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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.
Things have pretty much sucked up to this point.
Someone hates these cans.
HULK's Halloween decorations webcam is up!
You can sell more copies of a book that talks about how we will all be rich and immortal than you can of one that predicts more of the same.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
For those of you who enjoy fiction, Accelerando by Charles Stross is one of the best fictional treatments of the Singularity I've had the pleasure of reading. In Accelerando one of the characters refers to the Singularity as the 'rapture of the nerds'. Great stuff.
Seriously, though, will we be able to actually pinpoint a time and say 'this is when the Singularity occurred'? I'm sure that a person from the 19th century, when confronted with the complexity of life today, would contend that the Singularity has already happened, but this time is still (largely) comprehensible to us. As time marches on, and things become steadily more complex, won't humans, augmented by increasing levels of technology, maintain at least a cursory connection?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Yes, but all of his wonderful technology could be used by people that want to preserve their own power and wealth. Why does he assume that it will be used for "good" purposes? Look at nuclear energy, for example. It's a powerful source of energy but the same technology is used to make nuclear weapons.
Bradley Holt
Where is my flying car.
Get on it. I was promised one more than 50 years ago.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
extraordinarily bright future in which technological progress has leapt
This really sounds like one of those "In the year 2000, people will be..." If this type of thing were remotely true, I'd be driving a hover car to work right now. And yes, I know they exist but I don't know a single person that has even the remotest possibility of owning one.
I guess you have to come up with this kind of thing to sell books or articles. I would imagine nobody would be buying a book envisioning the year 2025 as pretty much the same as today with more hard disk space and faster CPUs.
I'm a big tall mofo.
aren't with the technology. We have "utopian" level technology compared to 80 years ago right now. The problem is with the people.
Look at Russia. Rampant alcholism, suicide, murder, gansterism, etc. Yet it is perfectly capable of sending off spaceships and creating high level technology.
I appreciate and welcome all the anticpated advances- but unless we create a worldwide civil society that is robust, honest, and representative; it won't make a dime's worth of difference.
The battle has been "won" in that "nanotechnology" has been repackaged to refer to "really small stuff", rather than to Drexlerian nano-assemblers. I'd be interested in reading what Kurzweil says (although I give the benefit of the doubt to chemists with empirical data over "futurists") but it's not like anyone has successfully demonstrated anything approaching Diamond Age proportions.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"singularity" says nothing about "bright future" or "utopia" per sé, but more descripes a point where the ever increasing innovation rate makes predictions impossible.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Pessimist: "That glass is half empty."
Optimist: "That glass is half full."
Kurzweil: "The self-cloning milk in that glass will replicate thanks to nanobots and end world hunger."
Best Windows Freeware
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
From what I hear, the "peak oil" crisis stands a decent chance of obliterating human society as we know it before any of this wonderful stuff can happen. I would love it if someone would make a good argument why this isn't the case, but I've yet to hear one.
Could the Christians PLEASE get their "Rapture" out of the way first before our "Singularity" arrives?
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
...vastly more powerful computers (imagine more computing power in a head-sized device than exists in all the human brains alive today)
And we shall call it "Marvin"
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Unfrortunately this will only be accessible to the super mega ultra rich.
:-)
I really have no idea why people keep holding to this idea. The "super mega ultra rich" are by no means the powerhouse they once were. Today's society instead revolves around the needs of the middle class. If the middle class will be unable to afford it in the near future, the "super mega ultra rich" aren't going to be able to afford it (or even have it available) now.
Sure, the "super mega ultra rich" can afford nicer stuff than you and I, but they certainly don't have much that you and I don't have. A quick comparison list:
They have -> We have
Expensive Sports Car -> Affordable Sports Car
$3000 Cell Phone -> $0-$500 Cell Phone
Jet Plane -> Cessna
Mansion -> Spacious Home
Ming Vase -> A Vase that you can use
The world isn't what it was in the time of H.G. Wells. I seriously doubt you'll be seeing the "poor" eating the "rich" anytime soon.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The accompanying graph is staggering but only shows five points of data. Its top point shows a life expectancy of 77 years in 1999 or so, which of course is not human life expectancy. Human life expectancy is about 65, ranging from about 43 in poor countries to 79 in the richest country. Kurzweil's statement only applies to the wealthy; in much of Africa, life expectancy fell dramatically during the 1990s.
And since he's clearly talking about life extension, the reader should be aware that there is no exponential curve at the top of the lifespan. His numbers gained mostly from improvements in child nutrition and antibiotics, and there aren't any continued improvements to be made in those (quite the opposite, actually). If we look at the average continued life expectancy for Americans aged 75, between 1980 and 1985 they gained 0.2 years; 1985-1990, 0.3 years; 1990-1995, 0.1 years; 1995-2000, 0.4 years; 1997-2002, 0.3 years. This is good. But it's not exponential lengthening of lifespan.
Oh, and the "decade" within which he promised we'd be ahead of the curve is now half over. The above quote is from 2000.
