Don't forget that you're also emotionally weaker as a child, and more apt to cry. You get jaded with age.
In fact, I was living in NYC on 9/11/01, but the WTC collapse and ~3,000 dead wasn't enough to make me cry (angry sure, but not sad). It took the combination of THAT event AND my Mom's heart attack to get me to break down for a bit. Hits closer to home I guess.
My first reactions to 9/11 and today's shuttle burnup are similar: anger. But my anger is mostly directed at the likely IMPLICATIONS of the event, rather than the event itself. In the case of 9-11 I immediately began to fear my government more than the decentralized terrorist boogeymen, and in today's case, I fear more for the space program - and the survival of the human race by extention - than I do about one more inevitable shuttle loss and 7 smart people dead.
Maybe that makes me an unemotional bastard for only focusing on the big picture rather than caring as much about the human interest stories or about losing myself in the mass psychology in the aftermath of large scale events.
Best case I figure humans have maybe 100-300 years before we have to start emigrating off the planet if we are to survive as a species long term.
Actually, we've got more like 10 to 40 years to get our act together, since evolution (now extended by technology) is naturally (double) exponential. If you only linearly extrapolate at the current rate of progress you might be right, but historically that's not the case.
Very cool indeed. Instead of watching live TV, I'd wait a few hours for the edit scripts to hit the p2p networks, then I could watch the Sopranos and be able to say, "Product placement? What product placement? All I saw was Acme everywhere.":-)
Eventually I'd want a similar capability adapted for my retinal display's overlay. (can't pause life though, so you'd need automatic pattern recognition & removal instead of human editors.)
I personally believe it [molecular nanotechnology] won't have an impact even close to that of computers and the information revolution.
I'm sorry, but I find it really hard to believe you'd still think that way if you'd read a little more on the subject. For light reading, there's the old Engines of Creation and Unbounding the Future, by Eric Drexler. Or you could learn about the hard science which would lead you to your own similar real world implications.
I'm not dismissing it, just being a realist. It won't solve world hunger or peace.
Peace, no - we're still human afterall - but solving world hunger, yes, that's imminently possible.
Sure, we currently have warlords pinching off the food supply in the 3rd world when there's more than enough to go around, but these poor people certainly wouldn't have any trouble smuggling in just one nanoassembler (able to make copies of itself for other villagers). This nanoassembler can then extract all the energy it needs from the sun (stored in fuelcells), and all the infinitely recyclable molecules it needs from the surrounding environment, and can manufacture any desired object bottom-up.
So how is literally dirt-cheap food, clothes, and shelter not revolutionary for starters? I don't think I'm being overly optimistic either; I think I'M being the realist for a technology is only a couple decades out.
I think a more interesting question is can a species evolve from being an animal, driven by instinct, to a civilised being living in harmony with it's environment and each other fast enough to not destroy itself?
That is the more interesting question, and it's one I think about several times a day (yes, really), but I still think about sex 10 times more often.:-)
And no, humans are no where near that point yet.
Don't be so sure. The Technological Singularity is only a few decades away. Evolution is exponential, and we're currently on the sharp knee of that curve after having been in the flatlands for millenia.
"Incentives matter," I like it, but where in the world did the river example come from?
Tragedy of the commons. People tend to trash resources they have no direct stake in (like your rental car quote).
Putting your faith in fantasy technology is naive and unrealistic. I think nanotechnology might bring some benefit to mankind, but it's no panacea that will solve every world problem.
Moleculary nanotechnology is not some "fantasy technology" that "might bring some benefit to mankind" -- molecular manufacturing is an inevitable evolution of technology with huge implications for world economic, political, and social systems. And no, it's no Utopia, because solutions cause new problems, but that doesn't mean that the overall change is neutral, or negative. Imagine an effectively post-scarcity world where you don't HAVE to work for a living. That's just the tip of the iceburg.
Anyway, just don't be so quick to dimiss MNT, and its effect on excessive capitalism/individualism. (Open source software is a collectivist community phenomena, and MNT will allow for the same in open source hardware.)
People ARE using p2p to distribute free software, just not to a very great extent yet because there's no STANDARD.
e.g. I share all three RedHat 8 ISOs on the eDonkey2000 network, and see quite a few people downloading them off of me. (In fact, from my xfer logs, I can see that each CD has been downloaded about twice from me; that's 4GB less load on central servers).
