Sunday: Technological Dreams

By: Armchair Startupist

Dreams in the air and blooming towers (Source)

The important question: Why did Europe win? During the Renaissance, technology preceded science - and it caused its development (not the other way around - as people think, that science caused technology. Today we understand that instrumentation preceded discoveries). Europe won because of superior technical instruments (an achievement of the late Middle Ages!), not because of its spirit. Meaning technology won, not Europe. Printing, steam, telescope, navigation - technical achievements that preceded the science behind them. But what's the difference between Europe and China, for example? That the technologies did lead to the development of science and culture, until the spirit created by technology grew and expanded, and from the internal spiritual logic of technology came expansion, discoveries, and domination (after all, what is technology if not control over the world?) and expanding imperialism - this is the logic that drove Europe. In other words, not just technology - but the dream was the difference (the connection between dream and technology). Therefore, it's very important that the new technologies of our time cause new cultural-scientific development, that we won't be just technical like the Chinese, that we won't be just users or technicians, but designers. How? Through technological dreams.

What is the long-term acceleration function of the world? Is the world's progress exponential, meaning is there acceleration in acceleration that is relative to progress itself, and therefore our true computational ability is exponential (growing with time itself), or is our complexity polynomial? If we consider constant learning forces in the long term (and does anyone know of others? Where were they for billions of years? And in general, where in nature are there forces that grow by themselves?), it's likely that the function is quadratic, because acceleration is constant and only speed increases, so throughout history acceleration always looks the same, the point of view is time-invariant: at every stage in history you move faster than ever before, and there are countless evidences for this, but if we look between today and a year ago, and from today to another year - we'll find an almost straight line. So where was the exponential growth? You can't feel the speed, only the acceleration - this is the theory of relativity. And what is the force that leads to acceleration and pushes forward? The technological dream, which is always one step ahead, and doesn't sit at the end of history, like the messianic dream.

We must have a business model for culture - otherwise it will die. Currently there isn't one. Therefore, payment is needed through computing power, and this is the next humanism. An economic model for literature - the time you read on the computer is the time your computer's processor gives to the writer. And the same goes for the time you listen to music or watch a movie, or any reproduced creation. And this computing power is equivalent to virtual currency, or to computation with real need that is sold as a supercomputer. Meaning we need software that is a black box that transfers your computing power to a reliable and responsible external corporation without the ability to break out of it, and this is what will save culture. This essentially enables universal mini-payments without forcing you to open your wallet, and the real payment is in electricity. A small part of your electricity bill will be payment for the book you read, while using a resource you bought (the computer). This will also transfer world computing to much higher utilization, because this payment model can also be for software. The moment Apple opened an app store, and connected money to developers, a software boom was created. Such payments could create a content boom. And this will turn the equation time equals money - into money equals time (computation). The essence of money will be understood as computation time, and then they will understand why the cost of a product rises at every stage in the supply chain, because computation is performed (management is also computation).

We need a unification of networks between the social network and the website network (currently separated), including ranking for people (like there is for websites), which will allow the return of hierarchies - against popular culture (quantity of people versus their quality). Especially important is the ranking for people on the social network, and thus the social network will be like neurons. And then there will be people who are hubs, and transmit ideas to a larger public, like editors - and the first one who sent me the idea (for example shared a post I liked) will rise in ranking, according to Hebb's rule. The ranking for culture will recreate the cultural and social hierarchy, and this will be the end of low culture pretending to be high. From there hub - to Heb.

