From Future

(This was originally posted onto my user page directly, I took the liberty of moving it to the discussion page.)

Thank you for the kind message!

You are quite right: We write mainly about technology developments.

Developments in social consciousness are near impossible to predict, so we simply don't put much energy there. But developments in technology are (to quote I-forget-who:) "embarassingly predictable." I'd like to point you to Predicting Mid-Range Global Futures - actually download the power point; It's much nicer, I think. Mid-range technological futures are still hard, but they are something we can study and think about.

We think that Marriage obsolescence will happen, but we know that porn + 3D + AI is going to happen. There's just no doubts, and there's already some of it.

The thing isn't so much that we're obsessed with technology, as that: If you are interested in the future, your only safe bet is technology.

I came to this arena through activism. I witnessed the WTO battle in Seattle, and realized that there were things going on that I didn't realize. When I hit the books to study the situation and how things are going, I read the various advice to would-be activists. The refrain was the same, over and over: "If you want to be an effective activist, you must be thinking long term." I started thinking, "Okay, what are our goals for 2030, then?" But I realized, after talking with various people, that my vision of 2030 was absurd. The majority voice told me: "Good, good, fight the good fight, and we can make it- your plan is reasonable, and with lots of hard work and effort, you can do great things." But I had the good fortune to have an ear for technical communities, as well. I am not talking about just programmers here: Most programmers have no idea what's in the future. I am talking about people who have infused their life with technology efforts. I started hearing stories about robots, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, from people who I trust, and from people who are clearly paying attention to technology. People who know history, people who are carrying many things, people who are putting together standards, people who can explain the lay of the land to me. These people have a very different concept of where we are going, and I realize: My notions of 2030, and the notions of my fellow people, are entirely off base. "How far off base?" I switch from studying communes to studying technology. I am thoroughly convinced that any modern study of the future must include a thorough study of technology, and I am also convinced that a study of the future is the job of all activists. (That is, a study of technology is the job of all activists.)

The military, of course, has known this for ages, and the Intelligence Community is all over it.

Most people are incredulous, though, when you describe the mid-term future. They have to work through shock levels, think things through, and receive information from multiple sources that they trust. (Just as I had to.) It's just easier to me because I'm closer to the fire.

If you're going to predict the future, this is a mistake, because, for one thing, it is a mistake to assume that humans will continue their relentless pursuit of technology.

It's possible that 20-something centuries (at least; possibly the entire history of life on Earth) of technology development may suddenly reverse. But I don't think that is something we can hope for: If that's what happens, it basically means that we've suffered a massive catastrophy.

Or moreover, technological advancement may become so powerful in the near future that it is used to enslave most of the world, and in the process most of us could cease to have access (as a matter of protection for the ruling class).

I think Ted Kadzinsky scenarios are plausible. I don't waste my time thinking about the negative ends, though; I simply focus on directing our paths towards the positive ends. I hold few illusions about utopia; I'm more interested in survival. But it's neat, when you're a five year old kid, to dream about the day when you're 20, and can buy all the candy you want. It's also a motivation towards growth. (If this helps explain.)

And, being 29, I can say: It is pretty damn cool being able to buy all the candy I want. (Too bad I can't eat it all!)

This said: I don't rule out the possibility of utopia, or heaven on Earth. Societies have enjoyed it for themselves in the past, and there are always places on Earth where people are living amazing, beautiful lives. I see no reason why we can't get there.

Let me recommend reading Manna, by Marshall Brain. It's a fascinating look at employment in the near, mid, and long term futures. Very briefly: Put together cheap sensors, cheap intelligence, but difficult robotics. What do you get? You just pay humans to be the robots. Can't engineer a robotic arm strong enough to carry 20 pounds, and dexterous enough to perform all sorts of fine adjustments? Just automatically direct a human to perform the task by voice software, and confirm that actions are completed with sensor technology. It's not hard. In fact, there are already three companies in the world doing just this. Read Manna, it's great.

Technology does not necessarily follow a logical path, because people don't.

Hm. Perhaps it follows a biological path, rather than a logical path. But it is somewhat predictable, like falling water, even though the particular drop paths may be chaotic.

People do not follow a logical path, at least looking at the scale of weeks and months. But that doesn't carry over to technology..! Moores law continues.

