CryoNet #32954 - #32959

CryoNet - Wed 20 Oct 2010

    #32954: Has there been technological progress since Mark Plus was bor... [Perry E. Metzger]
    #32955: Technological Progress [Brian Wowk]
    #32956: Re: CryoNet #32951 - #32953 [Freeposity]
    #32957: Re: Future Fatigue [Keith Henson]
    #32958: Cryonics chatbot [Mathew Sullivan]
    #32959: http://diybio.biz [Jonano]

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Message #32954
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:24:02 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email protected]>
Subject: Has there been technological progress since Mark Plus was bor...
References: <[email protected]>

> Subject: Future Fatigue
> From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>
> 
> Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of "Future Shock"
> 
> http://bigthink.com/ideas/24533
> 
> I can see why Toffler's book might have impressed people in 1970
> for a week or two as something insightful, radical or edgy.
> 
> I don't see why it has that reputation now. I turn 51 next month,
> and nothing in my life has given me "future shock," mainly because
> of all the fraudulent promises of technological transformations
> I've heard since my childhood. (And you know what I refer to.)

Lets say you went back in time to 1960 and attempted to explain to
them the case of a couple of Florida teens who got in trouble for
sending nude photos of themselves taken on their cellphones to each
other via Facebook, and the ensuing controversy given that many
people don't believe that the teens in question had done anything
deeply wrong, let alone criminal.

How long would it take you to give the background to the person you
were talking to? How likely is it that they would believe your
description of the future?

Would they believe in the iPhone? Would they believe in the change in
sexual mores? How long would explaining the internet take?

Last week, the New York Times had a front page story describing a
reporter riding along in a car driven entirely by an AI going over
normal highways in California. The claim, which I believe, is that
such cars will be in commercial use within a couple of decades at
most.

I could go on for hours, but I have to get to the office.


Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		[email protected]

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Message #32955
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:23:56 -0700
Subject: Technological Progress
From: Brian Wowk <[email protected]>

In Cryomsg 32953 Mark Plus wrote:

> Brian Wowk endorses Scott Locklin's observations about the failure of
> technological progress in Cryonet #32937:

> http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=32937

     I did not say that technological progress had "failed."  I simply
agreed that the lives of Americans changed less in the past 50 years
than they did during the 50 years before that.  Technological progress
has been, and continues to be, the most successful endeavor ever in
terms of improving the length and quality of life in human
civilization.  The rate of technological progress is just not the
monotonically increasing exponential that some people oversimplify it
to be.  Social factors can and have inflected the curve.  That doesn't
mean technology is anywhere near the limits of physical law.  It's not
even close.

     It's true that our generation is not going to live to see most of
the things we feel we were promised as kids.  That sucks.  But that's
no reason to trash the whole idea of technological progress.  We
should count ourselves lucky to see what we've seen.  Most of the 100
billion humans who've ever lived had it much worse than you and I.

---Brian

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Message #32956
References: <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:45:28 -0500
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32951 - #32953
From: Freeposity <[email protected]>

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 4:00 AM, CryoNet <[email protected]> wrote:
Message #32952
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:45:14 -0700
Subject: Future Fatigue
From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of "Future Shock"

http://bigthink.com/ideas/24533

>I can see why Toffler's book might have impressed people in 1970 for a
>week or two as something insightful, radical or edgy.

>I don't see why it has that reputation now. I turn 51 next month, and
>nothing in my life has given me "future shock," mainly because of all
>the fraudulent promises of technological transformations I've heard
>since my childhood. (And you know what I refer to.)


Fraudulent? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? Surely some predictions were
overly optimistic but others have been too conservative. For example,
I'm holding a device that has more computing power than the world had
when I was born. I can put it in my pocket, I can call just about
anyone on the planet. It can tell me my location, can plan a trip,
take a picture or a movie or a audio recording, become a compass, help
me to identify birds. I can put a staggering amount of music on it for
my listening pleasure or I can put books on it to read. I can find
obscure items and purchase them. I can identify specific stars in the
sky by just pointing it at them. I can also speak into it and have it
translate my words into other languages in audible speech.

I have an implanted cardio defibrillator in my chest. It constantly
monitors my heart and wirelessly communicates with my doctors. They
send me reports on the status of my heart and when I go into their
office they can actually change the rhythm of my heart.

Many cars now automatically call for help when they've been in an
accident. Google has been testing cars that drive themselves.

Over 500 exoplanets have been discovered.

I could go on and on, but I think I've made my point. Just because we
don't have flying cars yet or aren't living on the moon it doesn't
follow that prior claims are fraudulent, merely mistaken or misguided.
In many cases it's more a matter of people not pursuiing the goals
than a matter of the technology not being feasible.

Of course for people like us, future shock is not likely to happen.
But for the common person they get over it rather quickly and embrace
the tech when it becomes a reailty.



-- 
Money isn't speech.
A Corporation isn't a person.
http://www.movetoamend.org/

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Message #32957
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:51:59 -0700
Subject: Re: Future Fatigue
From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 2:00 AM, MARK PLUS <[email protected]> wrote:

snip

> I don't see why it has that reputation now. I turn 51 next month, and
> nothing in my life has given me "future shock," mainly because of all
> the fraudulent promises of technological transformations I've heard
> since my childhood. (And you know what I refer to.)

I think you have used the wrong word.  "Fraud" is where something is
promised and the person making the promise knows they cannot provide
it.

Flying cars fit in that category.  They are not impossible from the
physics, just beyond the state of the art in materials and were beyond
the state of the art for control technology.  Have you seen this:

http://vimeo.com/6194911

I am . . . 17 years older than you are.  My memory goes back to almost
before computers.  I was programming computers when memory was a
dollar a byte.  Flash memory (faster than the dollar a byte memory of
long ago) is now around a dollar a GB.  So the 8 GB USB memory stick I
carry around would have cost $8 B long ago, filled perhaps a thousand
semi truck trailers and taken a substantial hydro plant to power it.

Of course computers improved and fell in price over decades so it was
not shocking until you look back and think about how much computers
have changed.

Think about it, a billion to one.

Keith

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Message #32958
From: Mathew Sullivan <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:45:29 -0400
Subject: Cryonics chatbot

--e0cb4e385676385c040493036841

A member of Second Life introduced me to an AI chatbot last month, and I'm
making an effort to train it in support of cryonics. If you can spare a
little time and check in regularly with the link below, the AI can be
refined to improve the response. The AI isn't terribly bright, so it is
helpful to stay on topic, and don't be surprised if the responses are wrong
or a bit silly. So, feel free to type whatever you please even if you are
not interested in chatting about cryonics, but the preference is in support
of cryonics in some fashion.

If you would like to submit suggestions for corrective changes on any given
response, please feel free to do so.

The first link is a simple text dialog. The second is with a VHost which has
a limit of 500 text exchanges per month, since it is only a demo of what you
can get if you are willing to pay the extra fee. If by chance the second
link does not work, refer to the first link for a few weeks until the
traffic slows.

This cryonics chatbot is published at:

http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=c490735f9e344c84

http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk-oddcast?botid=c490735f9e344c84
 (VHost)

--e0cb4e385676385c040493036841

 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

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Message #32959
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:14:18 +0200
Subject: http://diybio.biz
From: Jonano <[email protected]>

This is your tool for sellling or buying instruments in biology:

http://diybio.biz

The Steve Jobs of Biotechnology is coming ?

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