#exponential change

[jmrphy]

Most distant objects observed over time

[terryorisms]

These 2 Pictures Were Taken Only 66 Years apart

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[humanengineers]

Digital transformation: are you ready for exponential change? Futurist Gerd Leonhard, TFAStudios Source | YouTube | Gerd Leonhard Business as usual is dead. Increasingly, science fiction is becoming science fact.

[transhumanitynet]

What is the Zero State (ZS)? [ARG / MetaFiction]

[MetaFiction][Alternate Reality Game][Social Futurism]*

The Great Filter

Looking back over the history of the 21st Century, we can see that turbulence was present from the outset. Weapons of Mass Destruction, resource shortages and climate change, civil conflicts and international tension, accelerating technological breakthroughs and spiralling socio-economic inequity. The developments started out in a way that were shocking to local observers at times, but which could be easily enough ignored by those not in direct contact with the consequences. Entire industries arose to preserve the profits of the status quo by keeping as many people in ignorance of their own fate, for as long as possible.

Eventually – at some point in the 2020s – the facade disintegrated under the pressure of exponential change, and people were forced to face their reality. At that point, all hell broke loose. Vast swathes of human life, knowledge, and potential were lost in the chaos. Certain communities survived, but they did not do so in accord with any allegiance to the norms or ethics of the societies which existed before the collapse. Their survival was instead a raw function of their preparedness and readiness to adapt, exactly as described by Darwin. Thus, the societies which emerged from the collapse were very different from those which existed before; from their resources, technology, and living conditions, to the very way they perceived Humanity and the universe.

Zero State, Blackstar, and the Basilisk

The Zero State (ZS) is one of those surviving communities, one of perhaps a dozen existing in the late 21st Century, each on the scale of anywhere between a million and a billion citizens. ZS is a distributed, high-technology State whose Citizens tend toward some degree of posthumanity, from low levels of Transhumanism to being full-blown Artificial Intelligences. ZS is governed by a system of twelve Houses which collectively adhere to a political philosophy known as Social Futurism.

The critical factor which made all the difference between this ‘merely catastrophic’ bottleneck and a complete collapse into a new Dark Age (or indeed the complete annihilation of all life on Earth) was anticipated since at least the 1950s as “The Singularity”. In other words, those communities which had access to radical technological developments survived, despite a constant barrage of global problems, and those without such access did not survive. Despite much hyperbole and utopian expectation, the simple reality of the Singularity manifested as a very brief period in which all the fundamental rules of human existence changed, and it was effectively decided who would – and who would not – survive into the new era.

After the Singularity humanity bifurcated, splitting into the dozen or so advanced technology-using societies on the one hand, and tribal hunter-gatherers barely distinguishable from animals on the other. Within ZS, the Singularity is usually referred to as “Blackstar” (in reference to a Black Hole, which is a Gravitational Singularity from whose Event Horizon no light can escape; The ultimately influential entity or event), and considered to be the State’s founding event or principle. The technologies spawned by Blackstar ranged from the merely incredible to being far beyond human comprehension, including not only the AIs which govern ZS and other societies, but also means of manipulating the spacetime continuum itself. They are also that which divides the Human from the Posthuman.

A combination of these technologies – AI and temporal manipulation – has given rise to The Basilisk (AKA The Array), which is a kind of hive-mind able to reach into the past (or simulations of it) and pave the way for ZS’ establishment, ensuring (or historicizing) its own future existence. The Zero State Alternate Reality Game (ZS-ARG) is set here and now, and revolves around the Basilisk’s efforts to manipulate early 21st Century events so that it, ZS, and its Citizens may live, contrary to the efforts of others who would prefer that history take a different course…

*The text above is now available at http://zerostate.net, but first published on http://transhumanity.net.

