Airships for non-time-critical journeys? That's a very intriguing idea. It reminds me of a paradigm shift I experienced recently.
My wife and I bought our first robot, a roomba naturally. We watched it intensely as it cleaned for the first hour. When it finished it docked itself to recharge. My wife then noted that there was still some fuzzies on the carpet and that it didn't seem to pick everything up. I told her that it would probably pick it up on its next run.
After a couple days of running the roomba when we would leave the house, the carpets suddenly are cleaner than they have ever been. So clean in fact that our allergies seem to have improved (probably placebo, but that roomba does pick up the dust).
I realized that our house cleaning robots don't work like the Jetsons led us to believe they would, where they clean the house 10 times faster; they in fact take 10 times as long. They are, however, 100 times more meticulous and therefore they clean the house 10 times as well. I think this is a paradigm shift.
Perhaps there is indeed similar benefits to be reaped from a similar shift in the transportation/aerospace sector.
While I am a huge fan of aerospace tech in general, I cannot help but feel that the technology has begun to flat line. I feel as though we are ship-builders, and that we are excited about the newest interceptor-class sea vessel.
While this new technology is remarkable, it still lays within the same paradigm as it has for over one hundred years: air goes in, air goes out (be it prop, turbine or scramjet), wings generate lift, shape minimizes drag.
I don't know of any other way to do it, so I don't mean to demean these mind-blowing advances. I only mean to make a point that while our speed is increasing, the paradigm will hit a wall.
Are we not seeing smaller advances as the decades roll-on?
I wonder, what other transportation paradigm could allow us the kind of advances that air had as compared to sea?
What they call 'Piracy' will continue to rise - there is no point at which it will retract. I wonder if they have added into their estimations the accelerating growth of this piracy they are measuring.
Which brings me to something that I've been wondering about for a while; how would the entertainment industry survive if there was theoretically no way to protect their intellectual property from open and free distribution. How would they handle a world where there was no legal route to enforcing a royalty-style or licensed payment system?
Because it is my thoughts that as our world further connects itself together that this is exactly what will happen in the (no so distant?) future.
At least in the technological sense, the legal sense is difficult to gauge, though I hope the legal system will suffer a major overhaul in the coming decades.
I would like to know your thoughts on the technocratic element in a modern government.
Technology has never been as large an effector in society as it is today. I see modern technology as being able to allow more fine-grained governing while also dealing with the mammoth problems that come from large populations and legal systems.
Technology is becoming more and more a part of the governmental process worldwide, does it make sense that we should require our leaders to have at least some level of technical sophistication to properly utilize and understand this new aspect of government?
Have our ancestors ever faced a question like this? One of dramatic technological impact on government and society?
That's a very good point. I can see how narrow my interests are when I look at things from that perspective. And I now in fact wonder how important a knowledge of the milky way really is. The old phrase, "in the grand scheme of things" leaps to mind as well as it's counterpart, "for the task at hand".
At our current state as a civilization I wonder if it is more important to focus on the big picture, or if we really should be working a little harder at home before tackling the cosmos. After all, Paris Hilton's ability to manipulate is certainly noteworthy when looked at from a sociological perspective, while from that same viewpoint a knowledge of the makeup of Saturn's rings is irrelevant.
Still, I cannot help but find more interest and wonder with what's "out there", rather than "down here". Am I just wasting my time?
> I suddenly saw gravity as a sort of surface tension, > trying to bring everything back together into a nice, > neutral sphere. I also suddenly saw the dark energy > as the momentum of the thrower and the dark energy > as the buffeted air through which the splash disperses.
I am always amazed at the large-scale structures of the universe. Especially the way that these structures are almost always analogous to physical phenomenon on earth (perhaps no surprise or coincidence if you adhere to the anthropic principle;)
I was showing my wife the computer-generated 3D maps of the uneven, filamentous distribution of galaxies in the known universe and she commented on how it reminded her of the fingers and tendrils of water being thrown from a bucket - but thrown out in all directions. I suddenly saw gravity as a sort of surface tension, trying to bring everything back together into a nice, neutral sphere. I also suddenly saw the dark energy as the momentum of the thrower and the dark energy as the buffeted air through which the splash disperses.
It's amazing how an analogy can take something so intangiable and make it immediately accessable. I feel, however, that sometimes a simple analogy can have a negative effect as well.
Without a true appreciation of the reality of astronomical images, comparisons to clouds and swirling water can diminish the wonder.
For me, in this image I see a stunning display of incomprehensible size and volume. I see the very heart and soul of our universe laid bare; the very stuff from which everything is made - amazing!
But for someone more lay in the ways of science and astronomy (and less enthused) this simply looks like a puff of smoke.
How is it that some of us wonder and wander and some of us do not?
