On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
Imho, internet is 100x bigger than commercial airlines. Yeah, being able to travel to the other side of the planet in a day (compared to weeks of train travel for example) is really cool, but very few actually do that anyway. But having essentially all collected information of the human race at your fingertips in a couple of seconds, that is huge. There is no competition between the the two as I see it, and I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910. I don't think we fully realise how limited we were before internet.
Then the fact that we tend to use this access to all collected information of the human race to look at kittens videos, that's a different point.
On July 09 2015 22:10 TMG26 wrote: Is there anything better than kitten videos?
In practice I'd guess there are a lot more hours of porn watched than kitten videos, but then the statement of accessing the collected knowledge of the human race becomes cynical rather than funny and cute. I went with funny and cute.
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
Imho, internet is 100x bigger than commercial airlines. Yeah, being able to travel to the other side of the planet in a day (compared to weeks of train travel for example) is really cool, but very few actually do that anyway. But having essentially all collected information of the human race at your fingertips in a couple of seconds, that is huge. There is no competition between the the two as I see it, and I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910. I don't think we fully realise how limited we were before internet.
Then the fact that we tend to use this access to all collected information of the human race to look at kittens videos, that's a different point.
The promise of Interstellar travel > smaller screens to look at cat videos
The internet used to simply be called the library and only academics had access to it. Flight used to be called magic and only imagination could access that. Go back half a century and we went to the moon. Now? We get excited because our satellites takes pictures of Pluto.
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
Imho, internet is 100x bigger than commercial airlines. Yeah, being able to travel to the other side of the planet in a day (compared to weeks of train travel for example) is really cool, but very few actually do that anyway. But having essentially all collected information of the human race at your fingertips in a couple of seconds, that is huge. There is no competition between the the two as I see it, and I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910. I don't think we fully realise how limited we were before internet.
Then the fact that we tend to use this access to all collected information of the human race to look at kittens videos, that's a different point.
Of course it is hard to argue that the impact of the internet has not been huge - and I am not trying. I am arguing that progress since 1970 has been primarily in bits and bytes, while progress in the "real" world has mostly stagnated. And I believe that humanity needs to find a way to channel the progress in the digital world back to the physical to make the world a better place tomorrow. Some of this is already happening, which is why I am somewhat optimistic about the future.
However, I can't get around the real world stagnation that has gripped us, and is still holding on, which is why I contest the idea that we are living beyond what people imagined say 50 years ago - far, far from it.
"I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910" - this however seems ridiculous, and I think you would reconsider once you start choking to death on Diphtheria. Although that comparison isn't really useful to begin with. What would "all the knowledge of the world" really give you in 1910, when most of the knowledge that makes the internet amazing has yet to be brought to the world?
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
Imho, internet is 100x bigger than commercial airlines. Yeah, being able to travel to the other side of the planet in a day (compared to weeks of train travel for example) is really cool, but very few actually do that anyway. But having essentially all collected information of the human race at your fingertips in a couple of seconds, that is huge. There is no competition between the the two as I see it, and I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910. I don't think we fully realise how limited we were before internet.
Then the fact that we tend to use this access to all collected information of the human race to look at kittens videos, that's a different point.
Indeed, the Internet is basically amazing and people don't realize just HOW amazing it is. I don't think any other invention in human history so far can compete with the computer. Possibly electricity, maybe antibiotics, those are pretty amazing too. Flight? Not a chance. I have used planes less than 5 times in my life.
With the internet, if i for some reason need to find out who ruled Krakow in 1197, that takes me less than a minute (The answer is Leszek I the White). Try answering that question in 1965 in less than a day of work. And i can apply this technology to any question i can come up with, on any topic. I can real time video chat with my father while he is in Japan. I can have the computer solve mathematical problems that would have taken Mr. 1965 more than a year of work and probably the aid of a doctor of mathematics within minutes. (This is incredibly useful in an amazing amount of situations) I can simulate all sorts of stuff. I can have a fully interactive photorealistic video simulation of a fictional world. If i require anything in between a fridge and an authentic replica of a medieval sword, i can order it online and it will be at my doorstep within a short amount of time.
