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Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near"
popo writes "The Wall Street Journal has a (publicly accessible) review of "The Singularity is Near" -- a new book by futurist, Ray Kurzweil. By "Singularity", Kurzweil refers not to a collapsed supernova, but instead to an extraordinarily bright future in which technological progress has leapt by such exponentially large bounds that it will be... well, for lack of a better word: 'utopian'. "Mr. Kurzweil... thinking exponentially, imagines a plausible future, not so far away, with extended life-spans (living to 300 will not be unusual), vastly more powerful computers (imagine more computing power in a head-sized device than exists in all the human brains alive today), other miraculous machines (nanotechnology assemblers that can make most anything out of sunlight and dirt) and, thanks to these technologies, enormous increases in wealth (the average person will be capable of feats, like traveling in space, only available to nation-states today)." On one hand its fantastically (even ridiculously) optimistic, but on the other hand, I sure as hell hope he's right." Got mailed a review copy; I'm not finished yet, but I agree - optimistic perhaps, but the future does look pretty interesting.
Iain M Banks (to be confused with the non-sci-fi writer Iain Banks) has written a lot of book about "The Culture" a man/machine symbiosis that has created a utopian society in which people get what they need.
Actually it sounds also like Robert Heinlein, Asimov and most other Sci-Fi writers I've ever read. But mostly like Iain M Banks who books are a cracking read.
Living to 300... of course we will, we'll have to work till we are 280 though.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
There are several different types of Singularities postulated by the various SF authors who have been involved in popularizing the term over the last few decades. In Vinge's original Singularity, in Marooned in Realtime, the entire human race (minus a few people in stasis bubbles) simply vanished--uploaded, transcended, no one knew. In Stross' novels, the main marker is usually the awakening of a superhuman AI.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Why stop there, fuck 300. How about we don't have to die. Why wouldn't the same chemical modifications that would allow for a 300 hundred year lifespan continue to work forever?
Well, that's easy enough to fix.
;-)
Vase
You can purchase a used Cessna for ~$20,000-$50,000, or you can build one for ~$20,000. You'd probably get a bank loan similar to your car loan, but you may be able to stretch the loan for a longer period than a car. (Planes usually last at least 20 years. With good care on the airframe, it can last two to three times that.)
Which isn't to say that you should run out and get a plane. Many people (myself included) don't have sports cars either, despite the fact that they can afford them. Only bother with a plane if you actually want to fly.
As for the vase... I take it you're not married?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There is a truism in regards to technology: when something is made easier to do, more of it is expected to be done.
And what happens when it is affordable to just manufacture robots and AIs to do the work? And manufacture robots and AIs to manufacture and design robots and AI? We could get to a point where it is vastly more efficient to manufacture "workers" than to train humans to do the work.
I don't know what happens then. But it certainly isn't just "more of the same". An observer could not have predicted human society based on what the world was like before intelligence arose. Similarly, we cannot predict the future "society" (whatever they call it) that will arise from the hive mind of intelligences replicating.
I have no idea when or if we'll get there. But I think it is intellectually lazy (and, in fact, indefensible) to say that the future is guaranteed to be like the past just because it "usually is". "Usually" human beings don't even have civilization. It's an unpredictable recent development since the last ice age. I expect more unpredictable developments in our future.
"And as a side point, the world progresses by generations. The additude and bias of the last generation is replaced by the fresh more adapted views of the next generation. As a whole, humanity grows by death of the old, and birth of the new. Think your government representitives are bad now, then think of what would happen if a guy who was born in 1750 was making the decisions on stuff like the Internet"
Would you rather live in a *Logan's Run* civilization where you have to be "renued" at the ripe age of 30? (yes, I realize the age was lower in the book).
And oh my....the tyranny to live under the rule of someone who has lived a long time. Seems like that's what we tolerate today here in the U.S. under the Constitution.
I also think there are several figures from the 18th Century that could easily function in the 21st (and later) and our society would be better if they still lived. I'm thinking about Ben Franklin and Voltaire in particular.
Militarily, just imagine if the military minds of Julius Caesar, Alexander and Cromwell held commanded in today's battlefields.