Unfortunately, slashdot mangles edonkey links like this so here are the jigle.com links TO the ed2k quicklinks instead, for which there are hundreds of sources to swarm (slowly but reliably):
Hmm. Do you also live in a bomb shelter cursing the fact that nuclear war and Y2K disaster never struck to validate all your expensive preparation?:-) Only kidding (HAD it happened, your paranoia trait would be passed on to future generations:)
But relatively soon people will be able to make a copy of a candy bar (almost) as easily as a datafile. Molecular manufacturing will turn the configuration of matter into yet another form of easily reproduced information, and it'll be Napster-times-1000 as even larger dinosaur industries begin their death throws...
People should start thinking about that. Bottom-up molecular assembly is not that far off, despite what the linearly-extrapolating-where's-my-flying-car-pessi mists like to say.
Yeah, Individualism and free markets win because "incentives matter!" (I repeat that phrase in my head all the time). There's not much incentive to be productive for no reward, just as there's not much of a disincentive for everyone not to shit in the river.
However, individual greed can get excessive, to the overall detriment of everyone, and the gap between the haves and have-nots widens... no thanks to a government like the U.S. which is tilting its wealth redistribution (tax) in favor of the rich with obscene corporate welfare and by eliminating fair progressive taxes like the estate tax (not a "death tax"), dividend tax, etc.
Greed is good, but socially responsible greed is better. So yeah, I'm one of those whackos who thinks that maybe billions of dollars in concentrated personal wealth is just a *tad* much, and that to redistribute the extra gravy at high rates isn't much of a disinsentive at all. "Oh no, I can't make 2 billion as fast as 1 billion. Guess I'll go eat some worms instead."
Not that any of this will matter as much in a few more decades when the means of production (and destruction) is democratized with molecular nanotechnology, just as digital production was democratized. The poorest of the poor will have the cheap and easy means to live like the old robber barrons without any of the robbing, not to mention the means to "print opensource food" from freely available component molecules and sunlight.
And what's the incentive to produce in a world of material abundance? Social brownie points I'd guess... tradable for things which are still scarce like celebrity time and beachfront property. Somehow I don't think the new social contract will allow for disproportionate wealth though. (Hmm... I seem to have rambled offtopic. Oh well.)
Is anyone using HTTPS yet? That would be tough to block
If the mainstream began to tunnel p2p via https you could bet that they might argue for traffic shaping rather than outright blocking since they can no longer sniff packet contents... "in the interest of national security" of course, even though true "terrorists" don't need gigabytes to communicate, but the "pirate terrorists" do. Have to prove your innocence like a good citizen by communicating in cleartext and/or giving Microsoft root.
If you want to fight the terr-arr-ists, make sure you buy your crack cocaine from the CIA. They need all the funding they can get above-and-beyond their normal daily pork allowance.:-)
Heh...on the Fox News Channel's ticker, they had the following tidbit of information:
"The virus spreads using a Microsoft vulnerability known as "SQL Server""
And on MSNBC, the ticker says:
""CyberAttack2003! -- Terrorist Worm spreads using a flaw in certain database software.""
MSOutlook exploits are similarly called generic "email worms".:)
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Re:WHO GIVES A SH*T WHERE HE'S FROM?!
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· Score: 1
Remember, humans still have a lot of evolutionary baggage. "My tribe is better than your tribe!" doesn't go away just because we're living in technologically 'enlightened' times.
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Re:No it was Tesla...Marconi is a Marketer
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· Score: 1
and others are veiled in secrecy by the U.S. government
Ooo... you mean Zero Point Energy is real, and the Gubbermint is covering it up to keep the OilPigs in power?!
Seriously though, there's no Tesla conspiracy unless you want to believe in one. Anything he invented couldn't be so advanced as to have not been independently rediscovered in the many decades since.
Would it ever even be able to pay back the initial investment costs before it became yesterday's technology?
Well, I'll probably be upgrading my 802.11b for 802.11g this year, and then to whatever comes after that in the years to come (hopefully something "OpenSpectrum Compliant":). Multiply that by millions of other people and there's no investement/maintenance is as distributed as the network.
A nationwide wireless network doesn't need to be some monolithic burden under one company's control. It can be an emergent thing.