You just don't realize how amazing computers and the internet are because you use them every day.
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
Imho, internet is 100x bigger than commercial airlines. Yeah, being able to travel to the other side of the planet in a day (compared to weeks of train travel for example) is really cool, but very few actually do that anyway. But having essentially all collected information of the human race at your fingertips in a couple of seconds, that is huge. There is no competition between the the two as I see it, and I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910. I don't think we fully realise how limited we were before internet.
Then the fact that we tend to use this access to all collected information of the human race to look at kittens videos, that's a different point.
You'd take the Internet over : -decent medicine & hygiene, increasing your chances of living past 2yo or of seeing your grandchildren's birth by a considerable amount -easy and cheap access to electricity, heating, and water -generalized education -easier and faster transports (aircraft, automobiles, better trains) -cheap, mass-produced goods available to everyone -radio, TV, movies -the advance of women's rights (and of racial minority's rights depending on the country) ?
People before the Internet were not "limited". Everything they did took more time, that's all. But for all the talk, how many actual inventions has the Internet brought?
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
Imho, internet is 100x bigger than commercial airlines. Yeah, being able to travel to the other side of the planet in a day (compared to weeks of train travel for example) is really cool, but very few actually do that anyway. But having essentially all collected information of the human race at your fingertips in a couple of seconds, that is huge. There is no competition between the the two as I see it, and I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910. I don't think we fully realise how limited we were before internet.
Then the fact that we tend to use this access to all collected information of the human race to look at kittens videos, that's a different point.
Indeed, the Internet is basically amazing and people don't realize just HOW amazing it is. I don't think any other invention in human history so far can compete with the computer. Possibly electricity, maybe antibiotics, those are pretty amazing too. Flight? Not a chance. I have used planes less than 5 times in my life.
You just don't realize how amazing computers and the internet are because you use them every day.
Well, I really don't think is the case, and I believe it's exactly the other way around: People take most of the amazing things we have thanks to innovation of the past 100 years for granted, because, well, we have enjoyed them to the same level of progress over the past 40-50 years.
Take something as simple as refrigeration, something that is completely taking for granted now, but didn't become a standard feature of daily life until the 1950s. Without it no variety in food, bad nutrition, no lager beer, awful health situation in large cities, and a significant part of your week spend on purchasing and preparing food. Similarly, take central plumbing, another invention of the 20th century, which probably has done more to public health than any other.
Gee, never mind medicine or how about effective birth control?
Ask someone in 1910 if he would rather be able to travel in a day across the globe, get rid of the disease and STENCH of city life, flu pandemics or if he instead be able to read up on ancient history at home rather than walking over to the city library. I think the choice would be pretty clear.
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
Imho, internet is 100x bigger than commercial airlines. Yeah, being able to travel to the other side of the planet in a day (compared to weeks of train travel for example) is really cool, but very few actually do that anyway. But having essentially all collected information of the human race at your fingertips in a couple of seconds, that is huge. There is no competition between the the two as I see it, and I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910. I don't think we fully realise how limited we were before internet.
Then the fact that we tend to use this access to all collected information of the human race to look at kittens videos, that's a different point.
Indeed, the Internet is basically amazing and people don't realize just HOW amazing it is. I don't think any other invention in human history so far can compete with the computer. Possibly electricity, maybe antibiotics, those are pretty amazing too. Flight? Not a chance. I have used planes less than 5 times in my life.
You just don't realize how amazing computers and the internet are because you use them every day.
Well, I really don't think is the case, and I believe it's exactly the other way around: People take most of the amazing things we have thanks to innovation of the past 100 years for granted, because, well, we have enjoyed them to the same level of progress over the past 40-50 years.
