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Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" 970
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.
Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trust me, utopia will be sucky too, such is the vastness of human desire.
Exactly. Without a significant shift in human cultures any utopia cannot happen, whether we have the technology or not. We could never agree on what utopia should be like, and would fight about it.
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Funny)
Not unless that Utopia involves virtualization so that everyone could simulate their own Utopia based on whatever they felt should be the case... Then let the robots deal with the problems of the real world. You know that would make a good movie... Oh wait...
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy has just ripped a few idea's from popular sci-fi, penned them down in a 'this will happen' fashion, and is now raking in the bucks. But then again, he is a futurist.
I'll have to explain t
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Where would we be if humans were satisfied w/ n (Score:5, Funny)
Utopia.
Re:My utopia (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ;-)).
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:3, Insightful)
How many times have
You heard someone say
If I had his money
I could do things my way
But little they know
That it's so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind
(this is what Bud was listening to in his trailer in Kill Bill 2)
WTF do people WANT? There are people who all they do is go to parties all day, being chauffered around and catered to at every turn who are MISERABLE. Conversely, there are people who literally shovel shit all day who are happy as clams. Jesus H. C
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Technology: Nuclear Power
The Promise: Cheap, clean, safe, plentiful electric power.
The Reality: Expensive power with waste we don't know how to deal with, but it does have the added bonus of creating by-products that can be turned into horrible weapons of mass destruction.
The Technology: Robots
The Promise: Sit back in your easy chair and let Robby the Robot mow the lawn and take out the trash while you relax and have a beer.
The Reality: Sit back in the unemployment li
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:3, Informative)
The Blurb:
Lawrence had ordained that Prime Intellect could not, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. But he had not realized how much harm his super-intelligent creation could perceive, or what kind of action might be necessary to prevent it.
Caroline has been pulled from her deathbed into a brave new immortal Paradise where she can have anything she wants, except the sense that her li
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is only the environment that changed in the past 100 years not peoples lives. Just take the following basic stuff: love, work, power, friendship, kids, getting old, etc. Now people have the same problems, or similar problems in different context. Technology does not really change our lives, it changes only the circumstances.
Just like hoping to get your favourite pancake in a nicer packaging next year. Lets say easier to open box, instant delivery... is there anyone out there believing this would mean a significant change in his life? Yes, unfortunately...
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:3, Insightful)
We "put plow to earth" because it turns out that burying your children who starved through the winter is not so much fun after all.
no amount of technology will bring it back without a funndamental shift in our culture.
If you want it back that badly, you can have it easilly. Go deep into the mountains of Asia or Africa. Leave everything, including your clothes, behind you when you go. Enjoy the three or four weeks you manage to survive in your primati
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Interesting)
Things are much better today, but not every step is a step forward from the individual's point of view.
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Be careful. If farming's more reliable at preventing, say, a whole tribe from extinction and increasing its overall size, farming passes evolutionary muster. That doesn't mean life isn't, overall, shorter and nastier for most of the individuals in it. They might be able, for example, to feed more children - indeed, need them - to keep this whole farming pyramid scheme going. But with diseases and a social structure that demands stratification - chiefs to count grain, soldiers to steal grain from other tribes and repel invaders - you might need those extra little hands to weed and feed chickens so you don't all starve.
So, yes, farming had to yield some benefits immediately, but benefiting the gene pool as a whole could still mean overall suckage (shorter, nastier lives) for the majority of individuals in the system.
I thought that the most interesting idea in Guns, Germs & Steel was the suggestion that writing was primarily an invention designed to steal from the farmer class. 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.
I wouldn't say your average 3rd world farmer is better off than a stone age hunter-gatherer. But I am.
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea we still have thousands of children with Polio in Ironlungs...
Actually the world is a pretty good place in most developed countries. It is even a lot better than it was 50 years ago in the developing countries.
The correct way to look at it is not that the present sucks, but how can we make the future better.
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well hurry the hell up then. (Score:3, Funny)
Does the misery and decay in the Soho townhouse get cable?
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Grim Meathook Future (Score:4, Informative)
This is another looney (Score:3, Funny)
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?
Re:This is another looney (Score:3, Funny)
"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
No it isn't.
