Edge’s 2009 Question is out!: What would change everything?. The list of answers by some of the most interesting individuals in the third culture individuals out there is as inspiring and thought provoking (and atrociously designed, interface-wise) as ever. Kevin Kelly’s answer my favorite so far:
It is hard to imagine anything that would “change everything” as much as a cheap, powerful, ubiquitous artificial intelligence—the kind of synthetic mind that learns and improves itself. A very small amount of real intelligence embedded into an existing process would boost its effectiveness to another level. We could apply mindfulness wherever we now apply electricity. The ensuing change would be hundreds of times more disruptive to our lives than even the transforming power of electrification. We’d use artificial intelligence the same way we’ve exploited previous powers—by wasting it on seemingly silly things. Of course we’d plan to apply AI to tough research problems like curing cancer, or solving intractable math problems, but the real disruption will come from inserting wily mindfulness into vending machines, our shoes, books, tax returns, automobiles, email, and pulse meters.
This additional intelligence need not be super-human, or even human-like at all. In fact, the greatest benefit of an artificial intelligence would come from a mind that thought differently than humans, since we already have plenty of those around. The game-changer is neither how smart this AI is, nor its variety, but how ubiquitous it is. Alan Kay quips in that humans perspective is worth 80 IQ points. For an artificial intelligence, ubiquity is worth 80 IQ points. A distributed AI, embedded everywhere that electricity goes, becomes ai—a low-level background intelligence that permeates the technium, and trough this saturation morphs it.
Great stuff—it’s people like Kelly that make me miss California ;)
Jeff Bezos had remarkably similar, equally inspiring ideas at a recent TED talk, comparing the web to electricity but Kelly pushes it further, to ”intelligence as electricity”
Insomnia’s hitting me hard so I thought I might as well write some of the thoughts swirling in my head…
I got almost 20,000 songs in total, having recently recovered most of my music library from a backup I had in Mexico. Some 2,000 of those songs I absolutely love and keep track of them with a special playlist. Funny thing but that playlist alone is worth to me more than all my thousands of (illegal) songs.
Anyway, been listening to that playlist for hours now. Climaxing to is a better word. Music is such pure pleasure, ain’t it? (I wonder if the pleasure will fade with age as they say—does that mean that it is fake then? Do dogs listen to music?) This is why I tell you I just can’t stop marveling at technology: so much marvelous music, from all over the world and all over time, available for so little money to me—a 100 years ago it would have been unthinkable, to die for.
It shocked me that you didn’t know the meaning of “marveling” today girl, because it’s such an important word to me. Like, about what we talked at Ice Berry, people bore me not because they don’t share my interests but because they’re barely interested at all.
I’m so hungry for passion, for intense and unreasonable interests, for people with dreams, for people to wonder and marvel with, you know? Pretty much all most people seem to care (superficially, unreflectingly) about is gossip, fucking, or kids.
So people are mostly uninterested, unawed, unmoved—or when they’re not they’re unbelievably pessimistic, negative, catastrophist, paranoid, bitter… People who marvel are so exceedingly, saddeningly rare.
Any dimwit can be bitter (and most are), it’s the easiest thing to do, human nature (have you ever wondered how common clinical, biological chronic depression is, while its opposite, biological, chronic euphoria, is so weird as to be almost unheard of?).
Marveling, being hopeful, is the exception, it’s what takes effort and imagination and daring.
We will all be wearing something like this in no more than 5 years. Seriously, it’s positively awesome, just look how silly happy I look.
Your brain is uncannily good at patching your vision so you can eerily “see thru” the screen—soon enough the feeling of obstruction disappears and it just floats magically along. The tiny screen is good enough for text to read and you can apparently browse the web too. You control it through some controls at the headphones. It’s already for sale at some very reasonable $700 here in Japan (online only). So Mannfred Macx!
Oh and I just uploaded a massive 200 photo batch to Flickr, at the end of this set, starting with this picture. If you wonder why this blog has seen so little love lately, it’s because most of my online efforts have been directed to photoblogging—these aren’t just pictures, I title each one with a brief summary of what I was thinking when I shot it or what it makes me think. It’s a strange style but it suits me and I hope you like it (you’ll probably like it, just as for this blog, if you’re more into ideas and stuff than people). There will be much less photoblogging coming though, since I’m focusing all my energies on learning Japanese!
Ever since I’ve had a digital camera I’ve noticed a strange use of it: I’ll often snap stuff —whiteboards, signs, text, documents, maps, ads, book covers..— for practical, remember-or-consult-it-later purposes (as opposed to “leisure” snapping of people, events or cool stuff). Since I got my awesome new camera this use has only intensified, with two interesting new twists:
First, since the image quality is now unbelievably and consistently good it’s painful to look at other camera’s), pretty much anything is recorded at the same (or higher!) fidelity than the real thing. So I can now confidently snap pictures of intricately detailed maps, computer screen text, faraway signs (with its awesome 10x zoom) or whatever.
Second, since the screen is now unbelievably good and big (3”!), and since browsing has gotten so much faster and responsive (not there yet but close), most of my later reviewing now is done right at my camera. It’s a very different, much more personal and portable experience than being anchored to the desktop. Also, since memory is now so mindboggingly cheap I can just keep these reference photos on the camera (that is, with me) for as long as I need to.
So a typical use of my camera now is getting some directions or reading an interesting review of some place at my laptop and just snapping it for later, in-place reference. It’s so fast and convenient. I don’t have everywhere web in my iPhone now but if I did I think I’d often still do it this way instead of fiddling with it (and of course I’ve long stopped stooping to printing stuff—are you kidding me?).
It’s really starting to feel like a prostethic (photographic) memory module and my guess is that this use will become more and more prominent, to the point that some 5 years from now it could be cameras’ main use (mostly because we’ll be saturated by “leisure” photos of people, events or cool stuff). My camera actually reflects this and one of its 5 main modes is actually the cleverly titled “Clipboard” mode, designed only (!) to keep photos of “maps, timetables and other travel info” (reference photos!) at hand (a special mode shouldn’t be necessary once the interface gets there).
(Another interesting day, not far at all, is when the view through the viewfinder is better—more detailed, more zoomable, wider, better at night—than the one through your cornea.)
So awesome! First Fred product I stumble on but do check out them out, they are one cool, pun-obsessed manufacturer of novelty items that while gimmicky still manage to be classy.
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