Take something as simple as refrigeration, something that is completely taking for granted now, but didn't become a standard feature of daily life until the 1950s. Without it no variety in food, bad nutrition, no lager beer, awful health situation in large cities, and a significant part of your week spend on purchasing and preparing food. Similarly, take central plumbing, another invention of the 20th century, which probably has done more to public health than any other.
Gee, never mind medicine or how about effective birth control?
Ask someone in 1910 if he would rather be able to travel in a day across the globe, get rid of the disease and STENCH of city life, flu pandemics or if he instead be able to read up on ancient history at home rather than walking over to the city library. I think the choice would be pretty clear.
ice boxes, plumbing, medicines were all in the early 1900's which is exactly what we are trying to talk about. Refrigeration, vaccines, interstellar travel, etc... these were magic before and has become reality now. The internet, as useful as it is, is not magic. Its literally the same thing as before, but more convenient. And if you asked someone in early 1900's whether saving 2million people in spain from the flu was more impressive than books with no paper--real world trumps digital.
A lot of what the internet gives is convenience. The early innovations of 1900 => 1980 was magic made real. There's a difference between convenience and innovation.
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
A lot of the advancements we are currently making have not shown their real world applications yet, would be my first point.
However we'll work with your 50 year timeframe, or there abouts. Let's ask an average member of the public from 1950 what they know about space. Sputnik was launched on the 4th of October 1957, the first satellite. Now I think you're average Joe Public won't know much. An American would of likely know of The Space Race through media like newspapers, but the applications this would have for them they could not even begin to comprehend, whilst the science fiction of the era was dreaming up flying cars (something also new to them, coincidence?) What they actually got was a global communications system, which would allow them to upload or download any type of media anywhere on the whole planet, whilst simultaneously knowing what was happening in real time on the other side of the globe should they wish in their own pocket. All knowledge on tap 24/7.
Now, I don't know about you, but I say that IS an example of large scale technological advancement, in a short period of time too.
The 50 year time frame is also important, but in an unexpected way. Einstein's work on the atom was ground breaking. It came at a time when the top science of the day was through steam engines. A time not long after they had a tug of war between two ships to decide which was better out of paddle steamers and the new fangled propellered type, that's the era we're in. Einstein's first discovery was proving the existence of the atom, the jiggling of pollen in water was a weird mystery to them, Brownian Motion they could not understand. And whilst some argued for there being a micro scale we could never see (microscopes being the best they had) It was dismissed as unimportant for that reason.
Einstein and the new era of the atom, the new fact of the micro scale. Which led to Bohr's work in Quantum Mechanics. Einstein hated this new concept, and argued against it, but the Copenhagen Interpretation was the victor. You have one great mind taking Step A and the next Step B. Humans themselves are the limiting point. You have your 50 year time frame. The atom bomb came from Einstein's work, the quantum level evolved and who will know what the next particle they discover at CERN can do? Splitting a mere atom can give us horrific outcomes, what's the next particle discovery going to yield? The power for interstellar space flight? You just don't know!
The reason we have not cracked Artificial Intelligence yet is because we do not know enough yet about how our own brains work. They are only just now starting to be analysed, the imagery technology is new and evolving. For example today we know that the psychopaths have a smaller amygdala part of the brain. This is still concerning the brain (new science) But is also a technological and learning step forward. When we get the next step in scanning and imaging techniques that can map the brain completely, on a 1 to 1 level every little neuron and connection (anyone think they won't be able to do that X years down the line? ps. Take your moot point about storage capacity and bin it, look at old tape players vs. micro SD) Well shit fellas, when you do that electronically what you have is the same networking that gives you and I consciousness. Artificial Intelligence baby.
The great teaching institutions around the world give young minds the latest in understanding, and some evolve it a step forward. Just like evolution in nature, random genes are better adapted to the environment, in science random ideas become better adapted to the truth. And it's the stepping stone nature of life that leads to the advancement. And speaking of evolution, how we evolved into Homo Sapiens is understood. Could we have a discourse like you and I today with a neanderthal? No. We speak of science evolution (like you say the technological singularity won't happen, yet I say it will with time) Yet what about human evolution itself? Will we be able to communicate with homo sapien evolved?
