    Ähnlich erklärt der Google-Programmierer Mark Davis den Erfolg der Bildchen. Er ist Präsident des Unicode-Konsortiums , das die Emojis standardisiert – sie sollen ja überall das Gleiche bedeuten. “Emojis verleihen Kurznachrichten Würze”, sagt Davis. Gesten, Mimik, Intonation – solche Nuancen fehlten der Schriftsprache. Gerade in Kurznachrichten sei es mit Worten allein sehr schwer, Gefühle und Stimmungen auszudrücken. Emojis könnten da helfen. “Sie sind die emotionale Kurzschrift der Onlinekommunikation”, sagt Davis.

    Entsprechend überzeugen Emojis die Nutzer: Rund 200 Emojis pro Sekunde werden derzeit über Twitter in die Welt geschickt. Was die Forscher nicht überrascht: “Emojis sind gleichzeitig ein sehr altes und ein sehr neues Phänomen”, sagt etwa der amerikanische Linguist Ben Zimmer von der Softwarefirma Vocabulary.com. Der “piktografische Impuls”, die Liebe zu kleinen Symbolen und Zeichen, liege in der Natur des Menschen. So gehe beispielsweise auch das heutige Schreibsystem auf Piktogramme zurück, etwa der Buchstabe “A” auf das Bild eines Ochsenkopfes, das irgendwann um 180 Grad gedreht wurde.

    Zugleich bedienten Emojis die Lust, die Grenzen neuer Technologien auszuloten, sagt Zimmer. “Menschen genießen diese Art des kommunikativen Spiels – auch weil wir immer wieder daran scheitern, wirklich das mitzuteilen, was wir meinen.”

    Das Bedürfnis, sich klar auszudrücken, ist so alt wie die Menschheit selbst (siehe Grafik). Der Weg von der Höhlenmalerei zum Alphabet ist eine der elementarsten Kulturleistungen überhaupt. Doch die Schriftsprache ist immer noch nicht perfekt. “Ich denke häufig, dass ein spezielles typografisches Zeichen für ein Lächeln existieren sollte”, sagte der Schriftsteller Vladimir Nabokov schon 1969.

    Sein Wunsch wurde erhört, als der Informatiker Scott Fahlman von der Carnegie Mellon University 1982 das Emoticon erschuf . Er und seine Kollegen fanden Spaß daran, im Onlineforum der Universität sarkastische Witzeleien auszutauschen. Doch offenbar wurden diese häufig fehlgedeutet. Genervt schlug Fahlman irgendwann vor, Scherzhaftes mit einem Smiley zu markieren :-), Ernstes dagegen mit :-(. Bald waren auch das zwinkernde ;- ) und das laut lachende Emoticon :- D geboren.

    Die Farbe verpasste ihnen dann der Japaner Shigetaka Kurita von der Telekommunikationsfirma NTT Docomo. 1999 wollte das Unternehmen die Kommunikation über Mobiltelefone attraktiver machen. Kurita ließ sich von japanischen Manga-Comics und Straßenschildern inspirieren und entwarf 176 Symbole, jedes von ihnen nur zwölf mal zwölf Pixel groß. Die ersten Emojis (japanisch: e = Bild, moji = Schriftzeichen) waren geschaffen und wurden in Japan ein voller Erfolg.

    Der Siegeszug um die Welt begann erst, als das Unicode-Konsortium beschloss, Emojis in seine Datenbank aufzunehmen. Die Organisation, zu deren Mitgliedern Branchengrößen wie Apple, Google, Yahoo oder Oracle zählen, legt die internationalen Standards für die Darstellung von Text fest. Jeder auf der Welt gebräuchliche Buchstabe ist in Unicode einer bestimmten Zahl zugeordnet. So wird erreicht, dass beispielsweise der Buchstabe “A” von jeder Software eindeutig als “A” erkannt und dargestellt werden kann.

    Seit Oktober 2010 sind die Emojis Teil des Unicodes. Ein Smiley, das in China auf einem obskuren Handy eingetippt wird, bleibt daher weltweit ein Smiley, egal, mit welcher Technik es empfangen wird. Das genaue Aussehen der Bildchen legen allerdings die Designer der jeweiligen Software fest. Deshalb tanzt beispielsweise die Emoji-Tänzerin in Apples Handybetriebssystem Flamenco, während die Figur in Android 4.4 aussieht wie John Travolta im Discofieber.

    Immer neue Emojis nimmt das Konsortium nun in seine Liste auf. Neben den japanischen Zeichen sind inzwischen viele Symbole aus den Windows-Schriftarten Wingdings und Webdings vertreten. Das Ergebnis ist ein sehr skurriles Symbolsammelsurium. Besonders beliebt beispielsweise ist ebenjener Haufen, der sich gerade im Englischen herrlich mit anderen Emojis kombinieren lässt (, , *).

    (* Holy shit, shit storm, no shit)

    Warum der Haufen lächelt? Ganz einfach: In Japan, wo das Zeichen herkommt, gilt es als Glückssymbol. Ohnehin lässt sich über die Bedeutung der Zeichen gut streiten. “Verschiedene Kulturen können Emojis auf sehr unterschiedliche Arten verwenden”, sagt Linguist Zimmer. Als Beispiel nennt er das Symbol der beiden aneinanderliegenden Hände  . Während Japaner zum Beispiel das Bild als Gruß interpretierten, würden andere Kulturen betende Hände sehen, sagt Zimmer. Bei den Amerikanern wiederum werde es mitunter als “high five” gedeutet.

