Even Fidelity acknowledges rapid change is ahead (power, advance, material)
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What do synthetic biology, crowdsourcing / big data infrastructure, chronic water challenges, and medicine based off your DNA all have in common?
Fidelity is thinking these will be among the biggest new waves in technology and will potentially revolutionize everything from what we eat, how businesses harvest and analyze data, the medicine we take, and the future's most precious natural resource won't be gold, or silver, or oil, but water.
Sound familiar?
Ray Kurzweil and other Singulatarians have been saying for quite a while that rapid technological advances in computing power will shrink computing needs in both size and price, while continuing an exponential growth in the number of flops possible by computers and even semi-flops using quantum computing. This will lead to gene sequencing and profiling that what takes a few weeks and several thousand dollars today to just 3 days and a few hundred dollars. With such price performance, within the next ten years we may see drugs and health care move from provider centric to patient centric models, while reducing the number of adverse drug reactions every year since doctors will know which drugs would suit you best based on not just what you do, and what you eat, but also your DNA. At some point, we may even be able to target DNA errors which could lead to malignant cancer.
Crowd sourced projects no matter what they do all have one thing in common: big data crunching needs, and how we power such projects in the future will both revolutionize how parallel computing is approached as well as the infrastructure and power needs to do it. I read in a magazine that at projected growth rates in both air travel / airplanes and cloud computing and data storage sites, within 5 years cloud computing and crowd-enabled computing will consume more energy and release more pollution into the atmosphere than airplanes. This shows how much our society is relying on "big data".
These combined might spur growth in synthetic biology. Recently a woman had part of her skull which was crushed replaced with her own skull, regrown from adult stem cells which had been reverted to their embryonic state. This is huge, and is just one example of how future food, materials, and even man/machine interfaces might behave, and will force us to choose answers to important questions, like what does it mean to be human, is eating a genetically engineered salmon ethical, and is harvesting organs from engineered pigs who grow human organs ethical, and so on. It also presents big investment opportunities.
One of the threads in this forum asked "Why hasn't the Singularity gone mainstream yet?" This may be the beginning of it, if one of the biggest and most successful investment houses in the world is thinking about it.
That is a good point. At some time it has to become main stream however while this is a big step in that direction I still think its to early for the main stream yet as most people glaze over when I talk about it and even get up set that I think technology is the answer to our problems. As a example of that one of my good friends went off on me last night for that vary reason. I did not get mad because I know where he is coming from as I was there about 5 years ago. The good news is I think we can finally say in less then 10 years it will be main stream and that is a small but important step.
There is a big reason why most mainsteam doesn't get rapid and extraordinary change - they're not scientifically intelligent enough. They may be the smartest emotionally, but when it comes to science, few make the cut.
There's a reason why the standard IQ is about 100. About 50% of the population isn't capable of the rigor, process, ability to deduce, or analyze data. Heck you have a hard time regular joes learning their multiplication tables. It's sad that most people need to break out a calculator to do basic things like calculate 20% tip. I gave a trick to a guy once and he's like "OMG YOU'RE A GENIUS!"
... well, that's debatable, I have my moments, but I do acknowledge I'm smarter than the average bear. I also acknowledge that average people just are amazed at what I do (I'm an engineer).
As an example, I found the below project somewhat dull, but my family at christmas mostly thought it was astounding... and proves that average people just don't get science.
For one of my research projects I was collecting DGPS data using a common consumer device as I was driving to and from work for a couple months. After collecting the data, I then compared my data to the WA state DGPS data they collected a few years back using a van and expensive equipment. I proved that my data was to within 0.2m of their data, which I treated as "truth" as they had post-processed their data to be accurate to within 1cm of truth.
I then said that, OK, that's great, but what if we used it to drive cars? Are cheap devices good enough yet? So I took my data, and compared my driving line to what a simulated car would do if it were controlled by a controller in both speed and accuracy to the middle of the lane. I had to do the transformations into ECEF frame and then to flat-earth frame and showed that like all good DGPS devices it adjusted for other effects, and I found that a standard car (which I modeled linearly like most car companies do when evaluating performance) using a simple linear controller had about 0.2m of error. Combine my data error with the controller performance error to centerline and you get an average of 0.4m error.
Clearly wasn't good enough and my conclusion was that GPS alone isn't good enough yet, and I hope that Nevada and other states put regulations in place in how accurate the GPS has to be.
... after I got done explaining this to them, their eyes were glazed over. The adults were just sort of left like "uhh ..." and the kids got bored and walked away.
To me this was simple: get a bunch of data, compare to truth, and combine with performance of a standard car. Bingo, done. Some math had to be done and I had to build my sim from scratch but not too bad.
To them, it was as if I had just derived the meaning of life.
That is why the singularity will not ever go mainstream. Ever.