I highly doubt that humanity will naturally evolve.
The reason for that is simple: Timeframe. It takes at least tens of thousands of years to evolve naturally. Meanwhile we are already within fingers width of being able to tinker with our own genes, We already are able to tinker with our living bodies quite a lot. I would be very surprised if we wouldn't start some sort of self-guided evolution on a much smaller timeframe than nature could ever hope to accomplish.
(Funnily enough, if i recall correctly if you put a neanderthal through a current education you would probably not even notice he is a neanderthal. The only difference between you and a Cromagnon man is your upbringing)
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
Imho, internet is 100x bigger than commercial airlines. Yeah, being able to travel to the other side of the planet in a day (compared to weeks of train travel for example) is really cool, but very few actually do that anyway. But having essentially all collected information of the human race at your fingertips in a couple of seconds, that is huge. There is no competition between the the two as I see it, and I'd easily take the internet over everything that happened between 1960 and 1910. I don't think we fully realise how limited we were before internet.
Then the fact that we tend to use this access to all collected information of the human race to look at kittens videos, that's a different point.
Indeed, the Internet is basically amazing and people don't realize just HOW amazing it is. I don't think any other invention in human history so far can compete with the computer. Possibly electricity, maybe antibiotics, those are pretty amazing too. Flight? Not a chance. I have used planes less than 5 times in my life.
You just don't realize how amazing computers and the internet are because you use them every day.
Well, I really don't think is the case, and I believe it's exactly the other way around: People take most of the amazing things we have thanks to innovation of the past 100 years for granted, because, well, we have enjoyed them to the same level of progress over the past 40-50 years.
Take something as simple as refrigeration, something that is completely taking for granted now, but didn't become a standard feature of daily life until the 1950s. Without it no variety in food, bad nutrition, no lager beer, awful health situation in large cities, and a significant part of your week spend on purchasing and preparing food. Similarly, take central plumbing, another invention of the 20th century, which probably has done more to public health than any other.
Gee, never mind medicine or how about effective birth control?
Ask someone in 1910 if he would rather be able to travel in a day across the globe, get rid of the disease and STENCH of city life, flu pandemics or if he instead be able to read up on ancient history at home rather than walking over to the city library. I think the choice would be pretty clear.
ice boxes, plumbing, medicines were all in the early 1900's which is exactly what we are trying to talk about. Refrigeration, vaccines, interstellar travel, etc... these were magic before and has become reality now. The internet, as useful as it is, is not magic. Its literally the same thing as before, but more convenient. And if you asked someone in early 1900's whether saving 2million people in spain from the flu was more impressive than books with no paper--real world trumps digital.
A lot of what the internet gives is convenience. The early innovations of 1900 => 1980 was magic made real. There's a difference between convenience and innovation.
Most of the discoveries of the XXth had been known/used for centuries. Ice boxes were centuries old. First vaccinations were arguably in the XIth century, at least known to exist in the XVIth. Cars are just a small improvement over horse carriages. Flight was available in the XVIIIth, although heavier than air flight is a nice touch. Rocket to the moon ? Just a larger version of the fireworks we'd used for centuries.
Yes the difference before/after the XXth is huge, but I don't know if it qualifies as magic: someone from the XIXth could understand where it comes from and link it to something he has experienced. The main points of that revolution are the capacity to mass produce technological products (available to most) and the understanding of the mechanisms at work.
The only radically new elements would perhaps be linked to atomic energy/quantum physics?
Let's bring back someone from 1850 to 1950. We show him a horseless carriage. Let's move him to 2050, we show him a horseless and driverless carriage that gets him anywhere on the planet if he states his wish to go there. The first is an impressive mechanical tool. The second is magic.
I understand the feeling and we have been slowed in the last 50 years by the absence of a light replacement energy source, but I feel you underestimate how the tricks of today (even if a lot of them are linked to computation) would be considered as magic by people a few generations back.
fruity: None of what you are saying addresses my point. I already said I consider the internet an incredible technological achievement, I mean you would be insane not to think so. However, it simply pales in comparison to the insane progress from before 1970 on virtually every front of human life.
