| I think the web (www) won't change much at all, but that doesn't mean the way we interconnect with others won't. This seems ultimately shortsighted. Human "progress" (increasing interconnection -- such as urbanization and population density) has been growing exponentially[1] since the birth of agriculture allowed humans to form societies. Relative to this kind of momentum, the web is only a hint of the interconnection and globalization to come. The web may stagnate and become self-serving (as opposed to being useful), but this has no bearing on whether we'll eventually be able to simulate a human brain in its entirety or reach some {uto,dysto}pian future where all of our consciousnesses are somehow woven together. I'm not saying that technology will be our salvation, but the graphs and trends don't lie. We are at a very interesting time in human history: we are either going to continue interconnecting exponentially or there will be some catastrophic event. There's no room on those curves for a plateau. Whether humanity passes the torch of technological innovation to AI (voluntarily or coerced) or we suffer a self-wrought apocalypse, I don't know, but there is certainly reason to fear the changes the future will bring. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/human-progress-charts-2011-3?...
(This link isn't specifically tied to my argument. It's just the first set of graphs I found illustrating the long-term growth of humanity.) |