Your post really discredits people from the past and cheapens their individual contributions.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
This reminds me of the comment my wife made when I said "Wouldn't it be cool of someone came up with something where you did not have to sleep?" Her respond "No, becuase you would be tired all the time." The point that excites everyone is not the potential of 230 years of extended dementia, but being able to live with good health for 300 years. Why does everyone assume if we learn to exend life, it will only occu by exending the most frail portion of our lifespan? That actually seems like the least likely scenario. Is is easier to keep a 80 year old body alive for 200 years or a 20 year old body?
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
Except our desire for more and better is what drives our technology and science. So if we are to continue to progress as a society we have to think its sucky and have the drive to change it instead of just bitch and moan about it.
I think the engineer says something more along the lines of: "The glass is rigorously designed to accomodate twice normal loads."
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
If you have at least $100,000 to invest, you probably want a fee based advisor. His job would be to find a way to minimize tax issues, maximize the growth of your funds (within your risk comfort profile), and generally help you work your financal investments. In exchange, he takes a super-small percentage (~0.5%) of the money as payment. Thus it's in his interest to make your money grow, as he'll see a greater return.
Your best bet is to go bother a few companies like National Financial Partners or TD Waterhouse. They can help hook you up with an advisor. Just remember not to agree to anything until you're comfortable with the idea.
Disclaimer: I have no experience giving my own money to these guys, just second hand experience. So do procede carefully. Please?
Two other flaws in Kurzweil's claims:
First, his view of the socio-technical aspects of technological innovation are entirely one-way. I've not seen him address the problem that such advances in power are only sustainable as long as there is a market for them. In the case of many other technologies such as the internal combustion engine, cooling systems, and aviation, advances in power and capacity tapered off due to a lack of a strong market demand.
The second flaw hinted by the first, he seems to play fast and loose with his definitions of complexity and rate of innovation.
At the point of transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer, starvation was much higher among the farmers. It took a centuries in just about every culture before farming was as reliable a source of food as it replaced. Farming produced more food per acre, but popultation density went up as well, so the average person was worse off.
Things are much better today, but not every step is a step forward from the individual's point of view.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well, it's just my bullshit theory, but I'd say that the shit-shoveler is happier because he has simple, physical challenges often met and bested. The modern well-to-do life gains a sense of ennui and purposelessness because the inadequately-evolved human animal is still freaking out over needing food, shelter, and crushing competition, even if everything is better than fine. Without real challenges to stimulate and satiate the hunting urge, petty trifles fill in the space with just as much gravity.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
... but Collapse is about doom and gloom, not more of the same. It just caters to the other end of the manic/depressive spectrum.
The Technology: Nuclear Power
The Promise: Cheap, clean, safe, plentiful electric power.
The Reality: Expensive power with waste we don't know how to deal with, but it does have the added bonus of creating by-products that can be turned into horrible weapons of mass destruction.
The Technology: Robots
The Promise: Sit back in your easy chair and let Robby the Robot mow the lawn and take out the trash while you relax and have a beer.
The Reality: Sit back in the unemployment line and let Robby the Robot do your manufacturing job while you look for another (and don't forget to mow the lawn and take out the garbage when you get home).
The Technology: Super Intelligent Computers and Nanobots
The Promise: Utopia!
The Reality: A computer smarter than everyone on Earth and unstopable microscopic, self-replicating robots; what could possibly go wrong?!? (cue the Terminator theme music)
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Actually my favorite singularity fiction comes from Vernor Vinge. I think he actually came up with the singularity idea - the link goes to a 1993 talk in which he presents the idea.
I don't know whether we'll reach that singularity he talks about, but I really enjoy his books, for example the early True Names, or more recent books such as A deepness in the sky or A fire upon the deep. These last two are my two favorite science fiction books.
And, no, I'm not affiliated with V. Vinge.
As to your "we've always managed in the past" argument, I'd suggest you read Jared Diamond's new book "Collapse". In it he shows that we've
Today's political structures don't make me hopeful for our being able to manage even the oil crisis, but the reality is many times worse because we don't just have that one crisis... we have many. Energy, climate change, resource (and especially fresh water) shortages, bubbles in the financial structures, growing wealth disparities and an ecological footprint that's already exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth. And all those crises have started to reach critical stages. Right now still very few people see it, but even over the next few months they will get more and more ominous and obvious. Fasten your seatbelts, civilization is about to go for the ride of its history.
