What are your top 5 technologies of the next 15 years?

[sojourner]

You have one false assumption. Exponential technology.

[Crazy Eddie]

RAMA wrote:

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Happily war is also becoming extinct...we are living in the most peaceful time (relatively) in human history.

What history books are you reading? The United States has been at war pretty much continuously since its inception. Sixty five percent of our GDP is military spending, as is eighty percent of our national debt. We spent the first decade of the twenty first century involved in not one but TWO major land wars and are peripherally involved in four others.

"Relatively" peaceful? If so, it's only because most of the major world powers are currently getting along with each other -- for the most part, anyway -- and so the only major conflicts involve either small countries or organizations butting heads in regional conflicts or very large countries bombing the piss out of smaller ones for no coherent reason.

Wifi and its dematerialization affect still make LESS to target than the previous more local hardware based communication in war.

Yes, which means the WiFi network is that much easier to take out, since only a handful of targets need to be struck to disable it entirely. This is a fairly different case from, say, cable communications with its many redundant lines or conventional radio which can only be blocked by jamming or precision targeting of all possible transmitters; you could produce a pretty effective WiFi blackout in a given area just by bombing a half dozen base stations whose locations are already well known.

With newness in the 21st century comes more rapid maturity...

And with that, the ability of immature people to wield power irresponsibly. This is the point of technology you're not getting: just because somebody invents a better device doesn't mean the USERS of that device will be better people. For every RAMA that finds personal enlightenment on the internet there are ten Jihadist wackos who use the internet purely for downloading porn, stolen credit card numbers and bomb-making manuals (usually in that order) plus three guys on 4chan posting animated gifs of David Hasselhoff farting on Kim Katrel's face.

The technology alone doesn't change the agendas of the people who currently hold all the social and political power in the world; it hasn't, and it won't. The same technology that allows some peasants in Rwanda to learn CNC machining can just as easily be used by the Rwandan government to selectively exclude them from the workforce and keep the existing social order in place.

[Crazy Eddie]

RAMA wrote:

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As seen in the Abundance video I posted, there is a great possibility that gov'ts will not be able to regulate the exponential advances already happening, they won't be able to handle the overflow of developments or the implications that will be wide ranging and global. In many cases, the gov'ts (even the US) are too backwards to realize what is happening. In fact most observers agree it's already too late to stop exponential growth.

It's not the growth that they would attempt to stop, though. In fact, they're probably not interested in curbing that growth anyway, they might even wish to accelerate it.

What they would and will seek to prevent is the use of that technology to benefit their social/political competitors, anyone who threatens the existing power structure.

To use a concrete example: they don't have to prevent the invention of online universities or educational software, and they probably wouldn't bother. They COULD, however, pass laws that devalue educational certifications obtained by online programs or strip the accreditation of institutions that depend on that newer educational software. Politicians can easily pretend there's a legitimate political reason for it, but in the end they would be motivated purely by the desire to protect the massive financial investments in traditional universities whose founders may or may not be bribing the fuck out of them.

Microloans are making those people who make under the poverty level able to buy cell phone or buy $35 e-pads. Technophilanthropists are bringing MILLIONS of technological items into poor countries, changing the local economies. Clean water tech allows people to not travel for their water, often taking half a day of work time. It allows them to not call out of work due to illness brought on by dirty water, or allows them to get a job in the first place. There's a huge economic impact with clean water technology.

Nobody's disputing that. The question is whether or not these new technologies will produce a radical change in the existing power structure in these countries. I'm telling you that it won't, because all of these programs depend on the cooperation of local governments and trans-national organizations. For many of these governments, there is a point where the people could become TOO empowered, and most of them are just insecure enough to undertake some kind of harsh draconian measures long before they ever get to that point.

A few of them already have.

As far as the the Chinese family willing to work for less in the global marketplace, again, technology comes into play. One example: Using electricity costs the same in most countries, automating more makes the US competitive again as robots replace workers.

That doesn't make the WORKERS more competitive, which is my point. The American worker cannot reasonably compete with the Chinese family unless they are willing to accept a slightly lower standard of living that their international competitors are used to. That's the origin of the phrase "race to the bottom", a very real and persistent economic problem.

Workers of course will have to be re-educated and "upgraded" out of less technological jobs of course.