The main logical error Kurzweil makes is simply that he thinks computers will get smarter because they get faster. Readers who believe the one has anything to do with the other need to go back to Dreyfus' 1972 classic What Computers Can't Do. From there, start reading over the painful history of what is now called "strong A.I.", and what used to be just called "A.I.", to see how necessarily limited our efforts have become. Kurzweil elides over this distinction in the worst way. He starts by saying that computers are now as smart as an insect -- which is unrefutable because nobody can quantify what that means -- and proceeds to predicting that they will be as smart as people once they get n times faster. No, I'm sorry, all that means is that they will be as smart as n insects. Whatever the hell that means.
Mostly I wouldn't care. Fantasy is fun. Except that Pollyannaish predictions of paradise-yet-to-come persuade people that the problems we create for ourselves are irrelevant. If you think the Rapture or the Singularity is going to make all currently conceivable problems laughable, little things like massive extinction and global warming turn into somebody else's problem. They're not -- and our grandchildren, with their very fast and non-sentient computers, and their non-300-year lifespans, are going to be kind of ticked that you and I spoiled the planet.
The whole premise is actually kind of simple I think. There's three basic components to everything that we use in our lives. Raw materials, Energy, and Design. Stuff needs to be thought up(design), it requires ingredients to build(raw materials), and it takes energy to make/use/operate it. Some things, like digital media, have negligible raw material requirements, but they still fit the mold.
So if we can make computers that can actually think well enough to do the design, then getting design done faster just requires better computers. I think it's safe to assume that computers will continue to increase in power. Whether or not they'll become "intelligent" is harder to predict, but lets say for the sake of the singularity that they do.
We also need plentiful energy. If this whole fusion power thing ever pans out, we'll have that.
Raw materials are a little harder. Making things just out of dirt is a bit simplistic. because there's lots of different minerals and such present in dirt, and they're not all suitable for any purpose. There's lots of stuff available in the earth, but extracting it, even if it becomes easy, will most likely be rather destructive. The solution is to make spaceflight reliable enough that we can mine other places, asteroids and the like.
Although that seems to me to be a short term solution, because most things in space are pretty far away. Unless there's some sort of major star trek-ish breakthrough in propulsion, it's never going to be all that simple.
I guess the point is, design and energy are almost like a switch. Either we'll have a couple big breakthroughs that'll bust those two wide open, or we won't. But even if we got cheap brains and cheap energy, the raw materials issue seems like it'd be a harder problem. If you're looking for a long term investment, land would probably be a good one, because it's the hardest thing for us to make more of.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
How cuckoo is Kurzweill really, when he makes another mint from selling his science fiction to the remaining U.S. population, not yet burning The Origin of Species?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
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'.
More's Utopia was a vision of a place where Marxist Socialism actually worked. It had nothing to do with technological progress.
"imagine more computing power in a head-sized device than exists in all the human brains alive today"
Given the MTV generation, don't we have this already?
After reading it, you'll clearly see that there is a fine line between genius and madness. And I can't say which side of the line he's on.
End transmission.
I think we have differing definitions of 'middle class'. I didn't think I was poor, but let me add my family to the list: I have Ancient car that has to be resuscitated every year or so Serendipitously discounted cell phone, normally $100, but I got it for free Eh, we've never vaguely considered getting our own plane Tiny home Tupperware Maybe society does orbit your 'middle class', but that's still pretty far above me.
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?
He uses the M for his SF stuff and drops it for his more mainstream fiction.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Hmmm, like digital recording technology could be used by people who want to preserve their "intellectual property"? Just wait for the nanotech napsters and emules. When there's a "Mr. Nanoassembler" in every kitchen the concept of wealth itself will be changed to something we cannot understand today.
Why does he assume that it will be used for "good" purposes?
I haven't read Kurtzweil's book, but from TFA it seems that this point is addressed. I suppose that a nanotechnological equivalent of a "firewall" will be created somehow. Perhaps we will have an ultra thin layer that's impervious to any nanomechanism. In the same way that our bodies have immune systems to cope with germs, we will need a system to get rid of rogue nanobots.
As described, this sounds just like the singularity Vinge always writes about. I hope he gets credit. I do think there's some sort of singularity coming, but I'm less sure than Kurzweil that we can predict much of what will be on *this* side of it, let alone on the other side.
BTW, for those who (like me) had always pronounced "Vinge" to rhyme with "hinge", according to Vinge himself it rhymes with "dingy".
It didn't happen.
Fast forward to the 1970's at the advent of the personal computer revolution and read magazines like "Byte" or similiar. The coming of age of the PC was to free us from mundane tasks, make work easier, give us more leisure time because things were simpler.
That did not happen either, even if Byte and others were correct in saying that the computer revolution was here to stay.
There is a truism in regards to technology: when something is made easier to do, more of it is expected to be done.
Or, if you prefer, back to the PC analogy: PC's have made things like spreadsheets, memos, etc., far easier for the average office worker, but instead of being rewarded with more leisure time, more spreadsheets and memos etc. are expected instead. In other words, instead of making life easier, more work has been created and now we are more or less enslaved to the technology that it is done on.
History is rife with examples of this: cellphones, for example. Now you cannot get away and work goes with you everywhere, all too often 24/7. Enslaved to the never-ending communication, instead of better, we got more.