WSJ Writer is Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit Fame (Score:5, Informative)
HULK's Halloween decorations webcam is up! [komar.org]
Optimisim sells... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:3, Insightful)
We seriously can live pretty long as it is. If you can't live it up in the first ~70 years, you're probably not going to get more out of the next 230. Not to meantion
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:3, Insightful)
More like your teens, buddy. GH levels peak and flatten during your teens, and the decline in GH levels in general corresponds to how hard and fast you live. Vigorous athletes tend to have a later, longer peak and flattening period. But by high school commencement, it's all downhill buddy.
Evolution only protects you until you can make babies, then you're on your own.
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:4, Insightful)
But eventually, the world (be it earth or all planets we might make habitable) will be filled with immortal people, unable to procreate because there is no more room nor resources for more people. They will be doomed to either continue living with the same people eternally, kill each other, or commit suicide. No thanks.
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:5, Insightful)
But eventually, the world (be it earth or all planets we might make habitable) will be filled with immortal people, unable to procreate because there is no more room nor resources for more people. They will be doomed to either continue living with the same people eternally, kill each other, or commit suicide. No thanks.
We will miss you.
What's wrong with having the same people around "eternally"?
There's... what? Six billion of us? Even if you figure that more than half of those people are assholes, that's still almost three billion people worth having as friends. It would take a long time to get acquainted with them all (and sift them out from said assholes.) Just learning all the languages we would need to learn to all talk to each other fluently would take one or two of what we used to consider lifetimes.
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you rather live in a *Logan's Run* civilization where you have to be "renued" at the ripe age of 30? (yes, I realize the age was lower in the book).
And oh my....the tyranny to live under the rule of someone who has lived a long time. Seems like that's what we tolerate today here in the U.S. under the Constitution.
I also think there are several figures from the 18th Century that could easily function in the 21st (and later) and our society would be better if they still lived. I'm thinking about Ben Franklin and Voltaire in particular.
Militarily, just imagine if the military minds of Julius Caesar, Alexander and Cromwell held commanded in today's battlefields.
Your post really discredits people from the past and cheapens their individual contributions.
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:4, Insightful)
Code-wise, picture if the old COBOL programmers today were kept in the workforce for another dozen decades. I think it's a shame that a langauge as old as my father is still being used by my father at his age. Likewise, if I'm using C++ when I'm nearing 50.
Old -> legacy -> entrenchment... The only escape is when cost(refractoring_to_new) cost(maintaining_old)... Which is starting to happen in the case of COBOL due to the aging of that generation...
Not to say that old things are bad, it's just that they typically were solutions for their day. Picture this, one day (probably within our lifetimes), people might look at Java as an efficient language. It sounds kinda funny to us. But go back 30 years and tell an assembly programmer that C is efficient.
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Optimisim sells... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. To produce mechanical power
2. To intelligently apply that mechanical power
The former reason is why so many ancient civilizations used slaves. Being able to generate about 200kWs (~500kWs burst) of power may not seem like much, but if you put enough people together you can power ships, lift boulders, hammer out the sides of mountains, and other laborous activities.
Obviously, animals of burden can provide much more power than humans, but they often fail the latter need. i.e. You can yoke an animal and ask it to move forward, but you'll have a hard time getting it to assemble something for you. That's why humans are still necessary. They know how to apply power.
Today, computers and robotics combined with various power generation techniques have allowed us to manage both requirements with great success. For example, much of the construction of a car is repetitive work. Create a proper computer program and a robot can do the work faster and cheaper.
That's why there's an ever shrinking lower-class population. The focus has gone from doing the work to providing tools and maintenence to do the work. This has placed the majority of the population in a better position than before. A side effect of this "nearly everyone is middle class" change is that more tools can be produced. More tool production means that more work can be done. More work translates directly into more goods and cheaper prices.
Semi-topical link. (Score:3, Insightful)
For those of you who enjoy fiction, Accelerando [accelerando.org] by Charles Stross [antipope.org] 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?
Re:Semi-topical link. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Semi-topical link. (Score:5, Insightful)
I shouldn't think so. Whenever singularities appear in any model of the real world, it generally means a breakdown of the model. So this singularity means an acceleration of technological advance to a point where our ability to forecast breaks down and we really can't say what will happen.