    Andere Emojis sind noch rätselhafter. Was zum Beispiel bedeutet das bislang gern als Stinkefinger-Ersatz genutzte ? Was heißen die drei bunten Kugeln auf dem Stock ? Und was will uns der blaue Diamant sagen **?

    (** Japanische Neujahrs-Türdekoration; bunte Reisklöße (Dango), eine japanische Spezialität; japanisches Symbol für „lieblich“)

    Schließlich der “Mann im Anzug, schwebend”, der erst jüngst in den Status eines Emojis erhoben wurde. Wer nachforscht, erfährt, dass irgendein Microsoft-Mitarbeiter vor Jahren mal ein Faible für das Ska-Plattenlabel “2 Tone Records” hatte, dessen Logo dem Schwebemann ähnelt. Durch Unicode geadelt, hat die merkwürdige Figur jetzt für alle Zeit ihren Stammplatz im international gebräuchlichen Schriftstandard.

    Emoji-Fans lieben diese kleinen absurden Geschichten, die auch dazu führen, dass die Bildersprache immer populärer wird. In einer Umfrage aus dem Jahr 2013 gaben 74 Prozent der Nutzer in den USA und 82 Prozent in China an, dass sie Emojis verwenden. Rund acht Milliarden Emojis sind laut der Website emojitracker.com seit Juli 2013 verschickt worden. Das derzeit beliebteste Symbol der Welt ist das lachende Gesicht mit Freudentränen .

    Liebende bezirzen sich mit Emojis, und auch fürs Sexting, also “dirty talk” via Kurznachricht, eignen sich die Bildchen. etwa beschreibt, wie Aubergine und Pfirsich auf genau die richtige Weise zusammenfinden.

    Es gibt soziale Netzwerke, in denen ausschließlich Emojis gepostet werden können, Emojicate etwa oder Emojli. Wer eine Liste mit seinen zuletzt genutzten Emojis an die Internetseite Emojinalysis schickt, bekommt eine Analyse der eigenen Befindlichkeit.

    Und längst hat die Kunst die Bildersprache als neue Ausdrucksform entdeckt. Auf YouTube finden sich Musikvideos, die einzig mit dem Stilmittel des Emojis arbeiten, zum Beispiel ein Video zu Beyoncés Hit “Drunk in Love”. Der Tumblr-Blog “Narratives in Emoji” zeigt Emoji-Zusammenfassungen der Filme “Titanic” und “Independence Day”.

    Sogar ganze Bücher sind schon in Emoji erschienen. Nachdem er 3500 Dollar auf Kickstarter.com gesammelt hatte, brachte der amerikanische Computerexperte Fred Benenson über 800 Emoji-Enthusiasten dazu, mit ihm zusammen jede Zeile von Herman Melvilles “Moby Dick” in eine Reihe von Emojis zu übersetzen. Das Ergebnis heißt “Emoji Dick” , ist als gedrucktes Buch erhältlich und steht inzwischen in der Library of Congress.

    “Emoji Dick” zeigt allerdings deutlich die Grenzen der neuen Weltsprache. Denn wirklich lesen kann das Werk niemand.

    Die erste Zeile etwa lautet . “Nennt mich Ismael”, soll das bedeuten, der erste Satz von “Moby Dick”. Sprachforscherin Lebduska ist skeptisch: “Ich lese auch nach mehreren Versuchen immer noch ,Telefon, Schnurrbartgesicht, Segelboot, Wal, ok’”, kommentiert sie trocken. Selbst Benenson habe eingeräumt, dass “ein Großteil des Buchs keinerlei Sinn ergibt”, erzählt die Forscherin. Begeistert ist sie trotzdem. “Emoji Dick” könne als “Literaturmüll” betrachtet werden, aber auch als “mutiger Ausflug in literaturwissenschaftliches Neuland”.

    Die Frage ist, ob Emojis der Welt erhalten bleiben, mindestens als Ergänzungsmittel. Oder sind sie nur eine Modeerscheinung der Netzwelt, zu sehr Spielerei, um ernst genommen zu werden?

    Tyler Schnoebelen, Linguist von der Eliteuniversität Stanford, heute bei der Textanalysefirma Idibon beschäftigt, sieht durchaus Parallelen zur Schriftsprache. Schnoebelen hat Emoticons analysiert und festgestellt, dass deren Gebrauch je nach Alter, Geschlecht und sozialem Status des Schreibers variiert. Auch beobachtet er, wie sich verschiedene “Dialekte” entwickeln. Und bei der Kombination mehrerer Emojis hat Schnoebelen sogar eine einfache Grammatik ausgemacht, bei der die Stimmung – zum Beispiel ausgedrückt durch ein weinendes Smiley – immer vor der eigentlichen Aussage steht, einem gebrochenen Herzen etwa.

    Schnoebelen sieht eine große Zukunft für Emojis. “Wir haben gelernt zu sprechen, und wir haben gelernt zu schreiben”, sagt der Linguist, aber erst Emojis würden es nun erlauben, “mit derselben Geschwindigkeit zu schreiben, mit der wir sprechen”. Dass dabei mancher Sinn auf der Strecke bleibt, interpretiert der Forscher eher als Vorteil, der “Mehrdeutigkeiten” und “Untertöne” erlaube, die in der Schriftsprache bislang gefehlt hätten.

    “Emojis sind längst nicht so eindeutig, wie man denken könnte”, bekräftigt Lebduska. Das Smiley etwa sei zunächst natürlich ein Symbol der Unbeschwertheit. Doch selbst hinter jedem Smiley lauerten immer die Möglichkeiten der Ironie und des Sarkasmus. Es fasziniere sie, schwärmt Lebduska, wie kreativ die Leute beim Verwenden der Emojis seien.