George Santayna said those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. True. And history here will repeat itself. Technology will make things easier, and when they are easier it will be expected that more of it will be done.
And, as anyone who has sat on a beach with only a cool drink and the waves to contemplate, more work, no matter how "easy" is not Utopia.
Just reviewing the list, I appear to be missing a cessna and a vase I can use
Folks, I've met Ray and done business with his KAI company. He is freakin' brilliant...and then some. That's not to say his "utopian future" is any more likely than "Jetson flying cars", but he's certainly NOT a goofball or charlatan. I'm currently reading "Fantastic Voyage", his book about life extension. Having a background in medicine, I can say that the things he and the doctor co-author cite are both plausible and in agreement with current research for the most part. Ray is a diabetic who no longer requires insulin injections; he manages his illness through diet and exercise. This quest to fight his illness led to the book. So from his own experience, the quality if not the length of his life has improved through application of some of the ideas in the book. SOO, I'm not going to dismiss the new book until I've read it...he might be right! :o)
I am my own gestalt.
Gabby Johnson: [shouting] The singularity's a n[GONG!]
[the last word is lost in the peal of a church bell]
Harriett Van Johnson: What did he say?
Dr. Sam Johnson: He said the singularity is near.
Matt
Rich guy:
$500,000 for a course of cancer treatment.
Poor guy:
Vitamin C and prayer.
Who do you think is going to live longer?
What are you on about? Let me guess: you live in a gated community and you and your other nouveau riche friends occasionally take your Cessna down to Mexico for the weekend. While there you stay in a secure resort, safe from any undesirables. In your Calvinist world, decent people are well off and if anyone has to struggle to pay the bills, you're pretty sure it's due to moral failings. And like any decent American, you would never call yourself rich. You're average! Middle class! "I buy vases you can use, not like those RICH folks with their ridiculous Ming vases! HA HA HA!!"
Wake up. You're upper class. We will eat you.
*cough* so... yeah, crazy weather lately, eh?
Your computer will be roughly 1,000 faster than what you're using today. You will probably have more than 4,000 times the memory, and a fast hard drive that stores over 100,000 times as much as that floppy you're using. You can buy these supercomputers for less than $500 at Wal-Mart.
That computer will be hooked into a self-directed network that was designed by the Department of Defense and various universities - along with nearly 400,000,000 other machines. Your connection to this network will be 10,000 times faster than the 300 baud modem you're using. In fact, it will be fast enough to download high-quality sound and video files in better than realtime.
There will be a good chance that your computer's operating system will have been written by a global team of volunteers, some of them paid by their employers to implement specific parts. Free copies of this system will be available for download over the hyperfast network. You will have free access to the tools required to make your own changes, should you want to.
You will use this mind-bendingly powerful system to view corporate sponsored, community driven messages boards where people will bitch about having to drive cars that are almost unimaginably luxurious compared to what you have today.
Remember: in some fields, the singularity has already happened.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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
Though I understand your point, I don't completely agree. I think one of the best example would be the internet and the revolution it brought. Yes, I call a revolution having access to such an infinite source of knowledge, having to rethink many business models because of new consumer habits (*ahem*RIAA*ahem*), allowing people to publish their own thoughts and receive feedbacks without having to be ripped off by some publisher (blogs), letting people compare the news and judge by themselves what's true/right or not (CNN vs AlJazeera, for an extreme exemple), and I could go on and on.
And that's just ONE innovation. A major innovation that brought so many changes that we can tell right away it is revolutionary. Even if in 30 or 40 years, the internet is a thing of the past, some other new type of network will emerge to replace it. The internet changed our way of life so much that we can hardly imagine living without it, IMHO.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
If you people would RTFB, you'd discover that the Singularity has a history of intellectual discussion going back around two decades. The treatments in science fiction are a part of that, but just reading the SF isn't going to get you much (any more than reading SF will teach you physics, or math, though it might serve to get you interested).
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-s ing.html
http://singinst.org/what-singularity.html
http://www.accelerationwatch.com/
And let's not forget:
http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/search.pl?query=Sin gularity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singula rity
The first person to use the term "Singularity" as applied to futurism was John von Neumann, and he used it to mean a disruptive change in the future brought about by a high level of technology.
The first person to postulate that recursive self-improvement in Artificial Intelligence would rapidly produce "ultraintelligent machines" was the Bayesian statistician I. J. Good. Today this is known as the "hard takeoff" scenario.
The first person to popularize the term "Singularity", referring to the breakdown in our model of the future which occurs subsequent to the (technological) creation of smarter-than-human intelligence, was the mathematician (and sometime SF author, and inventor of cyberspace) Vernor Vinge.
Kurzweil's "Singularity" belongs to the accelerating change crowd that includes John Smart. Their thesis is, first, that history shows a trend for major transitions to happen in shorter and shorter times, and second, that you can graph this on log charts, get reasonably straight lines, and extend the lines to produce useful quantitative predictions. I agree with the qualitative thesis but not the quantitative thesis.