That is because you are a engineer. I will be honest I consider myself a educated man, I have a masters from the University of San Diego a top 15 school, but its not in engineering and while I fully understand the singularity I had to read what you posted twice to understand what you were talking about with your study. That does not mean I am unintelligent it just means I am not a engineer. If you told the story without all the numbers and acronyms then it would be easier for people to understand. As far as you comment about the singularity. Never is a long time and at some point it will go mainstream the question is when not if and my educated guess is it will happen around 2019 when it becomes apparent where computers are headed to even the average citizen.
Interesting suppositions about the future, but do you think big corporate industry will fail to recognize this as an opportunity for them to retain and even increase their control of the distribution of wealth and well-being among the citizenry?
Even with the current level of medical infrastructure, corporate medicine has already raised the price of survival to well over a half a million dollars per person. ( $2,300,000,000,000 / 300,000,000 X 80 ). That's about 20% of median earnings. Compared to probably less than 1% a century ago, when most people lived into their 70s with almost no medical intervention. As long as people are willing to pay for longevity, Big Medical will happily bill them.
FMR LLC (Fidelity Management and Research) or Fidelity Investments is an American multinationalfinancial services corporation. It is one of the largest mutual fund and financial services groups in the world.
Interesting suppositions about the future, but do you think big corporate industry will fail to recognize this as an opportunity for them to retain and even increase their control of the distribution of wealth and well-being among the citizenry?
No one knows what life will be like after the singularity and that includes large corporations.
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Originally Posted by jtur88
Even with the current level of medical infrastructure, corporate medicine has already raised the price of survival to well over a half a million dollars per person. ( $2,300,000,000,000 / 300,000,000 X 80 ). That's about 20% of median earnings. Compared to probably less than 1% a century ago, when most people lived into their 70s with almost no medical intervention. As long as people are willing to pay for longevity, Big Medical will happily bill them.
You are thinking in terms of today's economic reality and that is understandable because this is all we have known. However, things will be changing so rapidly that today's economic reality will not be the economic reality once we get close to and pass the singularity.
God, I just love all these conspiracy/fantasy this is what's going to occur somewhere down the road threads...
I remember all the glowing studies and research papers over the last few decades promoting how computers will be doing this or that by 20xx, but funny as it sounds it's still the same old thing... How medical science will do XYZ for us.
From where I stand one of the main things medical science has done for us is turned us into a junkie society..
Here take this pill, no take this other pill, here lemme give you a shot for that. Your son/daughter was run over by a truck and it crushed her spinal column? No problem, we can keep them alive as a vegetable in bed for at least the next 50 years...
With companies scared sh*tless to come out with anything new for fear of being sued for patent infringement and the ability of a company to squash a competitor who has a superior product I don't see any massive changes to society....
Fidelity is nothing more than one of many financial services companies each having their own idea of what will be the next stellar thing to invest in....
God, I just love all these conspiracy/fantasy this is what's going to occur somewhere down the road threads...
There is no conspiracy and this is not fantasy and this is not somewhere down the road ideas but things that are actually happening as we speak. For example there are computers that are powerful enough to simulate the human brain, however, they are very expensive and there are only a handful of them in the world. That being said using More's law they will be 1,000 dollars by 2019 and already software companies are working on developing software so by then it will be noticeable to the general public. Then on top of that they are currently reverse engineering the brain and it will be done by 2019. So ya 2019 is, in my opinion, a very important year.
This is the information on the Blue Brain Project:
I remember all the glowing studies and research papers over the last few decades promoting how computers will be doing this or that by 20xx, but funny as it sounds it's still the same old thing... How medical science will do XYZ for us.
I get it. Its the boy who cried wolf.
More's law was not developed until the 60's and even then it was not fully understood how computers advanced so scientists made the best prediction they could given what they understood about computers and that is why they were usually wrong. That is why if you look at what they thought the future would be like it was just a "advanced" future of whatever decade they lived in. Its kind of comical actually as we now look back even to the 80's and 90's. However computers advance exponintally and now we understand why and the implications of that but even we can't say what life will be like after 2045 as all of the current models break down and that is why it is called the singularity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by plwhit
From where I stand one of the main things medical science has done for us is turned us into a junkie society.. Here take this pill, no take this other pill, here lemme give you a shot for that. Your son/daughter was run over by a truck and it crushed her spinal column? No problem, we can keep them alive as a vegetable in bed for at least the next 50 years...
That is most likely because you don't look around to the current modern advances in medicine from anti viral medication to the breakthroughs in genetic research and the blind and paralyzed and sequencing the genome to the latest breakthroughs in curing such diseases like HIV and cancer. Those are just a few examples what is going on now in modern medicine and is nothing short of amazing. As time goes on it will only get better and I am talking the next 10 to 20 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by plwhit
With companies scared sh*tless to come out with anything new for fear of being sued for patent infringement and the ability of a company to squash a competitor who has a superior product I don't see any massive changes to society....
