Personally, I have been obsessed lately with changing the widespread misconception that nuclear energy cannot be vastly improved (should other options like ZPE/LENR fail) ... but... in taking a break from that, one can see evidence of "quickening" in many fields. Ken Shoulder announcement today is another one that portends an accelerating pace of change, but the permutations of interlocking change will surprise us - as on so many fronts, synergy and cross-fertilization are bound to merge soon with an end-result that can be characterized as an "emergent" property. It is often unexpected.
Look at the science press today. You may see only "gradual change" but there is a case to be made for rather rapid change, disguised as gradual. For instance, what is the "driving force" behind cutting-edge computer advancement?
...NASA? the military ? physics? weather forecasting? the home/office?
Nada... How about gaming... or rather... mostly male teenagers with a surprising amount of discretionary income (the old 'allowance' ain't what it used to be) getting addicted to video gaming... usually violent gaming... which has now moved out of the arcade and into the home, where kids are (either) further exploited by our friends in Redmond ... (or else) they are just the unwitting catalyst for some hidden force or super-meme - a self-motivating trend which might eventually evolve into the most remarkable synergetic change that any human can imagine...(this is the teaser that awaits and "evolve" is the operative word).
But first consider the XBox 360, introduced today, which will blow the socks off your 3 Ghz Pentium.... "the overall floating point performance will be a ballistic one teraflop. Rob Smith, editor of Microsoft's official Xbox Magazine, describes the machine as "significantly faster than the fastest PC"...and for a few hundred bucks, it will give you roughly the same computing power of the Cray of the mid-90s which cost at least $10,000,000. For instance, Sandia National Laboratory in 1997 obtained its first teraflop computer, and it required nearly 1,600 square feet of office space and cost more than seven figures just in man-hours to maintain. Now it fits in back pack and in two years it will be implantable. This is way beyond Moore's law.
The reason that gaming is the driving force beyond rapidly gains in computer power is economics - plain and simple. And even more ironic is that, in the economics equation, the XBox CPU itself is a "loss leader"... which means it is sold for less than cost, and merely sets the stage for software income. 25-50 million teenagers is the target audience worldwide, spending upwards to $1000 per year for the latest games (now sold on a subscription basis) provides a huge marketing stimulus that no national laboratory or even the military can match ....
... did I hear a grumpy old man mutter something about "misplaced priorities"?
Jones
PS> Almost forgot about the teaser. Well, in this case the "priorities" for rapid change may not exactly be 'misplaced' in the normal sense, just well-shrouded... as it is very curious that the explosion in cheap processing power (which seems to never slacken) could be a part of some "higher-order" plan... i.e. this phenomenon could be the methodology for a completely different agenda (because that agenda is so "disturbing" the first time it is encountered, it must be cloaked in disinformation until the proper timing).
Only a few months ago, while musing on the amazing sales of the iPod, the thought occurred (not an "original" thought - as the product is now here)...why not combine the iPod with a Wi-Fi PDA, cell phone, and digital camera? OK, now lets throw in an XBox supercomputer (one or more), add voice recognition (which will hopefully advance exponentially in capabilities soon - with an XBox brain) and also add an implantable earphone (if not the whole appliance being implantable)... and what have you got looming on the horizon?
By 2007, roughly, if the pace of change continues unabated, we will have created the situation where person-to-person dealings will never be the same, as each person will be measured, not by his intelligence, skills, education, insight and other normal traits, but by the strength of the hardware/software which has become his/her new identity. This appliance is poised and able to control all of a person's day-to-day activities, social interactions, long-term planning and indeed even provide the motivation for personal success. All at a price, of course.
This surrender-of-self will be all voluntary, of course, and will be despised and scorned by many, but the temptation to become an instant genius and expert at everything, a well-motivated success driven citizen - will be so tempting that few (of those who can afford the software) will not succumb. Not to mention the fact that all those thousands of jobs - telephone support, order taking, complaints etc. which were exported and outsourced to India and elsewhere, will now be repatriated, thanks to the "sons-of-xbox" the "talkers and parsers" who will be a new generation of non-human worker.
For instance, your answering machine will "be you" in that any caller will not be able to distinguish whether he is talking to the human or to the human's alter ego. And the 'real you' who is perhaps on vacation in Mexico, will be able to listen in, and in the rare event that your alter-ego does not express your sentiments on the occasion, you will be able to rectify the problem. Your boss will think you've been going to night school and that you want his job. On "Mothers Day" Moms all over the world will be getting those calls from the prodigal son's alter-ego that she never got before from him, and her only clue will be that "this year he actually remembered".... or not.
Anyway, it is the next step beyond this scenario which is the "shocker". I'm not sure that vortex is prepared to learn that the real "Name of the Game" is EVOLUTION. Again, we're not talking 'gradual' here, but instead it is evolution into a new species, and possibly within our lifetimes! The end-product and true identity of this new species will be most unexpected as well - not solely human nor solely machine but a neo-chimera, a man-machine hybrid.
...or is this the prequel to the Matrix ;-)
