NewtonTalk.net May 2009 archive: Re: [NTLK] OT: The Future: Cybo

From: Ryan Vetter <physicalconstants_at_yahoo.ca>
Date: Mon May 04 2009 - 18:14:50 EDT

Good comments Ed.

The one thing that comes to mind from your post is evolution, and how the older I get, the more I see everything through an evolutionary perspective. Evolution is the theory of everything - well, as good as that is going to get with the knowledge we have today. That everything is striving to be better - that this is the explanation of everything, of all movement and all things.

That the betterment of ourselves is the end of all action. Natural selection... the variables in the environment that push evolutionary changes have themselves changed drastically. Now, more than ever, humans are the most significant driver of natural selection in relation to themselves, because we are changing our environmental landscape on so many levels. Before we were more at the mercy of mother nature... but now we are playing more and more of a significant, controlling role in our own evolution.

The era of manipulating our own genes to better ourselves is just around the corner, and now, we may meld ourselves with machines. These two things combined will drastically change the way we look and think. It is fascinating because while so many other animals and other lifeforms are 'stuck' (i.e. monkeys, turtles, etc.), we have the capacity to effect radical evolutionary changes within ourselves.

----- Original Message ----
From: Ed Kummel <tech_ed@yahoo.com>
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Sent: Monday, May 4, 2009 12:56:54 PM
Subject: Re: [NTLK] OT: The Future: Cyborgs and Invisible Computers?

I for one am looking forward to human/machine interfaces. I've been casually reading the TransHuman site and subscribed to the list for almost as long as I have been subscribed to NewtonTalk. (http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt) I suggest that anyone interested in this give it a read!
Many, many years ago, I played around with alpha-wave control (back in my college days) where we triggered certain lights and moved motorized objects just by thinking about them...of course, we had on a helmet with sensors embedded in it...I look forward to being "chipped" much like my cat...
And the old-timers on this list know my stance on the use of the human brain...the short take is, to use the human brain as a storage device (phone numbers, and such) to be a waste...The human brain is unique in that it's strengths cannot yet be replicated in mechanical brains (ie, pattern recognition)...but the human brain weaknesses can easily be performed by mechanical brains (intense calculations of milllions of numbers)
One of the items holding humans back from further evolution is that when we are born, we have to learn everything...taking math as an example, we have to learn simple addition in order to learn multiplication...Can you imagine if you can just download simple addition so you *START* with multiplication? And each successive generation will start that much further up! Then when you die, you can download your life's knowledge to your family...
One of my favorite sayings...which I made up is, "Information is only data until it is shared...then it becomes knowledge"

wow..that was a jumbled stream of thought...anyway..make of it what you will.

Ed
web/gadget guru
http://newton.tek-ed.com (download Newton packages)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Richard Feynman, Physicist, Nobel winner (1918-1988)

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers."

--- On Mon, 5/4/09, Ryan Vetter <physicalconstants@yahoo.ca> wrote:

From: Ryan Vetter <physicalconstants@yahoo.ca>
Subject: [NTLK] OT: The Future: Cyborgs and Invisible Computers?
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Date: Monday, May 4, 2009, 10:17 AM

Kevin Warwick, a Professor at the University of Reading, England, offers some interesting insight into human evolution, and what may be the next major evolutionary phase that we go through.

Watching it, I also started thinking - sort of collocating - future computers with Warwick's prediction of our future reality.

One thing I have found in computer literature is that a consensus seems to be that computers will miniaturize to the point of being invisible. For instance, smaller and smaller devices like a tiny projector that picks up wireless signals (i.e. streams movies) - no more televisions or Apple TVs.

I then start to feel a bit uncomfortable with all this, but yet intrigued. Is this our future? The harmonious blend of computers with organic tissue, making us smarter and connecting ourselves to one another - a Borg - and invisible computers?

Would you say that the Internet - a sort of global consciousness and pusher for the computer industry - was 'the' precursor to all this, if it ends up happening?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_l7SY_ngI&feature=fvst

All the best,

Ryan

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