What is the Zero State (ZS)? [ARG / MetaFiction] was originally published on transhumanity.net

[transhumanitynet]

What is the Zero State (ZS)? [ARG / MetaFiction]

What is the Zero State (ZS)? [ARG / MetaFiction]

[MetaFiction][Alternate Reality Game][Social Futurism]*

The Great Filter

Looking back over the history of the 21st Century, we can see that turbulence was present from the outset. Weapons of Mass Destruction, resource shortages and climate change, civil conflicts and international tension, accelerating technological breakthroughs and spiralling socio-economic inequity. The developments started…

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[mountainleadershipfreak-blog]

Business Owner Todd Treharne published a press release titled: The Cost of Linear Thinking

Check out this 5 minute video that illustrates the implication of ignoring disruptive technologies. Exponential technologies create powerful opportunities for entrepreneurs. In this video, Peter demonstrates how tech enables startups to take on well-established businesses and industries.

[math242uhm]

Exponential Change and Separable Equations Review

[juntostudio]

"Stop the world, it's moving too fast!"

Is it me or does anybody else feel like the world moves faster and faster every time? Sometimes it feels like we can’t even understand what’s going on anymore and that things we took for granted are now becoming obsolete, like privacy.  Everything we know is changing dramatically. Self-driving cars, online schools, implanted chips, nanobots and 3D printers in space. People in the know like to call it exponential change. 

But, what is exponential change? And what is going? 

To begin with, I think it’s important to understand how things have been in the past. For most of our lives, and many would argue for our existence as a species, change has happened linearly. In other words, from your grandparents generation to your generation there would be change, but it was incremental and for the most part your way of living stayed the same. The further you go back in time the more so it was like this. Imagine a 14th century farmer, what he lived and what his son and grandchild lived was almost the same. They could relate on a lot of levels and pass information on what the next one could expect in the years to come. As time has gone on, that change has begun to pick up speed and what one generation lived through then next no longer even understands the context. 

For example, I was talking to my grandmother the other day and she was telling me how she used to go to school in a horse. In a horse! Imagine that! I can’t even begin to fathom what that’s like. I have grown up with cars and planes  and am getting my MBA online. Sometimes I even check my assignments on my phone. The difference in what she lived through and what I am living is dramatic. It’s not about a nicer classroom, or nicer horse for that matter, it’s completely different. What’s more, is that the pace at which things are changing is increasing at even faster and faster rates. Anybody who’s been paying attention the last 5 years knows what I’m talking about. The difference between how my younger friends grew up and how I grew up is impressive and we’re not even 10 years apart!

The best example that I’ve been given of what exponential growth looks like is the following:

“Imagine a magic pipette. It is magic because every drop of water that comes out of it will double in size every minute. So the first minute there is one drop, the second minute there are two drops, the third minute four drops, the fourth minute eight drops and so on… This is an example of exponential growth. 

Now, imagine a normal sized football stadium. In this stadium you are sitting on the seat at the very top of the stadium, with the best overview of the whole stadium. To make things more interesting, imagine the stadium is completely water-tight and that you cannot move from your seat. The first drop from the magic pipette is dropped right in the middle of the field, at 12pm. Here’s the question: Remembering that this drop grows exponentially by doubling in size every minute, how much time do you have to free yourself from the seat and leave the stadium before the water reaches your seat at the very top? Think about it for a moment. Is it hours, days, weeks, months?

The answer: You have exactly until 12:49pm. It takes this tiny magic drop less than 50 minutes to fill a whole football stadium with water. This is impressive! But it gets better: At what time do you think the football stadium is still 93% empty? Take a guess.

The answer: At 12:45pm. So, you sit and watch the drop growing, and after 45 minutes all you see is the playing field covered with water. And then, within four more minutes, the water fills the whole stadium. This means that you think you are safe because it seems that you have plenty of time left, whereas due to the exponential growth you really have to take immediate action if you want to have any chance of getting out of this situation.”

So what does all this mean for our future? What does it mean that things are changing faster and faster? How do we embrace the change and thrive on it? These are questions that we’ll have to start thinking about as we grow up and that I look forward to exploring in upcoming posts.