Of course. They have a choice between lowering their standard of living to below those of a third-world worker, or retraining for a career with twice the technical requirements and twice the educational investment just to keep their PRESENT standard of living. The greater the technical requirements for an honest living, the fewer people are able to MAKE a living with the knowledge they have, and the people who DO have those greater skills find their knowledge is less and less valuable as time goes on.

It's enough to sat, the point at which your workers have to have a PhD in computer science just to run a cash register is the wrong time to wonder if the globalist economy isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Finally, because a paradigm has been happening for a long time does not mean there won't be a new paradigm.

That's like saying "Just because the Earth orbits the sun doesn't mean it always will." There isn't much reason to believe this will change any time soon.

[jefferiestubes8]

Voice Recognition technology as primary input (instead of keyboard/mouse) by 2020

Artificial intelligence for children to interact with when no friends or siblings 2020

NFC/RFID Readers in mobile phones RFID chips in many retail products changing retail industry completely 2015-2020

Fiber-to-The-Home in the rural & suburban areas of the USA delivering Internet access as well as HD Video-on-demand services. Including state legislation that all commercial and residential new structures be prewired/cabled for fiber to every unit.

Self-driving cars around 2025

[RAMA]

What history books are you reading? The United States has been at war pretty much continuously since its inception. Sixty five percent of our GDP is military spending, as is eighty percent of our national debt. We spent the first decade of the twenty first century involved in not one but TWO major land wars and are peripherally involved in four others.

The violence of our age is generally over-represented in the media. We have a tendency to turn the past into a golden age, but it's not really so:



http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pink..._violence.html

http://articles.timesofindia.indiati...-wmds-violence

http://stevenpinker.com/

With newness in the 21st century comes more rapid maturity...And with that, the ability of immature people to wield power irresponsibly. This is the point of technology you're not getting: just because somebody invents a better device doesn't mean the USERS of that device will be better people. For every RAMA that finds personal enlightenment on the internet there are ten Jihadist wackos who use the internet purely for downloading porn, stolen credit card numbers and bomb-making manuals (usually in that order) plus three guys on 4chan posting animated gifs of David Hasselhoff farting on Kim Katrel's face.

Social evolution tends to lag behind, but I would argue that it still moves at least parallel with technological development. Aside from the above Steve Pinker links, we can see the world reaction to wars and events since the 60s, protests and so on. Such points of view were not to be found in earlier wars to any great degree. Same thinkg with nuclear proliferation. According to Hans Rosling, social/health/organizational changes help increase influence more before wealth does. Developing countries that gain wealth and influence solve social problems first to a great degree.

As far as the singularity goes, this is a totally different animal. I've already shared some thoughts on it, I feel we will perceive the world totally different after that point, and a transhuman transition period beforehand will make us more enlightened.

The technology alone doesn't change the agendas of the people who currently hold all the social and political power in the world; it hasn't, and it won't. The same technology that allows some peasants in Rwanda to learn CNC machining can just as easily be used by the Rwandan government to selectively exclude them from the workforce and keep the existing social order in place.

Not alone it doesn't but more than ever it provides tools to do so. The people and gov't that don't change agendas will be left behind. The use of these tools isn't supposition, it's already in evidence around the world.

[RAMA]

jefferiestubes8 wrote:

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Voice Recognition technology as primary input (instead of keyboard/mouse) by 2020

Artificial intelligence for children to interact with when no friends or siblings 2020

NFC/RFID Readers in mobile phones RFID chips in many retail products changing retail industry completely 2015-2020

Fiber-to-The-Home in the rural & suburban areas of the USA delivering Internet access as well as HD Video-on-demand services. Including state legislation that all commercial and residential new structures be prewired/cabled for fiber to every unit.

Self-driving cars around 2025

Such AI already exists! SIRI for example.

Voice recognition can be used everyday by the avg person. I have it on my phone but rarely use it. I was in a cell phone store yesterday and the software translated everything spoken in the demo perfectly.

I'm wondering just how much fiber optics are going to be used as wi-fi penetrates our life further.

[RAMA]

sojourner wrote:

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You have one false assumption. Exponential technology.