Also, 2015-50 years gives you 1965, not 1950. And we had communication satellites in 1965.
All your future talk is maybes and super vague. The benefits of current progress just haven't arrived yet? Well then, why not, and when will it happen? This doesn't explain the stagnation of the past 40 years. And you are wrong, we know very well that CERN will not give us interstellar travel. We also know quite well the powers and limitations of the "AI" we can create.
No idea what you are getting at with your talk about evolution.
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
The Concorde burned up way too much fuel, it was loud (and hence only used on transatlantic flights), had all sorts of environmental issues (such as harming the ozone layer) and relied on government support to make up for the cost of building and maintaining a drastically reduced number, only becoming profitable later on. It might have been a technological achievement but a very shortsighted one. It's like saying I could save half the time on my work commute by installing a bulldozer blade in front of my car and flooring the gas. It's great, but I just destroyed half a highway.
In 2015 we have operational space stations, new countries are planning manned missions to the moon with unmanned ones already underway by the EU, Russia, China, India and Japan, and the UAE is trying to send an orbiter to Mars. If you were in any of those countries in 1965, except for Russia, you weren't going anywhere. NASA is getting ready for Moon Program 2: Electric Boogaloo with the Orion program making its first test launch last year. Now for the first time, you and I can go to space as well, assuming you and I have either a really trusting bank or a few hundred thousand dollars. But that was completely unattainable 50 years ago, where it was strictly government work with only the best of the best of the best from the US and USSR who were going to be going to space. We have anything but given up on space exploration.
Nuclear... we're in a lull. Blame Chernobyl, Fukushima and the Simpsons. But we do have all sorts of other alternative-energy developments. Maglev trains in China, Japan and Korea. The Tesla, which I'll get to in a bit.
But anyways, these are all the pinnacle of our technology, but let's go back to your example of the regular world, then and now. A person from 1965 would definitely see the differences, just as they would see the differences in 1915. Diseases from their time like the measles are almost nonexistent. We can conduct surgeries with lasers. We can bomb people with robot planes and plan their route with military satellites. We have cars that make so little noise it has to be included artificially, and ones that you can plug in are commonplace and spreading.
I actually saw one of the Tesla supercharging stations (the fast ones, not the regular ones that take hours to charge your car), in rural New Hampshire. Farms everywhere, not exactly first-rate when it comes to tech, but feel free pass through, grab a bite to eat, and when you get back to your car it's nearly topped off.
About a decade from now (actually 5 years, but let's plan for the worst), we won't even need to drive the cars around anymore.
As for what the Internet has given us, it's far more than just knowing who was the 43rd President of Mexico. The same magic rectangle that does that can also summon me a random person off the street who will take me to my destination, during which time I can have a nice chat about the technological developments of the day with people who don't live on the same continent as me and might see differently. The speed of my rectangle and others' are all averaged together so if I, or someone else wanted to, could check traffic on any given road in real time.
And I think it's not just the knowledge but the speed at which we get it and the near-infinite potential it affords us that we're able to glean all this information, everything we've had, and decide it's not enough.
Also, a funny side note on TV's: If you really wanted to blow a 1965 person's mind, you show them a house with a 72-inch TV in the bathroom, turn on the TV and show that the number of available channels has gone from ~3 to >1000, and then say that it's actually the low end of modern entertainment (compared to near-infinite number of streams, TV shows, movies, games, whatnot available on a PC with an internet connection). I don't know if they'd consider it magic, but it would definitely be awe inspiring.
On July 10 2015 00:09 Simberto wrote: The reason for that is simple: Timeframe. It takes at least tens of thousands of years to evolve naturally. Meanwhile we are already within finger's width of being able to tinker with our own genes, We already are able to tinker with our living bodies quite a lot. I would be very surprised if we wouldn't start some sort of self-guided evolution on a much smaller timeframe than nature could ever hope to accomplish.
