[kj] OT: The Venus Project

[Brendan Quinn]

Whatever the changes they happened in 100 years. Look at the big picture of
how short that is compared to how long we've been self-replicating
organisms.if you have any idea of that timeframe, even roughly, you'll know
exactly what I'm getting at.

 

Robert Anton Wilson has an audio series about what he calls his 'jumping
jesus' phenomenon. The acceleration of information. He takes 0 AD and calls
the amount of information possessed by the entire human race 1 Jesus. The
time to double that information, fucked if I know off the top of my head,
but it wasn't long. Then we're at 2 Jesus, 4 jesus, then 8, then
16.exponential progress. Same as computer processing (look up Moore's law,
after the co-founder of Intel Corp's prediction that the no. of transistors
in CPUs would double every approx 18 months, which has proven to be the case
for the last several decades.just a mirror for general tech progress) 

 

Technology moves a hell of a lot faster than societal changes. Hence my
point, that it's one of the main drivers of societal change.

 

I was raised with video games, television, reading sci fi, and hard science,
I work in IT, and I still find it nigh on impossible to keep up with the
rate of change in technology. I never said it was a driver towards people
becoming more compassionate towards each other (not right yet), but of
course that's what I think is the long term effect.

 

Of course.we're still the same biological entities behind it all, fight or
flight, nature vs nurture, adrenal dump, Maslow's hierarchy of
needs.whatever. My point is that tech is a driver for societal change, and
even if it's only the free dissemination of information via the
internet.isn't that a biggie? Wasn't Gutenberg's printing press a BIG thing?
(despite the fact that the Chinese had moveable type a lot earlier.)

 

Huge tech change in 100 years and we think it's ho hum, business as usual.I
just find that short sighted. 

 

If you had to go back to the standard of living 100 years ago.dwell on that
for a bit. No internet, most music except classical sucked shit, no planes,
no heart bypass surgery, no MRI scanning.and look forward to WWI in 1914.

 

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From: gathering-bounces at misera.net [mailto:gathering-bounces at misera.net] On
Behalf Of folk devil
Sent: Tuesday, 18 November 2008 15:16
To: gathering at misera.net
Subject: Re: [kj] OT: The Venus Project

 

You're heading back to memetics ;)
Life expectancy has gone up from around 50 in 1900, to about 78/80 today,
and it wasn't that long ago we could only expect to live to about 35. 
Medicine has made many 'advances'..or are we just replacing the old with the
new, and moulding the same thing into a different shape all the time?
Ich bin eine Maschine.

"

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From: bq at soundgardener.co.nz
To: gathering at misera.net
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:45:48 +1100
Subject: Re: [kj] OT: The Venus Project

I think me & Ade are arguing tech vs society.

 

Don't forget technology is a facilitator for society however. Without the
critical mass of people and the survival resiliency that plant & animal
farming, specialisation and division of labour provide (with their inherent
costs of course), it's not really possible to have dedicated classes of
priests, merchants, scribes, philosophers, scientists etc etc. (Probably
Amway salespeople as well).

 

The internet is going to be hugely impacting in the way it affects society
over time, that's so obvious to see. Want a record, movie, tv show? Steal
it. Want to block access to independent media to your population? Good
like.we'll use onion routing, open web proxies, encryption etc to get around
it. 

 

Those old chestnuts of virtual reality and AI.keep an eye on them.
Cybernetics, nanotech, VR, AI, deeper understanding of physics.they say that
biology will be the physics of the 21st century. Who knows. 

 

Check it out.AI from about 2020-2030 on.computers are going to have the raw
power of the human brain. Average 'desktop' computers, if there's still such
a think. That's a game changer. The 20th century saw massive changes in
lifestyle & standard of living, the 21st. Well who knows what will happen,
but short of massive wars, famine, another dark ages, if technology is
allowed to continue apace, we're in for a real paradigm shift I think. 

 

I mean, this isn't futurist fantasy stuff, it's just a natural extrapolation
of the vector that science has been on for the last 300 + years.

 

Don't believe that society won't be affected.

 

  _____  

From: gathering-bounces at misera.net [mailto:gathering-bounces at misera.net] On
Behalf Of folk devil
Sent: Tuesday, 18 November 2008 14:17
To: gathering at misera.net
Subject: Re: [kj] OT: The Venus Project

 

Well surveillance and control has advanced quite nicely, ever since PCs went
portable and cell phones became a new appendage.. ;P

"




 

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