Kate,
You were busy writing a paper last night while I was reading Wired last night next to you so I didn't want to interrupt you. However, there was the most amazing little article in the "Infoporn" section of the magazine about what the author, Kevin Kelly, is calling "The One Machine." Basically, all of the computing power in the world is becoming completely accessible from anywhere through devices like my iPhone or your XBox 360. While not everything is completely linked, we are, in effect building synapses in a giant, electronic brain. "By 2040, the planetary computer will attain as much processing power as all 7 billion human brains on Earth."
Crazy!
Kelly continues by talking about how the humans that program and access this global brain are really important components because we provide the input, the data, the raw materials that this One Machine needs for its prime objective: processing. The article finishes this: "We are headed toward a singular destiny: one vast computer composed of billions of chips and billions of brains, enveloping the planet in a single sphere of intelligence. "
It's not said, but doesn't this smack of the singularity? It's everywhere...
- N
P.S. Even weirder than the article is the appearance of an excerpt from the article spontaneously in my first draft of this post. WTF?
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[Singularity: the point in the future where technology advances beyond the human mind, and people will no longer be the source of great invention.]
The singularity is now, and we recognize this fact. We are the generation whose actions will determine just how far technology will jump - and in what directions. There is a huge amount of new information every day that shows our progress towards the singularity. This is our collection of the most intriguing steps into the coming event horizon.
3 comments:
N,
Seems a bit dangerous to be building a giant brain linked to Our Everything doesn't it? After all, even vanilla organic brains occassionally contain a flaw that causes recurrent seizures. What would happen if the overmind (cobbled together as it must be) is epileptic? I'd hate to be on a plane or in an operating room on the day we find that out.
Also, there's nothing to say that one brain = one mind. A MPD overmind... would that be better or worse?
Have a good one,
M
M,
Hmm...it's an intriguing thought, this dysfunctional One Machine. Brings to mind HAL-9000 and Marvin, the Paranoid Android. "A brain the size of a planet..." I suppose our One Machine is likely to be just as disjointed as all of our existing machines, since it will exist in them/because of them. I guess the only thing I can say to defend it is that, with millions of individual components, redundancy is ensured should any individual piece go awry. Of course, with millions (hundreds of thousands?) of neurons and synapses in our brains, things still go catastrophically wrong.
I guess the trouble with something like the One Machine is that it's being built whether we are aware that we are building it or not. SkyNet, anyone? Coffee Point is probably looking pretty good right now.
-N
[Comment reposted because I have no idea how many neurons/synapses we have.]
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