Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 18-22 Oct 2010 (1776-1780)
westrim:
--- Quote from: Mad Cat on 19 Oct 2010, 12:06 ---At least no one's done this yet.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=technological+singularity
Edit: Oh darn. Now I have.
--- End quote ---
I always forget about that site.
--- Quote from: Steve the Pocket on 19 Oct 2010, 12:23 ---I very much would like to know how you managed to extrapolate "self-importance" OR "butt-hurt" from a person not bothering to Google something.
--- End quote ---
Self importance because they expect others to do the explaining for them rather than seeking it themselves, butthurt because any joke they don't get is automatically bad or less worthy somehow.
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 19 Oct 2010, 12:26 ---image
--- End quote ---
Lol, as if desktops will be around for the singularity.
Though I'm actually not one of the ones looking forward to it, first because it's still hypothetical and there are enormous boundaries to overcome, and second because it is inevitable that some people will still get left behind if it does happen (even if of their own volition). The divide between rich and poor is already a pain in the ass- what about a divide between immortal and mortal or physical and virtual?
jwhouk:
Major technological changes are always thirty years away.
Carl-E:
--- Quote from: westrim on 19 Oct 2010, 12:53 ---Lol, as if desktops will be around for the singularity.
--- End quote ---
Actually, that's a pretty old comic.
--- Quote ---Though I'm actually not one of the ones looking forward to it, first because it's still hypothetical and there are enormous boundaries to overcome, and second because it is inevitable that some people will still get left behind if it does happen (even if of their own volition). The divide between rich and poor is already a pain in the ass- what about a divide between immortal and mortal or physical and virtual?
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: jwhouk on 19 Oct 2010, 13:31 ---Major technological changes are always thirty years away.
--- End quote ---
Nothing goes the way we imagine it will. Some things go the way some people imagine - Gene Roddenberry imagined flip open communicators and look, we got flip phones. People work on medical scanners because they saw tricorders when they were kids, and so some things will come true. But the stuff that makes it is only the practical stuff. No flying cars - we're having enough trouble with the grounded ones. Jet packs? They can go so wrong. The stabilizer control goes out, and you wind up slammed headfirst into the pavement. No thanks.
But look at what's being done with nerve control of artificial limbs, and you'll find that the singularity's a lot closer than you thought. But it's for people who need it. We'll continue to be born human, and as Westrim points out, there will always be the have-nots and the want-nots, regardless of the potential of "mecha-me" or floating clouds of intelligence.
So don't hold your breath!
haikupoet:
--- Quote from: westrim on 19 Oct 2010, 12:53 ---
Lol, as if desktops will be around for the singularity.
--- End quote ---
No reason to assume they won't. There will be a lot fewer in the future, and most of the ones you will see will look like Mac minis (or thinner), but gamers, media people, and HPC are keeping the desktop form factor alive despite the dominance of laptops in the market because such people need the expandability and interchangeability of parts.
That's actually a thing that bothers me about futurists -- they have all these great ideas (arcologies, digital radio replacing analog, frequency-hopping radio broadcasts, "smart" kitchens) but they never stop to think that a) their target audience may not be interested or able to afford them or b) that they have to compete with immense installed bases for a lot of older technologies that are still perfectly suitable for their needs. After all, I could get a smart kitchen, but I don't have to worry about DRM or power outages with a cookbook. The arcology thing is another idea -- okay, which city do we tear down first? (See Boston, 1960s for what happens when people try to do ground-up urban renewal.) I mean, I can come up with a pretty good idea for what an ideal 21st century city would look like, but where would I build it, who would fund it, and how would I get people to move there in the first place?
--- Quote ---Though I'm actually not one of the ones looking forward to it, first because it's still hypothetical and there are enormous boundaries to overcome, and second because it is inevitable that some people will still get left behind if it does happen (even if of their own volition). The divide between rich and poor is already a pain in the ass- what about a divide between immortal and mortal or physical and virtual?
--- End quote ---
See, this is why I think the Singularity fundamentally is a meaningless concept. If you want to look at a reasonable approximation of what the future might look like, Star Trek ain't it. Think "My Life as a Teenage Robot". Think "Babylon 5". Think "Star Wars". Hell, even QC is a pretty good approximation of what the near future is likely to be like.
It's all fun and such to speculate about transhumanism, but it's meaningless to make any predictions about it without any real knowledge of how to get there. The researchers who work on things that might lead down that path are mostly doing it because it's cool, and it appears in so much SF because it's cool. The only people who treat it as Serious Business are futurists, and they're kind of dumb.
haikupoet:
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 19 Oct 2010, 14:21 ---Some things go the way some people imagine - Gene Roddenberry imagined flip open communicators and look, we got flip phones. People work on medical scanners because they saw tricorders when they were kids, and so some things will come true. But the stuff that makes it is only the practical stuff. No flying cars - we're having enough trouble with the grounded ones. Jet packs? They can go so wrong. The stabilizer control goes out, and you wind up slammed headfirst into the pavement. No thanks.
--- End quote ---
Except the flip phone was an intentional mimicking of the Star Trek communicator, just like you said about tricorders. Giving Roddenberry credit for the prediction is a little off.
--- Quote ---But look at what's being done with nerve control of artificial limbs, and you'll find that the singularity's a lot closer than you thought. But it's for people who need it. We'll continue to be born human, and as Westrim points out, there will always be the have-nots and the want-nots, regardless of the potential of "mecha-me" or floating clouds of intelligence.
So don't hold your breath!
--- End quote ---
I don't think artificial limbs are Singularity-related at all, at least no more than Deep Blue's victory over Garry Kasparov. They're interesting from a biomechanical perspective, but all they do is restore function that's been lost. If you want to think in more transhumanist terms, think about what it would take to install a tail. Not only would the beginning of the tail have to be clamped to your coccyx (and probably sacrum as well), but in order to have a functioning prehensile tail, you'd also have to attach some pretty heavy-duty anchoring to the pelvic bone to keep from ripping your spine out when you're hanging from the roof truss of a high school gym. A permanent augmentation is transhumanist, but an artificial limb isn't.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version