Ta-Wan
When it was foreseen they called it The Information Singularity.
The Information Singularity is the point where the amount of information and the ability to process it both increase at such rates that an infinite amount of information appears in a finite time - this time will be in the next decade.
For now we have been used to computer speeds and processing abilities doubling every so often. Your computer would go out of date in a year, then 6 months, then 3, then almost as soon as you'd left the shop. We have also seen how parents asked children how to program the VCR timer, then how to remove a virus, then how to set up their smart phone. Kids are so good at adapting to new things that the age a child needs to be to interact with technology and their marked superiority to adults is also moving towards its own near zero singularity. Technology could well be linked to, controlled by, and relayed to our minds, by our minds and so a new born child may possibly be born into the world where multiple languages, martial arts, mathematical skills and so on are fed to the developing brain of newborns even developing babies in the womb.
If this sounds far fetched this is simply because your brain is getting rigid with age and further reason why children adapt so well to new technology.
Open Source is what has given us Linux, Google (at least parts of what they do), Android, the Creative Commons license, open scientific development, open forums, TED, and a host more. We have developed a sharing of information and the universe is approaching a point where it will be able to store, adapt and process this information. Many illusions will be shattered.
Will the universe attain self knowledge? Will humans realize complete compassion for themselves and all life? I can only foresee good from all of this as, when we know all about all (though this will still be limited as we can never know the knowing of the knowing), then the result can only be love.
How will people promote war and sell weapons when we know for sure that we are all one?
You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.
Kids adapt to these things so quickly because to them they are toys, not tools. Adults adapt to the technologies to the extent they find them applicable or essential to what is important to their daily life. (Unless they are adult gamers.) We either learn the language or the icons, or say, screw it, who needs it.
ReplyDeleteI am less optimistic about singularity; which will come first--that or climate collapse? And does singularity apply to the universe as a whole or just a select group of technologically advanced primates on a minor planet?
Your second point: It is not that having all information and the processing of it means that the vastness of the information makes us wise. It is that we can par it down to the core truths.
ReplyDeleteYour first point: See the link in the post. This kid learned several programming languages and is sharing his passion. This is not kid playing games, this is advanced development possible only through advanced tools.
I did watch the kid, who probably gets beat up a lot, but gave up when he got to "Bustin Jieber." He would be nowhere without Jobs and Gates and their predecessors.
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