Re: The Future
- From: "Charles Hottel" <chottel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:28:58 GMT
"tlmfru" <lacey@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Charles Hottel <chottel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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What do you think the next 20 to 30 years will be like? If you are likea
most people you think it will be like the last 20 to 30 years and there
is
good chance that you would be unprepared for the powerful changes comingand
the the rapid pace of those changes.
That is just a small part of the thesis of a book I have just read: The
Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
Couple of questions: does he specify his assumptions - in particular does
he
expect that the resources for what he foresees will always be there? And
does he include individual choice in the matter: will people be obliged to
go along with the changes or not?
It is somewhat hard to answer your question and yet do the book justice. The
book is focused yet very wideranging in giving lots of background for his
assumptions and reasoning as well as concrete examples in support of his
views.
Yes he gives his assumptions. He started out many years ago studying
technology trends in order to better time his inventions for the
marketplace. As he says it took on a life of its own after a while. He gives
some of the mathematics also and has developed a "Law of Accelerating
Returns".
He says where he thinks some of the resources will come from and gives
estimates of their availability. Some of it is more concrete and some is
more speculative. I think the predictions for trends are easier than for
which specific designs and/or products will win out over others.
Well people will have the same choice or lack of choice that they have now.
We have no choice now but to live with the fact of nuclear weapons. In
theory we could stop development of biotechnology, nanotechnology and strong
AI, but in practice the economic and competitive benefits of developing them
are close to irresistible, not to mention the benefits to peoples lives.
Historically speaking technology has increased exponentially throuh natural
disasters, wars, government regulation etc.
I will try to give the jist of why the process will keep going short of our
destroying ourselves or our being destroyed by a natural disaster. Now that
we have the human genome we will, at an ever increasing exponential rate,
decipher the processes underlying the operation of our bodies and disease
processes. This will allow us to conquer disease, end hunger and extend life
span. This will allow some of us to live long enough to take advantage of
nanotechnology which is now less developed than biotechnology, yet it too is
advancing exponentially. Nanotechnology will allow us to manifest things in
the real world from simple raw materials and the information needed to
construct them (picture Star Trek replicators machines). Eventually we could
choose to replace our biological bodies with "better" engineered bodies and
even before that it can be used to further expand our life spans. These
technologices will interact with each other synergistically. Technology to
enable reverse engineering of the brain is also expanding at an exponential
rate. Nanotechnology will greatly speed this up also. This will lead to
machine intelligence on computers that are a million times faster at
processing than our brains. This machine intelligence will be able to
redesign itself and evolve itself and "unenhanced" human intelligence will
not be able to keep up. Little by little we will merge with our technology.
In fact some of us are already doing so, for example deep brain stimulation
for people with Parkinsons disease.
That is an extremely abridged version of what he is predicting. The book
goes into much, much more detail of all the ramifications, the assumptions,
the potentials, the objections, the potential existential downsides etc. The
reason I am recommending the book is because I think these issues are very
important to us all, we need to educate ourselves more about them so we can
participate in the debates ahead and make informed choices for ourselves. I
think this is true even for people who think the predictions themselves are
bunk.
Me - I see society being more sharply divided into the INNERs and the
OUTERs. There are already quite a crowd of people who are perfectly happy
spending most of their life intereracting with devices - computers, games,
TV - all of which are indoors. TheIN-ward trend will continue: it's
already
feasible, in principle, to live completely indoors without ever having to
leave the comfort of one's home: assumimng some sort of income to finance
the lifestyle. Only a little enhancement will be necessary to look after
all bodily needs and functions - well, almost all - so that a person could
live and interact with the world wholly through direct-brain inputs and
outputs. There will be quite a number of people who will enjoy this sort
of
lifestyle - any sensation can be produced by stimulation of the proper
part
of the brain. They'll be the INNERs. Everyone else will be the OUTERs to
one extent or other and there will likely be some bitterness because the
OUTERs will be supporting the INNERs.
He posulates having interchangable reality and virtual reality and even
having them both at the same time.
I may be right or not! But I'll probably be around for 20 years, anyway,
to
find out!
PL
.
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