What you say makes complete sense, and so I must believe you, sadly. I suppose the cost-effectiveness of this strategy is why this kind of behavior can continue.
Off topic here a bit, but I have this personal theory that the laws of any government will eventually break-down, and with them (perhaps at the same time) society. No doubt this breakdown will be highlighted by nonsensical legal actions, such as this Best Buy litigation.
I think that this breakdown is caused by the very nature of law, at least in the western world, which allows additions to be made more easily than retractions. Of course, this is true of many (most) systems, but in law its ramifications are most dire.
I think I will call this speculation the 'idea of informational breakdown' - Follow me here.
I think that law is just information. In fact, I believe it to be one of the first systems to truly formalize information. Of course, it's not perfect. This was in ancient times; today we have formalized information to a degree unimaginable to these ancient peoples.
Our formalization of information has taken on the form of computerization, and I feel that our modern formalization is much wiser, and smarter (after all, within our modern information system we expect certain things to expire - law has seen its realm as constant). We have built a world-wide communication system comprised of enough information to eclipse all the law books of history. We have in fact managed to replace many real-world physical items with this system.
The current collision between classical law and the logical world of modern information is, in my mind, probably caused by the incomplete and flawed method of information formalization used for law, and the current (and changing) method of information formalization used in modern computation.
A fringe idea, but one which I think has at least some element of reality, and thus the truth, within it.
How can companies run like this? IN my mind I see this as a big waste of effort and money on Best Buy's part. This wasted money would have to translate into Best Buy's bottom line, and thus affect we, the consumers as higher overall prices.
I've worked in the corporate world long enough to know that departments and other corporate entities show amazing survival instincts - but the legal departments of these mammoth companies are certainly the most predatory. Really, they must drum-up this kind of litigation.
I wonder if there was even any kind of financial-impact analysis or at least some kind of brand image analysis presented to the board prior to sending these notices. I would guess that the legal department simply sends them out under the "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" assumption.
it is one of my goals to ride one of these bullet trains.
I may not be the first to think of this (though google results for "high speed rail vacuum" seem to return results concerning toilets and braking systems) - could it be practical to build a vacuum-tunnel for a maglev train to travel through?
I was thinking that perhaps building a deeply submerged tunnel (through rock especially) would work well, since there would be no surrounding atmosphere to sneak in easily. It would seem easiest to form a vacuum-sealed tunnel underground as opposed to above ground.
In a vacuum tunnel how fast might a train be able to travel? It could perhaps actually beat air transportation?
Judging by the fortune attained thus far, manifest in the exceptional duration of the rovers, I feel that a little chance-taking is warranted.
Somewhat like betting $100 at medium risk, winning $1,000 and then deciding to bet $100 again at higher risk (and reward).
I consider luck and fortune two different things. Luck just happens: finding a briefcase of money is luck. Fortune happens when you work and work towards a goal and all you need is just a little luck at the end.
Has agriculture cost move lives than it has saved?
Agriculture is probably humanity's most powerful invention, and why hasn't it turned on us to kill us? Because we control it? Or is it simply because it helps us and that is what it's primary purpose is?
When these intelligences appear they will be designed to help us. I find it unlikely that they will spontaneously become evil.
I know that opinion is split, but I think that people are generally geared to help each other and not harm - I don't think family units or civilization would exist otherwise.
No sooner would your spreadsheet application spontaneously become a 3D game engine than an intelligence designed for help spontaneously become a harmful entity.
Its current configuration may be somewhat useless, but there is a point to goggles which allow overlay. This is essentially synthetic reality. It is my thoughts that soon "goggles" like these will be as common as bluetooth headsets are now - though they will probably be glasses rather than goggles (or perhaps even contacts, eventually).
I don't need to list the plethora of uses for synthetic reality, but even in this nascent stage I could see the ability to increase and decrease contrast as useful - perhaps in searching around for something lost.
This is simply algorithms being applied to a video - with object recognition the potential is large.
With the increase in automation (read: robotics) the price of food will drop and subsequently the profit.
Extrapolating into the future, perhaps farms will be (almost) completely automatic. Everything will drop in price when automation is put into play. This is what I see as the cause.
Why does the fact that the conversation is on a phone make a difference?
If it is mere conversation (not the phone) that is the safety risk, which is evidently is the case, then would this not indicate that carpools are as much a safety concern as cell phones?
Slashdot Mirror
Airships for non-time-critical journeys? That's a very intriguing idea. It reminds me of a paradigm shift I experienced recently.
My wife and I bought our first robot, a roomba naturally. We watched it intensely as it cleaned for the first hour. When it finished it docked itself to recharge. My wife then noted that there was still some fuzzies on the carpet and that it didn't seem to pick everything up. I told her that it would probably pick it up on its next run.
