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

[RAMA]

newtype_alpha wrote:

---

The question of whether or not they CAN is a moot point. It's really a question of whether or not they WILL. There are a lot of political, social and economic reasons to believe that they probably will not.

Additionally...its not just big business-large corporations and technophilanthropists doing the funding now, but projects like THIS, which are growing much more rapidly lately:

http://www.wired.com/business/2012/0...-new-software/

[Crazy Eddie]

RAMA wrote:

---

Well the huge emerging markets suggest otherwise...Coca Cola alone (as in my example) is willing to spread the Slingshot technology to over 100 countries after testing.

This is Coca Cola we're talking about; I'll believe it when I see it.

Additionally...its not just big business-large corporations and technophilanthropists doing the funding now, but projects like THIS, which are growing much more rapidly lately

Interesting as that is (in addition to being a complete non-sequitor) you are continuing to avoid the relevant point: it's not the TECHNOLOGY that is the problem. You have this rosey idea that whenever technology becomes available, someone somewhere will sieze it and use it to make the world a better place. This IS the case for many technologies, but when that technology becomes disruptive, it invariably meets with resistance from those who have an interest in keeping things the way they are. And that's only accounting for ARTIFICIAL barriers to development; plenty of new technologies fall by the wayside for no reason at all, just a series of unhappy accidents that doom them to slow death.

In the end, though, this is all just academic. None of the technologies you've described are anywhere near widespread implementation, even if the social/political conditions for their development are perfect, and in some parts of the world they are anything but.

[RAMA]

newtype_alpha wrote:

---

This is Coca Cola we're talking about; I'll believe it when I see it.

Interesting as that is (in addition to being a complete non-sequitor) you are continuing to avoid the relevant point: it's not the TECHNOLOGY that is the problem. You have this rosey idea that whenever technology becomes available, someone somewhere will sieze it and use it to make the world a better place. This IS the case for many technologies, but when that technology becomes disruptive, it invariably meets with resistance from those who have an interest in keeping things the way they are. And that's only accounting for ARTIFICIAL barriers to development; plenty of new technologies fall by the wayside for no reason at all, just a series of unhappy accidents that doom them to slow death.

In the end, though, this is all just academic. None of the technologies you've described are anywhere near widespread implementation, even if the social/political conditions for their development are perfect, and in some parts of the world they are anything but.

Sorry, how is that a non-sequitur...I have given you 3 separate ways such things can be funded and developed, 2 of them are relatively new and innovative.

It's not just the existence of the technology I'm talking about, it is the new way it is proliferating...which I have gone through pains to bring up.

The conditions in Africa in many cases are not ideal, yet the market penetration of smartphones for example has found a way to develop...and make money for the companies as well as improve GDP, and bring people out of poverty. I see no reason to expect the needed water purification system to not succeed in this way (word of mouth is good on it's efficacy so far). Smaller scale systems have already been in place, but this will be a big step forward.

Dean Kamen and Coca Cola

http://noobsensei.blogspot.com/2012/...slingshot.html

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/28/d...e-led-light-b/

[Balrog]

Singularity - Is this some kind of new Glee Club?

Are they going to make Regionals?

[Crazy Eddie]

RAMA wrote:

---

Sorry, how is that a non-sequitur...I have given you 3 separate ways such things can be funded and developed, 2 of them are relatively new and innovative.

Air guitar picks for smartphones? You REALLY don't see how this has nothing whatsoever to do with what we're talking about?

Really, you strike me as the kind of person who is easily impressed by technology -- or even just articles about technology -- and hold up ANY example of technological progress to be evidence of something wonderful right over the horizon. Let's not fail to take Murphy's Law into account, or Ted Sturgeons famous and relatively accurate prophecy that 99% of everything is shit.

It's not just the existence of the technology I'm talking about, it is the new way it is proliferating...

The leap from iPod guitar picks to transhumanist/singularity technology is a pretty huge one; they're not in the same ballpark. Not in the same league. Hell, they're not even the same sport.

The conditions in Africa in many cases are not ideal, yet the market penetration of smartphones for example has found a way to develop...and make money for the companies as well as improve GDP, and bring people out of poverty.

Let me be perfectly clear on this lest you continue to erroneously make this point: Smartphones do not bring people out of poverty.

Technology has always proliferated across culture lines, as various groups and societies pick and choose products from their neighbors they find desirable. The social/political/economic progress DOES NOT proliferate the same way, and it does not follow technological distribution; rather, technological advances tend to concentrate in areas where more and more progress is being made.