I'll put $40 trillion on "The Law of Accelerating Returns", and laugh at you for putting your money on "Moores Law Has To Hit A Wall Dammit!!!!1!!!1":-)
the limitation of lightspeed in communication is only really a problem if you assume that the users of it have to worry about time.
A theorectical Matrioshka Brain can live as long as its star burns. So what's a few million years lagtime between buddies when you live for hundreds of billions of years? Of course, as you think faster, the world outside seems to come to a standstill; like cityfolk observing countrybumpkins.:)
Ideally, we should get to the point where the only work we're doing is maintaining/improving the robots.
That's a pretty weak ideal future; humans slaving away oiling up their robot master so it can build Nike's 7% faster.:)
Ideally, we'll get to the point where advancing robotics, nanotechnology, and IA & AI, will result in the technological unemployment of just about everybody on and off Earth. And just when society is getting used to the idea of an economy of unimaginable abundance, the next shockwave will hit.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, I was living in NYC on 9/11/01, but the WTC collapse and ~3,000 dead wasn't enough to make me cry (angry sure, but not sad). It took the combination of THAT event AND my Mom's heart attack to get me to break down for a bit. Hits closer to home I guess.
My first reactions to 9/11 and today's shuttle burnup are similar: anger. But my anger is mostly directed at the likely IMPLICATIONS of the event, rather than the event itself. In the case of 9-11 I immediately began to fear my government more than the decentralized terrorist boogeymen, and in today's case, I fear more for the space program - and the survival of the human race by extention - than I do about one more inevitable shuttle loss and 7 smart people dead.
Maybe that makes me an unemotional bastard for only focusing on the big picture rather than caring as much about the human interest stories or about losing myself in the mass psychology in the aftermath of large scale events.
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Actually, we've got more like 10 to 40 years to get our act together, since evolution (now extended by technology) is naturally (double) exponential. If you only linearly extrapolate at the current rate of progress you might be right, but historically that's not the case.
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Eventually I'd want a similar capability adapted for my retinal display's overlay. (can't pause life though, so you'd need automatic pattern recognition & removal instead of human editors.)
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I, and hundreds of other sources, are sharing OpenOffice, and all the RedHat 8.0 ISOs, among other things.
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FilePlanet doesn't want to lessen people's dependency on paying for their central servers, so I don't think they'll be going this route. :)
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I'm sorry, but I find it really hard to believe you'd still think that way if you'd read a little more on the subject. For light reading, there's the old Engines of Creation and Unbounding the Future, by Eric Drexler. Or you could learn about the hard science which would lead you to your own similar real world implications.
Peace, no - we're still human afterall - but solving world hunger, yes, that's imminently possible.
Sure, we currently have warlords pinching off the food supply in the 3rd world when there's more than enough to go around, but these poor people certainly wouldn't have any trouble smuggling in just one nanoassembler (able to make copies of itself for other villagers). This nanoassembler can then extract all the energy it needs from the sun (stored in fuelcells), and all the infinitely recyclable molecules it needs from the surrounding environment, and can manufacture any desired object bottom-up.
So how is literally dirt-cheap food, clothes, and shelter not revolutionary for starters? I don't think I'm being overly optimistic either; I think I'M being the realist for a technology is only a couple decades out.
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That is the more interesting question, and it's one I think about several times a day (yes, really), but I still think about sex 10 times more often. :-)
Don't be so sure. The Technological Singularity is only a few decades away. Evolution is exponential, and we're currently on the sharp knee of that curve after having been in the flatlands for millenia.
--
Tragedy of the commons. People tend to trash resources they have no direct stake in (like your rental car quote).
Moleculary nanotechnology is not some "fantasy technology" that "might bring some benefit to mankind" -- molecular manufacturing is an inevitable evolution of technology with huge implications for world economic, political, and social systems. And no, it's no Utopia, because solutions cause new problems, but that doesn't mean that the overall change is neutral, or negative. Imagine an effectively post-scarcity world where you don't HAVE to work for a living. That's just the tip of the iceburg.
Anyway, just don't be so quick to dimiss MNT, and its effect on excessive capitalism/individualism. (Open source software is a collectivist community phenomena, and MNT will allow for the same in open source hardware.)
--
e.g. I share all three RedHat 8 ISOs on the eDonkey2000 network, and see quite a few people downloading them off of me. (In fact, from my xfer logs, I can see that each CD has been downloaded about twice from me; that's 4GB less load on central servers).
