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Old 09-25-2014, 02:16 PM
 
18,512 posts, read 15,494,002 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Josseppie View Post
To be honest I am in the so called 1% so I do plan on being among the first to do it. Just not when it's in beta testing.
Ok, fair enough...
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Old 09-25-2014, 02:18 PM
 
18,512 posts, read 15,494,002 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Josseppie View Post
You really sound like people in the past who said computers have or had stopped advancing exponentially and why. Like you they were convinced they were right and look at us. Today we have google glass so with al their reasons in the end they were wrong. Just like in the 2020's we will have nanotechnology changing our lives dramatically.
Furthermore, your choice of examples (Google glass) is ad hoc and not targeted toward the specific scopes of what anti-futurists were saying in the 1980s.

This is a separate flaw in your argument.
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Old 09-25-2014, 02:43 PM
 
Location: Pueblo - Colorado's Second City
12,262 posts, read 24,404,814 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1 View Post
Furthermore, your choice of examples (Google glass) is ad hoc and not targeted toward the specific scopes of what anti-futurists were saying in the 1980s.

This is a separate flaw in your argument.
My point is simple. When I was a kid in the 1980's I remember hearing on the nightly news how computers had advanced a lot but that it was coming to a end and why. I remember thinking that sux but makes sense. Then in 1991 when I went to college I got a lap top, one of the first good ones, and when I was talking to the sales associate he was going on and on about how its hard to make the companies that small to fit in a lap top and is why its so expensive. Then in college I would hear certain people say computers have come a long way but this is the end of them advancing exponentially and why. Again I did not think much of it other then makes sense and that sux. Then in grad school the smart phone came out and it took me by surprise. Shortly after is when I first heard of the singularity and Ray Kurzweil. At that point I told myself I would never be surprised of what is coming next and when wearable tech came out this is the first time I can say I saw it coming years ago. As before people are saying ya its advanced but this is where it will/ has stopped and why. Then in the 2020's when we have nanotechnology I am sure some people will again say the same thing. Then in the 2030's nanotechnology will be more advanced enough to give us life 3.0.
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Old 09-25-2014, 03:41 PM
 
18,512 posts, read 15,494,002 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Josseppie View Post
My point is simple. When I was a kid in the 1980's I remember hearing on the nightly news how computers had advanced a lot but that it was coming to a end and why. I remember thinking that sux but makes sense. Then in 1991 when I went to college I got a lap top, one of the first good ones, and when I was talking to the sales associate he was going on and on about how its hard to make the companies that small to fit in a lap top and is why its so expensive. Then in college I would hear certain people say computers have come a long way but this is the end of them advancing exponentially and why. Again I did not think much of it other then makes sense and that sux. Then in grad school the smart phone came out and it took me by surprise. Shortly after is when I first heard of the singularity and Ray Kurzweil. At that point I told myself I would never be surprised of what is coming next and when wearable tech came out this is the first time I can say I saw it coming years ago. As before people are saying ya its advanced but this is where it will/ has stopped and why. Then in the 2020's when we have nanotechnology I am sure some people will again say the same thing. Then in the 2030's nanotechnology will be more advanced enough to give us life 3.0.
What specifically did they say would stop advancing? CPU speed? Storage capacity?

When did they predict it would happen? 1990? 2000? 2010? 2020?

And how is Google glass more relevant than other computers available today?
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Old 09-25-2014, 03:58 PM
 
Location: Pueblo - Colorado's Second City
12,262 posts, read 24,404,814 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1 View Post
What specifically did they say would stop advancing? CPU speed? Storage capacity?

When did they predict it would happen? 1990? 2000? 2010? 2020?

And how is Google glass more relevant than other computers available today?
They were talking about computers in general and it was when ever they said. For example in the 80's they said it would stop after the desk top then in the 90's it was after the lap top then it was after the lap top and then it was after the smart phone yet we have wearable tech like Google glass. So today people, like you, say it will stop here and yet in the 2020's we will have nanotechnology.
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Old 09-26-2014, 01:16 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1 View Post
Actually, CPU speed isn't the only thing that's levelled off. If you look at the Herb Sutter article, you'll see that computation per unit energy, according to some measurements, has become flat as well.

Perhaps Intel is using measures for which that is not the case (i.e. it is still on an exponential curve). But then the question is: Why should anyone think that measure is more relevant to a potential singularity than any of those that have become flat?
Because of Processing Power per Dollar is the ultimate measure for computers, that is if energetically possible (it's important to consume less energy but it does only have to be in the range of possible to handl, not going exponential).
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Old 09-26-2014, 01:56 AM
 
141 posts, read 128,011 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1 View Post
What's new about placing orders with a machine?
This. This is what you fail to grasp.

Computing have been around for a thousand years or more, a computer was literally someone sitting at a desk 'computing' at a certain time in history. It is not that the CPU was invented or that Turing made his famous 'bomb' or mechanic calculators, it is about that computing is on an exponential trend.

Biotech is on an exponential trend.

Information technology is on an exponential trend.

The list goes on.