    Gleichzeitig dringt die Bildersprache in immer mehr Lebensbereiche vor. Leidenschaftlich streiten die Nutzer um die Erweiterung des Emoji-Vokabulars. Eines der Topthemen: Essen. Während Symbole für Eis , Spaghetti und Sushi seit Langem im Emoji-Alphabet existieren, fehlen noch jene für Hotdogs und Tacos, ein Umstand, der auf Facebook-Seiten wie “The Universe Demands a Taco Emoji” vehement beklagt wird. In der nächsten Unicode-Version sollen sie nun enthalten sein, ebenso wie das Einhorn, der Kricketschläger oder das Nerd-Gesicht.

    “Wir bekommen sehr viele Vorschläge für neue Emojis”, sagt Unicode-Präsident Davis. Die Auswahl sei ein Balanceakt, die Entscheidung hänge davon ab, ob das Symbol eine Lücke fülle oder ohnehin bereits weit verbreitet sei. Und auch um ethnische und kulturelle Vielfalt sind die Unicode-Macher bemüht. Zusätzlich zum christlichen Gotteshaus soll es bald Symbole für Moschee und Synagoge geben. Vor allem aber muss sich Davis nun plötzlich mit Hautfarben beschäftigen. Die Sängerin Miley Cyrus, Pop-Ikone vieler Teenager, trat 2012 per Tweet eine Kampagne für mehr ethnische Diversität im Emoji-Universum los (#EmojiEthnicityUpdate). Der Vorstoß fand Anklang. “Unicode hat gedacht, dass wir statt einer schwarzen Person zwei verschiedene Drachen, neun Katzengesichter und drei Generationen einer weißen Familie brauchen”, schimpfte etwa die farbige Sasheer Zamata von der populären US-Show “Saturday Night Live”, “sogar die Black-Power-Faust ist weiß!”

    Nun steht das Unicode-Konsortium unter Druck, die in der Tat fast durchweg hellhäutige Emoji-Welt einzufärben. Vergangenen Herbst kündigte das Konsortium deshalb an, den Usern künftig die Option zu geben, den Hautton bestimmter Emojis zu verändern, und zwar entsprechend der Fitzpatrick-Skala, einem “anerkannten Standard in der Dermatologie”. Apple hat bereits einen “skin tone modifier” für Emojis in eine Beta-Version seines Betriebssystems eingebaut.

    Ohnehin will Davis dafür sorgen, dass sich künftig noch mehr Nutzer in der Welt der Emojis zu Hause fühlen. Das Konsortium werde alles daransetzen, die Bilderkollektion umfassender und einheitlicher zu machen, verspricht der Programmierer. “Technisch gesehen haben wir in Unicode noch Platz für mehr als eine Million weitere Zeichen”, sagt Davis.

    Für die Freunde des elaborierten Textes mag das wie eine Drohung klingen. Doch Sprachforscher wie Lisa Lebduska beschwichtigen. “Natürlich kostet es viel weniger Mühe, ein Herzchen zu verschicken, als einen Liebesbrief zu schreiben”, sagt sie, “aber ich glaube, dass Liebesbriefe trotzdem nicht verschwinden werden.”

    Wie Worte seien auch Emojis eine Reflexion der Welt, sagt Lebduska, und wie Worte hätten die Zeichen das Potenzial “zu beschreiben, zu erkunden und zu verbinden”.

    Ob das tatsächlich gelingt, liegt allerdings wohl auch im Auge des Betrachters. Die US-Komikerin Ellen DeGeneres brachte es jüngst in ihrer Show auf den Punkt . “Was heißt diese Zeichenfolge?”, fragte sie ihr Publikum und präsentierte eine Abfolge von Emojis .

    “Für jüngere Leute bedeute das ,Hallo, an welchem Tag und zu welcher Zeit kommt dein Flug an?’”, erläuterte DeGeneres.

    Für ältere Leute jedoch bedeute es etwas ganz anderes, nämlich: “Meine Tastatur produziert nur noch kleine Bildchen, wie bekomme ich sie wieder normal, damit ich nicht mehr diesen Unsinn tippe; und überhaupt: Warum machen sie diese Telefone so klein?”

  • Microsofts Craig Mundie: “Microsoft can be cool!”

    In a SPIEGEL interview, Craig Mundie, 63, Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft, discusses the companies future, the mistakes of the past, computing in the 21st century, the upcoming Windows 8 Software and the Surface tablet.

    This is an extended version of an interview published at SPIEGEL Online International.

    SPIEGEL: Microsoft will presents a whole array of new products at the end of this week. Is this the beginning of a comeback to former glory?

    Mundie: I believe that Microsoft never lost it’s relevance. I always tell people we’re almost 40 years old now, fighting against every venture-funded good idea on the planet  in the world’s most competitive industry, and we’re still here, okay? So I say, „Do you think that’s just an accident?“. I don’t think so.

    SPIEGEL: Microsofts track record at anticipating technological trends hasn’t been the best in the past. With the tablet Surface and the new Windows 8 software you are now targeting in particular the mobile market. Again ten years too late?

    Mundie: My response is that we had a music player before the iPod. We had a touch device before the iPad. And we were leading in the mobile phone space. So, it wasn’t for a lack of vision or technology foresight that we lost our leadership position. The problem was that we just didn’t give enough reinforcement to those products at the time that we were leading. Unfortunately, the company had some executional missteps, which occured right at the time when Apple launched the iPhone. With that, we appeared to drop a generation behind.

