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I've always been interested in futurologists. It started as a kid, when they spew ideal worlds with flying cars and such. A.k.a. The Jetsons period. Soon afterwards, I started realizing it was all crap, and started using them as a source of entertainment as to this day. It makes a great laugh every now and then. If a futurologist predicts something, as a rule of thumb I'd say it won't, still, they tend to take themselves very serious.

However, so far I've seen two 'predictions' that are worthwhile:
- The partly self-fullfilling prophecy the books by William Gibson (Neuromancer, etc.); Not only is he spot on most of the time, what is scary is that while he issues many warnings, mostly the "coolness" was remembered and used, resulting in the opposite effect, starting with termonology: words like cyberspace, matrix and the Net originate from these books. Funnily, I like the books now mostly on other levels.

- The concept of technological singularity. Hey, they almost spoil it with stuff like http://www.singularitywatch.com/spiral.html but the effect in history cannot be denied.

Hi /.,

For articles on the Linguistic User Interface see:
http://singularitywatch.com/lui.html
http://singularitywatch.com/promontorypoint.html

For more on Evolutionary Development:
http://singularitywatch.com/convergentevolution.ht ml

If you find the topic of accelerating technological change fascinating and important you might enjoy our e-newsletter, Accelerating Times :
http://accelerating.org/news/signup.php3

You might also wish to attend our annual fall conference at Stanford, Accelerating Change .
Past conference public archives are at the website of our nonprofit, the Acceleration Studies Foundation:
http://accelerating.org/

We are still early in understanding our universal, cultural, and technological records of accelerating change, and this topic may be the most important and valuable one we could consider, as change and its opportunities may come faster every year forward for the rest of our lives.

We'd love any of you with interest in these fascinating topics to join our community.
Hope to meet some of you at Stanford in September.

Best,
John Smart
President, ASF

Hi /.,

For articles on the Linguistic User Interface see:
http://singularitywatch.com/lui.html
http://singularitywatch.com/promontorypoint.html

For more on Evolutionary Development:
http://singularitywatch.com/convergentevolution.ht ml

If you find the topic of accelerating technological change fascinating and important you might enjoy our e-newsletter, Accelerating Times :
http://accelerating.org/news/signup.php3

You might also wish to attend our annual fall conference at Stanford, Accelerating Change .
Past conference public archives are at the website of our nonprofit, the Acceleration Studies Foundation:
http://accelerating.org/

We are still early in understanding our universal, cultural, and technological records of accelerating change, and this topic may be the most important and valuable one we could consider, as change and its opportunities may come faster every year forward for the rest of our lives.

We'd love any of you with interest in these fascinating topics to join our community.
Hope to meet some of you at Stanford in September.

Best,
John Smart
President, ASF

Hi /.,

For articles on the Linguistic User Interface see:
http://singularitywatch.com/lui.html
http://singularitywatch.com/promontorypoint.html

For more on Evolutionary Development:
http://singularitywatch.com/convergentevolution.ht ml

If you find the topic of accelerating technological change fascinating and important you might enjoy our e-newsletter, Accelerating Times :
http://accelerating.org/news/signup.php3

You might also wish to attend our annual fall conference at Stanford, Accelerating Change .
Past conference public archives are at the website of our nonprofit, the Acceleration Studies Foundation:
http://accelerating.org/

We are still early in understanding our universal, cultural, and technological records of accelerating change, and this topic may be the most important and valuable one we could consider, as change and its opportunities may come faster every year forward for the rest of our lives.

We'd love any of you with interest in these fascinating topics to join our community.
Hope to meet some of you at Stanford in September.

Best,
John Smart
President, ASF

I found his speaking style engaging and intelligent, and his theories to be enlightening. You each owe it to yourself to read an interview with him, which he gave out copies of to participants in the talks at the camp.

The interview details his theory on the whys and hows of what has been termed "the coming technological singularity". Transhumanists here will know what I speak of - all others, please look into it - google is your friend.

One of the ideas presented in the above interview referenced, John Smart lays out the idea that natural disasters do little to impeded evolutionary development, in fact, he contends that such disasters cause leaps in development:

from the above interview

"Catastrophes are to be expected, and they accelerate change whenever immune systems learn from them. In my own research, there has never been a catastrophe in known universal history (supernova, KT-meteorite, plague, civilization collapse, nuclear detonation, reactor meltdown, computer virus, 9/11, you name it) that did not function to accelerate the average distributed complexity (ADC) of the computational network in which it was embedded." - John Smart

The ideas and theory he sets forth in the above interview make a lot of sense. He does, however, always hold that it is a theory, and may be wrong - several times during his talks at Burning Man he was adament in stating this. However, I think his ideas highlight and explain certain domains within the idea of a technological singularity in a logical and consistent manner.

Please note that I am open to debate on this entire issue. If anyone can offer me detailed analysis or references to papers or writings regarding the unlikelyness or impossibility of a technological singularity occurring, I am all ears, so to speak. I want to hear the other side of the story, from the dissenters. All of it is fascinating, but it is hard to determine what the likelyhood of any of it is if you have only heard one side...

..CS might well stand for crackpots, but definitely some interesting material. Not recommended for philosophobes. may we live in (exponentially acceleratingly) interesting times!

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-s ing.html
http://singularitywatch.com
http://singinst.org

for the love of Life!
*(r)

memes don't exist. tell all your friends.
(enlightened by na-fun)