Category: Futurology
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An end to copyright?
I suspect that AI generated content is (eventually, not any of the current versions) going to destroy copyright as a concept. The generally-stated reason for copyright is to incentivise the creation of more works: artificial scarcity, which drives up prices, introduced around the time the printing press was invented (but the idea goes back much…
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Bioprinted fairy drones
As Arthur C. Clarke wrote, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. In the case of bioprinted fairy drones, the tech only looks like magic because it isn’t advanced enough. Bioprinting is the 3D printing of organic material. It’s been demonstrated for years in various different capacities, but the current state-of-the-art suggests that we’re…
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Post-scarcity
There are many different ways to discuss “post-scarcity”. The traditional idea is that all material goods are available at no cost, kinda like the replicators in Star Treks TNG and DS9. However, even in the Trek universe, replicators used power, and this allowed replicator rationing to be a plot point in Star Trek Voyager. Even…
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Mistakes
It is important to keep track of one’s mistakes — you can’t learn to be better if you don’t. Here is one of mine from 2016: “Trump and Clinton are both equally awful”. Ye gods, how I wish that was so. I saw each as just two more in the same mould as all other…
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Sufficient technology
Let’s hypothesise sufficient brain scans. As far as I know, we don’t have better than either very low resolution full-brain imaging (millions of synapses per voxel), or very limited high resolution imaging (thousands of synapses total), at least not for living brains. Let’s just pretend for the sake of argument that we have synapse-resolution full-brain…
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Memetic monocultures
Brief kernel of an idea: Societies deem certain ideas “dangerous”. If it possible to technologically eliminate perceived dangers, we can be tempted to do so, even when we perceived wrongly. Group-think has lead to catastrophic misjudgments. This represents a potential future “great filter” for the Fermi paradox. It does not apply to previous attempts at…
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Pocket brains
Total iPhone sales between Q4 2017 and Q4 2018: 217.52 million Performance of Neural Engine, component of Apple A11 SoC used in iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X: 600 billion operations per second Estimated computational power required to simulate a human brain in real time: 36.8×1015 Total compute power of all iPhones sold between Q4 2017…
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Thought crime in 2084
A new meaning to the words “Thought crime”: a crime for which the only evidence is a scan of your brain.
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Old predictions, and how they’ve been standing up
The following was originally posted to a (long-since deleted) Livejournal account on 2012-06-05 02:55:27 BST. I have not edited this at all. Some of these predictions from 6 years ago have stood up pretty well, other predictions have been proven impossible. Predicting the future is, in retrospect, hilarious. Nonetheless, I want to make a guess…
Kitsune Software 