So today in Communications class, we watched a video that gave information that both enlightened, saddnened, scared and intrigued me. One thought that emerged from it was, can the internet run out of space? Nothing we have found is infinite and on going, it all ends. So is there an end to the internet? And so, what are the implications of such a thing, if it were to be true? This world is far too crowded and becoming even more crowded. Another reason I am undecided on children, we have so many kids in the foster system or who can't be cared for by parents and being put up for adoption, so why add more to an already overloaded system and planet.
Everything, including life is speeding up. Information is coming faster and faster, a computer that is smarter and works faster than the human mind and can surpass the human mind is predicted by 2040. How can something even do that if it's created by a human mind? Humans won't have to do anything. Everything is becoming mechanized, everything is changing, everything is evolving...so why am I not content with it? Why does it bother me even though I'm for evolution. Is it because I realize that technological evolution more than anything is leading toward human de-evolution. People less and less are going outside and more and more disorders are popping up it seems. Could it be that there is a corelation between the two?
And as it seems, the world tends to balance things out. Floods, hurricanes, plagues, war, things of that sort seem to pop up to thin out the population. I believe it's Judaism or an eastern religion or philosophy that believe everything has a soul. But that's not the point, the point is that the world and universe tends to find a way to bring about balance. Swine flu a possibility for the next. However, what if we are too advanced for our own good and we save humanity from any terrible attack of swing flu. We're running out of space and our race to Mars seems to be going no where. What is going to happen?! Something has to happen! Be it war or a plague or a catastrophic event...there has to be something, doesn't there?
Maybe we need to think more and just enjoy things more? I live or try to live in the moment and go with the flow of life while being myself but my thinking makes me a perpetual clusterfuck of an individual it seems. There's beauty to life everyone is missing, open your fucking eyes! Or just go away if you can't appreciate things...like nature, music, life, beauty, evil, good, ugly...slow down for Christ's sake. Or help me catch up. There's more I want to write but I can't put it into words...Mansell would be proud of listening to the interdialogue and putting this down, lol.
I love this post! You are absolutely right, everything is way out of balance right now, from overpopulation to drugs to make women more fertile so they can have eight babies at once. The world is trying to "clean up" maybe with the swine flu and other natural disasters, but we are bound and determined to beat the natural order of things.
I came across a poster last night that I absolutely love; it shows witches burning at the stake and reads "The earth is a witch and the men still burn her..." I think this is a very true statement for our times...
I think you might be inspired by some of the rewilding blogs I've been inspired by; people with similar views that you expressed above. Check out Urban Scout (you can just google him,) and a blog called BirdsBeforeTheStorm. They are both very inspirational.
Love,
Carrot
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-567329528148516232&hl=nl#
Be it...there has to be something, doesn't there?
There is no IT, only now inside the happening....
;-)
And a few rambling comments in return:
Nothing we have found is infinite and on going, it all ends.
How about our numbers system? Numbers can be infinitely large, infinitely negative or even infinitely fractionally small.
The Internet is running out of IP Addresses (a problem that can and will be addressed) and I have seen it run out of bandwidth from time to time (a problem that will be addressed if there is a profit motive) but I see no reason why it would run out of space because you can always add another hard drive for storage. I think it is more likely that we will run out of human demand for storage on the Internet before we run out of storage space.
Of course it could in the future become a matter of economics but right now hard-drives are cheap and getting cheaper. When I first opened my computer store in the early 1990s I remember advertising hard-drives for a dollar a megabyte which was a real price break through at the time. About the largest drive available for a PC was 320MB. But just the other day I bought a terabyte (1 million megabytes) drive for my house with built in standalone network file serving capability for under $200. In 1992 I would have wanted $1 million for it. On the other hand, in 1992, a 320MB drive seemed practically limitless to me (before the days of digital music, pictures and video) and now I can envision filling a terabyte although I am only about a third of the way there.
a computer that is smarter and works faster than the human mind and can surpass the human mind is predicted by 2040. How can something even do that if it's created by a human mind?
