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I wonder if Ray would ever consider being a guest on the Paracast. I'd love to hear that conversation. A lot of people think that Ray is way out there, but you can't deny the predictions and contributions he has made. He is a highly intelligent man. And he may be dead on with this singularity thing. I haven't listened to this video yet, but will once I can give it the time.
The thing we often miss about future technology is the sometimes exponential nature of it's growth and the inconcievable applications of "useless" tools (ie TV, computer, internet,etc). We are in a rapidly developing technological age (again) and the future is often constrained in a large part only by our imagination. I like Ray.
Kurzweil's data in the short term spans over 100 years and in the long term spans billions. The law still holds. One of the criticisms of his exponential graphs is that it is claimed he cherry picks the data. But if you get a chance to listen to this speech, you will see he has accommodated his critics by using the data of 15 other sources independently--and they all still cluster around his data. Also his track record on predictions is just excellent--better than any psychic on the planet.
One of the points he makes this time more explicitly than he has before is that 'Moore's Law' was around far before Moore was born. He likes to start with the 1890 census and explain the Law holds through paradigm shifts. the Hollerith machine was an electro-mechanical device. We then went through vacuum tubes and transistors before we got to silicon, which is the current leading edge, but if silicon does have a limit, that's okay because something else will take over and besides, although couched in terms of size, it's really more about cost and speed of dissemination into the culture.
His latest book is The Web Within Us: When Minds and Machines Become One, and here's a web site: http://www.kurzweilai.net/
Fixed, thanksI liked the second article better than the first (which, btw, is not on page 2 so you have to backup the link to the .com
Bruce Sterling said, 'The future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed.' Technology is already addressing that.
I believe the quote William Gibson's, the two have very similar opinions about the future. The point being, he's right.
And there probably will be people that opt for total emersion in virtual worlds. But I bet most won't.
Being two pretty knowledgable guys (Stagger and Schuyler) when it comes to this sort of thing, do you think that we will hit a metaphorical brick wall?
Hey, these are all themes in Greg Egan's Diaspora though not so much about 'affording' but 'choosing'. It's fiction to be sure, but Egan knows how to do his homework!If we could dump ourselves into a computer, or live forever with the help of nanobots or something like that, I could see a whole new set of problems popping up socially. We could effectively become a two rung species, half of which has access to and can afford the alterations and those that cannot.
See Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument. (Off topic: I think many here would also enjoy Bostrom's Where Are They? Why I hope that the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing. )Someone (Skunkape? CaptG?) suggested we already ARE in a simulation. I must say that is an intriguing idea. I don't think it needs to be as stark and evil as 'The Matrix' but I think it is a possibility.