Every once in awhile I like to just sift through the grist that is being processed on the great wide interweb and take a gander at trends and events that feel like they are going to be important building blocks in the near future.
To this I add a first level of links that allow further exploration of what this technology is about and what it is linked to:
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/24645/page1/
So we have a new way to manipulate data that allows a different insight to emerge from massive amounts of information.
The television series CSI and its geographical offshoots have always pushed technological advances with their fancy computer graphics, image enhancing and hand or voice controlled computer displays. Now we see the next steps. One truism that has prevailed from the early days of computer use is that the greater the capacity of the system the larger and more sophisticated projects than can then be undertaken. There’s a problem in the programming industry with its much larger programs and applications where the coder/developer can no longer hold the whole picture in their mind. These two tools alone have implications for that entire paradigm.
The charge into Cyberspace has been blunted by technology that is not up to the word and idea visions of William Gibson et al nor the movie maker’s spin ala the Matrix.
Technological advancements are accelerating and convergence is a growing force. My smartphone is the end result of this convergence. The former incarnation required a large physical box connected to a wire based network, a camera, a video camera, a library, a typewriter, an entire postal system, a boombox, a tape recorder, a bookstore, a video store plus many, many more separate systems and infrastructures.
A lazy Sunday that has brought some new insights to my daily ruminations. To sum up I wish to drag you a bit sideways into my mind space and I offer as a final tidbit this piece:
http://spiffy.ci.uiuc.edu/~kline/Stuff/internet-rant.html/
My reflections started to square McCluhan and Bateson and Varela.
So, in the main, how will the medium infect the learning about system/context? Learning the learning system…
I reckon there are intense polarities and differentials, such as between engineering control and dionysian hedonism. Or, between loose and taut purposeful search. Between mining the data set and comprising the data set. Etc..
And, this is in the context of, to use a metaphor, not being able to ‘technically’ predict the day-after-tomorrow’s weather.
It’s also in the context of late finance-global capitalism, so, for example, we can draw a differential between complex risk algorhythms networked to leverage micro information–a kind of game–and using the code platform for bringing virtual and combative “3D” risk onto the screen of the escapist, jobless, virtual warrior.
Both are doing something, in part, destructive and happily nihilistic. It all may find the crucial hook in brain chemistry. I note the ecstatic release in the audience voicing their amazement at the nascent apparatus on ‘stage’; being staged for the alpha first, and rolled out for the rest of us, later.
I’d also draw the differential between those who are working tirelessly to figure out what technology may afford (especially in a visionary sense,) and those who just want to use technology without being mindful of its ramifications.
Then roll in peak oil while imagining Buckminster Fuller was right–”We are, each of us, energy billionaires.”–and try to square the rush beyond material culture to something these presentations are beginning to render and beginning to imagine.
See David Chalmers, Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis. PDF
Also: Singularity Summit August 14-15
The video montage was simply a set of pointers – one thinking of new ways to assemble, link and examine data. The undernet is rumored to be 8 – 9 times as large as the whole visible web. Those “gene” companies scaling up and down genomes of everything from beans to mice are producing prodigious amounts of data. A single company produces 5X the content of the Library of Congress each month with their little super computers. There are 1,000′s of them at it.
Current input devices will not allow the interaction soon to be needed for the 3D library formats depicted in cheery forward looking speculations. Sony’s wand for wandering 3D environments for creation, examination and control of interfaces could be entirely leapfrogged.
Expert agents, intelligent assistants and personal aids are already emerging through many faceted overpowered little gadgets that watch over the daily schedule, search for cheap prices, watch online events, create dedicated ring tones based on priority access and alert you when what you like is on offer. I’d like mine to be attractive and realistic so that it can follow me into end of life alzheimer’s like a sure footed deer.
So, while I don’t believe in AI and don’t expect the golden age to descend upon us any time soon I do believe some paths are growing into discernible roads and creating if not dragging infrastructure along with it.