I wish I could try to put my thoughts into simpler and more concise writing, but this is too complex an issue for me to put into simple terms. I mean, I like to think of myself as an optimist, but my life experiences have led me to other conclusions.
The biggest reason I'm even attempting to make serious posts here, is because, after watching that video, it suddenly reminded me of a lot of things that I find wrong with the world. Gah... Hell, its not even very often I post more than twice in a single thread. But being an unofficial student of history and the social sciences, and also being for a long time, a hard-line futurist/one-worlder, this is an issue very close to my heart. Not in an emo sort of way, but in the kind of way that leaves me up at night thinking over all of the possible thousands of scenarios.
I'm not a tree-hugging pacifist (not by a long shot, hell I wouldn't be playing wargames if I was.) but I do tend to think about the negative consequences of everything that I do and that I see other people doing.
kurzweil here is trying to empirically determine the rate of technological progress and advancement.... his conclusions are drawn from analyzing past and present trends, and an important point of the technological singularity is that there is no stopping or slowing it
it's not a subjective opinion of what he wants for humanity in the future, he is just honestly doing his best to try and accurately forecast what we should expect in terms of technological progress (specifically on issues that you and I and the audience can relate to, e.g. computing and the internets) and at what point it becomes unpredictable (supra-human machine intelligence)
i don't really see any utopianism, nor does he pretend to predict large scale social impact or progress
i think he is making the point that the result of innumerable pressures on technological advancement (economic, societal, political, personal, you name it...) over a great length of time --> an inexorable march towards singularity
it doesn't really have anything to do with judging the actions of naive researchers or social injustices
moving on,
i admit the presentation was very Western-centric but once you solve that core concept in economics of scarcity who knows what'll happen to individuals and society, imo it's a case of optimism and pessimism, and your personal views on basic human nature
--> each to his own opinion
if you look at popular media there is plenty of negativity out there already... plethora of MAD-scenario world wars, matrix-terminator robots-enslave-humanity type stuff
Accelerando, Rainbows End, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Planetes, Dennou Coil, Neuromancer, The Forever War, etc. - any number of sci-fi works out there, to do with the singularity or not, all present very human realities of tomorrow that are not strewn with utopian optimism
Quanto has a point. Nanites can be dangerous. I once got a nanite stuck in my nose for like a week and I tried everything from tweezers to pliers to get it out and I had no luck. I dug around in there for ages and finally I was eating a taco with hot sauce and I sneezed it out. I found it on the floor a couple days later and it smelled like onion. Just be careful with new technologies because you never know what can happen. I certainly didn't see it coming. Beware.
this is all academic since the worlds oil will run out in liek 12 year causing the econmic infrastructure to curl up and die resulting in mass food shortages as farming and transporting food to consumers becomes impossible and requiring a blowback to localised food production, resulting in the death of cities and consequent anarchy. this is just like the new furby or somthing, it dosnt exactly help the impending mega-doom coming soon to the west near you
1v0ry_k1ng wrote:this is all academic since the worlds oil will run out in liek 12 year causing the econmic infrastructure to curl up and die resulting in mass food shortages as farming and transporting food to consumers becomes impossible and requiring a blowback to localised food production, resulting in the death of cities and consequent anarchy. this is just like the new furby or somthing, it dosnt exactly help the impending mega-doom coming soon to the west near you
Peak oil is really only something for Texans and Sheiks to get worried about, because their businesses will become more unprofitable. And then the middle east will regress back to the middle ages. Because we will have hydrogen fuel cell cars.
HeavyLancer wrote:Peak oil is really only something for Texans and Sheiks to get worried about, because their businesses will become more unprofitable. And then the middle east will regress back to the middle ages. Because we will have hydrogen fuel cell cars.
Well... it does sort of represent a massive collapse of our current economy if we can't find AND implement a suitable oil replacement in time.
