Wednesday, January 4, 2012

SINGULARITY: THE MERGING OF MAN AND MACHINE IS NEAR




Four years ago Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow turned to her husband after looking up some movie trivia online and asked, “What did we do before the Internet?” Thus, Sparrow set out to investigate how Google, and all the information it proffers, has changed how people think. Four psychology experiments later Sparrow has her answer, which was published in Science this past August. “[The Web] is an external memory storage space, and we make it responsible for remembering things,” she says.

Brief of the full article here:



Does it mean that internet has in fact relieved our brain from the load of memories? Is it possible for science in the future to find a better use for the free space in our brain; a bigger emotional storage for love, kindness, charity, patriotism, patience, concern for the humanities, environment and of course evil for the demonically inclined?

When I bought a 160 GB external disc memory 2 years ago; I thought I will never be able to fill it. I was wrong and with internet speed getting faster and faster; downloading from the internet gets not only fun but necessary for a lot of reasons depending upon one’s own interests.

I need a new ‘terabyte external memory disc.’ It is not an external memory disc for my laptop; it is in reality an external memory extension of my aging brain because I choose what to store into it meaning I keep only that which I can tap anytime I want like recalling a memory. The beauty of it is: you and I can keep the memory in its entirety…no more no less unlike a jumbled-up human memory where you inevitably substitute words you can’t recall and alter the meaning. In essence; we are all ‘Cyborg.’

A book has just been published by a technology genius Kurzweil who predicted that “SINGULARITY IS NEAR;” which happened to be the title of his book meaning man and machine will merge in the not so distant future. Micro machines smaller or as big as a red blood cell will in the future circulate in our body not one, not two but as many as necessary and directed to any part of the body to cure diseases.

The first time I ever sit on a documentary movie for 5 hours was two days ago and there was not a single time that it paused to buffer. Really amazing but it is the present (nothing out of the ordinary) state of the net and it will keep on getting better. They used to cut You Tube into 10-15 minutes sequences but that is now history. Watching movies in the internet is presently like watching a DVD on your monitor.

Unless our educational system is overhauled to respond to the net’s increasing relevance; many parents may opt to keep their children at home where learning will be more advanced and fun to the very young. Our children will in the future sit in a classroom where a virtual Einstein delivers lecture on the theory of relativity complete with virtual tools that only the real dumb will not understand. Virtual atoms will be whizzing around the classroom and chains of DNA that you found insanely difficult to grasp will be worming around you. Many of our subjects today where the young spend grueling hours learning by force will in the future be laughably perceived as primitive and stupid :-) 

NLK



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