In my opinion, Kurzweil could greatly strengthen many of his arguments by giving up on the attempt to predict when these things will occur, and just saying: "They will happen eventually." I think that it is just as important, and a great deal more probable, to say: "Eventually we will be able to create Artificial Intelligence surpassing human intelligence, and then XYZ will happen, so we better get ABC done first." Than to say: "And this will all happen on October 15th, 2022, between 7 and 7:30 in the morning."
Since I don't care particularly about when someone builds a smarter-than-human intelligence, just what happens after that, and what we need to get done before; and since I don't think that this necessarily needs to make life incomprehensible, so long as we do things right; I belong to the I.J. Good "hard takeoff" crowd. With a strong helping of Vernor Vinge, because I think there's a difference in kind associated with a future that contains mind smarter than human, which we do not get just from talking about flying cars, or space travel, or even nanotechnology.
On Slashdot, someone says "intelligence" and you think of all the computer CEOs with IQs of 120 and the starving professors with IQs of 160, and you think that means intelligence isn't important. But you will not find many excellent CEOs, nor professors, nor soldiers, nor artists, nor musicians, nor rationalists, nor scientists, who are chimpanzees. Intelligence is the foundation of human power, the strength that fuels our other arts. Respect it. When someone talks about enhancing human intelligence or building smarter-than-human AI, pay attention. That is what matters to the future, not political yammering, not our little nation-tribes. In 200 million years nobody's going to give a damn who flew the first flying car or
Planetary death rate: 150,000 lives per day. End the slaughter
I really have no idea why people keep holding to this idea. The "super mega ultra rich" are by no means the powerhouse they once were.
Oh, just wait! Another decade or so of Republican control and we'll get there.
They have -> We have
Let's just add a couple, shall we?
1)
Complete access to health care -> Weak/expensive health insurance
2)
Self perpetuating wealth (via tax loopholes, offshore accounts, etc) -> Constant taxation and standard of living cost increases
2 is the kicker, really. Once you attain a certain level of wealth, there are many financial vehicles available that can maintain the money, and even grow it a bit. Eliminating the estate tax will make this possible in perpetuity, effectively creating an aristocratic class in the US. Once this is accomplished (and it's only a matter of time with the Republicans in charge of everything) we will have the era of the "super mega ultra rich" back again.
They have -> You have -> I have
Expensive Sports Car -> Affordable Sports Car -> A 1984 Ford Ares
$3000 Cell Phone -> $0-$500 Cell Phone -> $0.35/minute payphone
Jet Plane -> Cessna -> Sometimes when I'm in my cubical I put out my arms and make airplane noises
Mansion -> Spacious Home -> Small 1 bedroom apartment next door to noisy @ssholes
Ming Vase -> A Vase that you can use -> No vase, but no plants so who cares
Private doctors -> public HMO -> My health plan: don't get sick (thanks to both Clinton and Bush)
Hot women -> fat women -> blind women
Electric heat -> Gas heat -> I just have gas
Gold plated Mozart records -> vynil Beatles records -> police record
Privacy -> a false sense of security -> run, Forest, run
Celebrity friends -> friends -> a socket puppet
Huge income, lots of time off -> modest income, unpaid overtime -> No income, lots of time off
Sex in a private jacuzzi -> sex in the community pool -> sex at the zoo (and not with other patrons)
Dashing good looks -> good hegine -> the roaches I live with are disgusted by me
Vote Republican -> vote Democrat -> Voted for the rabbit to get the tricks
Plays golf -> plays bowling -> plays with himself
Bogus diploma from Harvard/Yale because daddy is a major contributor -> diploma from community college -> Ph.D. in mathematics and computer science (yeah kids, stay in school)
We will never run out of oil because we'll switch to something else first. What will that be? I have no idea but I know that it will be better than oil, just as oil has been better than horsepower. Why am I so confident? Because we managed to make the transition from horses to cars without the end of the world happening. I'll bet that if you go do the research, you'll find predictions of how human society would crash because there simply wasn't enough space to grow the hay to feed all the horses needed to sustain society.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Wisdom comes with age (at least for some), and one thing we learn is that the next generation is not so different from the last as they would like to believe.
Regarding the guy born in 1750, I'm guessing a healthy, well-educated Thomas Jefferson would do a bang-up job making decisions on stuff like the Internet. Yes, to meet my standards he would need an enormous change of heart regarding slavery and racism, but I believe that's possible. It doesn't -have- to wait for the next generation.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
The people of 1505 might have been rather impressed by societal change through 1755 (development of stock companies, the scientific method, the reformation) -- but the people of 1755 would be absolutely floored by the world of 2005.
While people may be living a bit longer than they used to, I'd argue that it's only because we're preventing people from dying prematurely, rather than actively extending life span in general.
Say that the average lifespan of a human body under optimum conditions is 90 years (a figure I just made up, bear with me). By getting people to stop smoking and eat better, we're simply getting closer to those "optimum conditions" whatever they are.
But no amount of non-smoking and eating well is going to get you to live to 150. That would require fundamental breakthroughs in medicine and, as such, is entirely unconnected with historical life expectancy figures.