We can debate about what part of what subsystem broke down in the 1990:s (say superheat in projected CPU:s), that is interesting and all but history shows us that when one thing stops working, humanity finds another.

Oh no! we hit a wall, vacuum tubes just can't be smaller!
We hit a wall, litography just can't go below 5000nm!
we hit a wall, 4nm is the end!

You get the idea. Or actually you doesn't seem to.

Maybe it is easier for someone that has actually lived the thing, I don't know.
If someone had told me I'd have a start-trek like hand held computer where I could listen to any music, see any film call any person for almost free I would not have believed them in say 1985.
Then came Napster, then came the smartphone, then came Youtube... and here it is, like it had always been here!

Not like you have to bike downtown to by a friggin expensive plastic disc where the signature of sound waves have been pressed into it so you could put a tiny stick in that valley, turn the disc and listen to music.
Information? Go to the library and try to find something interesting (tough luck), wait until you learn it in school? You needed to do a whole career just to get to the base information in one domain! TV? Yeah that was really filled with useful information. Guess Radio was the best but still, there was like this one show at 23h00 every sunday... missed it? Sorry for you it's gone.

When I got my C64, I got my hands on some opcodes (machine code), but no one did a selective jump, so I spent months writing self modifying code, just because I didn't know there was or how it worked.

That was how it was to live in the eighties.

Today, we truly live in another world.

The thing is that with all those technologies and the expansion of communication (2.3billion people on the internet), the changes are coming faster and faster.
I have felt this a long time (the computer race was actually breaking people in the industry, one console/pc/mobile/GPU or whatever came out, two years later a new came out, then it was every year, then it was every 6 month. Keep up!).
Tomorrow we'll have even more changes, more and more and more. It is even starting to be hard to keep track of all the news about technology, 20 years ago you'd buy a magazine about the latest things every year, today there is several a day, you'd need a magazine like in the old days but every week and soon every day...

So, it doesn't matter if some part breaks down, humanity always find a way around it and this exponential trend will continue. and continue. and continue.
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Old 09-26-2014, 03:27 AM
 
141 posts, read 128,011 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Josseppie View Post
To be honest I am in the so called 1% so I do plan on being among the first to do it. Just not when it's in beta testing.
Congrats to you I'm not :-/ but I'm not exactly poor either. Guess I'll let you test the stuff first !

Giving where we are heading I think it will come down "to the masses" quite quickly, in a world of abundance and close to zero marginal costs everyone would have access to about everything.
Still, many people won't be prepared psychologically so they have to wait until it becomes mainstream in usage to dare, or actually not dare being not mainstream any more...

Ha ha, sometimes I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas

ps. you are waiting for the 2020 to go full solar? Is this because of battery tech or grid parity (or others)? I'm tinkering with the costs to check if I can't just buy a solar panel, an inverter and chuck the output in on the 220v line... Seems like it will take some years to get ROI (return on investment) say up to 8. Maybe next year it will drop to 4 years. But I don't have any reliable numbers, still interesting though, both for the economic and environmental approach.
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Old 09-26-2014, 06:04 AM
 
141 posts, read 128,011 times
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One step closer to APM ("atomic replicators"):

the Foresight Institute » Blog Archive » Scaffolded DNA origami improvements advance DNA nanotechnology

Less important but anyhow: Tomorrow, first authorised drone delivery in EU

First Authorized Drone Delivery in Europe Scheduled for Tomorrow
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Old 09-26-2014, 06:59 AM
 
18,512 posts, read 15,494,002 times
Reputation: 16193
Quote:
Originally Posted by Josseppie View Post
They were talking about computers in general and it was when ever they said. For example in the 80's they said it would stop after the desk top then in the 90's it was after the lap top then it was after the lap top and then it was after the smart phone yet we have wearable tech like Google glass. So today people, like you, say it will stop here and yet in the 2020's we will have nanotechnology.
Ok, it appears the issue under discussion is miniaturization, not performance.

To that end, the issue now is to define what counts as a computer or unit of technology. This is one of the main problems I have with Ray Kurzweil's predictions (which you seem always eager to repeat, almost word for word). Kurzweil's claims about computers being in "X" places or shrinking to "Y" size are so loosely defined as to be virtually unfalsifiable, and to that end, no amount of wearable tech could ever vindicate your argument.

Kurzweil, the Singularity and His Futurism - Retort


Until you solve this problem, people could be wearing 5000 miniature cell phones embedded in their shorts, even if it happens just three months from now, and there is still not the slightest justification for believing we are any closer to a singularity which involves machine intelligence superior to humans. (unless, of course, you can show that the main limiting factor in the latter amounts to the difficulty of computer miniaturization...)

You seem to think that "impressive", "cool", or "awesome" is somehow equal to compelling, as an argument for a conclusion which is not only specific, but also requires a technological capacity which is different not in quantity but in kind from the examples you use.

What you need to realize is that I am a scientist, and I hold these claims to rigorous standard of falsifiability and quantitative analysis. Informal arguments which cannot be quantified don't cut it, no matter how impressive, awesome, or eyebrow-raising the tech is, because that is simply beside the point.
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