    SPIEGEL: What happened?

    Mundie: During that time, Windows went through a difficult period where we had to shift a huge amount of our focus to security engineering. The criminal activity in cyberspace was growing dramatically ten years ago, and Microsoft was basically the only company that had enough volume for it to be a target. In part because of that, Windows Vista took a long time to be born.

    SPIEGEL: Have you learned your lessons?

    Mundie: Steve (Ballmer) made many changes, starting even at the top management level of the company. For example, there’s not a single product group president here today who was here five years ago. These changes are a reflection of the fact that we gave up leadership in some categories that turned out to be very important. Today our execution is not hampered by the same errors. We have learned our lessons. That doesn’t mean we won’t make some errors someday, but we’re at least not making the same ones again.

    SPIEGEL: Which role will Microsoft play in the coming decade as an IT company?

    Mundie: I think it’s going to be an interesting next decade. This is my 20th year at Microsoft. Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold hired me to develop the company’s capability in non-PC computing. In 1992, that seemed very avant-garde, but, of course, today we all live with computing everywhere around us.

    SPIEGEL: How will the computer of the future look like and how will we interact with those devices?

    Mundie: What we’re trying to do is to make the computer more like us and as helpful as an expert. To do that, we have to teach the computer to emulate more and more of the human senses, seeing, listening, speaking, as well as the tactile senses. We believe that our motion sensor Kinect will be a big part of that. The computers and the back-end cloud services are powerful enough now that we will see more of this type of technology very soon.

    SPIEGEL: What would that mean, for example, for peoples homes or offices?

    Mundie: For example, you’ll be able to directly ask the computer to help you. In the past, to work a computer program, you had to learn how to use the tool, and the tool had rigidity. In the future, it should be more like going to an assistant and saying, „Here is a document, make it look good,“ rather than saying „well, make this paragraph this point size and fit this font.“ A big emphasis at Microsoft is machine learning. The computer should not only be able to emulate your senses, but to appear to understand things based on learning or history. For example, for Office 365 that is in testing right now, we built a machine-learning-based assistant for your Inbox. The program looks at all your historical mail handling. From that, it makes judgments about what’s most important to you and groups those things together. How does it know? Because it has observed your behavior over some period of time.

    SPIEGEL: Don’t people want to define themselves what’s important to them and what isn’t?

    Mundie: That would require that people could actually describe their own behaviors, which we’ve learned they can’t do. They can’t tell you how they think enough to be able to put it into rules. The computer on the other hand is very well capable to observe your actions and deduce from that a set of behaviors or rules.

    SPIEGEL: If you look ten years ahead, which role will the PC play?

    Mundie: I think it will be about almost like it is today. However, it will be supplemented for example with intelligent whiteboards and displays for group discussions. Eventually, you will come into a room and the whole room will be the computer. In fact, people will be thinking more about computing and not computers. So for example, when you go into a space, you might have your phone in your pocket and your tablet in your briefcase. And if you set them down, they will all work together.

    SPIEGEL: Right now, the whole industry seems to have made it the user’s problem to migrate what they care about from one device to the next.

    Mundie: Yes, and I think that Microsoft may in fact be the company best positioned to help with this cacophonous situation, simply because we have a viable position in every product category, including a robust cloud service to connect all the different devices.

    SPIEGEL: Still, the world doesn’t seem to pay too much attention to your innovations.

    Mundie: I disagree. For example, if you look at the reviews, people who have a Windows phone actually prefer it over an Apple phone or an Android phone at this point. And Surface, I think, has met very strong, positive reviews and is really resonating with people.

    SPIEGEL: Surface will be on online-sale in Germany from Friday onwards. Again, Microsoft seems to be very late with such a device. The iPad is on the market for years. Why should people care?

    Mundie: Our experience is, despite some rhetoric, that most people who want to do any serious computing don’t want to do it trying to type on a glass screen. As a consequence, they always end up having two computers, a laptop and a tablet. Our dream was that you could have a no-compromises tablet experience and a click-on, high-quality keyboard, so that you don’t really need two computers. Surface fuses two worlds, and I think when people look at the engineering and design of the device, they will have an epiphany.

    SPIEGEL: Besides the X-Box, Surface is Microsofts first in-house computer hardware. Why did you decide to go this way?

    Mundie: Our marketing for many, many years was always through our partners. You never really bought a product directly from Microsoft, but from HP, Dell, Lenovo and alike. So, in a way, Microsoft always depended on its indirect representation through those companies. Now it became clear to us that we have to speak for ourselves. We have to tell the complete Microsoft story.

    SPIEGEL: How much is industrial design part of this story? Apple for example puts a lot of emphasis on design. Does design become more important for Microsoft?

    Mundie: I think it does. Surface for example is a product that gave us an opportunity to establish a new bar in this respect. Many people had said, „Oh, Microsoft technology is too bloated, it’s too fat, you guys don’t pay attention to these things.“ We think that Surface is a place where we can prove to people that this mythology is wrong. It’s a place where we get to speak to the public with our own voice about what’s possible, at an aspirational level. In part, the reason to do Surface was also to create a benchmark for our partners, saying, „look, there’s nothing intrinsic in our technology that won’t support products that operate at the upper tier; you just have to design them“.

    SPIEGEL: By building your own computer hardware you effectively become a competitor of your own partners. Are you going to go it alone in the future, like Apple does?

