Hofstadter’s Law; “It always takes longer than you expect, even...

Hofstadter’s Law; “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you've taken into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

Douglas Hofstadter

In the 1950’s Alan Turing, the co-breaker of the Enigma code, an avid chess player, and the mathematician probably most responsible for the development of the digital computer, predicted that computers would be able to beat the world chess champion within 10 years. Naysayers, and most mathematicians, computer scientists and almost all chess players laughed and said it was impossible. After ten years had passed, and Turing was long deceased, the idea that computers could beat a chess master became standard dogma. Though it took a lot longer than Turing had expected, 23 years ago Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov. Since then computer chess has become so advanced, and ubiquitous, that the chess programs on your mobile phone can beat any chess grand master. Artificial Intelligence had a longer gestation than Turing expected, but it is now changing the world, including all areas of medicine.

Some naysayers, for their own little reasons naysay in-vivo endomicroscopy and digital biopsy is taking too long. Tiresias is old and has seen much medicine. Tiresias has written here on the adoption of new technologies in medicine, the barriers involved, technical, and more importantly sociocultural and financial. Tiresias has no doubts that this is the future. Tiresias has no better answer to the naysayers except to quote an old Chinese proverb:

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. "