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by Josh Baltzell.
Original Post: Interesting .NET Rocks Episode
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I just caught the end of this week's episode of .NET Rocks and now I really wish I had caught the beginning. These seems to be in a philosophical conversation about what software means now and in the future. Even though I love solid technical content I think we all need to talk about topics like this once in a while.
I've always been interested in the future (I mean I subscribe to Scientific American, Discover, and Wired (Plus I am a Kurzweil nerd and I have read The Age Of Spiritual Machines twice. (I also started reading Emergence but I lost interest after about half of the book (Even though the bottom up intelligence is really cool.))))
It's very hard to determine the future. They say that we all overestimate a new technology's impact in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. Then again, I have seen those "[Blank] of the Future" movies from the 50's that show some outlandish things that would still be futuristic today.
On the show Carl, Rory, and Bob Reselman talked a little about what the future of evolution could be and it was mentioned that machine intelligence was evolution's future. I think that is part of it, but now the whole shebang. We would not be content to let our machines have all the fun so I think Kurzweil's ideas of us becoming machines ourselves is the logical extension. Though I doubt it will happen in his timeframe and I'm sure that half the population will be luddites in comparison to the rest of us.
Assuming that moving faster than light really is not possible then the only cost effective viable solution it to transmit ourselves somehow digitally or in a very small container. We have to be machines if we want to have any real fun.
I'm looking forward to Monday so I can hear the beginning of the show.
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