    Mundie: Apple has always had the luxury of being a software and a hardware company. I do describe that as a luxury, because you only have to think about yourself. But at least in the past, when you start to fan out and want to provide products for the whole world in every country, it’s very hard to do that on your own. We still think that it’s better to have a symbiotic relationship with our worldwide community of partners. And we are not alone with this model. Googles Android for example has gotten a big share fairly quickly by allowing several companies to participate.

    SPIEGEL: There are other device categories in the making. Google presented its Google Glass-project lately. Is Microsoft interested in glasses with augmented reality?

    Mundie: None of these things are particularly new or unanticipated. At a research level, we look at everything.

    SPIEGEL: Microsoft Research has 850 Ph.D.-level researchers. The company invests hundreds of millions of dollars per year in research alone. Isn‘t there just enough innvoation for the money spent?

    Mundie: And those people just don’t know what they’re talking about. I keep score every year how many things come out of research into the product group, and these transfers are counting in the hundreds. Microsoft Research is the world’s largest computer science research operation. I have seven labs, and each of them compares well to the faculty of a pretty good-size university computer science department. What this research provides to Microsoft is long-term nourishment. We think that, unless you have the ability to play with big ideas and to do fundamental research, you eventually run out of gas.

    SPIEGEL: When Windows 95 was launched, in 1995, computer geeks lined up to buy the first copies. Bill Gates paid three million dollars to the Rolling Stones for rights to use their classic „Start Me Up“ as the softwares’ theme song. Nothing like that happens now. Has Microsoft losts its cool?

    Mundie: It’s hard to keep your cool against young companies. But I do think it’s important to be cool. And the thing that always shows me that Microsoft can be cool is the whole Xbox business. We are worldwide number one in game consoles. This shows that when we package and present ourselves right, there is no stigma associated with being Microsoft.

    SPIEGEL: The stigma seems to be more prevalent in the PC business right now. The package hasn’t been right in the past?

    Mundie: I think we are able to learn. The phones and now the Surface are showing that our ability to sprinkle the fairy dust and have the coolness is growing. However, people have to understand that we are in a dilemma. A huge part of Microsoft’s revenue is to businesses, and if you’re a business, the last thing you want is us to be cool, because we’re providing you with your mission-critical infrastructure. Guys who buy infrastructure don’t buy cool, okay? Because they want you to be reliable like a rock. It is a lot easier to have the cool part emerge when you don’t have the enterprise part. But that’s a very critical part of our business.

    SPIEGEL: Still, some industry experts predict that Microsoft will become the next big technology giant to slip into obscurity if the company can’t reinvent itself.

    Mundie: I’ve been telling people to think about it like being in the Olympics. From the very beginning, the Olympics not only had the individual events, but they had the decathlon. Why? Well, they not only wanted to not know who could win each race in track and field, but they wanted to know who was the best overall athlete. I like to think that Microsoft will come to be recognized as the best athlete in computing.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge

    –> Read edited interview at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Michio Kaku: ‘Eternal Life Does Not Violate the Laws of Physics’

    In his best-selling book “Physics of the Future,” American professor Michio Kaku lays out his vision for the world in 2100. Kaku, the son of Japanese immigrants, spoke to SPIEGEL about a future in which toilets will have health monitoring sensors and contact lenses will be connected to the Internet.

    SPIEGEL: Professor Kaku, in your book you write about how we will be like gods in the future. Are you saying that our grandchildren will be gods? Isn’t that a bit immodest?

    Kaku: Just think for a moment about our forefathers in the year 1900. They lived to be 49 years old on average and traveled with horse-drawn wagons. Long distance communication was yelling out the window. If these people could see us today with mobile phones at our ears, Facebook on our screens and traveling with planes they would consider us wizards.

    SPIEGEL: It’s still a big step to go from wizards to gods.

    Kaku: So what do gods do? Apollo has unlimited power from the sun, Zeus can turn himself into a swan or anything else and Venus has a perfect body. Gods can move objects with their mind, rearrange things, and have perfect bodies. Our grandchildren will be able to do just that.

    SPIEGEL: Let’s do a little time traveling. Close your eyes and imagine waking up on a September morning in the year 2112. What do you see?

    Kaku: More important than what I see, is what will be omnipresent. Intelligence will be everywhere in the future, just like electricity is everywhere today. We now just assume that there’s electricity in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the future we will assume that everything is intelligent, so intelligence will be everywhere and nowhere. As children, we will be taught how to manipulate things around us just by talking to them and thinking. Children will believe that everything is alive.

    SPIEGEL: We’ll ask the question in a different way. What will we experience on this morning in 2112?

    Kaku: When we wake up, the first thing we want to know is what’s going on in the world. So we put in our intelligent contact lenses and with a blink we are online. If you want information, movies, virtual reality, it is all in your contact lenses. Then we’ll drive to work.

    SPIEGEL: Driving? How boring!

    Kaku: Aw, you want to fly? Cars may even fly, but we will also be able to manipulate our cars just by thinking. So, if you want to get into your car, you simply think, and you call your car. The car drives itself, and boom, there you are.

    SPIEGEL: So our grandchildren will fly to work. And what will change there?

    Kaku: If you are a college student, you blink and you can see all the answers to the final examination by wearing your contact lenses. Artists will wave their hands in the air and create beautiful works of art. If you’re an architect, you will see what you are creating and just move towers, two apartment buildings around as you construct things.

    SPIEGEL: Why do we have to even bother leaving the house if all of our needs, questions and desires are played out virtually on our grandiose contact lenses?

