The Future is Crazy

Adventures of a Time Machine Traveller

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

Kuhn used the duck-rabbit optical illusion to demonstrate the way in which a paradigm shift could cause one to see the same information in an entirely different way.

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

We are united with our common experiences and we are united further by our common experiences that are not shared by those who lead us. We are the outcasts, the fringes, the frontrunners of a new order; we're entering a fray where none has gone before.

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you?

Erwin Schrödinger

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

This little debate shows the difficulty of trying to use logic and reasoning to defend themselves. At some point, you reach rock bottom, and there is no defense except loudly shouting, "I know I'm right!" You can't go on defending your patterns of reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over.

Gödel, Escher, and Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

No matter; God wants Man, whom he has created and in whose heart he has so profoundly entrenched a love for life, to do all he can to preserve an existence that is sometimes so painful, but always so dear to him.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth.

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

Transhumanism

Deriving Visual Sensory Input from Neuron Activity

Contact Lens that Alters Visual Perception

Aside from the obvious, this one will lead us down a path where we can tune-out of this realm and enter another realm. Instead of having contact lens that alter reality, we could have ones that replace reality. As in, the contact lens could completely block off all sensory-input from this world and send in signals of a virtual reality where you are a water molecule in the ocean. Or whatever it is. If you can dream it, you can conceive it, quite literally. 

Also, one night my woman could be Bar Rafaeli. Another night she could be the German Chancellor. 

Beyond that, I could see through someone's eyes. If you couple the fact we can derive visual sensory input from neuron activity (as the first link describes) and that we can alter visual perception, someone else's brain could be hooked up to my contact lens, and I could see through their eyes.

Erasing and Recalling Memories through Individual Neurons

If we can decode visual input from neuron activity, why can't we decode memories from neuron activity? You could stimulate a memory's neurons and decode the neurons' activity to capture the memory. In other words, you could hack into someone's memory. But don't forget we can also delete the memories. This becomes a very slippery slope to me. 

Having your Physical Movements Controlled by a Computer

Everything is becoming information. Physical products will be represented pretty soon with code because of nanotechnology. Physical movements, based on this technology, will also be able to be represented with code. Just imagine downloading some software online and uploading it to your body so that you can have the motions of an Olympian.

Or even, the computer-controlled-muscles could be connected to a network and your body motions could be controlled by someone else. Your woman could control how you move in bed or the government could prevent you from making a stabbing motion.

Battery Runs on Glucose

If my phone was implanted in my body, it could run on this battery and I would never need to recharge it; I would just have to eat more food.

Or, this becomes a sort of Matrix thing. Some countries are experiencing an obesity epidemic and an energy crisis at the same time. If we put these glucose batteries in obese people, they could lose weight while providing energy to the grid. 

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

From uploading memories to upgrading your body, Juan Enriquez brings light to the underground network of scientists who are working on making science-fiction become a reality. Enriquez helps us to wake up and realize the crazy stuff that is happening all around us. Before you know it, everything will be different.

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

Networked Society, On the Brink

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

Andreessen: Think about what it has meant to build a primary technology company up until now. In order to harness a large enough market, to attract the right kind of technical talent, to pay them adequately, to grow the company to critical mass—until now that’s only been possible with companies that are providing tools for all sectors, not just specific sectors. Technology has been just a slice of the economy. We’ve been making the building blocks to get us to today, when technology is poised to remake the whole economy.

Anderson: What categories are next?

Andreessen: The next stops, I believe, are education, financial services, health care, and then ultimately government—the huge swaths of the economy that historically have not been addressable by technology, that haven’t been amenable to the entrance of Silicon Valley-style software companies. But increasingly I think they’re going to be.

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

from The Seven Mysteries of Life by Guy Murchie

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

There are no words. 

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

Kevin Slavin: How Algorithms Shape our World 

It took me 3 times before I could fully comprehend what Kevin had to say. The future looks horrendously terrifying in a fascinating way when you consider how much we incorporate uncontrollable algorithms into our lives like Kevin suggests. Besides that, this is an exceptional presentation.

Transcript:

This is a photograph by the artist Michael Najjar and it’s real. In the sense that he went there to Argentina to take the photo. But it’s also a fiction. There’s a lot of work that into it after that. And what he’s done is that he actually reshaped, digitally, all the contours in the mountains to follow the vicissitudes of the Dow Jones Index. So what you see, that precipice, that high precipice with the valley, is the 2008 financial crisis.

Link to the rest of the transcript.

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

Century of the Self: a Four Part Documentary about Consumerism, Democracy, and Propaganda 

From Hopeless Bleak Despair:

The documentary breaks down just how and why a small handful of men took the ideas first put forth by Sigmund Freud to create the idea of 'public relations'. They then began a steady manipulation using this type of propaganda to spark and perpetuate needless consumerism and to influence the political landscape of western culture. This manipulation has led to a fundamental change in the psyche of the individual, and thus, the way our society exists, operates, and ultimately where it is going and why.

A summary from Wikipedia:

[...] The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy, commodification and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitudes to fashion and superficiality.

Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, a key player in the development of 'public relations', sums it up:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

This is a must-see documentary. It will completely alter your outlook on business, consumerism, and democracy. 

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

[...]By 2100, we shall have the power of the gods of mythology that we once worshipped and feared. In particular, the computer revolution should give us the ability to manipulate matter with our minds, the biotech revolution should give us the ability to create life almost on demand and extend our life span, and the nanotech revolution may give us the ability to change the form of objects and even create them out of nothing. And all this may eventually lead to the creation of a planetary Type I civilization. So the generation now alive is the most important ever to walk the surface of the earth, for we will determine if we will reach a Type I civilization or fall into the abyss.

From The Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku. We've only gotten a taste of things to come with technology. 

[thefutureiscrazy-blog]

The preeminent transnational community in our culture is science. With the release of nuclear energy in the first half of the twentieth century that model commonwealth decisively challenged the power of the nation-state. The confrontation is ongoing and inextricably embedded in mortal risk, but it offers at least a distant prospect of felicity.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes