In envisioning how machines will replace humans, Kevin Kelly breaks down our relationship with robots into four categories.
Complement with Ellen Ulman’s Close to the Machine.
futurism
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![Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.… [A]ssociative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another, [is] the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.
A vintage vision for managing information overload the rising importance of filtration](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbqjcdojkD1rqpa8po1_500.jpg)
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.… [A]ssociative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another, [is] the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.
A vintage vision for managing information overload the rising importance of filtration
In today’s technologically sophisticated and intertwined societies, complexification is taking on a supraindividual, continent-spanning character. With the instant, worldwide communication afforded by cell phones, e-mail, and social networking, I foresee a time when humanity’s teeming billions and their computers will be interconnected in a vast matrix — a planetary Übermind. Provided mankind avoids Nightfall — a thermonuclear Armageddon or a complete environmental meltdown — there is no reason why this web of hypertrophied consciousness cannot spread to the planets and, ultimately, beyond the stellar night to the galaxy at large.
Neuroscientist Christof Koch on how consciousness evolved and why a global “Übermind” is inevitable
“Shouldn’t everybody be on the internet? YESSS.”
Kids in adorable 90s haircuts predict the future of the internet (“by the time we’re in college, the internet will be our telephone, television, shopping center, and workplace”; “…and I even found a recipe for catfood cupcakes”) in an oddly prophetic PSA from 1995.
Then, see Arthur C. Clarke predict it way back in 1964.
Colonizing Mars – aerospace engineer and author Robert Zubrin and NASA Ames researcher Margarita Marinova explain how and why humans will one day turn the Red Planet green, establishing the next frontier of technological innovation and seeding the universe with new branches of life. Part of Someday Somewhere Beyond, a forthcoming feature documentary by Jonathan Minard exploring the history and future of space colonies.
Meanwhile, Carl Sagan has a gentle warning to the future explorers of Mars.
The predictions in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four vs. Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World. Also see Huxley’s prescient 1958 interview about concepts from the book that we are now living.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Happy birthday, Aldous Huxley – his prophetic 1958 interview by Mike Wallace
Assuming we haven’t destroyed ourselves in a nuclear war, there will be 8-10 billion of us on this planet—and widespread hunger. These troubles can be traced back to President Ronald Reagan who smiled and waved too much.
Isaac Asimov and other thinkers predict 2012 in 1987.
Also see John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 prediction for today.
We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.
Legendary economist John Maynard Keynes’s hopeful vision for humanity in 2030, circa 1930.
The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.
Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren – in 1930, iconic economist John Maynard Keynes penned a hopeful vision for post-Occupy humanity
[In] a development that even just thirty years ago would have seemed like the most absurd science fiction, there are now far more books available, far more quickly, on the iPhone than in the New York Public Library.
[…]
This technology cannot simply substitute for the great libraries of the present. After all, libraries are not just repositories of books. They are communities, sources of expertise, and homes to lovingly compiled collections that amount to far more than the sum of their individual printed parts. Their physical spaces, especially in grand temples of learning like the NYPL, subtly influence the way that reading and writing takes place in them. And yet it is foolish to think that libraries can remain the same with the new technology on the scene.
Thoughtful and important piece by David A. Bell on the future of libraries. For an essential companion read, see Library: An Unquiet History.
Eventually we’ll also be able to speak to televisions, personal computers, or other information appliances. At first we’ll have to stick to a limited vocabulary, but eventually our exchanges with our appliances will become quite conversational.
Bill Gates predicts the iPhone and Siri in 1995
Knowledge has gone from being an adjunct of money power and muscle power, to being their very essence. It is, in fact, the ultimate amplifier. This is the key to the powershift that lies ahead, and it explains why the battle for control of knowledge and the means of communication is heating up all over the world.
Powershift – Alvin Toffler on the age of post-fact knowledge and the rise of the super-symbolic economy (1990)
The Future Is Ours – remarkable, necessary short film by Michael Marantz pays tribute to those pushing humanity forward and reminds us that the future is, indeed, in our hands.