In some ways, we have already become slaves to technology, and therefore to our current upper classes (who are themselves mentally enslaved by technology, power, and money).

I'm not sure I follow; I would need to understand the meaning of "enslavement."

Technology is tools. The tools serve as extensions of our hunger. It would be more reasonable, I think, to say that our hunger has enslaved us, or that our power relations have enslaved us, rather than blame the messenger: technology.

Just consider: If our advancements in technology over, say, the last 50 years, have really been as great as we say they have (and I think they have), then why is most of the populace still working 40 hour weeks?

Human reasons, that we don't venture to explore here. We could well be working 70 hour weeks right now, had union organizers not struggled at the end of the 19th century. If the unions had been defeated at the end of the 19th century, then we would not be slaves to machines; Instead, we would be slaves to owners. Since they fought a fight though, and established a tradition, we are not. The machines are irrelevant. The answers to these kinds of questions go deep into personal and social struggles and histories, which me make no efforts to predict.

Human life is basically metaphysics. The operation of complex minds is basically metaphysics. It's all spirits and fairies and magic. Mathematicians would be more comfortable with the word "Chaos."

I don't say, I don't think anywhere we say here, that technology automatically means a future of freedom. But I know this for sure: The future struggle for freedom will be fought with future technology.

As an advocate for Democracy, I work to establish in the public mind an understanding of our future scenario.

Where is the extra time that we work going? It going to the advancement of technology.

That's not the whole picture; It also goes to supporting more people, paying off fat cats, and buying Playstations and bandwidth and your own computer, unless someone just gave you yours.

But again: We study technology here, not economics. Economics is also metaphysics, in my book. The predictive ability of economists is notoriosly horrible. But here's a prediction I have for you: In 2015, Intel chips will sport x10's to x100's of cores apiece.

We buy lots of technology, which fuels the tech industry. Then we work to pay off the credit card bills.

Pay off your credit card bills first. Make that a major priority. I'm dead serious.

I'm not trying to say that technology is all bad, otherwise, why am I here writing in this wiki? I'm only saying that this wiki, in looking into the future, emphasizes something about the authors - that they are so obsessed with technology, they forgot about all the other things that can happen in the world.

I hope it's clear: We haven't forgotten. We have simply acknowledge that we cannot sensibly predict them. It is not possible. Especially looking to mid-range futures.

Who could have predicted, in 197x, the state of politics in 2000? Nobody. Who could have predicted, in 197x, the use of fiber optics in 2000? NISTEP.

Just think, some day you may be playing a game in some hyper-realistic format, and realize that when you turn it off, the same game was right there all along. Of course, our curiosity compels us to invent many games that could never happen in reality, but we may eventually find that what reality has provided for us is really what we enjoy the most in life, because, after all, it's what we evolved to enjoy in the first place.

I think this is highly unlikely; Games are tuned to provide continously challenging experiences that work in interesting ways. The material world was not tuned like that. Leveling up in the material world is far more boring than leveling up in a created world.

Let's suppose it were the other way around. Then we have no explanation for the dramatic rise in virtual realities. Virtual reality is a poor name. We're not talking about leaving reality. For some reason, people accept this for telephone calls, but not for virtual worlds, no matter how many people get paid for their activity online.

(Side link: Anda's Game.)

But if, before that, we snap back towards nature like a rubber band, there's no telling whether we will actually get as far as fundamentally changing our own brains.

Well, it'd be a first.

Or maybe a few people will, and they'll create a race of super-cyborg-serial-killers who hunt down the "lower humans" for sport.

It's possible, and I work against this sort of future. I recommend self-augmenting ASAP!

Happy predicting!

Thanks. {:)}=

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Thanks for the reply, I was hoping someone would have some reaction to what I had to say. Unfortunately, I think on some points you have misunderstood, and on other points have provided insights which you have either not supported by argument or outside reference, or worse, have provided outside reference that contradicts your own arguments.

Your strongest point seems to be that, indeed, technology is the only thing that we can accurately predict. While I have to agree that technology - at least in details and timeline - can be predicted more accurately than many other developments, you must have noticed that this link you gave me shows a page that makes very few predictions about technology, and many predictions of a social, economic, and political nature. Granted, these are very general predictions, but these predictions are also very important.