    Kaku: Well, you will want to go outside because we are humans, and our personality hasn’t changed in 100,000 years. We’re social creatures. We like to size each other up, figure out who’s on first, who’s on second. But technology will be able to help with that. In 2100, for example, when you talk to people, you will see their biography listed right in front of you. If you are looking for a date, you sign up for a dating service. When you go outside and people walk by you, their faces light up if they’re available. If someone speaks to you in Chinese, your contact lens will translate from Chinese to English. We will still resist certain technologies, however, because they go against who we are.

    SPIEGEL: What’s an example of that?

    Kaku: The paperless office. The paperless office was a failure, because we like tangible things. If I give you a choice between tickets to see your favorite famous rock star or a video of a close-up of your favorite rock star, which would you choose?

    SPIEGEL: The concert tickets naturally.

    Kaku: That’s the caveman in us. The caveman in you says, “I want direct contact. I don’t want a picture.” The caveman in our body says once in a while, we have to go outside. We have to meet real people, talk to real people, and do real things.

    SPIEGEL: Speaking of real things, we were fascinated by the toilet of the future described in your book.

    Kaku: Yeah. You will still have to go to the bathroom because our biology hasn’t changed. But your toilet will have more computer power than a university hospital does today.

    SPIEGEL: The toilet as a supercomputer?

    Kaku: Your toilet will have a chip in it called a “DNA chip.” It will analyze enzymes, proteins and genes for cancer. In this way we will be able to fight cancer long before a tumor even has a chance to develop. We will be able to also detect other illnesses early and fight them. But we will still have the common cold. There are at least 300 different rhinoviruses and you need to have a vaccine for each one. No company is going to do that, because it is going to bankrupt a large corporation to make a vaccine for each of them.

    SPIEGEL: What a defeat! Comfort us — did you not just refer to the perfect body of Venus?

    Kaku: The nature of medicine will shift away from basically saving lives to perfection. We will be able to rearrange our own genome.

    SPIEGEL: I assume that you mean to make ourselves prettier, stronger and generally better?

    Kaku: Those ambitions will be there.

    SPIEGEL: As we get a better handle on genetic technologies, won’t there be more of an urge to create designer babies?

    Kaku: We need a debate about these issues. This is going to create societal problems. You have to have an educated public democratically debating how far to push our beautiful children and the human race.

    SPIEGEL: Will we eventually be able to conquer death?

    Kaku: Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics, surprisingly enough. After all, we only die because of one word: “error.” The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn’t function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that’s why we die.

    SPIEGEL: What can we do about that?

    Kaku: We know the genes that correct these things. So if we use genetic repair mechanisms, we might be able to repair cells so they don’t wear out, so they just keep on going. That is as real possibility. We will also be able to regenerate organs by growing new ones. That can already be done now.

    SPIEGEL: Then we will get rid of death?

    Kaku: In principle, yes.

    SPIEGEL: Then how will we decide who gets to live and who must die? Who will be allowed to have children?

    Kaku: I don’t think children or overpopulation are going to be a problem. When people live longer, they have fewer children. We see that in Japan, the US and in other countries where prosperity, education and urbanization are on the rise.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

    ‘It’s Nice to be Superman for an Afternoon’

    SPIEGEL: Okay, back to the toilet. What do I do when the toilet tells me that I have cancer cells?

    Kaku: You talk to the wallpaper, and you say…

    SPIEGEL: Excuse me, but you talk to the wallpaper?

    Kaku: As I mentioned, everything will be intelligent, even the wallpaper. You talk to the wallpaper, and you say, “I want to see my doctor.” Boom! A doctor appears on the wall. It’s a RoboDoc, which looks like a doctor, talks like a doctor, but it’s actually an animated figure. It will tell you what is going on in your body and answers all medical questions with 99 percent accuracy, because it has the medical histories of everyone on the planet available.

    SPIEGEL: Will we also have robot driving instructors and robot cooks?

    Kaku: Yes, of course.

    SPIEGEL: But aren’t robots still rather dumb, even after 50 years of research into artificial intelligence?

    Kaku: That’s true. ASIMO, the best robot around today has the intelligence of a cockroach. However, that will change. In the coming decades, robots will be as smart as mice. Now, mice are very smart. They can scurry around, hide behind things, look for food. I can see that in 10, 20, 30 years, we will start to have mice robots, then rabbit robots, cat robots, dog robots, finally monkey robots maybe by the end of the century. They will do dirty, dull and dangerous jobs for us. That means they have to feel pain too.

    SPIEGEL: Are you talking about machines with the ability to suffer?

    Kaku: We will have to build robots with pain sensors in them, because we don’t want them to destroy themselves.

    SPIEGEL: Then won’t we have to start talking about robot rights?

    Kaku: Once we design robots that can feel pain, that’s a tricky point. At that point, people will say, “Well, they’re just like dogs and cats.”

    SPIEGEL: When will machines become a threat, like HAL from the movie ‘2001?’

    Kaku: At some point we can plant a chip in their electronic brains that shuts them down when they start to develop dangerous plans.

    SPIEGEL: But won’t they be intelligent enough to take the chip out themselves?

    Kaku: Sure, but that won’t happen until after 2100.

    SPIEGEL: How comforting.

    Kaku: Then we always have the option of making ourselves even smarter.

    SPIEGEL: Are you referring to the old science fiction idea that our brains are immeasurably smart?

    Kaku: Exactly, and spending the whole day calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity. I don’t seriously believe that. It goes back to the caveman in us. What do cavemen want? Cavemen want to have the respect of their peers. They want to look good to the opposite sex. They want prestige. If we’re stuck inside a computer calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity, who wants that?

    SPIEGEL: The idea that one day we will all be Supermen or Superwomen sounds really tempting though.

