Good Grape Wine Company

January 4 2007

Our Wine Neighbors, The Jetson’s!

I’m moderately technologically adept—and I think most people, certainly those that manage and read blogs are as well.

While I’m nowhere near the Jetsons in terms of technological savvy or acumen, I embrace my inner geek and roll with it—this despite some of my Luddite friends—some wine drinkers and many who are not.  I know a person that doesn’t have a computer at home and, gasp, another person that doesn’t have a personal email.  My father who is young enough to be with “it,” whatever “it” may constitute looks at a computer the same way he looked at a microwave 25 years ago—with awe and wonder.  And, he still doesn’t use either one.

So, I’m firmly in tune with both worlds—the technologically advanced and the “kicking and screaming” camp.

That said, I read some technology predictions for the next 25 years that scared the hell out of me.

If these predictions are correct, whatever technological progress we’ve made in the last 25 years will be eclipsed by a factor of 5x in the next 25 years and it could have some radical implications on the world of wine.

Ray Kurzweil, a noted futurist with a track record of accurate predictions, released his sixth book in the fall of 2005 called, The Singularity is Near.

His book is predicated on a theory he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns.  This theory is an evolutionary system that says that order increases over time.  The “singularity” referenced in the title is described as a transforming event on the future horizon in which computers will exceed and then blow far beyond the capacity for human intelligence.

Kurzweil is quoted in an airline magazine called Hemispheres as saying,

“We can use these technology forecasts based on regions of the brain that have already been simulated to come up with pretty good estimates of the amount of hardware and computational capacity required to simulate the entire human brain.  In my book, I analyze that and come out with about (10 to the power of 16) calculations per second.  We’ll have that amount of computation for about $1000 by 2020.”

He continues to break down his theory into laymen terms by saying simply,

“By conservative estimates by the late 2020’s, we’ll have detailed models and simulations of all the several hundred regions of the human brain, and we will then understand its principles of operation.  This nonbiological machine intelligence will ultimately be more powerful than biological intelligence because it will combine the power of human intelligence, which is primarily pattern recognition, with the typical strength of computers.

The question was then posed about an uprising of computers that perhaps create havoc like some science fictions movies or space age cartoons.

Kurzweil’s answer was,

“First, we’re going to merge with the technology.  When you get to 2035, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a human who doesn’t have a substantial nonbiological thinking process inside his body.  These people will be hybrids.  It’s not like you’re going to walk into a room and say, ‘OK, all the machines over on the right and humans on the left.’  It’s going to be all mixed up”

What does this have to do with wine?

One of the stories got strong play 2006 was the concept of the “Robo-Sommelier.”  Numerous articles were written and the blogosphere was atwitter at the prospect that a robot, er, wine-bot, could taste and identify types of wines and would have the ability to become personalized to recommend wines that suit an owners palate.

In a BBC article that I read, a Dan Coward from Bibendum Wine Limited, gave his best Thomas J. Watson impersonation when he said,

“I love new ideas in wine, but this one seems like technology for the sake of it.”

Thomas J. Watson, a leader for decades at IBM is famously recalled for his utterance,

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Coward continues,

“The human taster will always have the upper hand in terms of flavour, smell and texture, and can make qualitative judgments based on the combination of these factors.”

Not so fast. 

If Kurzweil is correct, the computational ability to mimic and exceed human sensory capacity—a function of the brain—will be eclipsed by 2020—a mere 13 years from now.

What scares the heck out of me are signs now that point to continued hegemony based on this technological assumption.

The battle for terroir and appellation specificity might become not a battle to be fought, but a quaint notion leftover from a bygone era.

Numerous folks are already globally sourcing fruit putting out a bottle that speaks to flavor profile and not of “place.”  If technology advances as it has been suggested then consumers would presumably have their palate typed to a specific wine that was made exactly to their specifications, regardless of where the fruit came from.  Instead of bemoaning Yellowtail, we would be bemoaning, perhaps, 95% of the industry?

And, perhaps most sinister, what if Parker, in a nod to Ted Williams who wanted to preserve his DNA and his body via cryogenics for future possible use, used the available computational modeling to mimic his palate in order to have a robot chemically taste wine in perpetuity, long after he has passed, to keep the Wine Advocate going and his acolytes legion long into the future thus furthering his influence into the next several decades without silly things like a succession plan.

Crazy?  Sure it’s crazy, and so was the idea of this thing called the Internet being omnipresent in our lives just a mere 20 years ago.

I’m not sure if George Jetson drank wine, but many of us will swill it down, if only to cope with the changes that are likely coming to our passionate place in this world. 

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