It's worth pointing out that a US citizen of 1905 would, with some training, be perfectly comfortable in 2005. We're still doing the same things, and we're organized in basically the same way. A lot of things are a lot easier, but they're not fundamentally different. We have a bunch of magic toys, like electric refrigeration, air conditioning, ubiquitous automobiles, and the Internet, but we're doing fundamentally the same things with them that we were in 1905. The amount of future shock would be far, far lower than in the timeframes you mention.
The single biggest change is probably the Internet, but I tend to think that, at least so far, its impact is a bit overstated. Yes, we all have access to tons of information very easily that we didn't have before, but that also means we have access to bad information much more easily, too. With the physical costs of paper publication, there was a gatekeeper effect that improved knowledge quality. If you go to a library, the chances of anything you read being true are far higher than doing the same research on the Net. I'm sure that there are far more profound shifts that will occur because of the Net, but I don't think they've really happened yet.
Until we figure out a new energy source that is an order of magnitude better than what we have now, it strikes me that things won't improve that much more. In fact, in many areas, they stand a very high chance of regression.
In fact, if you look at the main things social conservatives of all religions are "for", it amounts to supporting this stone age social structure. Have lots of kids, be fearful of your lord, keep the young folks locked up until they can be indoctrinated in the system, don't question any of this or we'll knock the shit out of you. Actually, large parts of the world still work this way.
David Brin writes about this a lot. He talks about the feudal pyramid being replaced by a diamond-shaped society, where the poor aren't the largest class, for the first time in human history.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
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...is that they assume basic human nature will change: That with access to wealth, to automation, and to education, people will trancend their basic natures and become something greater. One problem with this line of reasoning is in deciding what constitutes "better" (or the measurement of "progress"). Values are inherently arbitrary decisions; your ideals might be very different from mine, with no clear way to compare the two objectively. Your utopia, then, might be my dystopia. Another problem is that wealth, automation, and education are merely tools. They are inherently amoral. We have to put them to a purpose, and we have to judge those purposes as being "good" or "bad", and sometimes there are unintended consequences. To use a trite example, nuclear energy mirrors our good desires (for a cheap and clean energy source), our evil desires (for a powerful weapon), and the unintended consequences (there's actually some dangerous waste that must be dealt with).
Well, I guess I'm ranting, but I really don't buy the idea of the Utopian Singularity, or of anyone's Utopia, for that matter.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
"That's why there's an ever shrinking lower-class population"
Are you stating this as a fact? Because it sounds rather spurious without any data backing it up. I have not seen such a claim before. Maybe you are talking about absolute rather than relative poverty? Or maybe class in a different sense altogether?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Yes, and if this book is anything like his previous books, he will no doubt spend an entire chapter recounting each and every accomplishment he has made since birth, lest you forget you are reading from a "genius."
Arguing that individual farmers were worse-off than individual hunters really doesn't make any sense.
Why did the farmer population go up? It went up because people had more kids that survived to adulthood.
That was because they had more resources to care for those kids. For the most part, individuals must have been better off.
Actually, it can make sense if you change your definition of "better off". Studies of current hunter-gatherer societies (yes, they exist) show that the work to socializing time ratio is much lower in those societies than it is in subsitance farming socities. The reason farming is so prevalent is that you can support a bigger population. However subsistance farmers have much greater instances of malnutrition and tooth-decay due to their starch-based diets, and have a much higher rate of disease, due to their crowded living situations.
So an individual in a HG society works much less, socializes more, has better food, and is generally healthier than the subsistance farmer. On the flipside there is a higher infant mortality rate, and therefor smaller families. Thus, survival wise the farmer is "better off", but in terms of quality of life the HG is "better-off". I think that's what the parent is talking about.
Don't romanicize the subsistance farming lifestyle, just because you know so little about it. Likewise, don't admonish others for romanticizing the hunting and gathering lifestyle, when you yourself know so little about it.