    Kaku: I think what’s going to happen is we will have avatars. They will have all these powers that we want — to be perfect, superhuman and good looking.

    SPIEGEL: Great! Does that mean we can send our avatars to meetings that we don’t want to attend?

    Kaku: You will send your avatars to the Moon or on virtual trips or whatever. But you also have the option of shutting it off and getting back to normal again. The average person will not necessarily want to be Superman, but they may want the option of being Superman for an afternoon. It’s nice to be Superman for an afternoon, but then to say, hey, “let’s go out and have a beer with friends.” Do you see what I’m saying?

    SPIEGEL: Yes, of course. Atavism beats out the avatar. But just how strong are these caveman impulses? Could there one day be a movement against all of this new technology?

    Kaku: Such movements always accompany technological changes. When the telephone first came out, it was very controversial. Throughout history, we only talked to friends, relatives, kids. That’s it, period. Then comes the telephone. There were many voices denouncing it, saying we had to go back to talking to our families, so on and so forth.

    SPIEGEL: You claim in your book that we are the most important generation that has ever lived. Doesn’t every generation think that?

    Kaku: Out of all the generations that have walked the surface of the Earth, we’re the only ones to witness the beginning of the process of becoming a planetary civilization. We decide whether humanity survives.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by “planetary civilization?”

    Kaku: We physicists rank civilizations by energy. A Type 1 planetary civilization uses all the energy that is available on the planet. In a hundred years, we’ll be Type 1. We’re on our way there. We will control the weather. We will control earthquakes and volcanoes eventually. Anything planetary, we will control. Type 2 is stellar. We will control stars, like Star Trek. Then Type 3 is the entire galaxy, where we’ll control the Milky Way galaxy.

    SPIEGEL: Hold on a second. We aren’t even close to that now!

    Kaku: No, we are in a transition. We still get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. Carl Sagan did a more precise calculation. He figured out that we’re actually Type 0.7. So we’re on the threshold of being Type 1. We will have two planetary languages, English and Mandarin. Look at the Olympics. That’s planetary sports. Look at soccer, another planetary sport. The European Union is the beginning of a planetary economy, if it ever gets off the ground correctly.

    SPIEGEL: We are having a few tiny problems with that last one.

    Kaku: Well, nevertheless, when I look at the larger sweep of things, I see that we are already coming together. We’re entering the birth of a planetary fashion and we are already seeing the birth of planetary culture. Democratization of the world marches on.

    SPIEGEL: What is one thing from the world you imagine that you would like to have today?

    Kaku: Well, I wouldn’t mind having a few more decades to live and, for example, to see the first starship. Also, it’s a shame that I cannot live in the 11th dimension.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

    Kaku: The energy of wormholes, black holes and of the Big Bang. You would have to be a Type 3 civilization before you can begin to manipulate that energy. That’s the province of my field of research, string theory.

    SPIEGEL: I think that’s where we can no longer keep up. Professor Kaku, we thank you for this interview.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

  • A Future of Self-Surveillance? Tech Pioneers Track Bodily Functions Day and Night

    Using smartphone apps and sensors, high tech pioneers are monitoring their own bodily functions such as heart rates, sleep patterns and blood. The ‘self trackers’ dream of a digitalized medicine that will enable people to lead healthier lives by getting around-the-clock updates on what goes on inside their bodies

    By Philip Bethge

    Larry Smarr’s large intestine appears to float in the middle of the room, nestled like a stuffed sausage between his other virtual organs.

    Smarr, a computer science professor, adjusts the dark-tinted 3D glasses perched on his nose and picks up an electronic pointer. “And this is where the wall of my colon is inflamed,” he says, pointing out a spot where the intestinal walls are indeed noticeably swollen.

    A supercomputer combined MRI images of the 63-year-old professor to create the three-dimensional illusion now projected on the wall. It gives the impression that the viewer could go for a stroll inside the researcher’s abdomen. (more…)

  • Sci-Fi Author Daniel Suarez: ‘We Have To Regain Control Over Our Own Data’

    Programmer Daniel Suarez has written books about a future where human lives are controlled by software. Suarez’ sci-fi scenario involves a malicious, murdering ‘bot’ network. It’s fiction — but Suarez warns that the groundwork for such a future is being laid by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and mobile phone firms.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Suarez, in the novels “Daemon” and the sequel “Freedom” you have invented a world in which small software applications that run automated tasks — generally called “bots” — control us and determine our destiny. Science fiction writers have often been prescient: Could this be a warning that applies to our current reality?

    Daniel Suarez: Well, the sequel is certainly fiction — but my fiction is only just over the horizon. I present a world that’s different but it’s familiar enough that it freaks people out a little. And it should. Because even today, we are surrounded by an army of bots that influence our lives profoundly.

    SPIEGEL: Some examples?

    Suarez: Sure, let’s take a look at what recently happened at Wall Street.

    SPIEGEL: On May 6, the Dow Jones suddenly dropped by nearly 1,000 points.

    Suarez: And then (bounced) back a couple of minutes later. And those were bots, trading with each other, beyond human control. They evaporated a trillion dollars of wealth in 20 minutes. Or look at medical decisions: Recently there was the case of several women who were kicked off their health insurance just because they were diagnosed with breast cancer. And it wasn’t a person that made this decision. It was a bot. They can do really atrocious things. And nobody questions it. Bots also work out your credit rating, which will determine whether you get a loan, an apartment or even a job interview. And that data never goes away.

    (—> read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

    SPIEGEL: Where does all this data come from?

