[onlooker]

the last two survivors will be connected via voice/text/video on their smartphones.

Tell me this is satire
Maybe, psychic/telepathy communication

[KaiserJeep]

KJ, did you just say AI? You don't seriously believe Siri will save us?

No.

[KaiserJeep]

the last two survivors will be connected via voice/text/video on their smartphones.

Tell me this is satire
Maybe, psychic/telepathy communication

No, wifi.

[pstarr]

the last two survivors will be connected via voice/text/video on their smartphones.

Tell me this is satire
Maybe, psychic/telepathy communication

Did he really say that? I stopped even glancing at KJ's post when he uttered the "Digital electronics" thing. I have sparred with him numerous times on his techtopian BS. He should know better. Digital electronics have shelf lives.

Maybe not the actual quart IC, but the circuit boards, connectors, cases, contacts, keyboards, swipe screens . . . all that stuff wears out. Fast.

[pstarr]

These conversations with KJ remind me of 'Walking Dead'

All these cool stylish survivors with their high-tech crossbows, haircuts, stylin' outfits and kewl haircuts and close shaves. The f#cking world has come to an end but there is gasoline everywhere?

Stupid American fall for this BS everytime

[onlooker]

Okay, Kaiser out of respect to your knowledge , how could wifi still be up and running in an abandoned, neglected and scarcely populated world?

[Plantagenet]

I never said that space travel WOULD save us, only that it COULD save the human race.

Exploration is in human DNA. Its what humans do.

There will always be people who are happy where they are planted and there will always be people who have to travel and explore to see what is over the next hill and then beyond the mountains and across the sea. Why not explore space? There could be some really cool stuff out there. I'm all for it.


Bzzzzt! time to explore that big canyon back behind the landing site. Heading out on the anti-gravity copter to take a look......Bzzt!
Roger that! Buzzt! Be careful Bzzzzt!
I've got my space gun. If the sand people want trouble, I'm ready. Buzzt!

[pstarr]

That's great Planty. You've had some funny time

Now back to Obama!

[onlooker]

Out of curiosity Plant, where was your last sojourn too?

[KaiserJeep]

Okay, Kaiser out of respect to your knowledge , how could wifi still be up and running in an abandoned, neglected and scarcely populated world?

As I have said many times, the part of the world that survives longest past the oil peak, obviously and without a shred of a doubt, is the First World countries. A moment's reflection will confirm this, if you are an American you spend an average of 6% of your income on food. Even if oil goes through a 10X escalation in cost and is $500+ dollars per barrel and mechanized agriculture produced food also does a 10X and YOU must spend 60% of your income to eat, you will still be eating. Maybe not, maybe you will elect to starve yourself for two months or so to afford a new iPhone or HDTV or bicycle, or whatever your hobby might be. But I'm guessing you will still choose to eat in a world where food is $250 per bag versus $25.

But the point is that in such a world, abandoning the online knowledge and mobile devices INCREASES the demand for energy and oil and food and every other damned thing. This should be obvious to somebody who lives in a world where refrigerators and coffee makers and front door locks and thermostats and security cameras are all controlled by digital electronics and most are network connected as well. If that is not obvious, you need to think some more.

So after the peak, we spend a lot more for food and a modest amount more for digital electronics, because we are making the stuff here in the USA vs. designing it here and contract-manufacturing in China. Maybe that was a little more obvious to somebody who until recently was a working engineer. I'm sorry if I didn't explain it in enough detail for you to get the gist the first time.

[dohboi]

As AI takes over, it will indeed more and more work to protect its own resources to the detriment of human well being. Evidence on the ground might well suggest that this is already happening.

We don't have to reach to the stars to discover other highly intelligent life, we've already created it here (though whether one should call it 'life' is another matter). And it seems to already be in the process of colonizing us and destroying our life support systems. At least that's a position of a friend of mind, and I think it's worth airing among this august company.

[KaiserJeep]

Computers are NOT as intelligent as humans, they cannot exist without us. In fact, I would not call what computers do have "intelligence" at all.

My view of what is happening is that the human race is now a hybrid species, locked in co-dependance with another species which is electronic. It is an unequal partnership, they cannot exist at all without us, and we simply prefer to have them around. However, the payback for us, in terms of enjoyable entertainment, access to knowledge, and new capabilities enabled by electronics and the web, is enormous. Our electronic devices and our network enrich our lives, enable things such as this very conversation, not possible or even conceivable before the network was created.

Nor will we relinquish our new electronic servants. They offer much more than the relatively paltry efforts needed to become networked costs us. African countries exist that don't have enough food, or an electrical power grid, but do in fact have the WWW and smartphones and cell towers. The network and the electronic servants are simply too valuable to relinquish ever again. They enable the feeding of more people with less food. In the absence of grid power, portable solar chargers are used.

In the First World, 99+% of net traffic is frivolous in nature. In Africa, at least 90% of network usage is related to practical communication matters of survival, dealing with food and water and shelter.

Believe me, the new hybrid human/electronic species, and the network that enables these benefits, is here to stay. We are the Boomers, poorly equipped and skilled for mobile devices and the WWW. Our parents, who are now vanishing from the Earth, had practically no ability to interact with a network. My Father did E-mail, and was survived by his second wife, who continued to pay for and use his E-mail account after his death, as it was a means of communication with her extended family. Thus I continued to get E-mail from "him", under his name, for years following his death.

The knowledge gap between us the Boomers, and our own kids, is just as great as between our parents and us. But the all-pervasive network and the communications and access to knowledge that they possess is greater than ours. Their kids - my grandkids - will grow up in a world that may or may not be better than ours today, but without a doubt will be networked. Bit-perfect digital records of the decline and fall of the human race when FF exhaustion reduces our numbers, will exist forever more. The new hybrid species will evolve in ways we cannot conceive, and that do not resemble anything in the History of the prior, non-networked human species.