The more intimate the interface, the more efficient and internal it is to the person, and this was the revolution of touch screens, or before that visual operating systems (Windows), or the ability to search in free language (Google), or in general the personal computer revolution (instead of punched cards). Meaning all the big companies and revolutions were interface revolutions. And the last, most intimate interface before actually entering the brain - is the eyes. The first to establish an interface based on what we look at on the screen and how we look (using a camera that sees our eyes at the front of the screen, for example) - will make a revolution like Microsoft and Apple. There's a lot of information in the pupil about what really interests us, and our desires, and it's faster and more efficient even than a finger, and control of the system can be based on this. The eyes are the mirror of the soul. And since the right place for such an interface is in Google glasses, and then you can also see what a person looks at in the world and not just on the screen, it's necessary to combine this with augmented reality. But the important thing philosophically about the new interface will be the merger between our perception, our will, and our control. Because the eyes also see, also show what attracts, and then also execute, which in the past were three separate functions. What you see is what you get - on the way to "what you think is what you get". Meaning there is a collapse of the psychophysical problem not from the outside inwards (that the person will perceive within himself the real world outside), but from the inside outwards (that the external world will be controlled by the person's internal world).

The great promise in augmented reality is an augmented reality office where you can work from home, and cross the threshold of human contact and human relation that our social brain demands - from afar (the technology is close to there), so that a real office is no more efficient than a home one. And then most of the population will work from home, while eliminating traffic jams, pollution, infrastructure collapse, and the advantages of urbanity. There can be a counter-trend to urbanization. This is Earth's chance against global warming. Without business meetings, and with much less travel that isn't for goods. Humans will become homebodies, like pets, and especially cats. Cats will thrive.

Printing houses and infrastructure and roads by robot and printer-truck will allow for their significant cheapening, and the most expensive thing in the economy will become much cheaper. After the revolution of printing products, manufacturing will become like agriculture, in terms of its importance, and it will do to the industrial revolution what the industrial revolution did to the agricultural revolution. The result will be a significant cheapening of the entire material world - and the victory of the spirit.

After a truth machine in the brain no one will be able to lie to the authorities. Tests in all positions will allow government without corruption, and a criminal revolution will be created that will make a significant part of the judicial and police system redundant. It will be enough to ask the suspect if he committed the crime, because you can see in functional imaging of the brain if he is lying. In addition, we need to hold above every city a drone (of the Argus type) or a high pole that will film it from above all the time (or in Doppler radar that identifies movements) and keep the film, and allow decoding of crimes backwards. We'll be able to know where the car that arrived at the crime scene came from, and follow its route months back. Also mini drones the size of a fly will change the world of surveillance, including intelligence. But for this we don't have to succeed in building a drone the size of an insect, or rodent, or bird. We can use the insect, rodent and bird themselves, and control them through electrodes to the pleasure area in the brain and their training, and only miniaturize the camera on their backs, or even implant it inside them. And then the camouflage will be perfect. The death of the old crime, the physical crime, when people will leave home less and the entire physical environment will be monitored, will force crime to move to the spirit. To cyber for example. And spiritual violence, like identity theft and money and shaming, is much less violent than physical violence.

The final stage will be Brainet instead of Internet, initially by imitating the connections within the brain to connections between different brains (for example copying the mechanisms of connections between neurons to connections between people on the social network), and later actually more and more internal connections into brains. This is the big general direction. Not artificial intelligence, which tends to be exaggerated in dealing with it and the speed of its arrival. By the time it arrives it will no longer be a revolution because our own intelligence will already be artificial and integrated with the computer inseparably, and with other brains inseparably. This will already be one big complex, but our threat of being swallowed in such a sphere as individuals is too great, and therefore we prefer to imagine artificial intelligence as the futuristic ideal, which as threatening as it is, it is at least an individual like us, and therefore maybe hostile, which we know how to deal with, unlike a partner, which we are swallowed into. We prefer war over love, and an enemy figure over a loving figure. And maybe this is also the difference between men and women, that men are afraid of being swallowed.

What was man? The transition from vertical evolution to horizontal evolution. And actually the return to it (because life began with gene transfer between cells without birth. Internet of organisms. And only in the second stage did we move to evolution of gene inheritance). No more lineage from top to bottom - from father to son, but parallel lines between humans, through learning. All of history is the gradual overcoming of horizontal connections at the expense of vertical ones, and therefore the internet cancels birth in our time. And therefore history does have a purpose: turning us into one big brain. To a species of spiritual ants. This is not science fiction but spirit fiction. And then there will be no more wars but deliberations. And there will be no history but learning.