Correct in principle, but not in the details. Over the last 100 years, life expectancy at age 65 in the US has been increasing at a linear rate of about one month per year. Other industrialized countries may have rates of increase somewhat higher or lower than that. Compared to someone starting to draw Social Security in 1940, today's retiree at age 65 has an expected "years to live" that's only about six years longer, not 15. Studies done in the early years of Social Security included this effect -- the 1940 forecasts of how long people would live in the 1990s were almost exactly correct. A bigger effect on pension economics is the fraction of the population that reaches retirement age. Industrialized countries are safer places than they were 100, or even 50, years ago. Fewer people die in their 40s and 50s. While more people live long enough to claim SS benefits, those same people also make contributions for many more years.
The SS "crisis" in the US is overstated. An interesting place to start is the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's "A 125-Year Picture of the Federal Government's Share of the Economy, 1950 to 2075", which can be found online here. Using today's benefit formulas, SS expenses as a fraction of the national economy are predicted to stabilize at just over 6% of GDP (Figure 2 summarizes this nicely). I claim that we can afford this. According to this study, by 2075, by far the largest single component of the federal budget will be interest on the debt.
o We can't go faster than the speed of sound.
o
Any time you say "can't", sorry, you're likely to be wrong.
So here we go with another round of "The future's going to rock"/"The future's going to suck" debate. The utopian idealists versus the eco-depressive fetishists. If there's one thing I'm sure of, if we do someday go through a Singularity-type event, someone somewhere will be whining about how the benefits of it aren't distrbibuted with perfect equality.
Let me speak as someone who actually has read the book, which I would assume sets me somewhat apart from most of the 'reviews' in this thread. Kurzweil's good and well worth reading if you want any idea at all as to where things will probably eventually go. I say probably because, of course, there are no guarantees (we could all get smacked by a massive comet tomorrow--this is not a forgiving universe). And I say eventually, because like so many others, I think Kurzweil's timeline is a bit optimistic. But when I say a bit optimistic, I mean by perhaps a decade or two, not centuries or millennia (Kurzweil addresses this all in depth in the book, and many of the comments on this thread make the very mistake he's trying to educate people out of--thinking in terms of linear progression when we're actually seeing exponential growth across a massive number of fronts). I think Kurzweil is being optimistic on a personal level due to his own age--the man's in his fifities, and no doubt worries about the odds of personally surviving to see such the radical shift that he is prognosticating and anticipating.
What intrigues me most is the prospect for human enhancement. I consider this to be the most desirable, and perhaps even most inevitable, course towards the Singularity. We already have implants to allow deaf people to hear by tying directly into the auditory nerve (cochlear implants). We will follow that eventually with similar implants for vision, and eventually for other aspects of the brain itself. What will start as a humane effort to return normal function to those deprived of it will eventually permit us to merge with powerful computer systems, and gain the advantages that will come with that (imagine that your very imagination is augmented to include a high-powered CAD system, along with perfect memory recall, should you wish to use it). If we're smart, we can work to hone the best aspects of our humanity (our imagination, our sense of wonder, our empathy) while minimizing the worst of our nature (the primitive bloodlust that we carry as a result of our mammalian nature). Yes, yes, it could all go very wrong, but to those who point fingers towards nuclear weapons as evidence of our incorigibly beastly nature, I'd point out that they have been used only twice, and since the horror of their consequences have sunk in, they have not been used in anger since. Most people are good, decent folk. The eco-depressives strive to convince you otherwise, though the lack of mass suicide among the green folks is perhaps the best evidence that even they don't believe things are as utterly hopeless as they say. Yes, we have problems. No, they are not insurmountable, even with the technology that we have today, to say nothing of the technology we will have tomorrow.
Enhancement of human intelligence also allows us to avoid most of the whole "Is Strong A.I. possible?" debate. By working to increase both the scope and scale of human intelligence, we're already working with a source of 'I', and are layering in the 'A', seeing what works and what doesn't. An evolutionary approach, if you will. Ultimately, I don't really know if it will be possible to transfer my thought processes from biological neurons to nanocircuitry, but besides the notion of a 'soul', I really don't see why it couldn't happen. As thinkers on the subject have pointed out, you lose brain cells all the time (even if you don't consume as much beer as the average engineering student), and yet you retain a sense of continuity with your past self. If you were to imagine a process that replaced your existing brain cells one at a time with artificial neurons that were functionally identical to the cells
In a world without walls, there is no need for Windows.
There are currently a few Cessna's on eBay with a buy-it-now price less than I paid for my car. A couple for under $20,000.
Almost anyone with a white collar job can afford a Cassna IF it is a priority for them, and they are willing to make do with a cheap car and broadcast TV.
No wonder envy is a cardinal sin. It is so fucking annoying that what Jesus would do is bitchslap you.
The average person will have a 5000 sq ft home, a self-driven car thats nicer than our nicest limos today, a jucuzzi, televisions anywhere/everywhere, instant commication with everyone they love/know, and all the porn and violence they could ever want. The poor will have 3500 sq ft homes, a nice self-driven car, televisions everywhere, instant commication with everyone they know/love and all the porn a violence that could ever want, but they're complain about how horrible their lives are and how sucky they are because they dont have what the average person has. And, as now, they wont be willing to put any effort, energy or risk into getting it. In other words, not much will change.