Real world historical example: American Plains Indians no longer live in tents, no longer hunt game using bows and arrows and no longer construct their clothing exclusively out of furs and hides. They adopted horses, then firearms, then western-style architecture, and now a hundred years later they have houses, cars, electricity, satellite radio, and yes, even smartphones. Yet they have been, and are today, a highly impoverished society in almost every way that a society can be impoverished: they are extremely weak politically, economically, sociologically and militarily. An even more extreme example is the Choctaw Nation (my grandmother's ancestors) who adopted European technology and styles as early as the late 18th century and attempted a crash course of modernization. They fared a hell of a lot better than the plains Indians, not because the technology did them a huge benefit (it didn't, by the way) but because of the political and social transformation that preceded it: they made a social investment in adopting new ways and attempting (unsuccessfully) to become part of a new world order.

The Dakotas remained in poverty because they were unable or unwilling to fully modernize and make meaningful social progress. The Choctaw remained in poverty because they were prohibited from making progress by their rivals (to wit, the United States), but despite this resistance were still able to make some progress. In neither case was the technology all that helpful.

Smartphones are convenient and useful, but you cannot voice dial your way out of poverty for the same reasons you can't shoot your way out of it with assault rifles and rockets. Poverty is caused by a lack of resources, tangible and intangible; technology is not a resource in and of itself, THE ABILITY TO PRODUCE technology is. IOW: When startup companies in the Congo start producing their own smartphones and computers and software applications without outside help, THEN we've got something to talk about.

I see no reason to expect the needed water purification system to not succeed in this way

Succeed WHAT way? It won't be owned or developed by the people who need it most, and they won't benefit from it beyond immediate material needs. In the end, it would be no different if Coca Cola SOLD them all the water they needed.

[Chemahkuu]

Lloyd Dobler wrote:

---

Singularity - Is this some kind of new Glee Club?

Are they going to make Regionals?

More like the rapture but instead of the soul going to heaven it goes to a harddrive, or so RAMA has been implying for the last few days, insistantly.

[publiusr]

Some more on the problems of consumerism
http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.0604

[RAMA]

newtype_alpha wrote:

---

Air guitar picks for smartphones? You REALLY don't see how this has nothing whatsoever to do with what we're talking about?

Really, you strike me as the kind of person who is easily impressed by technology -- or even just articles about technology -- and hold up ANY example of technological progress to be evidence of something wonderful right over the horizon. Let's not fail to take Murphy's Law into account, or Ted Sturgeons famous and relatively accurate prophecy that 99% of everything is shit.

The leap from iPod guitar picks to transhumanist/singularity technology is a pretty huge one; they're not in the same ballpark. Not in the same league. Hell, they're not even the same sport.

Let me be perfectly clear on this lest you continue to erroneously make this point: Smartphones do not bring people out of poverty.

Technology has always proliferated across culture lines, as various groups and societies pick and choose products from their neighbors they find desirable. The social/political/economic progress DOES NOT proliferate the same way, and it does not follow technological distribution; rather, technological advances tend to concentrate in areas where more and more progress is being made.

Real world historical example: American Plains Indians no longer live in tents, no longer hunt game using bows and arrows and no longer construct their clothing exclusively out of furs and hides. They adopted horses, then firearms, then western-style architecture, and now a hundred years later they have houses, cars, electricity, satellite radio, and yes, even smartphones. Yet they have been, and are today, a highly impoverished society in almost every way that a society can be impoverished: they are extremely weak politically, economically, sociologically and militarily. An even more extreme example is the Choctaw Nation (my grandmother's ancestors) who adopted European technology and styles as early as the late 18th century and attempted a crash course of modernization. They fared a hell of a lot better than the plains Indians, not because the technology did them a huge benefit (it didn't, by the way) but because of the political and social transformation that preceded it: they made a social investment in adopting new ways and attempting (unsuccessfully) to become part of a new world order.

The Dakotas remained in poverty because they were unable or unwilling to fully modernize and make meaningful social progress. The Choctaw remained in poverty because they were prohibited from making progress by their rivals (to wit, the United States), but despite this resistance were still able to make some progress. In neither case was the technology all that helpful.

Smartphones are convenient and useful, but you cannot voice dial your way out of poverty for the same reasons you can't shoot your way out of it with assault rifles and rockets. Poverty is caused by a lack of resources, tangible and intangible; technology is not a resource in and of itself, THE ABILITY TO PRODUCE technology is. IOW: When startup companies in the Congo start producing their own smartphones and computers and software applications without outside help, THEN we've got something to talk about.

