LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW
Friday July 28, 2017
Every piece of minutia exists in some record. Somewhere. Sorting and combining all data is ‘in progress’ (ie:IBM’s Watson project). Soon, far sooner than we might guess, aggregations of all knowledge in one place, a ‘pose question and click’ away. All knowledge. Point. Click. Not you, not me – but your robot talking to my robot …
Many things haven’t been discovered yet. Not few – but enormous amounts, new discovery opportunities made possible because we have this gargantuan aggregation and use of ‘all the information’ …
So much hasn’t been discovered yet – under earth, in ocean depths and space – awaiting learning, research and exploration. And, ‘what makes women tick’ that remains one of man’s most discombobulating problems …
Digging into lab experiment in laboratories, brains and their kitchen gadget drawers in search of obscure objects and elusive understanding – somebody will be inventing the next machine/computer and software to do it for us – artificial intelligence is in its infancy – and yet, A.I. looms as a massive scarcely understood force.
Once we have all the machines trained to do everything we used to learn and do, what will be left for 7.5 billion brains? We can’t all explore universe, ocean depths or neurosurgery. You might add that we could explore peace. Yes. And, better human relations. Love. Gourmet cooking. Playing chess. And soon those machines will be doing for us and guiding us to the point simple thinking, as we’ve known it, rendered obsolete. Redundant. Not required. Available everywhere if you’ve got sufficient bandwidth. Just holler, “Siri, buy more bandwidth”. Done.
I don’t know what I don’t know.
You might know what I don’t know – but still, you don’t know what I don’t know.
The next person doesn’t know what you don’t know.
Yet when you put us all together, don’t we all collectively know everything?
Everything ever known, discovered or proven – a point/click away.
We could go the other way.
Re-explore and re-discover old things, forgotten things. Why be a DIY hobby-ist when you could be an artisan building furniture, why paint by numbers (or a room) when you could one-up Michelangelo?
Throughout history our great artists, writers, discoverers and thinkers also had day jobs. They didn’t have Siri, laptops or tablets. No labour saving devices, no carpal-tunnel syndrome. They had to milk the cows, bake the bread, fix the roof and hustle for a living. They were real survivors – not on a reality show, but in life their expectancy (in terms of length or diversity) was low.
Were they happier then, are we happier now and will we be happier in the future?
Let’s find out.
Start today, there is no tomorrow …