We have Utopia today! Like the future it is available only to the elite. In the Utopian future it will be the same - the rest of us will live to 40 and die of easily curable/preventable disease.
This shit will not come cheap, those in power will do everything in their ability to stay in power. These are the rules of the world and have been since day 1.
Type I or Type II? If it's Type I, I'd very much like to know how he's still alive. Type II is treatable with diet & exercise, but a lot of people are incapible of regimenting themselves to do it.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Utopia.
"I dunno. The gap between "no smarter than people" and "smart enough to live on a planet" seems rather large from this side."
Well, not to undo your argument, rather to add to it, even people haven't managed the "smart enough to live on a planet" phase. We're not too hot on protecting our habitat. Even without tinfoil hat on, it's easy to see we're pretty sloppy, and given our ever increasing numbers we could get into real trouble on a number of issues.
One very optimistic view would be that maybe computers would have the smarts not to saw off the branch they're sitting on, in other words, help us steer clear of our more obvious flaws when doing all those wonderful things with nano whatnots.
Since everything we make gets used more or less evenly for good and for bad (not to put too fine a point to it, and feel free to make your own balance), the potential to screw up at very fundamental levels will grow exponentially as well. Any help with that, even from pinhead-sized computers, is welcome indeed...
Cheers
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Technology tends to help offense more than defense, especially combined with an open society. A defender doesn't get the luxury of knowing time or place.
Consider, for instance, 1945-era technology: a Hiroshima-type device. The difficulty of constructing and moving one into position is far less than the difficulty of figuring out who's built them and where they are. Sure, you can use radiation scanners and searches to achieve near-100% coverage of containers -- if you're willing to bring international shipping to a crawl, and hire vast numbers of screeners. On the other hand, an attacker only needs to move a single device into an appropriate position to have an impact, rather than invest in defenses at every point of entry. The construction or acquisition of a nuclear device may be difficult, but is simple compared to the defender's task...
And we've had 60 years to work on the technological means for preventing nuclear attacks. During that time, the principal defense relied on the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction, which is only a meaningful defense if (a) you can identify your attacker, which is a lot easier with an land-based ICBM launch
(or even SLBM, considering that the SLBM-capable club is fairly small IIRC) than a smuggled device, and (b) your attacker would seriously object to his own destruction (or of something else that you can destroy).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
They have -> We have
Expensive Sports Car -> Affordable Sports Car
$3000 Cell Phone -> $0-$500 Cell Phone
Jet Plane -> Cessna
Mansion -> Spacious Home
Ming Vase -> A Vase that you can use
I'm solidly middle class right now (or at least my family is, I'm in college and helping to bring them down at the moment. It all gets paid off, assuming a few engineering jobs remain in English speaking nations) I have a beat up old truck, no cell phone, no plane of any kind, a dorm room with a roommate, and no vases at all. A cell phone is probably within my price range, but I'd rather buy a few cds or a video game every month. I supose you are so middle class with your fine suburban home and I don't know how you manage with only a Cessna. You're rich, man, and you don't even realize it. I'm probably better off than a lot of people myself. I get to go to a public college, and that is beyond the reach of a lot of people from my high school. You are fairly close to the ultra super mega rich yourself, compared to a lot of people.
SAILING MISHAP
Except they don't have all the same things... at best they have one of those things, usually with some sort of sacrifice involved.
It doesn't matter. Viewed as a whole, the middle class is still a larger economic power house in all of these areas than the "rich" are. The fact that one man choses a plane, while another man choses a sports car, while another man choses a 2000sqft home near a city still adds up to more $$$ than the upper class puts into these areas.
Luxury goods are directed to those with lots of disposable income, which, IMO, does not typically include the middle class.
That doesn't seem to stop a large portion of the population from purchasing an SUV they don't need, a home entertainment center they don't need, a boat they don't need, and hundreds of other luxury items that they don't need. The middle class has some disposable income. They key is that they have to decide which things they really want with that disposable income.
It really is the same for the rich, except that they are looking on a more lavish level. Sure, they could afford all the same stuff middle class people do, but that's not necessarily what they want. Thus their $10,000 suits, $500,000 Exeleros, $10,000,000 private jets, and other nicities that can drain their bank just as fast as it can drain yours or mine. That's why many of these rich folks are attached these nicities as part of their position. i.e. They can't really afford a private jet, so their company pays for them to have one.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
When minds are ported to machines, we will soon network beyond recognition as individuals. Kurzweil is a digital immigrant with uncommon powers of imagination, but he doesn't understand even the sands now shifting beneath him.
Digital natives already live in an editable world. From fan fiction and remixes to wikis and wares, we claim and respect less individual ownership than our elders. This is equally true of all property, creation, and ideas. We blab ever more freely to the entire online world ever more intimate details of our "personal" lives, our personal and professional lives are ever less separate, we expose ever more details of our presence, our purpose, our thoughts, ourselves.