Unfortunately, slashdot mangles edonkey links like this so here are the jigle.com links TO the ed2k quicklinks instead, for which there are hundreds of sources to swarm (slowly but reliably):
- psyche-i386-disc1.iso
- psyche-i386-disc2.iso
- psyche-i386-disc3.iso
Remember to check those MD5's even if you trust that hundreds of people can't all be sharing the wrong thing.--
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People should start thinking about that. Bottom-up molecular assembly is not that far off, despite what the linearly-extrapolating-where's-my-flying-car-pessi mists like to say.
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However, individual greed can get excessive, to the overall detriment of everyone, and the gap between the haves and have-nots widens... no thanks to a government like the U.S. which is tilting its wealth redistribution (tax) in favor of the rich with obscene corporate welfare and by eliminating fair progressive taxes like the estate tax (not a "death tax"), dividend tax, etc.
Greed is good, but socially responsible greed is better. So yeah, I'm one of those whackos who thinks that maybe billions of dollars in concentrated personal wealth is just a *tad* much, and that to redistribute the extra gravy at high rates isn't much of a disinsentive at all. "Oh no, I can't make 2 billion as fast as 1 billion. Guess I'll go eat some worms instead."
Not that any of this will matter as much in a few more decades when the means of production (and destruction) is democratized with molecular nanotechnology, just as digital production was democratized. The poorest of the poor will have the cheap and easy means to live like the old robber barrons without any of the robbing, not to mention the means to "print opensource food" from freely available component molecules and sunlight.
And what's the incentive to produce in a world of material abundance? Social brownie points I'd guess... tradable for things which are still scarce like celebrity time and beachfront property. Somehow I don't think the new social contract will allow for disproportionate wealth though. (Hmm... I seem to have rambled offtopic. Oh well.)
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If the mainstream began to tunnel p2p via https you could bet that they might argue for traffic shaping rather than outright blocking since they can no longer sniff packet contents... "in the interest of national security" of course, even though true "terrorists" don't need gigabytes to communicate, but the "pirate terrorists" do. Have to prove your innocence like a good citizen by communicating in cleartext and/or giving Microsoft root.
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And, I, for one, am getting really tired of people saying, "I, for one, bla dee bla bla". That phrase is officially overused.
Don't let the low budget and "interesting" guests put you off; it's really a great show. :)
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And on MSNBC, the ticker says:
""CyberAttack2003! -- Terrorist Worm spreads using a flaw in certain database software.""
MSOutlook exploits are similarly called generic "email worms". :)
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Ooo... you mean Zero Point Energy is real, and the Gubbermint is covering it up to keep the OilPigs in power?!
Seriously though, there's no Tesla conspiracy unless you want to believe in one. Anything he invented couldn't be so advanced as to have not been independently rediscovered in the many decades since.
--
Well, I'll probably be upgrading my 802.11b for 802.11g this year, and then to whatever comes after that in the years to come (hopefully something "OpenSpectrum Compliant" :). Multiply that by millions of other people and there's no investement/maintenance is as distributed as the network.
A nationwide wireless network doesn't need to be some monolithic burden under one company's control. It can be an emergent thing.
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The Amish are moving west? :)
Who are these neo-luddites you speak of? Bill Joy Relinquishment followers? UnaBomber Sympathizers? The CloneConfused?
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I'll put $40 trillion on "The Law of Accelerating Returns", and laugh at you for putting your money on "Moores Law Has To Hit A Wall Dammit!!!!1!!!1" :-)
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A theorectical Matrioshka Brain can live as long as its star burns. So what's a few million years lagtime between buddies when you live for hundreds of billions of years? Of course, as you think faster, the world outside seems to come to a standstill; like cityfolk observing countrybumpkins. :)
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That's a pretty weak ideal future; humans slaving away oiling up their robot master so it can build Nike's 7% faster. :)
Ideally, we'll get to the point where advancing robotics, nanotechnology, and IA & AI, will result in the technological unemployment of just about everybody on and off Earth. And just when society is getting used to the idea of an economy of unimaginable abundance, the next shockwave will hit.
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He wasn't talking about todays comfy "wage-slaves" or about how we outsource to shithole countries for what we can't get away with anymore. :)
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