Comments on: End of Year Question: Life After the Singularity

By: Ryan O

Ryan O — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 07:37:57 +0000

I wonder what the effect on time, memory and the present would be. If you see a constant computeresque overlay wouldn’t you always be a couple of seconds behind reality? Would this gap gradually grow - the more you look at the furthur you distance yourself from the present? Could you trap yourself in your own projected memories? In other people’s? End up going backward through time like a blog until you reached a pre-singularity. Then, game over, play again?

By: Fred Condo

Fred Condo — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 20:15:49 +0000

The prime factors of 2006 are 2, 17, and 59 — not as stated in the second sentence of the posting. It’s kind of a rush correcting the arithmetic of a famous mathematician! Cheers!

By: Steve H

Steve H — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 19:13:15 +0000

Rudy, If I wanted to become President would I campaign to the humans or the beezies? Would there be considerably less orphids on toilet seats? Would they get mad if we brushed off our chairs before sitting down, or painted a surface they were stuck to? Would they stick to wet paint, or maple syrup? Could you get a picture of your colon anytime from the orphids you just ate? How many people would be reading over my shoulder right now as I type, and could they insert their own comments? Would this help us invent flying cars faster? Would beezies help old ladies across the street and fight crime like superman? Could I have beezies rob a bank for me, or is it all going to be credit cards and Beast-numbers on our foreheads? Of course, they’d be in our ears so we wouldn’t need iPods, but how would Metallica keep everyone from downloading their album as they recorded it? Oh, and the Golden Man defense has attack points; remember Kuttner’s MUTANT? ‘Kill ‘em with machines. Get uphill and drop rocks on ‘em. Put ‘em in positions where knowing doesn’t help.’
Questions, questions, questions; flooding into the mind of the concerned young person today, as Frank Zappa used to say.

By: Thomas Terashima

Thomas Terashima — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 04:58:18 +0000

My first question is: how has the human condition changed?
My second question is: what exactly do the beezies want?
Some details (or, my highly-opinionated ranting):
Perhaps the beezies will allow for a measure of privacy by allowing a “time window” analogous to a tape-delay for a televised sporting event. The worse the neighborhood, the longer the time delay. The more “important” the event, the more look-ahead computation the beezies will allocate: it isn’t necessarily the flashmob, but the orphid swarm.
Maybe there’ll be a fad for Charles Stross-like workers’ utopia communes, or cult compounds, or megacorporation archologies. Orphids aren’t magic fairy dust (maybe magic fairy lube). Fiat currency will be replaced by virtual coupons for orphid swarm resources. Certified geese will lay golden eggs (gold for illustrative purposes only). Fine print will become the new entertainment.
Paranoia will race pronoia, the latest stage in H.G. Wells’ relay race between education and disaster. No one will know which is which.
tom
-=W=-

By: gamma

gamma — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:15:13 +0000

hey thanx fer all the phun - 21st start of winter accordingly to some calenderz - FZ would have been 65 eaRTH YEARZ old - i can’t do anything much except to let it ZEn out -
love from The Martian Embassy - they finally had an obit in the Grudian by Chris Priest - that reminded me of yu & sci-fi BOB time
thanx & peace
G

By: Steve H

Steve H — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:59:48 +0000

Naturally my first question is ‘how easy/hard would it be to hack orphids?’ Can I have my own orphidnet that your orphids can’t talk to? Can I fix it so your orphids see me on a golden throne instead of my mundane toilet? Can one beezie hack another, or a whole bunch hack into one beezie? What if I like Orphid 2.0 and don’t want to go up to Orphid 2.5? What if Orphid 2.5 gives us all mental popup ads? How many orphids could dance on the head of a zippy? Where would you put your backup files? Would lack of privacy turn us all into blushing wallflowers or egomaniacs, or not? What’s the boiling point of Cesium? What kind of cursing-out could you give someone if you could accompany it with a Powerpoint show in 3D?
I think you’re really asking “Would our culture, and our basic humanity, survive this kind of paradigm shift?” Stross’s Vile Offspring come to mind; physically human but loaded with software that makes them less than human. How big would you like your IQ to be? Oops, too big. POP! Game over.
Remember BEYOND THIS HORIZON by Heinlein? They constantly upgraded humanity but kept ‘control naturals’ around to be sure they weren’t becoming monsters without noticing. Personally, if I wanted to be submerged in a groupmind, I’d get a job at Whalemart or Macrosoft.

By: BrianB

BrianB — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:08:39 +0000

I’m assuming the orphids and beezies are neutral agents. Like everything else, they would get used for good and evil by humans. Even so, there would be an intense struggle among some people to somehow rid themselves of the orphid lice or fool them. Everyone could see everything, but they could still be masking their intentions. There would be a lot of banality to sift through on the orphidnet, and why look at someone else’s life when it is less interesting than your own? Just another poor shmuck staring off into space masturbating, but he’s really communicating non-verbally with a resistance network.

By: Marshall

Marshall — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:43:24 +0000

Thinking of post singularity makes me tired.
Maybe we will not be able to stand it. So I would like to start an oasis where electricity didn’t work and you just breathed air. Sitting Offline taking a break. Not communicating; not imaging, not getting cleverer, but recovering.
In the vein of Red Mars I would like to reinvent the Postage Stamp and a type of illeteracy where buzz-words don’t connect.
I think I envision the singularity as global stupidity and to recover our intelligence we are going to have to surround ourselves with horses. Time will have to be slowed down by something mechanical that ticks loudly but softly in the corner. Photography will have to become difficult again and solely in black & white. Our clothes will not be statements of fashion.
So scattered around the country there are going to be museums where people will live - slowly- whilst the machines and the careerists yak incessantly and never notice the colour of a blade of grass.