After a couple days of running the roomba when we would leave the house, the carpets suddenly are cleaner than they have ever been. So clean in fact that our allergies seem to have improved (probably placebo, but that roomba does pick up the dust).
I realized that our house cleaning robots don't work like the Jetsons led us to believe they would, where they clean the house 10 times faster; they in fact take 10 times as long. They are, however, 100 times more meticulous and therefore they clean the house 10 times as well. I think this is a paradigm shift.
Perhaps there is indeed similar benefits to be reaped from a similar shift in the transportation/aerospace sector.
Very thought-provoking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sshbHTDSwCk
;)
Gutsy indeed!
While I am a huge fan of aerospace tech in general, I cannot help but feel that the technology has begun to flat line. I feel as though we are ship-builders, and that we are excited about the newest interceptor-class sea vessel.
While this new technology is remarkable, it still lays within the same paradigm as it has for over one hundred years: air goes in, air goes out (be it prop, turbine or scramjet), wings generate lift, shape minimizes drag.
I don't know of any other way to do it, so I don't mean to demean these mind-blowing advances. I only mean to make a point that while our speed is increasing, the paradigm will hit a wall.
Are we not seeing smaller advances as the decades roll-on?
I wonder, what other transportation paradigm could allow us the kind of advances that air had as compared to sea?
It's true!
Of course, the gamers are only attacking each other and they all have extra lives so...
What they call 'Piracy' will continue to rise - there is no point at which it will retract. I wonder if they have added into their estimations the accelerating growth of this piracy they are measuring.
Which brings me to something that I've been wondering about for a while; how would the entertainment industry survive if there was theoretically no way to protect their intellectual property from open and free distribution. How would they handle a world where there was no legal route to enforcing a royalty-style or licensed payment system?
Because it is my thoughts that as our world further connects itself together that this is exactly what will happen in the (no so distant?) future.
At least in the technological sense, the legal sense is difficult to gauge, though I hope the legal system will suffer a major overhaul in the coming decades.
I would like to know your thoughts on the technocratic element in a modern government.
Technology has never been as large an effector in society as it is today. I see modern technology as being able to allow more fine-grained governing while also dealing with the mammoth problems that come from large populations and legal systems.
Technology is becoming more and more a part of the governmental process worldwide, does it make sense that we should require our leaders to have at least some level of technical sophistication to properly utilize and understand this new aspect of government?
Have our ancestors ever faced a question like this? One of dramatic technological impact on government and society?
That's a very good point. I can see how narrow my interests are when I look at things from that perspective. And I now in fact wonder how important a knowledge of the milky way really is. The old phrase, "in the grand scheme of things" leaps to mind as well as it's counterpart, "for the task at hand".
:)
At our current state as a civilization I wonder if it is more important to focus on the big picture, or if we really should be working a little harder at home before tackling the cosmos. After all, Paris Hilton's ability to manipulate is certainly noteworthy when looked at from a sociological perspective, while from that same viewpoint a knowledge of the makeup of Saturn's rings is irrelevant.
Still, I cannot help but find more interest and wonder with what's "out there", rather than "down here". Am I just wasting my time?
Well, I guess it doesn't hurt to think ahead
Thanks for the info. Now instead of being confused, I'm depressed! ;)
Not completely.
I am always amazed at the large-scale structures of the universe. Especially the way that these structures are almost always analogous to physical phenomenon on earth (perhaps no surprise or coincidence if you adhere to the anthropic principle ;)
I was showing my wife the computer-generated 3D maps of the uneven, filamentous distribution of galaxies in the known universe and she commented on how it reminded her of the fingers and tendrils of water being thrown from a bucket - but thrown out in all directions. I suddenly saw gravity as a sort of surface tension, trying to bring everything back together into a nice, neutral sphere. I also suddenly saw the dark energy as the momentum of the thrower and the dark energy as the buffeted air through which the splash disperses.
It's amazing how an analogy can take something so intangiable and make it immediately accessable. I feel, however, that sometimes a simple analogy can have a negative effect as well.
Without a true appreciation of the reality of astronomical images, comparisons to clouds and swirling water can diminish the wonder.
For me, in this image I see a stunning display of incomprehensible size and volume. I see the very heart and soul of our universe laid bare; the very stuff from which everything is made - amazing!
But for someone more lay in the ways of science and astronomy (and less enthused) this simply looks like a puff of smoke.
How is it that some of us wonder and wander and some of us do not?
What you say makes complete sense, and so I must believe you, sadly. I suppose the cost-effectiveness of this strategy is why this kind of behavior can continue.