We give in unprecedented amounts and haste to relieve the suffering of millions we would never have met in a world of just five years ago. I'm a boy from 1970s Ohio; my neighborhood was defined as the distance my two feet could take me. "Long distance telephone calls" were themselves prohibitively expensive. An unthinkable two decades later, our neighborhood is defined as the distance our thoughts can travel, streaming freely (and with incredible clarity) in Google Talk. The billions living in Asia are as much a part of my community as anyone, anymore. More than half my colleagues in the U.S. are from the other half of the planet, and my next job might very well be on their turf. I hear the weather's great in Bangalore.
We can publish anything, anytime, to anyone anywhere, and I'd rather not be the only author. I'd rather not pay for access to others' thoughts and creations, and I'd rather not charge for access to my own. Let's talk about profit. I suppose profit is something you get by lying to whomever pays you. You convince them what you offer is worth more than truly it is, and then you profit. Sounds like the ancient, barbaric oppression from which humanity is emerging; sounds evil. No thanks.
Let's metaphorically say that on the order of 10,000 years ago humankind first effectively wrote, recording thought extrasomatically for posterity on tokens representing commerce between ancient farmers. 1,000 years or so ago, we effectively published (in 1041, movable clay type was invented in China). 100 or so years ago, we jumped into cars, we recorded real images and audio and video. We left ever more of ourselves behind, expressed ourselves and learned and experience ever more extrasomatically. We began living ever more through machines. It took thousands of years for us to realize what began 10,000 years ago, hundreds of years to realize what began 1,000 years ago, and it took decades to realize what began roughly 100 years ago.
10 years go, we began "browsing" and the world hit the Web. Critical mass for this as a publishing medium was achieved almost "instantly," let's say within the course of one year. Finally, 1 year ago, GOOG hit the ticker, and one day later, /. began whorring full-force for Google :)
Seriously, the point is we are less somatic than ever, and the latest jump (here on the Internets) happened in less than one generation. Thus digital immigrants like Kurzweil are on the slow side of a huge leap away from ancient human nature. This generation gap gapes unlike any generation gap before it.
We are merging already, with only a minority of the world online and only Riemannian Sums of shared experience among the connected. When we are online, the integral of connectivity will swiftly overwhelm whatever remaining essence of the ancient, the organic, the fragile, human individual.
Lifespans of 300 years will be suffered only by the relative Luddites who insist on their intellectual independence. Their inferiority will ensure both their irrelevance, and the irrelevance of any concept of "lifespan." These trends are easily visible now, to anyone whose mentality is digitally native.
So far all that humans have shown any proclivity for is eating, crapping and sleeping. Any thing more complicated that this just turns into a total clusterfark.
word.
If one were to completely solve aging, the "average" longevity would be 2000-3000 years (limited by ones hazard function). If one adds to that nanotechnology based "enhancements" one is probably pushing 10,000 years. Taking uploading into account, ones lifespan could be trillions of years. Ray pushes the envelope but he may have some problems with where the actual limits are.
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.
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from."
The suffering part is much more true than they would have intended. Without the bad times, the good times in your life seem like the same gelatinous goo as the times you don't remember. You define happiness by your previous unhappiness.
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
You own a computer. You can read and write. If we're playing "teeming masses", everyone posting on here is gonna get eaten. I'm sure you think you're middle class as well, etc., etc.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Jaysyn, The specifics are in the 1st part of the book. When I met him in 1989, it was business, so I didn't know his personal situation. I THINK it is Type II as I recall the onset was after he was an adult. The doctor he wrote the book with is who helped design his treatment plan. Going on the book, it sounds like it worked. UB
I am my own gestalt.
Speak truth to power.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The second point is related to the fact that humanity doesn't have centuries of time ahead of it... ...A few decades after we mostly stop dying we will ascend to the posthuman level...
Up until right around here, your argument was fairly sound. Then you had to throw your religious dogma at us.
All this "posthuman" "transhuman" "neo-human" crap is downright silly. I don't look much like the men who built the ancient city of Ur, and even less like their great-grandparents, but I'm still human. Likewise, my descendants might (for all I know) choose to engineer themselves into flying, genderless, half-robot people who communicate telepathically and compose artistic works directed at senses that I don't even have... but they will also still be human. Besides, they might not. They may very well conclude (again, for all I know... and for all you, for that matter) that those people who built Ur are actually the highest ideal of humanity, and genetically build their way back to being just like them, cheerfully living in little huts in the desert and eating off pottery they made themselves.
The one thing we can be fairly certain of, based on all forcasts of today which were made by people in the recent past, is that most (if not all) current pictures of what the future will be like are almost certainly wrong.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Look at the proportion of the world's population living on less than a dollar a day, or the local equivalent thereof. It's lower now than it has been at any point in history. Ever. "
By "any point in history ever" I assume you mean "since 1985" when this meaningless statistic was invented by the World Bank to justify neoliberal economic policies.