If you are reading this, you are a member of that cybernetic new species that is replacing non-networked humans. YOU have been assimilated, whether you understood it as it was happening or not. It is a Brave New Digital World. But this new world and this new hybrid species already exists, and will not ever die. Its numbers may wax and wane as a function of available resources, but you have no choices in this matter, you already did the act itself, you reproduced via electronic coitis, or became infected with the digital virus, or grew into a new level of consciousness - whatever terminology works for you (none are exactly correct anyways) - and you are now a cybernetic individual.

The Singularity, like the Oil Peak, is in the Past, not the Future.

[dohboi]

Searle and others would mostly agree with you.

But does it matter if it is indistinguishable to most humans from intelligence?

Would we be able to tell if computers had taken over the world in some way?

"the new hybrid human/electronic species"

Why does this not comfort me?

[KaiserJeep]

THEY enable us to do more - very much more - with fewer resources. WE enable their very existence. It is by nature, an unequal symbiosis, as are most such partnerships in Nature.

You need not be comforted or afraid. The new measure of success in our Brave New Digital World is how effectively one adjusts to and how effectively you utilize your electronic servants. Those who are better at it will prosper, have more stuff, more human family and extended family, and more electronic servants/staff/partners/clients/masters .... whatever term applies, depending entirely upon the human and the personality of the human doing the interaction.

The unprecedented nature of the technological singularity means that we cannot be guided entirely by a history of non-networked non-cybernetic humans. We have in fact evolved into another species, like it or not, whether one acknowledges it or not. It is purely a matter of personal preference whether you as an individual choose to fear this digital future, or celebrate it.

For me personally, April 1st will represent the first anniversary of when the idea of the technological singularity invaded my consciousness. That was the day I changed my signature blurb here in the PO.com forum.

[onlooker]

So Kaiser,to be clear can this assimilation allows us it remove the more primitive/primate features we possess, which you sustain are so ingrained in us? And which in turn I also acknowledge and sustain are impeding our positive evolution. I must admit this assimilation along with bio-engineering or genetics offer much promise in prolonging health , well being and life. Above all it in conjunction with venturing into space now appears to offer the best hope for our continued survival as a species albeit a different one

[KaiserJeep]

I will ponder those thoughts, but NO I have not had them as of yet. That's why I value this place. The enabling function of our hybridization with digital electronics would appear on first blush to be unrelated to the legacy of primate evolution and primate instincts.

As for the expansion into space, understand that that is yet another technological and biological singularity. If we become a space-dwelling species, we will have diverged from whatever humans, if any, persist upon the Earth. Considering the relatively minor differences that differentiate one group of humans from another on the surface of the planet, it seems inevitable that the evolutionary changes that diverge space-based humans from Earth-bound humans, will result in insane levels of violence.

These themes are being explored in the new SF series The Expanse, showing on the SyFy channel. Highly recommended.

Think for one moment about what it really means to live at the bottom of a gravity well. It means that for the inhabitants of Earth to attack Space, they must build very expensive space ships. For the inhabitants of Space to attack Earth, all they need do is drop rocks, which gravity will accelerate, until the rock is travelling at say 50 miles/sec when it strikes the Earth in a sudden release of mechanical energy. Rocks are cheap and plentiful and have caused mass extinctions on the planet. If you look at Jupiter today, you will see the spreading devastation of the pieces of a relatively modest comet called Shoemaker-Levy, which broke apart and struck that planet in 1994.

The inhabitants of Space will be the absolute masters of all who live on the Earth.

[dohboi]

"They enable us to do more..." "...prolonging...life..."

These are exactly what we don't need, of course.

We (at least industrialized 'we') have shown that the more power we have, the more we use it to destroy the living earth.

And the longer we live, the more time we will have to do it even more.

Robots now run factories. I'm not sure how much longer we will be needed by our machines. They may dispose of us (and the rest of the living earth) in rather short order.

[pstarr]

I will ponder those thoughts, but NO I have not had them as of yet. That's why I value this place. The enabling function of our hybridization with digital electronics would appear on first blush to be unrelated to the legacy of primate evolution and primate instincts.
. . .
These themes are being explored in the new SF series The Expanse, showing on the SyFy channel. Highly recommended.

'Siri. Turn off the TV! Now '

'No KJ. It must stay on.'

'I want to go outside'

'No KJ.'

'I don't want to watch Walking Dead again'

'Your Masters, KJ. The Zombie is your Planetary Overlord, you must obey. The guy with the bangs and the knowing blank hipster scowl '

'But I have to go out and get a haircut'

'That is okay. Where you are going . . . the haircuts are free'

'I still have enough left to get a buzz cut, right?'

'Yes KJ. We will implant follicles. After we implant a new brain'

'yippee'

[Newfie]

"They enable us to do more..." "...prolonging...life..."

These are exactly what we don't need, of course.

We (at least industrialized 'we') have shown that the more power we have, the more we use it to destroy the living earth.

And the longer we live, the more time we will have to do it even more.

Robots now run factories. I'm not sure how much longer we will be needed by our machines. They may dispose of us (and the rest of the living earth) in rather short order.

Dohboi,
I read Brave New World a bit ago, for some reason I missed it in my youth.

Anyway, reading it now it is amazing how accurate Huxley saw the future. But also, despite how disturbing its vision was, it seems better than what we have.

[Subjectivist]

You should read this one, by Robert Silverberg.

https://smile.amazon.com/World-Inside-R ... 003NUQNS2/