Off topic here a bit, but I have this personal theory that the laws of any government will eventually break-down, and with them (perhaps at the same time) society. No doubt this breakdown will be highlighted by nonsensical legal actions, such as this Best Buy litigation.
I think that this breakdown is caused by the very nature of law, at least in the western world, which allows additions to be made more easily than retractions. Of course, this is true of many (most) systems, but in law its ramifications are most dire.
I think I will call this speculation the 'idea of informational breakdown' - Follow me here.
I think that law is just information. In fact, I believe it to be one of the first systems to truly formalize information. Of course, it's not perfect. This was in ancient times; today we have formalized information to a degree unimaginable to these ancient peoples.
Our formalization of information has taken on the form of computerization, and I feel that our modern formalization is much wiser, and smarter (after all, within our modern information system we expect certain things to expire - law has seen its realm as constant). We have built a world-wide communication system comprised of enough information to eclipse all the law books of history. We have in fact managed to replace many real-world physical items with this system.
The current collision between classical law and the logical world of modern information is, in my mind, probably caused by the incomplete and flawed method of information formalization used for law, and the current (and changing) method of information formalization used in modern computation.
A fringe idea, but one which I think has at least some element of reality, and thus the truth, within it.
No, that's what they do alright.
How can companies run like this? IN my mind I see this as a big waste of effort and money on Best Buy's part. This wasted money would have to translate into Best Buy's bottom line, and thus affect we, the consumers as higher overall prices.
I've worked in the corporate world long enough to know that departments and other corporate entities show amazing survival instincts - but the legal departments of these mammoth companies are certainly the most predatory. Really, they must drum-up this kind of litigation.
I wonder if there was even any kind of financial-impact analysis or at least some kind of brand image analysis presented to the board prior to sending these notices. I would guess that the legal department simply sends them out under the "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" assumption.
Speaking of the myriad uses for supercomputers - I wonder, what is Iran's policy on extraterrestrials?
Meaning, if they were able to identify a signal from space from another civilization, how might they react?
For that matter, what is the US policy in this regard?
One day a cosmic, catastrophic event will occur. Will your species be ready?
You should check out some of my .txt files
Metallica_Enter_Sandman.txt is a great "read"
it is one of my goals to ride one of these bullet trains.
I may not be the first to think of this (though google results for "high speed rail vacuum" seem to return results concerning toilets and braking systems) - could it be practical to build a vacuum-tunnel for a maglev train to travel through?
I was thinking that perhaps building a deeply submerged tunnel (through rock especially) would work well, since there would be no surrounding atmosphere to sneak in easily. It would seem easiest to form a vacuum-sealed tunnel underground as opposed to above ground.
In a vacuum tunnel how fast might a train be able to travel? It could perhaps actually beat air transportation?
Judging by the fortune attained thus far, manifest in the exceptional duration of the rovers, I feel that a little chance-taking is warranted.
Somewhat like betting $100 at medium risk, winning $1,000 and then deciding to bet $100 again at higher risk (and reward).
I consider luck and fortune two different things. Luck just happens: finding a briefcase of money is luck. Fortune happens when you work and work towards a goal and all you need is just a little luck at the end.
Has agriculture cost any lives?
I think probably.
Has agriculture cost move lives than it has saved?
Agriculture is probably humanity's most powerful invention, and why hasn't it turned on us to kill us? Because we control it? Or is it simply because it helps us and that is what it's primary purpose is?
When these intelligences appear they will be designed to help us. I find it unlikely that they will spontaneously become evil.
I know that opinion is split, but I think that people are generally geared to help each other and not harm - I don't think family units or civilization would exist otherwise.
No sooner would your spreadsheet application spontaneously become a 3D game engine than an intelligence designed for help spontaneously become a harmful entity.
If Transformers showed one thing it's that computer graphics were created to render gigantic robot fights.
Its current configuration may be somewhat useless, but there is a point to goggles which allow overlay. This is essentially synthetic reality. It is my thoughts that soon "goggles" like these will be as common as bluetooth headsets are now - though they will probably be glasses rather than goggles (or perhaps even contacts, eventually).
I don't need to list the plethora of uses for synthetic reality, but even in this nascent stage I could see the ability to increase and decrease contrast as useful - perhaps in searching around for something lost.
This is simply algorithms being applied to a video - with object recognition the potential is large.
802.11N'Da'House!
With the increase in automation (read: robotics) the price of food will drop and subsequently the profit.
Extrapolating into the future, perhaps farms will be (almost) completely automatic. Everything will drop in price when automation is put into play. This is what I see as the cause.
Just SCO away already! ;)
Why does the fact that the conversation is on a phone make a difference?
If it is mere conversation (not the phone) that is the safety risk, which is evidently is the case, then would this not indicate that carpools are as much a safety concern as cell phones?