Society is already changing fast as it is a lot different now then when I was a kid in the late 70's and 80's and this is just the start. From now on each decade will see more and faster change so much so that by 2045 we have no idea what life will be like.
Quote:
Originally Posted by plwhit
Fidelity is nothing more than one of many financial services companies each having their own idea of what will be the next stellar thing to invest in....
This I agree with and while its a good step its not the mainstream....... YET!!!!!!!!!!!
I just want to say that I understand how it looks to someone who has not studied it in the kind of detail that I have. I was exactly like you when I first heard about the singularity. It did not make sense to me and I was like umm ok what in the hell is this guy (Ray Kurzweil) talking about. However since then I have spent hours studying it and watching it become more mainstream as time goes on and it has been the most interesting thing I have ever studied.
For people who are new to this I always recommend this video. It is short (only 8 minutes) yet gives a nice description of why things are advancing so fast and the impact it will have on society. Then if you like you can watch the longer videos or read the books to get more detailed information.
Last edited by Josseppie; 01-09-2013 at 04:01 PM..
Interesting suppositions about the future, but do you think big corporate industry will fail to recognize this as an opportunity for them to retain and even increase their control of the distribution of wealth and well-being among the citizenry?
Even with the current level of medical infrastructure, corporate medicine has already raised the price of survival to well over a half a million dollars per person. ( $2,300,000,000,000 / 300,000,000 X 80 ). That's about 20% of median earnings. Compared to probably less than 1% a century ago, when most people lived into their 70s with almost no medical intervention. As long as people are willing to pay for longevity, Big Medical will happily bill them.
A healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing, for sure, but the cynicism on this board is not. A century ago the life expectancy for women was 55 and for men was 50, not exactly "most people lived into their 70s with almost no medical intervention". Some people lived in to their 70s and since there was little medical intervention they did so without it, but most people died earlier and from causes that, because of medical intervention, they don't die from today. You are certainly free to forego medical treatment and if live healthfully and get lucky you'll live quite a long time.
There is no conspiracy and this is not fantasy and this is not somewhere down the road ideas but things that are actually happening as we speak. For example there are computers that are powerful enough to simulate the human brain, however, they are very expensive and there are only a handful of them in the world. That being said using More's law they will be 1,000 dollars by 2019 and already software companies are working on developing software so by then it will be noticeable to the general public. Then on top of that they are currently reverse engineering the brain and it will be done by 2019. So ya 2019 is, in my opinion, a very important year.
Yes, let us look at the benefits of this computerized society.....
~ No privacy
~ Ones life revolves around their credit score
~ Our children for the most part are worse couch potatoes than their fathers
~ It must be true, I saw it on the Internet attitude
~ We are drowning in more paper, not less
~ We have become more isolated from one another
~ We are losing the ability to think things out to their logical conclusion
And the list goes on....
Quote:
I get it. Its the boy who cried wolf.
More's law was not developed until the 60's and even then it was not fully understood how computers advanced so scientists made the best prediction they could given what they understood about computers and that is why they were usually wrong. That is why if you look at what they thought the future would be like it was just a "advanced" future of whatever decade they lived in. Its kind of comical actually as we now look back even to the 80's and 90's. However computers advance exponintally and now we understand why and the implications of that but even we can't say what life will be like after 2045 as all of the current models break down and that is why it is called the singularity.
There is one thing you overlook my young friend and that is where do these magnificent gleaming towers of computing power get their intelligence from?
Human Beings..... and as we see over and over and over "predictions" made by computers are wrong. Why? because human beings are the ones who programmed them and human beings are flawed creatures.
GIGO
Quote:
That is most likely because you don't look around to the current modern advances in medicine from anti viral medication to the breakthroughs in genetic research and the blind and paralyzed and sequencing the genome to the latest breakthroughs in curing such diseases like HIV and cancer. Those are just a few examples what is going on now in modern medicine and is nothing short of amazing. As time goes on it will only get better and I am talking the next 10 to 20 years.
Since when has cancer been cured? -- Ah yes, conspiracy time.. If I had a dollar for every time I've read XYZ will be cured in a few years I'd have Bill Gates as my butler......
Society is already changing fast as it is a lot different now then when I was a kid in the late 70's and 80's and this is just the start. From now on each decade will see more and faster change so much so that by 2045 we have no idea what life will be like.
I can say the same thing, society has changed from when I was a kid in the late '40's.... But for the last couple of decades the only changes that I see are automobiles that now cost more than a home, young people walking around with some device either plastered to their ear or glued to their hand and outdoor sports becoming non-existant... I see government invading every aspect of our lives, bedbugs taking over cities and the PS3/X-Box replacing mom and dad.....
If it's one thing that history teaches us it's that things never turn out quite the way we hoped they would...
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