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If you like science fiction at all, give Accelerando a read. Of course it's just a story, but it feels like a possible real future (at least the first section)
by civility 7y ago
If you like science fiction at all, give Accelerando a read. Of course it's just a story, but it feels like a possible real future (at least the first section). In it, there is definitely a place for people who reject integrating with technology, but that place is in the back and left behind. Instant access to all of digital knowledge, unlimited storage for every thought or experience that interests you, performing complicated calculations, visualizing higher dimensions, and so on. Your fingers, ears, and voice aren't that quick, and your eyes are limited to 2D and only have decent resolution around the center. There is certainly room for improvement over what evolved in mammals (or any animal).
It probably won't be real before I die of old age, and I'd certainly let the early adopters find the bugs, but sign me up for version 3.0 or later if I'm still around.
- graycat 7y ago> Instant access to all of digital knowledge, ... Yup, I agree. Indeed, that's the core goal of my startup, helping people find that stuff -- for a huge fraction of the content, tough to do now. Sure, but as I mentioned in another response here, eyes are deep into both the design and the construction of the brain. Sooo, super tough to have a better intake channel. To be fair to DARPA, my guess is that they have no intention of improving on eyes, ears, etc. but just augmenting them. I didn't mention it, but my reaction would be just go ahead and use just eyes and ears but give them, say, a better user interface.
- civility 7y ago> eyes are deep into both the design and the construction of the brain. Sooo, super tough to have a better intake channel. Maybe the optical processing parts of the brain are where they'll inject a lot of the new interfaces. Have you ever had the sensation, when you're really focused on a problem and thinking hard about it, of not being able to see while you're concentrating? To me, it feels like your brain is /borrowing/ the optical lobes for other purposes at that time. I don't have any background in neurology, but it's fun to think about regardless.
- tetraca 7y agoIf I had any faith in the people implementing the software and the people funding the venture, then sure. I would love to live in the bright cheery science fiction future. But at this point I expect anyone with the money to make a proper implementation of the idea will happily and intentionally create something downright abusive and exploitative to the so-called "user". Anyone with the love to make something that would actually genuinely improve the human experience will be relegated to contributing to a half built janky implementation that has to reverse engineer the chip drivers. I would feel lucky to live in the future where you can actually own the chip in your head AND turn off thought analytics.
- civility 7y agoYeah, I'm guilty of being pretty cynical/pessimistic from time to time too. However, despite all the nastiness and privacy invading features of the technical world, a lot of things really have just gotten better over time. Maybe just don't run "Braindows 10" or "BrainOS X" with automatic updates.
- chrisweekly 7y ago> "Accelerando" Singularity book 3 by Stross?
- civility 7y agoStross, yes. Not sure if it was book 3 of a series or something. I didn't read much else of his.
- maxander 7y agoBy Stross, yes. And it’s online: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...