Truly New

[arashiz]

I watched the documentary Moog a few nights ago, and there were a few things in there that really interested me. In it, Robert Moog discusses people's reactions when he first presented his synthesizers to the music community at large, and one phrase really stuck. "Don't you feel guilty about what you're doing

Comments

[arashiz]

They exist! Our eyes can only see within a certain spectrum; all you gotta do is wait for eye-hacking.

[arashiz]

you're correct about movies -- I purposely added a few decades for 'settling in time' (I knew about the 1895 'cause I checked wikipedia, haha), but forgot about Birth of a Nation, so you are most definitely correct there, but the theremin was invented in 1919, but it was patented in 1928. I misread the article.

[instigator_ash]

Less impressive than the fact that completely new experiences are being developed (at least to me) is the idea that the rate of these new experiences being developed is increasing over time. Consider how long it takes for a technology to get done changing society and for us to evaluate all of its consequences, both positive and negative. With the rate technology disseminates today, the chances of something with a really insidious side consequence reaching global scale quickly is quite high. And with the rate new technologies happen, that could happen several times in a row, compounding itself. We are, as a society, experimenting on ourselves constantly, and that frightens me. I feel like a more controlled, slow-paced, considered approach to new technology would be safer and saner.

[arashiz]

But I want my artificial intelligence noooooooooooooooooow!

[instigator_ash]

All I'm sayin' is we should pay the Law of Unintended Consequences some proper respect.

[stepping_stones]

No way! If there's ever an expedition to colonize the Moon, or Mars, I am totally signing up, just to be on the history books! Bring on the change! I fear no singularity!

[cernunnos]

Ecclesiastes 1:9b "there is nothing new under the sun."
Written circa 250 BCE.

Yeah, I'd say it's safe to say there's room for new things, but as instigator_ash put it, things are coming faster and faster.

However, I welcome the ever-increasing, dizzying speed of science, and that has very little to do with my love of the technological singularity why do you ask?

[arashiz]

mmmmm, singularity. my favoritest arbitrarily defined event ever.

[cernunnos]

And definitely the most fun.

[stepping_stones]

Speaking of singularities, were we ever able to change our biology, we could give ourselves the ability to hear like bats, or see infra-red/ultra-violet/X rays. Umm... I thought I had more to say, but most of it actually clusters around augmented senses.

Ooh! Don't forget the device! (From Epilogue? NaNoWriMo2K5? Remember? You helped me with math?) One of the things that I didn't get to was that Victor left himself a back door so that he knew what all users were up to - imagine seeing someone else's sense data! When he opens the connection both ways so that all device users are slowly consumed by a collective intelligence, it leads to a renaming of them as a species: homo homogenus. (Pronounced "homogenous," but meaning "one single kind.") I think that would be a new kind of experience.

Also, if you've never read Dresden Codak, you should give it a shot. His Hob story arc is a nice 27-page comic, more or less, with a creamy center of meaning.