Succeed WHAT way? It won't be owned or developed by the people who need it most, and they won't benefit from it beyond immediate material needs. In the end, it would be no different if Coca Cola SOLD them all the water they needed.

You're just not getting it, smart phones are an example of exponential technology (size, power, speed etc)...providing dematerialized services once impossible out of numerous other hardware based, old industrialized technologies, even in some cases a few years ago. It has demonstrably changed the world already and I have provided both technical experts and statistical evidence to prove it (your claims however have not).

We were discussing coca cola and corporations, and you were suggesting that they are slow to innovate with new technologies, I was telling you not only are THEY innovating more, but there are at least two other ways such progress is occurring, something which has not been available till recently. See how that DOES have everything to do with what we were talking about?

Your arguments are mainly opinion not based on modern reality, and also appear to be based on predispositions from your life experiences from whatever country you seem to come from, where possibly the effects of technology do not appear as rapidly as some others. It's hard to take such arguments seriously when faced with the preponderance of direct evidence to the contrary(for example the cell phone/poverty issue).

http://www.undp.org.za/democratic-go...and-innovation

http://blog.mysciencework.com/en/201...space-2-0.html

Anyway, I don't feel the need to continue this particular conversation with you any longer.

RAMA

[RAMA]

publiusr wrote:

---

Some more on the problems of consumerism
http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.0604

I answered this earlier in the thread.

Edit: No it was in a diff thread on this subject, I'll find it.

[Crazy Eddie]

RAMA wrote:

---

You're just not getting it, smart phones are an example of exponential technology (size, power, speed etc)...providing dematerialized services once impossible out of numerous other hardware based, old industrialized technologies, even in some cases a few years ago. It has demonstrably changed the world already and I have provided both technical experts and statistical evidence to prove it (your claims however have not).

Lacking from your various non-sequitor links is evidence that the exponential growth of technology has/will actually bring about that change. I again remind you that although smart phones are more available in the third world, they are not to a large degree being DEVELOPED there, nor are their residents reaping the economic benefits of technological progress itself.

The answer to poverty isn't helping poor people buy smartphones. The answer is helping poor people MAKE smartphones. The better answer is helping poor people INVENT smartphones. None of your links address this issue and you've repeatedly ignored it as if it doesn't matter.

We were discussing coca cola and corporations, and you were suggesting that they are slow to innovate with new technologies

No I wasn't. I was saying they were slow to SHARE new technologies in a way that would allow someone OTHER than the Coca Cola company to profit from them. In a lot of cases, they are actually prone to suppress those technologies rather than develop them, especially if those technologies would ultimately threaten their profit margins. IOW: Coca Cola wouldn't be investing in clean water technologies if they thought there was any possibility that THEY wouldn't ultimately end up as the primary beneficiaries of the technology in the best position to market that technology as a new commodity. If the third world had developed it themselves, they'd be more likely to SUPPRESS the technology than support it, thereby avoiding a potential source of competition.

As to the overall point, I wasn't referring to Coca Cola specifically so much as the existing power structure of the western world as well as the third world (which was the point YOU missed when I reminded you that dictatorships ALSO have to innovate in order to survive and the exponential growth of technology would make it easier to do so).

Your arguments are mainly opinion not based on modern reality

This in a discussion about how smartphone guitar picks are evidence of the approaching singularity.

[publiusr]

RAMA wrote:

---

I answered this earlier in the thread.

Edit: No it was in a diff thread on this subject, I'll find it.

I remember now. Yeah, I was looking for that thread and couldn't find it either.

[RAMA]

I listed this tech as an honorable mention:http://singularityhub.com/2012/11/05...vertical-farm/

[Crazy Eddie]

There are some researchers working on the "farmlab" concept similar to this. All-indoors in climate-controlled "shelves" housed independently. The most interesting thing was the indoor concept uses blue and red and blue LEDs so they put out 100% of their energy in light spectra that the plants actually absorb (and exclude green, which they do not).

[RAMA]

Chrysalis wrote:

---

More like the rapture but instead of the soul going to heaven it goes to a harddrive, or so RAMA has been implying for the last few days, insistantly.

Nonsense, a mis-characterization on several levels. Firstly I don't believe in "souls". Secondly, I don't believe in heaven. Thirdly, while metaphors often fail us, leading to some who characterize possibilities of technology based on extrapolation in terms of theology, I don't share those interests.

[sojourner]

No, you believe the mind can be uploaded into a virtual reality sim in a computer. Totally different. Totally.