Plenty of evidence to the contrary:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of...rating-returns

"Accelerating returns" then...which goes beyond the original "Moore's Law" (as the extract and graph shows, Moore's law was the fifth paradigm of exponential growth in computing...the next generation is almost here already...http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/chart03.jpg). The greatest criticism to exponential growth is that it comes to an end, in fact it does, but only for the next paradigm to follow.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/31678

A quote from my own post on another thread about the subject:

Yes! The artistic, engineering and tech strides of modern times is actually underestimated...in past centuries, there were often only a handful of humans involved with expanding the frontiers of human creativity and knowledge, sometimes their rarity (Like Da Vinci, Galileo, etc) makes their artistry and science even more noteworthy and valuable, but as you suggest, today there are not only more people involved with these endeavors, the ratio is much higher. Another reason: not just sheer numbers, but when one culture builds upon the developments of another, there is where the increased pace(exponential) ignites.

[RAMA]

[QUOTE=newtype_alpha;6254185]

RAMA wrote:

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Yes, which means the WiFi network is that much easier to take out, since only a handful of targets need to be struck to disable it entirely. This is a fairly different case from, say, cable communications with its many redundant lines or conventional radio which can only be blocked by jamming or precision targeting of all possible transmitters; you could produce a pretty effective WiFi blackout in a given area just by bombing a half dozen base stations whose locations are already well known.

The US and other advanced countries have had a hell of a time with their futuristic comm networks, but the theory of making wifi more survivable is sound...by making the technology more mobile they increase survivability. One nation that has done it right is the Israelis. They made the tech simple and redundant. Apparently it is also "hack proof".

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...tlefield-wi-fi

[sojourner]

RAMA wrote:

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The violence of our age is generally over-represented in the media. We have a tendency to turn the past into a golden age, but it's not really so:



http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pink..._violence.html

http://articles.timesofindia.indiati...-wmds-violence

http://stevenpinker.com/

Ah ah ah. Don't move the goal posts. The point was about war, not violence.

[jefferiestubes8]

RAMA wrote:

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just how much fiber optics are going to be used as wi-fi penetrates our life further.

fiber-optic cable has a large potential capacity.

There is one more technology in the next 25 years that will take off but not be mainstream:

by 2050, brothels will offer robots for guilt and disease-free sex.

If people start having sex with robots in 2050, the concept of what constitutes cheating in a relationship is bound to change.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/R...w/12908440.cms

[RAMA]

jefferiestubes8 wrote:

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fiber-optic cable has a large potential capacity.

There is one more technology in the next 25 years that will take off but not be mainstream:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/R...w/12908440.cms

I will never underestimate the the influence of sex in technology. Although the definition of sex, or even what it will be after a potential singularity would be anyone's guess...but before that, sure, it'll be as pervasive as it ever was, or even moreso.

[RAMA]

sojourner wrote:

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Ah ah ah. Don't move the goal posts. The point was about war, not violence.

Which is one of the first things talked about in the video...

[sojourner]

The video is also conflating violence with war. still moving the goal posts. Not everything T.E.D. is great or correct.

[RAMA]

sojourner wrote:

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The video is also conflating violence with war. still moving the goal posts. Not everything T.E.D. is great or correct.

That's true, but in this case Pinker is one of the most respected men in his field. His qualifications are impeccable. But this is nothing new, because of our limited lifespans, we always think our age is the most violent, the most damaging, the end of times. The facts show the reverse, but no amount of yelling is going to change the mind of the doomsayers and pessimists. Pinker isn't the only one with the statistics, simply do a search and Google and the results will agree that war deaths per conflict have dramatically reduced. Industrialized nations no longer routinely fight each other as in the centuries before WWII, leaving the conflicts to smaller scale civil wars and the like. The greatest pall to hang over the world was the Cold War, and that for all intents and purposes is over. Instant world destruction is less likely.


http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article..._war?page=full

http://azstarnet.com/news/national/g...16cc1cc62.html

http://www.winningthewaronwar.com/

http://www.hsrgroup.org/

[Crazy Eddie]

RAMA wrote:

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The violence of our age is generally over-represented in the media.

