banner art by Grand Failure
30 years ago they we're SURE we'de have flying cars by now.
Postulations not based in fact are just assumptions, and not something that should ever be taken as more than a thought-provoking interlude. They should never be confused with science, or for that matter, reality.
-Kevlar
Edit:
So says Back to the Future II.
(Edited by Nemisis at 10:25 pm on Nov. 23, 2004)
November 11, 2017 3:26:12 PM. First flying car will be off the lot. I swear.
See my earlier comments about postulations without basis in fact.
I was trying to get the right bitmask applied, but I seemed to have ANDed when I should have ORed, or ORed when I should have ANDed.
Or perhaps I should have just NOT.
Hmm... Perhaps it was little-endian...
Either way the sarcasam/humor bit got flipped the wrong way, and the Prick/Asshole bit got set instead. Unfortunately the Apathy bit seems to have also been set, so there's little I'm inclined to do about it, as much as I would like to stop.
Which reminds me of a funny quote:
What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?
I don't know, and I don't care.
-Kevlar
. o O (I sure did pick a bad day to stop sniffing glue.)
I think, if you read Kurzweil's full article, there is a lot of interesting stuff here. Wishful thinking perhaps, but an interesting point of view regarding the old "flatline", which is exactly what he is describing - and something directly out of Neuromancer.
And the "postulations not based on facts" are actually based more or less on "Moore's Law", which, while not fact, has acurately described computing technology from about 1970 to today. It can certainly be argued that we will hit the silicon speed limit, and Moor's Law will be slowed down, but that is not to say that Kurzweil's article is pure fantasy, either.
Anyway, I say it deserves another look. Perhaps with suspension_of_disbelief bit set to 1...
Within 30 years, however, we will be able to send billions of nanobots--blood cell-size scanning machines--through every capillary of the brain to create a complete noninvasive scan of every neural feature. A shot full of nanobots will someday allow the most subtle details of our knowledge, skills and personalities to be copied into a file and stored in a computer.
There have to be unforeseen consequences of this. Mental spam, perhaps?
