Challenging computer software frontiers and the human resistance to change

This paper examines the driving and opposing forces that are governing the current paradigm shift from a dataprocessing information technology environment without software intelligence to an information-centric environment in which data changes are automatically interpreted within the context of the application domain. The driving forces are related to the large quantity of data and the complexity of networked systems that both call for software intelligence. The opposing forces are non-technical and due to the natural human resistance to change. Based on this background the paper describes current information-centric technology, proposes a vision of intelligent software system capabilities, and identifies four areas of necessary research. Most urgent among these are the ability to dynamically extend and merge ontologies and semantic search capabilities that can be initiated either by human users or software agents. Longer term research interests that pose a more severe challenge are related to the translation of emerging theoretical hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) concepts into usable software capabilities and the automated interpretation of graphical images such as those recorded by surveillance video cameras.