I’m reading Ray Kurzweil who says the the Singularity is Near. While nay-sayers claim his science is questionable, I say he sounds pretty bright to me. The basic gist is because of exponential growth in technology (ie Moore’s law) we’re on the cusp of revolutionary changes in what it means to be human. We will transcend our bodies through technologies ranging from advanced medical DNA engineering to nano technology and the internet itself. We will become immortal within 20 years. (…says Ray)
I’m perusing an issue of Wired where they talk about Petaflops and the end of science as the process of discovery changes from “hypothesis -> proof” to “real model -> observation.” By connecting billions of people with billions of computers and cell phones, you create a global network that is quite similar to the human brain but on a much more massive, and speedy scale. Computer processors got faster than human synapses in the late 90’s. Your brain still has billions more neurons than your computer has switches in its processor, but if you start connecting everyone’s computer through the internet you can imagine the computers beating us before long. The internet = huge brain.
The more self expression and meaning that can be digitized on various cross linked web sites, the more complex the system becomes. At some point you get complex enough to call it “conscious.” Have a hard time believing that the only thing that makes us conscious is complexity? Is a flat worm conscious? Nope. How about a monkey? Well that’s got personality. Both have neurons its simply a question of quantity and cross connections.
Well, on the internet cross connections are most easily expressed in HTML. For better or worse, hypertext as expressed through a combination of HTML, XML, and CSS is the best way we have for documenting the meaning and cross connections of the content that makes humanity interesting. Making web pages = good. Think of it as a kid with a tiny brain figuring out how things go together. Learning is work. Twittering, blogging, sprucing up your mySpace page - that’s all worthy contributions to the group consciousness. One day we’ll all be immortal thanks to your selfless labor and kewl cat pictures.
The only downer is blogs, twittering and social networking sites kinda suck. Building a website the way you want to and being able to edit the copy without learning complex tools is key. You can’t expect a kid to learn, playing one game over and over again. In my eyes, blogs are nice because they’re easy to use - but the price you pay is your creativity is very limited. What we need is a more flexible way for people to easily edit web sites that don’t have to be blogs. ie, concrete5.
Ergo, use concrete5 - it’s going to replace your brain one day.
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To me, there’s a difference between “consciousness” and “sentience.” Worms are conscious; they’re just not necessarily sentient, I think. Dictionary.com assures me that these two words are synonyms, but they’ve always seemed to me to hold an important semantic difference.
(”While nay-sayers claim his science is questionable….” Are you talking about anyone but me here? )
I haven’t read anything by Kurzweil yet, but I listened to him recently on npr (Will We Recognize the Future?). While I definitely believe that humanity is evolving towards something profound, something bugs me about Kurzweil’s articulation of the future… like it’s too mechanical, too sterile. Humans pretty much stopped evolving biologically a long time ago. We don’t have to deal with the classic notion of survival of the fittest, where the weak are killed off and the strong pass along their genes. Even dumb and weak people still breed. Instead, there is a survival of the fittest in ideas our ideas, where those who amass the most power will have the most influence over the collective conscious of society. Humans have been developing more control over their external surroundings not through changes in their DNA, but by using technology as an extension of themselves. This has been happening since we figured out how to make tools and to use fire, and it will continue to happen. Will we someday reach a point where we are technically capable of living forever? Yeah, probably with the breakthroughs in stem cell research. We’ll probably start actively developing new strains of humans DNA soon too, although this seems like a creepy brave-new-world existence. But I don’t think that we can predict when it will happen based solely upon the current rate of change. In evolution, things tend to happen in spurts (a theory called punctuated equilibrium). Humanity will probably hit a wall before his nebulous, sci-fi notion of singularity occurs. The earth is already having trouble providing for the current number of humans. It’s supposed to take six earths to sustain the world population on the American lifestyle. Will the earth make it that long? What happens if everyone lives forever? Would humanity have to stop breeding? With the increasing disparity of wealth, what small percentage of the population would be able to afford immortality? Also, today we only use about 10% of our brains potential. If most people were to use 100% of their capacity they’d go insane (maybe we lack the philosophical framework and self control to really utilize too much of our potential at once, but that’s another post). That being said, what good would increasing our mind’s “processing power” really give us if we don’t use what we already have?
To me, there’s a difference between “consciousness” and “sentience.” Worms are conscious; they’re just not necessarily sentient, I think. Dictionary.com assures me that these two words are synonyms, but they’ve always seemed to me to hold an important semantic difference.
(”While nay-sayers claim his science is questionable….” Are you talking about anyone but me here?
)
kate
18 Jul 08 at 1:13 pm
no i am only talking about you kate. everyone else knows -robot is future.
Franz
18 Jul 08 at 1:45 pm
kate
18 Jul 08 at 2:04 pm
I haven’t read anything by Kurzweil yet, but I listened to him recently on npr (Will We Recognize the Future?). While I definitely believe that humanity is evolving towards something profound, something bugs me about Kurzweil’s articulation of the future… like it’s too mechanical, too sterile. Humans pretty much stopped evolving biologically a long time ago. We don’t have to deal with the classic notion of survival of the fittest, where the weak are killed off and the strong pass along their genes. Even dumb and weak people still breed. Instead, there is a survival of the fittest in ideas our ideas, where those who amass the most power will have the most influence over the collective conscious of society. Humans have been developing more control over their external surroundings not through changes in their DNA, but by using technology as an extension of themselves. This has been happening since we figured out how to make tools and to use fire, and it will continue to happen. Will we someday reach a point where we are technically capable of living forever? Yeah, probably with the breakthroughs in stem cell research. We’ll probably start actively developing new strains of humans DNA soon too, although this seems like a creepy brave-new-world existence. But I don’t think that we can predict when it will happen based solely upon the current rate of change. In evolution, things tend to happen in spurts (a theory called punctuated equilibrium). Humanity will probably hit a wall before his nebulous, sci-fi notion of singularity occurs. The earth is already having trouble providing for the current number of humans. It’s supposed to take six earths to sustain the world population on the American lifestyle. Will the earth make it that long? What happens if everyone lives forever? Would humanity have to stop breeding? With the increasing disparity of wealth, what small percentage of the population would be able to afford immortality? Also, today we only use about 10% of our brains potential. If most people were to use 100% of their capacity they’d go insane (maybe we lack the philosophical framework and self control to really utilize too much of our potential at once, but that’s another post). That being said, what good would increasing our mind’s “processing power” really give us if we don’t use what we already have?
Tony
21 Jul 08 at 10:56 pm