Some of these predictions rely on underlying changes in technology, but you can't ignore that the process also goes in the other direction, technology depends on demand, and demand is determined by society. The technologies that are easiest to predict are the ones for which a demand already exists, e.g. robotic replacements for humans, and for which the hurdles of developing those technologies are easy to estimate. But some technologies require, at the very least, a gradual massaging of public acceptance before you can even think of trying to sell them.

I believe that technology can change everything, and that is one of the reasons that I believe technology may soon implode. When you say this:

They have to work through shock levels, think things through, and receive information from multiple sources that they trust. (Just as I had to.) It's just easier to me because I'm closer to the fire.

It makes me think of the fact that I am a computer programmer, I am the fire. I have many ideas about what will happen with machines that can think, and I have realized that at some point the intelligence of a single super-computer will most likely reach a tipping point. If its maker is smart enough to exclude the possibility of it developing its own goals, this computer will lend so much intelligence to its user(s), that they will have the power to do whatever they want with the world. At this point the world will depend on the whims of this user, at which point the user will, no doubt, do whatever it is they intended to do when they had the computer made. The catch is this: They may have made the computer only because they predicted it would be made, and feared the result enough to make it themselves simply so that they could ask the computer how to exclude such powers from humanity for the forseeable future, basically, to save humanity from its own curiosity.

In my opinion, if we really are able make breakthroughs within the next 10 to 20 years to make computers that can duplicate human thinking, this scenario I have mapped out will happen very soon after, and technology may effectively reverse itself. I think that the technology of artificial intelligence destabilizes predictions of the future, as though we are in a space ship directed towards a black hole. We will either realize and begin to fear the unpredictability of what may happen to us from passing through the black hole, and steer away, or we will be sucked in and be subject to the results, whether they be good or bad.

But I think this may take a bit longer than technofiles believe. The past is rife with failed predictions about the present, predictions that failed because they did not take into account economics, politics, social attitudes, and the random dumb luck that inventors seem subject to.

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I read Nano, which makes the argument you just made: Owner of first super-computer limits ability of everybody else.

I don't agree with it, though, or any other "hard take-off" scenario: everyone's speeding up at the same time.

By the time ominous tech appears, lots of other people will be at ominous-1, and even more at ominous-2, and even more at ominous-3, etc., etc., etc.,.

The argument for "ominous" has been that technology concentrates power and wealth. (And absolute technology concentrates power and wealth absolutely.) I'm not so sure I agree, though.

"What if people fear high technology." What if some nations don't reject the technology? Keeping hoards of people from technology doesn't seem very likely to me.

I think it's likely that there will be anti-technology and pro-technology societies in the future, but it remains to be seen how it will go, or if it will even be that big of a schism.

I think that the predictions in the past have been bad because people just weren't trying very hard. Where people were trying hard, they did good. Again, the NISTEP report I cited.

I already know (and in some ways agree with) the other arguments you made. It's a shame that we can't speak in real-time, otherwise it's reasonable that we could come to clear understanding. Clear understanding is anathema in communication done by sending messages in bottles. Sometimes, in giving one explanation, we give short thrift to another explanation. And so on. Subtleties that can be worked out by facial expression and brief interruption and question can't be done online. Sorry.

Re: Scenario work by the CIA, of course, of course. Scenarios are important to think about even if we can't predict them. A further reason we work on tech here, is because it's what we know. I have limited understanding of the Intelligence Community, world politics, even US politics. (Glenn across the room from me here knows great detail about politics.) It would be absurd for me to begin talking about the future in that realm, so I rely on the IC for that kind of intelligence.

The Semantic Web I understand much better, and I keep much better track of the engineering world. I participate in local technical societies. So, it makes sense for me to write about such things. And people generally want to hear what I want to say.

Public Acceptance: Yes, I know. Automated Highway systems were demonstrated in the 1930's. Again more recently late 1990's. The current track taken by the AHS industry advocates is now smart cars, and they are selling people on Internet-like stuff in the car. This is a massaging of the public opinion, and I believe it will work. I put my personal AHS estimates in the 2015-2025 range. City travel for 2020-2035.

As for AI's, it seems to me that the demand is incredibly high, and we're going to do it, whether people complain or not. The governments and industries want it, even if people don't, and it would take an enormous rejection of technology to do it. I look at the younger generation, and I just don't see it. I don't see the rejection.