Monthly Archives: January 2009

the other day at work my 50 year-old boss explained to me what computers were like when he first started working with them in newsrooms in the 1970′s: apparently, ‘if you saw the lights flicker you ran across the damn room to pull out your card, because any power fluctuation would wipe away all the work you’d done.’ I then asked him where he thought computers were headed.. to which he replied that he couldn’t even really imagine where else you could take them. I mean, we both have iPhones, so I kind of understand what he’s getting at. the rise of the computer and the crazy places it will take us (even in my lifetime) is an intense thing to think about. a look back shows us how far we’ve come in such a relatively short amount of time.

growing up online?! it seems like a pretty redundant statement, not even a decade later. so where to next.. apparently in next twenty years, ‘There will be 32 times more technical progress during the next half century than there was in the entire 20th century, and one of the outcomes is that artificial intelligence could be on a par with human intellect by the 2020s.’ (source). oh, and ‘If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it’s not a major career problem. If you’re rich enough then by 2050 it’s feasible. If you’re poor you’ll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it’s routine. We are very serious about it. That’s how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT.’ (source).

it seems to me like these kind of projections have pretty serious philosophical implications. I don’t know what’s gonna go down in the future, but I damn sure hope we think it through first.. emerging ethicist market anyone?