The relative price of the cheapest commodity foodstuffs increases at a different rate than average inflation. This $1/day statistic assumes that the poor spend their $1 on the same ratio of items as is common to the economy as a whole. So as the price of airplane tickets, cofee, long distance telephone calls, television screens, automobiles and consumer electronics imported from China, become cheaper, we deduce that fewer and fewer people live on less than $1 a day. Of course none of these poor actually got $1 in cash today or ever (but it is based on relative purchasing power of income compared to $1.08 USD 1993). However, the poor living in the poorest countries in the world do not benefit from the importation of cheap manufactured goods from China (compared to expensive american made goods), because they can barely afford to eat (in fact they can not afford it) let alone buy manufactured goods made anywhere whatsoever.
So is a person living in a third world country today with access to the equivalent of $1 USD (or $1.08 1993 USD to be precise, as this is the currently used standard) actually able to eat the same amount of food as he would have been able to in 1993? well... if he took his food in the form of coffee, tobacco, clothing manufactured in a sweat shop or some other locally produced product he probably would be able to. But since he is more likely today to need to import his food from a richer country in 2005 than he would in 1993 (let alone 1905) I am a bit skeptical.
In the meantime the export of manufactured goods produced by the inhuman exploitation of labour has helped push US prices down, increased the apparent value of $1.00 american, while the simultaneous virtual cessation of local food production in third world countries (in favour of cash crops as mandated by the IMF/WTO in exchange for assistance to corrupt local governments who strangely have a tendency to be propped up by the CIA before being accused of human rights violations and deposed as soon as they disobey their american patrons) has increased the local cost of foods, giving that $1.00 much less food purchasing power than in the past relative to purchasing power for goods in general.
And this says absolutely nothing whatsoever about the relative wellbeing of countries as a whole (only the critically poor), and also says nothing whatsoever about the wealth of those third world nations 100 or 200 years ago.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
...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
Yes, Kurzweil has the uber tech credentials to lend legitimacy to his predicting endeavors. However, He ignores many, many aspects of our current reality that will definitely impinge his utopian dreamworld.
1 138883/qid=1128375836/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002- 2835979-1699208?v=glance&s=books
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First off, the current fossil fuel based economy needs to be quickly and with as little disruption as possible, moved to a new and low polluting fuel. For the business side of his predictions to take place, this will have to be addressed. There are plenty of opinions about this, including this one:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/087
Perhaps we could look at what many biologists are saying is only a matter of time. A world pandemic, similar to what happened in 1918.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/038
Last but not least, when technology gets to the point of enabling humans to live several hundred years, who gets to enjoy such benefits?
No, I think a combination of Kurzweils book and Bill Joys Why the future doesn't need us is more likely.
Let's not forget Murphys Law...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
You are wrong, utopia is where I rule with iron fist over mankind with an army of atomic men and... oh, you mean your utopia.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
the rest of us
/. community) in the have-nots group. You know, cuz we obviously aren't in the 1% that can afford food, shelter, health service, electricity, and internet access.
I love how you include "us" (the
no comment
The more that becomes available the more that they want and as all ways the only way to achieve this is by taking it from everybody else. When you have 10 million why strive for 100 million and then for 1000 million and then for 10,000 million etc. , regardless of how much harm they do to society in achieving those petty goals.
Even when the real measure of their achievment is the harm and disruption that they cause to society as a result of their individual greed and their need to have more than anybody else (the celebrated sociopath). Of course the internet might yet create a change as we do get the oppurtunity to mock those individuals regardless of the amount of money that they can spend on self promoting PR, they need to because deep down the guilt and shame are still there (hello bog balls ballmer and wee willie gates ;-)).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I have NO problem with living to 125-300 years....I just don't want my body to look and feel like I'm 125 to 300 years
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.
Dear Sir,
It has been brought to our attention that your have openly been making false and misleading claims about our patented product "the future". We hereby order you to cease and desist all written or verbal speculation about the features that will and will not be offered in this product. At what we consider a relevant time, we will make our own press releases about what may or may not constitute your allowable future to whom we consider to be relevant and interested parties. Until then, rest assured that we are only doing what's best for you, your family, your country and/or whoever else our press department believes is relevant at the time. Please also remember that our extensive patents on "the future" only exist to protect our current investments, without which, there would be no "future". "The future" is a very important strategic play for our company and we intend to defend it to the fullest extent of our law.
Sincerely
Monsanto
Well, it's all fine and dandy to dismiss arguments about posthumanity by claiming that "they will still be human", but this is pointless, unless you provide a definition of what a human is. If you consider "flying, genderless, half-robot telepaths" to be human, that is great, but not very helpful for the discussion.
You see, I was making a point that posthumans (whom you may still consider humans) will be able to avoid boredom of extended lives. By "composing artistic works directed at senses that youn don't even have", for example. If you agree with this point, it doesn't really matter whether you consider them human or not. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
However, it's just easier to use different labels for different objects. We do not call people "children" after they live for about 20 years, because they change so much, even though that change is gradual and they retain most of the essential features of a child to some extent. We call them adults. Similarly posthumans will be sufficiently different from modern, unmodified biological humans to warrant a different word.
P.S. And calling my argument "dogma" was unnecessary, especially since your disagreement appears to stem primarily from terminological differences.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.