Who said anything about the media? I'm talking about HISTORY. I live in a country that exists the way it does specifically because it fought a series of extremely violent wars against the native population of the Americas, punctuated by an extremely violent CIVIL war, followed by an equally violent war against Spain, followed by the occupation of the Philippines (which lasted until WW-II and was arguably more contentious than the occupation of Iraq), and that's just the first half of its history BEFORE involvement in two world wars and the subsequent Cold War (which includes Korea, Vietnam and a dozen different proxy wars).

The most you can say is that global military competition is no greater today than it was 200 years ago, but only insofar as there are fewer participants wielding far greater power.

We have a tendency to turn the past into a golden age, but it's not really so...

Indeed: if our history books were written only slightly differently, the battle against Hitler and the Axis powers would have been labelled "World War VI".

It's significant, though, that these massive global wars tend to happen every hundred and fifty years or so and usually come in threes, with each one being significantly more violent than the last one. The same technology you're advertising as the savior of humanity has masked the fact that we are now unleashing more firepower in smaller conflicts and inflicting greater damage in a shorter amount of time than ever before in history; indeed, we are fast approaching a time when we will not even need nuclear weapons to lay waste to entire cities.

Social evolution tends to lag behind, but I would argue that it still moves at least parallel with technological development.

Here you're assuming that social evolution -- or ANY form of evolution -- is inherently progressive. That is a false assumption in the extreme.

Evolution takes any number of shapes, for better or for worse, whichever new form is best suited to its environment. A society where aggressive/dishonest/selfish people are more successful tends to proliferate in those characteristics. Introducing new technologies to that society won't change that balance unless it is intentionally distributed to individuals with different traits; in a free market scenario, it's more likely that the people who are already prospering under the existing order will adopt that technology first and they will drive the next phase of its development to their own advantage.

In other words: in a world ruled by tigers, the invention of gunpowder probably won't benefit the zebras.

Aside from the above Steve Pinker links, we can see the world reaction to wars and events since the 60s, protests and so on. Such points of view were not to be found in earlier wars to any great degree.

Because we all know Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail to protest the Vietnam war.

According to Hans Rosling, social/health/organizational changes help increase influence more before wealth does. Developing countries that gain wealth and influence solve social problems first to a great degree.

True as that is, we're discussing technology, not social/healthcare/organizational progress. Technology is developing at a fairly rapid pass, and the developing world is accumulating large pockets of material wealth. They are NOT, however, making any headway with their social/health/organizational problems, and adding new technology isn't going to change that.

As far as the singularity goes, this is a totally different animal. I've already shared some thoughts on it, I feel we will perceive the world totally different after that point, and a transhuman transition period beforehand will make us more enlightened.

We're already beyond the singularity with respect to our pre-industrial ancestors. On some level we know this, which is why we tend to prefer to the period of the late 17th and 18th centuries as "the Enlightenment."

A new social order did indeed emerge from that transitional period, and compared to their forebearers they were extremely enlightened. They were SO enlightened that they subsequently reduced 4 million people to chattel slavery and ethnically cleansed an entire continent of its technologically inferior population before laying claim to the land themselves.

Let's not loose sight of the very real possibility that the "transhumanist movement" could be dominated by an elitist clique of technocrats that see the rest of the human race as a clan of backwards primitives who are better off being enslaved or at least tightly contained if only for their own good. In that sense, the dire predictions of science fiction (The Terminator/The Matrix et al) make a lot more sense when the Evil Machines are actually former human beings who have used technology to transcend their own humanity.

And who would we be to argue with them, anyway? They are the "enlightened" trans-humanists, which is really just another way of saying "Too smart to care what the primitives think."

Not alone it doesn't but more than ever it provides tools to do so. The people and gov't that don't change agendas will be left behind.

That's my point. Many of those oppressive governments will (and have) change their agendas in order to remain relevant, and they will grasp that very same technology in order to do it.

The use of these tools isn't supposition, it's already in evidence around the world.

Indeed. Here's one really good example.

Technology makes EVERYTHING easier, and it doesn't pick and choose who it benefits. When oppressive governments and militaries decide to invest in technology, their oppressive agenda becomes that much easier to implement. Those who oppose them have to grasp the same technologies in order to be relevant at all; those without access to those advanced technologies might as well be gun-toting apes that their enemies can bomb with impunity and even the media no longer notices or cares what happens to them.

Beyond any singularity event, ultimately "Enlightenment" means never having to say you're sorry for massacring savages.