VIDEO: Did You Know?

[Garritan]

Alan Belkin sent in this video. Interesting to see how fast the world is changing.

"We live in Exponential times"

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[Raymond62]

Frightening. So before I will end my 5th piano sonata, this music will be outdated already. Why should I start?

I ignore this whole movie and wait in patience until the next updates come out, knowing that in the meantime 1,000.000 babies are born, 1,000.000 or more loose their jobs (economic crisis) and knowing right now that Google.nl is not online.

The already outdated - while typing this - Raymond

[SeanHannifin]

Oooh, really cool video!! )(~

I don't think the video implies anything about art forms becoming "outdated", so I think your sonata will be fine. If anything, the Internet will make it more meaningful because you have access to a larger audience.

Some responses to the video:

I've never been a fan of our US formal educational system, which from middle school through college inhibits students from pursuing their interests and instead focuses on a list of "traditional" material that most students won't use. Complete waste of time and money. So I like the point this video makes about that.

I don't think we have to worry about IQ numbers in other countries... it's not like that's going to make us dumber.

200 million users on MySpace ... doesn't say how many unique users, or active users. Still, it's a lot, but I'm not sure it means much besides it's a popular site.

Broadband Internet Penetration ... I really don't know much about this, but my guess is that it has to do with not-so-great policies from broadband companies and corporations? Think of how TV and the Internet should be merged by now, if the competing companies involved didn't want to keep so much control over their content. Companies guarding control inhibit technological advances. I really don't know how they can be countered in any quick way.

4 exabytes of unique information ... what is "unique information"?

That new technical info is being created in large proportions doesn't necessarily imply anything about how useful it is to people with mechanical degrees.

Japan's fiber optic cable... :wow: I'd love to have that!! Too bad US companies would probably want too much control over it?

Computational power of the human brain ... "intelligence" doesn't come from computational power, it comes from how that power is organized. Having such a supercomputer won't be very amazing unless it's programmed amazingly. Our home computers already exceed the brain's computational power in some ways, mostly in labor-intensive math. The "computational capacity of the entire human species" ... what in the world does that mean?!

Illegal downloading... decades ago, there was one guy (ugh, I can't remember who it was now) who said that eventually, with the amount of computer power the world will have, copyright will dissolve completely, be non-existent. Which might seem scary to us now, but that's because we can't fully imagine the new technologies that will cause it to dissolve. Similarly, throughout human history there have been many eras in which people couldn't imagine the notion of copyright because they couldn't imagine the issues that would make copyright necessary. (And, no, they won't make art "suffer" ... unless you thought creation was all about protecting its copyright?)

As someone else said, history doesn't crawl, it jumps. How exciting to be at such a jump! But things will only change as fast as we let them change. I see many people come into our local library who don't have the Internet or who have never used a computer before. And things like cell phones become mundane... we get used to the technology we do have.

Anyway, if you think about how small we are in the universe, you can get a decent amount of awe from that too. :D And that's even more meaningless.

[reberclark]

We will have faster and deeper tools. Cool! Just keep including the unprotected "off" switch somewhere in the hardware, please.

[Styxx]

Hard to believe. :rolleyes:

[BenNichols]

Cool, i find that all pretty exciting. There is another vid on youtube (cant find at the mo) which explains that cos the US and many other western countries has a child/family rate of under 2.1, whereas Muslim states are at about 8.1, we will all be living in muslim states in the future. For example: The German goverment stated that they will likely be a muslim state by 2050.

So what do you have to say to that?

[rbowser-]

Great post, Gary!

I'm glad to see other people here aren't finding the vid's message "frightening" either. Times they are a-changing. Old order, old rules just don't work anymore. Uncle Sam has the chance to become Brother Sam! The World is evening out, and that's an exciting, positive thing.

Randy

[upsider]

Futurists can get it wrong too, thats the nature of the game. 40 years ago, in way off 2009, we were supposed to be playing golf on mars and eating proton pills for sustainance with our martinis.

Maybe all the honours students in India can fix the problem.

[dudefromthebronx]

So what does it all mean?

It means kids in the US better get their fat lazy little behinds back in school, stop playing with their iPods and start learning! Imagine being in a nursing home and cared for by some dimwit who doesn't have a clue.

Hope I die fo' I get old.