A singularity would have it that we get ever-accelerating advance, heading skyward to infinity at some finite time. I dislike, therefore, forecasts that the singularity will bring utopia. It need not. The singularity could very easily bring extinction. It could bring hell on earth. It could bring a tyranny beyond the dreams of 1984, in which no proletarian revolt could ever succeed because we've all got Seven Minute Specials waiting to go off inside us. To be quite honest, I think our best hope is extinction, but leaving successors - which is, let's face it, the best hope of any species that there ever was. In addition, I don't mind whether this means our genetically enhanced, cybernetic, hyperevolved biological descendants, or our superintelligent quantum-computing AI offspring. What do I care about DNA, after all? A sentient robot I might build is as much my offspring as a human child I might father.
I agree with the concept of the singularity - there are advances coming whose impact on society we won't be able to predict until it happens - but not that it will necessarily be good.
Re:Semi-topical link. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know whether we'll reach that singularity he talks about, but I really enjoy his books, for example the early True Names [earth.li], or more recent books such as A deepness in the sky [caltech.edu] or A fire upon the deep [caltech.edu]. These last two are my two favorite science fiction books.
And, no, I'm not affiliated with V. Vinge.
Technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Let them try! (Score:3, Informative)
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 se
Dear Science (Score:4, Funny)
Get on it. I was promised one more than 50 years ago.
Re:Dear Science (Score:5, Funny)
Get on it. I was promised one more than 50 years ago.
Dear Public,
We'll deliver you your flying car once you show you can handle the responsibility. They aren't a toy, you know. And your current record with wheeled cars frankly doesn't inspire confidence. Maybe next year.
All the best,
Science
Re:Dear Science (Score:5, Funny)
I want my hover car. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
The stuff you have is even more fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The stuff you have is even more fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just copyrights, either. Patents are getting a shake-down, and remember when people had trademarks instead of google rankings?
Remember when there were corporations dedicated to providing 'news'? Remember when people who uncovered some secret, global spanning government conspiracy would race to mail it to a trusted person, or a newpaper reporter, and hope they didn't end up dead, instead of just posting it on the net and everyone knowing about it one hundred and twenty seconds later when their RSS feeds updated?
Remember when there was a lot of information out there, like mapping phone numbers to addresses or the location of secret government installations in the middle of nowhere, and it was hard to find? Remember that? When we knew information existed, yet couldn't immediately find it?
There used to be buildings you could go to to find out who was the king of England in 1293, and what the capital of Chad is, and who pitched the first recorded no-hitter in MLB. (Edward I, N'Djamena, and Nixey Callahan, which I looked up in less than one minute.) I think they were called 'liberbies' or something. Rememeber when you used to have to go to them?
If any industry starts spinning wildly for no apparent reason, with pieces flying off left and right, it's probably in the middle of a singularity.
Re:The stuff you have is even more fantastic (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember: in some fields, the singularity has already happened.
The point of the singularity idea is that advancement is going to get so fast that we can't keep track of it, control it or predict what life will be like afterwards. None of that has been true about computing yet.
Re:The stuff you have is even more fantastic (Score:3, Insightful)
The problems of today... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The problems of today... (Score:5, Insightful)
We've got lots of really cool stuff now, but much of our economy is still based on scarcity. Energy is not free, and the people who control the methods of production have a lot of influence. And so they want to keep it that way. The same thing is true of many raw materials.
But even more than that, there's the labor issue. I don't think anybody's personal utopia involves spending all day out in the sun building roads, but we require that a whole lot of people do that, and other crappy jobs, because it's the only way we have to get it done. The fact that some jobs are crappier than others creates some weird social layering. If there comes a point in the future where we could have machinery efficiently do all those jobs, then things can probably change.
But yeah, it won't be easy, it won't just magically happen because of any particular invention. But technology will continue to make it more likely.
Re:The problems of today... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mmmkay. How do you figure? There were no "good old days". Basic sanitation is a transformative technology, and it's becoming reasonably widespread.
Re:The problems of today... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The problems of today... (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
The summary isnt really true (Score:5, Informative)
Kurzweil is not an optimist (Score:5, Funny)
Optimist: "That glass is half full."
Kurzweil: "The self-cloning milk in that glass will replicate thanks to nanobots and end world hunger."
Re:Kurzweil is not an optimist (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Kurzweil is not an optimist (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Kurzweil is not an optimist (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you a secret: The world produces enough food to feed everyone.
But some of that food is fed to livestock to create other food (which isn't an efficient task). And a lot of food doesn't get to where its going because of corrupt governments and economic factors.
Which is probably the problem right there -- we have the technology to make the world a pretty nice place. But we don't. Magical future technology is unlikely to change our behavior.
