Re: The Future

On 16 Apr, 18:46, "Oliver Wong" <o...@castortech.com> wrote:
> "Charles Hottel" <chot...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>
> news:_mUTh.2691$3P3.1491@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
>
> 

That should read "this will allow us to tinker with disease, hunger
and extend our lifespans with unpredictable results. Well, at least
until we have really worked it out as the genome is not the solution
to the problems but merely a stepping stone which has high-lighted our
ignorance regarding the function of RNA and its role in inheritance."

>
>     I'm not sure how understanding human genome will "end hunger". Hunger
> seems to be an economical and political problem, rather than a biological,
> medical or technological problem. Even if by the means by which
> genome-engineering will end hunger is by actually modifying our bodies so
> that we no longer need to eat (and instead, absorb energy through
> photosynthesis or something), the economical and political barriers will
> still exist: i.e. we won't nescessarily share this technology with those
> who are starving.

If you don't, then a very hungry China will over-run your civilisation
and, probably, eat you. Seriously, you can not allow a nation to
starve. Aside from Bangladesh and Ethiopia (and an increasingly arid
Australia), China and India, if left to starve, could present a
serious nuclear-armed reason as to why you must feed starving
nations.

> 

I know this will sound like the last cry of a Cobol dinosaur, when
faced with Java, but the case for nanotechnology has been overstated
and has been acknowledged as such by nanotech afficionados. I like the
idea of injecting nanotech to resolve issues with the brain (one could
write a scifi film script along the lines of Minority Report merged
with Terminal Man) but do worry that the grey goo will merely block up
the cardio-vascular system leading to premature strokes.

> Nanotechnology will allow us to manifest 
>
>     There's a question of cost-effectiveness, though. It's one thing to
> merely *have* the technology to take random matter (crumpled up
> newspapers, banana peels, etc.) and convert it into something useful (e.g.
> a dish of fettucini alfredo). It's an entirely different thing to have
> this technology available in a form which costs less than a couple billion
> dollars per invocation.
>
>

>     Personally, I think current research in neural networks is relatively
> promising. Current estimates put the number of neurons in a human brain at
> 100 billion. There's currently a CPU with 1024 cores

But only 10% of the capacity of the brain is currently used (according
to populist notions). So that is only 10 cores. It won't be long
before that image of a paranoid supercomputer becomes a
reality    :-)

> 
>
>     Note that, depending on your metric, computers may already be a
> million times faster at processing than our brains. For one example
> metric, communication from one neuron to the text happens using a
> combination of chemical and electrical reactions which is exceedingly slow
> compared to the switching speed of a transitor in a CPU chip. Advocates of
> Strong AI (Penrose is not one of them) believe the only thing stopping
> computers from being able to "think like a human" is the relatively linear
> nature of CPU design, contrasted against the massively parallel
> architecture of the human brain.

I agree (even at the risk of being criticiesed for jumping on your
bandwagon). Parallel processing (probably in three dimensions) would
be the only way to reasonably approximate the function of the brain.
 

So you could drive your car into a bus queue of people at the same
time as playing Second Life?

>
>     I'm fond of the idea that people will be able to one day directly
> "perceive" the Internet as a sixth sense, viahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Brain_plasticity. Extracting information from
> packets using your WiFi connection would be as natural as extracting
> information from photons using your eye. This will open up new forms of
> artful expression, and a new medium that is not based in sight, sound,
> touch, taste or smell. Perhaps you could directly send states of mind,
> perspectives or emotions for others to experience.
>

To sense the internet would require a permanently wired connection.
Big Brother will know exactly where you are and what you are doing at
every moment of the day (and what you dream about as well!).