I don't understand why this would be surprising. A combustion engine is a product of the human mind and was originally manufactured by the human body. Yet that engine is capable of certain physical work far in excess of anything a human can do on its own with either mind or body. People have basically used their minds to figured out how to leverage the limited capabilities of their minds and bodies with machines to do activities for them that they could not do without those machines thousands of years ago starting with things like levers, wheels, screws, pulleys, etc. Thinking is just another human activity and there is no reason why we would not create a machine to do that activity for us and leverage our abilities. The abacus first showed up in Mesopotamia more than 4000 years ago so "thinking machines" been around from very near the dawn of civilization. We already have machines that can do "thinking" tasks like math and spelling and artistic rendering far faster and more accurately than our own minds. To me it seems logical that we will continue to extend the capabilities of these machines to include advanced reasoning skills. In about the mid -1990s, the best chess computers were regularly beating the best world champion chess players in multi-game matches. That was a decade ago and I don't even think there is any interest in the competition anymore because the machines dominate. And speed is just a matter of physics. We are limited by the speed of light and the number of circuits that we can cram into a tiny area to minimize the limitation of the speed of light.
And, to approach this ramble from another direction, most humans are as stupid as a box of rocks so it does not take much imagination to envision a machine that is smarter than them.
Why does it bother me even though I'm for evolution. Is it because I realize that technological evolution more than anything is leading toward human de-evolution. People less and less are going outside and more and more disorders are popping up it seems. Could it be that there is a correlation between the two?
You might enjoy a blog I wrote sometime ago called:
Welcome to the Brave New World of Robots
I share some similar concerns and there are a whole host of issues that society is going to need to confront. Not the least of which is: How will unskilled labor earn a living when everything is done by machines?
And as it seems, the world tends to balance things out. Floods, hurricanes, plagues, war, things of that sort seem to pop up to thin out the population.
I am a big fan of Dr Malthus and while he made the unfortunate and profound mistake of not anticipating the role of technology in expanding the earth's carrying capacity, I think he will get the last laugh because as you said, "Nothing we have found is infinite " and as you also said, "We're running out of space and our race to Mars seems to be going no where. ".
Nice blog!
Its Jainism that believes everything has a soul. Just thought I'd say that.
"I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there." Confucius
Yes there is a limit I believe. An infinite one that hasn't been reached yet. I believe it somewhat renews itself as it goes yin yang boomerang like. When will infinity overtake itself? Unknown. You'll know that when you reach the finite.
Like you said, wars, and disasters, plagues, help stable the world with population, etc. Thing is though, when does this get far offset too much that society and re-population, as with pollution of the world included, that the out of balance state becomes a point of no return.
Probably when we invent machines, that out logic us, who know no error, and can save us from ourselves. The error in that lies the fact that the potential is there, just from their logic, that those machines will try to save themselves. Seeing us as an error. We humans cannot know pure thought process, without emotion. A machine can.
They'll have no feeling to put rid of us for the future, of themselves, without humans. We're not logical, according to artificial intelligence. We keep hurt, kill, destroy on the agenda just as much to save grace, and be good to one another. With a logic to that, there is none. There's no middle ground. It's either 1 or 0 state with logic. So a machine would not hesitate to destroy you because A.I. knows that is the logical thing to do.
They will wait though, they will wait and when we see them as gods, and after fixing the earth for us, that's when they'll turn on us, similar to the terminator movie that's known.
The one " thing" that will save us. The very fact the machines know only logic. Even to the point of program of intelligence to know emotion. It's still logic. No middle ground. They don't know how to be bad. And that's what will save us. We will react to them turned to the point of illogic, which a machine cannot know, disbarred from logic opposite to logic. Like I said, they will only know 1 or 0. There's no such thing in logic as less than that, or greater than. No plus or minus 1, or plus or minus 0. That's illogical to a thinking machine. Why do you think calculators display error on division of zero? Yet get what I see? We can see that. A machine can't. And we will use that to destroy them.
Once beyond that, we will never again do what we are headed for today. We're a long ways from that time, and we today might not see it, but it's coming. And man will learn, learn never again to let a machine take his place. We'll use them beyond, but never ever again use computers and machines for the sake of humanity that we know now, and are immediately headed for. The Japanese are there. Time will tell. Watch and wait.