Sounds like he has read ... Iain M Banks (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Side note (Score:3, Informative)
He uses the M for his SF stuff and drops it for his more mainstream fiction.
Re:Sounds like he has read ... Iain M Banks (Score:3, Informative)
I presume that:
I agree 100% about your assessment of his writing, both SF and 'social'. Try out "Whit" or "The Business" for some really well told tales that don't feature exploding planets.
If we don't run out of oil first... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If we don't run out of oil first... (Score:3, Informative)
Others cling towards fission as a way to generate energy until the renewables (including fusion) are up to s
We will never run out of oil. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We will never run out of oil. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If we don't run out of oil first... (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line is that we're working on efficiency and cost improvements to all of these technologies and making a gradual transition over to using them. If the oil situation gets serious, we'll accelerate our conversion.
Kurzweil is dead wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Kurzweil is dead wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
First, his view of the socio-technical aspects of technological innovation are entirely one-way. I've not seen him address the problem that such advances in power are only sustainable as long as there is a market for them. In the case of many other technologies such as the internal combustion engine, cooling systems, and aviation, advances in power and capacity tapered off due to a lack of a strong market demand.
The second flaw hinted by the first, he seems to play fas
Re:Life Expectancy (Score:3, Insightful)
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 li
Re:Life Expectancy (Score:3, Informative)
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
Needs (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Not "Utopia" (Score:3, Informative)
More's Utopia was a vision of a place where Marxist Socialism actually worked. It had nothing to do with technological progress.
Living to 300 ... (Score:3, Interesting)
But this is really Vernor Vinge's idea (Score:4, Informative)
BTW, for those who (like me) had always pronounced "Vinge" to rhyme with "hinge", according to Vinge himself it rhymes with "dingy".
Perhaps Heresy on Slashdot, BUT... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Perhaps Heresy on Slashdot, BUT... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a truism in regards to technology: when something is made easier to do, more of it is expected to be done.
And what happens when it is affordable to just manufacture robots and AIs to do the work? And manufacture robots and AIs to manufacture and design robots and AI? We could get to a point where it is vastly more efficient to manufacture "workers" than to train humans to do the work.
I don't know what happens then. But it certainly isn't just "more of the same". An observer could not have pre
Re:Perhaps Heresy on Slashdot, BUT... (Score:5, Insightful)
We aren't enslaved by our technology or our employers. We're enslaved by our own shallow, greedy, workaholic culture.
Our employers call us at home and have us bring our work home on company-provided laptops because we, as a society, let them do it.
Nay, we ask for it. Our obsessive need to have everything we buy cost less is what forces companies to start forcing us to do things like working unpaid overtime.
We're enslaving ourselves for valuing TVs that we don't have the time to watch and luxury cars that we will love for a week and then spend the rest of our lives associating with the two hours' worth of heavy traffic that we use them to experience every day. You're not a victim of the march of technology, you're not even a victim of your boss (remember, you agreed to take the job). You're just a victim of rampant materialism.
Think I'm just being some sort of hippie idealist? Well, chew on this: lately studies have been consitently showing that, once you get past the poverty line, personal satisfaction and happiness are negatively correlated with income.
Re:Perhaps Heresy on Slashdot, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
Links, history of Singularity (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-s ing.html [caltech.edu]
http://singinst.org/what-singularity.html [singinst.org]
http://www.accelerationwatch.com/ [accelerationwatch.com]
And let's not forget:
http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/search.pl?query=Sin gularity [justfuckinggoogleit.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singula rity [wikipedia.org]
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
singularity shmingularity: been there, done that. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Nothing like a debate! (Score:3, Insightful)
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
This is pretty far-fetched... (Score:5, Funny)
Maximum longevity (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mega Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Mega Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up. You're upper class. We will eat you.
*cough* so... yeah, crazy weather lately, eh?
Re:Mega Rich (Score:5, Funny)
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)
Re:Mega Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mega Rich (Score:3, Insightful)
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 ki
Re:Mega Rich (Score:4, Interesting)
Vase [galasource.com]
You can purchase [google.com] a used Cessna for ~$20,000-$50,000, or you can build one [zenithair.com] 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?
Re:Mega Rich (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
History lesson (Score:3, Insightful)
o
Any time you say "can't", sorry, you're likely to be wrong.
Re:Computer better be a _lot_ smarter than us .. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 w
Re:Interesting, yet very scarey (Score:3, Insightful)
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 sh