    Suarez: Data is gathered all the time. Just take your mobile phone. Geo-location data collected by your (mobile phone service) provider is not just about your movements. It’s about who you are with and what you will do next. There was a recent study at the Northeastern University in Boston, examining 50,000 cell phones and their owners. After some time, the researchers found they could predict the movements of any individual with 93 percent accuracy. And you can start to correlate that data with other data — for example, with credit card purchases or surveillance camera footage.

    SPIEGEL: Is the data being used already?

    Suarez: I’d be shocked if it wasn’t. Firstly, it would be part of the war on terror. But then it is also about selling things. Bots screen a vast ocean of data (for patterns). And they are very effective. Whether it’s about helping an intelligent agency find members of the opposition or selling people ice cream at the exact moment they’re most susceptible to buying an ice cream. If you can come up with a sophisticated bot algorithm, then you’re going to make a lot of money.

    SPIEGEL: In your books the story line involves a software tycoon and game designer Matthew Sobol, who accidentally creates a highly sophisticated network of bots that go into action when Sobol dies of cancer. The network, eventually named Daemon, then starts to dismantle civilization as we know it and even convinces followers to murder. How does all this happen?

    Suarez: The incentive is money. Basically all money exists as a series of ones and zeroes in databases. So, if you’ve got bots that are inside those systems, they can create money and then hand it to anybody. The bots also know who you’ve talked to, what your job is, what your hobbies are and so on. By the way, this is exactly what social media already does these days. There are 400 million people on Facebook. And Facebook is constantly being (researched) by bots. Those bots aren’t even intelligent. I don’t think it’s going to take a greater-than-human intelligence to trap us.

    SPIEGEL: In your books, you talk about a Darwinian struggle for survival between bots and humans. That sounds a little far fetched. Is the survival of humankind really at stake?

    Suarez: No, but our quality of life could be. A life where bots tell us what to do every second — get up, go to work, do this, have kids with this person — is completely reasonable. Bots determine our economic opportunities; We have already accepted that. So, really, how much of a journey is it from that point to having bots determine what other opportunities you get in life? All the decision making would be done by bots and we wouldn’t even notice.

    SPIEGEL: But surely there are still people behind all of this, programming the bots and coming up with a purpose for them?

    Suarez: Sure, and I’m not saying it’s a vast conspiracy. You don’t find evil people sitting in the corner going “ha, ha, ha.” (The programmers) are all good citizens. But the whole thing can easily get out of hand. There are networks of bots out there with 10 million machines. Who’s controlling them? You tell me where the process that’s attacking your data is, physically. You can’t just shut it down.

    SPIEGEL: Couldn’t one just pull the power plug out?

    Suarez: How would you unplug the Internet? There is no way. Data centers have generators these days. They don’t rely on the electrical grid. And you wouldn’t know where to start anyway. Even if you shut down 20 percent of the (Internet), it would still exist. My point is that we are creating something very powerful. And we don’t understand the implications. Bots are like parasites, they evolve all the time. Eventually, we loose control.

    SPIEGEL: So what can we do about that?

    Suarez: We have to regain control over our own data. I think that transparency is the key. If you know where you are at, you can act accordingly. And if somebody else wants to use your data, you should be able to decide yourself if you want to hand it over.

    SPIEGEL: So as a software specialist, how do you take care of your data?

    Suarez: I don’t have a Facebook page. I don’t use Twitter. I don’t give anyone a lot to grab onto. Sometimes, I even take out the battery of my mobile phone so that I can’t be localized. A very small group of powerful people is deciding what’s going to happen with your data, and they’re using bots to help implement what they want to do. That has nothing to do with democracy. It’s all about efficiency. And that’s the really scary thing about it. I’d prefer we don’t take that trip. Otherwise, this could really end up being a hellish world.

    (—> read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

    This article was published first in German in the DER SPIEGEL-supplement Kultur SPIEGEL

  • The Best Translation Program Yet: Google Delivers Foreign Tongues at the Press of a Button

    A German scientist has developed one of the first translation programs suitable for everyday use. Sheer computing power gives the Google software surprisingly good results — perhaps the best yet seen created by a machine.

    It’s a good sign when the creator of a piece of software ends up using it. On a recent trip to Japan, Franz Och, who doesn’t speak Japanese, was able to decipher restaurant menus and even read local news — using his mobile phone, which provided him with the translations within seconds.

    Och spent the last six years developing Google Translate, a translation program, at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, “and so far I’ve never really used it myself,” Och admits. But then the 38-year-old research scientist has a change of heart and adds, “I am very happy with what we have achieved.”

    Och, a German citizen, is the behind-the-scenes star of a segment of the software industry that has taken on a challenge no less daunting than tearing down global language barriers. In his job at Google, …. More

  • Google Co-Founder on Pulling out of China: ‘It Was a Real Step Backward’

    Last week, Google announced it would withdraw its Chinese operations from Beijing and instead serve the market from freer Hong Kong. The Internet giant’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, 36, discusses his company’s troubles in China and its controversial decision to pull up stakes and leave.

    SPIEGEL: With your decision to close Google’s Chinese Web site, you are the first major company to have challenged the government in Beijing in this way. Are you powerful enough to take on an entire country?

    Brin: I don’t think it’s a question of taking on China. In fact, I am a great admirer of both China and the Chinese government for the progress they have made. It is really opposing censorship and speaking out for the freedom of political dissent, and that’s the key issue from our side.

    SPIEGEL: Four years ago, you allowed your service to be censored. Why have you changed your mind now?

    Brin: The hacking attacks were the straw that broke the camel’s back. … More