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It seems to me that, with the ubiquity of smartphones and how powerful they're becoming, it's only a matter of time before there's a constantly-evolving digital
by Osmium 14y ago
It seems to me that, with the ubiquity of smartphones and how powerful they're becoming, it's only a matter of time before there's a constantly-evolving digital facsimile of the real world. We've started to see how, for example, many geo-tagged photos can be reconstructed into a pointcloud (see Microsoft's Photosynth amongst others), and how everyone is now carrying a location-aware camera-computer in their pockets... Projects like streetview would become obsolete.
The possibility for alternate reality games will be immense, but I suspect that's just scratching the surface. We've only had this smartphone technology for what? 5 years or so? And so far all ours uses for this technology have been fairly superficial and mundane (by which I mean, if you'd gone back a decade and asked people "what would you make if you had a smartphone that could do x?" you'd probably get decent predictions of the present day). But in 10, 20 years I imagine it'll have evolved to something far beyond what we can currently imagine.
- dansingerman 14y agoDidn't you know? We are living in a simulated reality: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html (Probably)
- Osmium 14y agoThen it'll be turtles all the way down :)
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoSimulation is overkill; the Matrix approach is cheaper - run the simulation within the brain.
- RivieraKid 14y ago"We are in a simulation" is a meaningless statement. It's like saying that there are millinons of invisible unicorns on Earth.
- rictic 14y agoNitpick: "We are in a perfect and undetectable simulation" is a meaningless statement. If e.g. someone found a privilege escalation in our reality's VM that would be quite meaningful.
- RivieraKid 14y agoGood point, that's how I meant it :) Similarly, if the unicorns found a way to become visible, it would become a meaningul statement too.
- rubinelli 14y agoReality hackers? Let's badger Charlie Stross to write a novel about it. :)
- BoppreH 14y agoThere's a great novel based on this very concept: Fine Structure ( http://everything2.com/title/Fine+Structure http://everything2.com/title/Fine+Structure ). Definitely worth a read.
- jbattle 14y agoI get what you are saying, but I disagree. If there were millions of invisible unicorns, surely we'd occassionally bump in to one. Azaleas would go missing. With the right technology, it might be possible to harvest them for ivory or meat or hoofs for glue. If we live in a simulation, there may be experiments that would demonstrate the fact. There may be ways to 'hack' the simulation and break all kinds of physical laws.
- RivieraKid 14y ago
- eddieroger 14y agoOK, I really tried to read that, but my lack of coffee and presence of being really tired made it hard to consume. Was the entire premise of it that one day a being will have computers powerful enough to simulate humanity, so of course they will, and we are the result of it? Some of those assumptions seem pretty damn big, but again, I could just be too tired to read it.
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