Personally I don't see a distinction between natural evolution and mankind deliberate genetic intervention. It's just who does the tinkering. Evolve we will. But into what? And will it be too late to go back, once we realise we didn't understand enough, like smoking was first thought to be good for you, and radium was put in all sorts of shit when radioactivity was first discovered, perfumes, shaving cream razors, I kid you not.
Seems we mess where we shouldn't, or do so before understanding enough.
On July 08 2015 05:01 fruity. wrote: Look at how we have progressed since 1900. The leaps forward in science and technology, from Einstein's work on the atom to visiting every planet in this solar system. All this in such a short time. What would someone from the 1700's make of an Apache attack helicopter? And then saw the sheer destruction these war machines can bring?
An incredible speed of technological advancement is happening, and we're increasingly reaching out into space, and developing the technologies for long distance space travel, to highlight one point;
A team of physicists from the UK, Portugal and Sweden led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford lab has shown that it should be possible to shield spacecraft using artificial magnetosphere's. MOO
READ THIS Google can spend BILLIONS of $'s on a WHIM and they are heavily investing in technology, as is a whole slew of American government agencies like the NSA, to their European counterparts. This is desired.
As we learn more about how our own brains work, this knowledge will in time be applied to quantum computing and Artifical Intelligence. I say a fully concious AI who has a sense of self, understanding that it lives in a different world to us.. Will happen at some point in the future, and when it does the sheer speed of thinking he she or it could achieve with a quantum computer, will be a turning point for humanity, good or bad.
Science fiction becomes science fact, it's just a matter of time.
This is one of my favorite subjects because I am still convinced of the opposite: That progress has slowed down, and is not nearly as rapid as it used to be during the days when say the helicopter was invented, to bring up your example.
As an exercise, travel back in time 50 years, and compare the world to our present. Obviously there will be differences in technology, but to me the vast majority is in computerization. The rest will look more or less familiar. People have cars, televisions, airplanes (in fast, the SAME airplanes) and you could probably extend that list. They won't have facebook and iPhones, sure. But compared to say human flight, those "inventions" seem really miniscule to me. In some areas you can't help but notice that technology has actually regressed. 40 years ago you could fly from Paris to NYC in 2 hours. In 2015 you are back at the travel speed of the 1960s. In 1965 humanity was on its way to the moon and to operational space stations. Compared to those days we have given up on space exploration. 1965 was the height of nuclear research, a path that has pretty much stagnated since.
Now, take a person from 1965, and let them travel back 50 years. The world they are taken to is VASTLY different. This is a world where a flu epidemic would kill millions. Where human flight was JUST invented, and commercial flying still far off. Where the majority of city traffic was horse drawn. Where people often enough didn't have central plumbing, central heating, refrigeration. Where transatlantic travel took not hours, but weeks. Where the fastest means of telecommunication was the telegraph. Where moving pictures existed, but were a carnival attraction rather than an every day normality.
Compared to the progress we saw from the beginning of the 19th century to say the moon landing, everything that happened since then is sad stagnation. It is no wonder that the visions of the future from say the 1950s and 1960s imagined fantastic worlds straight out of science fiction by 2000, considering the amazing pace of progress they had experienced in their lifetime. To steal from someone who argues along the same lines, "we were promised flying cars, and what we got was 140 characters".
The Concorde burned up way too much fuel, it was loud (and hence only used on transatlantic flights), had all sorts of environmental issues (such as harming the ozone layer) and relied on government support to make up for the cost of building and maintaining a drastically reduced number, only becoming profitable later on. It might have been a technological achievement but a very shortsighted one. It's like saying I could save half the time on my work commute by installing a bulldozer blade in front of my car and flooring the gas. It's great, but I just destroyed half a highway.
