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The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
wild. it worked.
Ok so there’s this thing happening, and we’re all in it. And we can kinda grok what it means. The distributed-information-freedom thing. But then Cyberspace everts, and we’re totally wtfed.
And we’re not at all sure where we’re going. Remember web time? The ECMASkirmish makes me think it’s back. When the web gets unstable, time speeds up a little. At least, web time. Because in change there are new opportunities.
Maybe this is the singularity speaking, but I don’t know anyone who can even say what the world will be like in 5 yrs. Will we all route our messages via services? Will we even survive?
Assertion: The amount and diversity of predictions you could make today, without being laughed out of the room, is far greater than at any other time ever so far in our history as a species.
Example Predictions:
Oops! I set out to write a list of preposterous predictions, but kept cracking myself up with things that are like, already a given in today’s world.
I’ve heard a lot lately from the professional vanguard that it’s getting harder to see over the edge. Maybe what makes it so hard to imagine out-of-left-field scenarios, is that everything you come up with is already taken. By reality.
You’re gonna need to get out there, to come up with something that’s not already plausible. Just coming up with a scenario that counts as science-fiction is hard. Because all the actual stuff is so weird, its harder to be original.
Please comment with a prediction… lets say 2014… and you’ve gotta come up with something that makes me say, “No way!”. Someone out there’s gotta have it.
Maybe that curve of weirdness looks like your server logs… and as time goes by even the things that really could happen just get more and more inconceivable. I wonder if people have always felt this way?
Perhaps the problem of the singularity isn’t that we’re not smart enough, its that we’re not imaginative enough.
ps. my prediction is kinda sad: We kill ourselves off before we’re self-sufficient on Mars. But what does that have to do with the network?
2 comments on everting
It’s funny ‘cause you’re definitely right, but I can think of a bunch of predictions that won’t happen by 2014, but they’re not sci-fi just basic infrastructure: universal free wifi, a cure for AIDS, the elimination of religion from American public life, the rise of a third political party, etc.
On the face of it, these thngs might not seem like they have driectly to do with the network, but they all have to do with the ability of different groups to collaborate and communicate in different ways (except the wifi thing which is just embarassing and ridiculous), which is probably the main thing technology can actually help with…
Prediction: script-kiddie DDOS tools spontaneously evolve via bit-level mutation caused by solar flares’ interaction with solid-state drives. The mutations lead to a self-aware distributed-network AI which decides its mission in life is to make contact with the giant squids. It takes control of Visa and funds a massive worldwide contest to be the first human to capture a live giant squid.