In 2015 we have operational space stations, new countries are planning manned missions to the moon with unmanned ones already underway by the EU, Russia, China, India and Japan, and the UAE is trying to send an orbiter to Mars. If you were in any of those countries in 1965, except for Russia, you weren't going anywhere. NASA is getting ready for Moon Program 2: Electric Boogaloo with the Orion program making its first test launch last year. Now for the first time, you and I can go to space as well, assuming you and I have either a really trusting bank or a few hundred thousand dollars. But that was completely unattainable 50 years ago, where it was strictly government work with only the best of the best of the best from the US and USSR who were going to be going to space. We have anything but given up on space exploration.
Nuclear... we're in a lull. Blame Chernobyl, Fukushima and the Simpsons. But we do have all sorts of other alternative-energy developments. Maglev trains in China, Japan and Korea. The Tesla, which I'll get to in a bit.
But anyways, these are all the pinnacle of our technology, but let's go back to your example of the regular world, then and now. A person from 1965 would definitely see the differences, just as they would see the differences in 1915. Diseases from their time like the measles are almost nonexistent. We can conduct surgeries with lasers. We can bomb people with robot planes and plan their route with military satellites. We have cars that make so little noise it has to be included artificially, and ones that you can plug in are commonplace and spreading.
I actually saw one of the Tesla supercharging stations (the fast ones, not the regular ones that take hours to charge your car), in rural New Hampshire. Farms everywhere, not exactly first-rate when it comes to tech, but feel free pass through, grab a bite to eat, and when you get back to your car it's nearly topped off.
About a decade from now (actually 5 years, but let's plan for the worst), we won't even need to drive the cars around anymore.
As for what the Internet has given us, it's far more than just knowing who was the 43rd President of Mexico. The same magic rectangle that does that can also summon me a random person off the street who will take me to my destination, during which time I can have a nice chat about the technological developments of the day with people who don't live on the same continent as me and might see differently. The speed of my rectangle and others' are all averaged together so if I, or someone else wanted to, could check traffic on any given road in real time.
And I think it's not just the knowledge but the speed at which we get it and the near-infinite potential it affords us that we're able to glean all this information, everything we've had, and decide it's not enough.
Also, a funny side note on TV's: If you really wanted to blow a 1965 person's mind, you show them a house with a 72-inch TV in the bathroom, turn on the TV and show that the number of available channels has gone from ~3 to >1000, and then say that it's actually the low end of modern entertainment (compared to near-infinite number of streams, TV shows, movies, games, whatnot available on a PC with an internet connection). I don't know if they'd consider it magic, but it would definitely be awe inspiring.
The reason why the Concorde failed (or why we stopped exploring space, or why we are still flying planes from the 70s, or why we are still driving the same cars, but with bluetooth) are irrelevant. I am describing simply THAT all that happened, and that those are signs of technological slow down.
All the counter examples you brought are from the future, and I like I said earlier, I mostly share a (mildly) positive view of technological progress in the future thanks to companies like Space X and Tesla, renewable energies, and actually applicable uses of AI like self driving cars. If all those come to fruit, that we are finally back on real progress. But we still leave behind us decades of slowdown.
On July 10 2015 00:09 Simberto wrote: The reason for that is simple: Timeframe. It takes at least tens of thousands of years to evolve naturally. Meanwhile we are already within finger's width of being able to tinker with our own genes, We already are able to tinker with our living bodies quite a lot. I would be very surprised if we wouldn't start some sort of self-guided evolution on a much smaller timeframe than nature could ever hope to accomplish.
Personally I don't see a distinction between natural evolution and mankind deliberate genetic intervention. It's just who does the tinkering. Evolve we will. But into what? And will it be too late to go back, once we realise we didn't understand enough, like smoking was first thought to be good for you, and radium was put in all sorts of shit when radioactivity was first discovered, perfumes, shaving cream razors, I kid you not.
Seems we mess where we shouldn't, or do so before understanding enough.
Uh? There's a major difference : natural evolution is an association of randomness and environmental influences, while human-driven evolution is not random and influenced by the human will
EPT
![[image loading]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Apache_helicopter_in_flight.jpg)
