Musings of a Demon-ted Mind

The following is the opening chapter of a book which I am thinking about writing about Second Life and it’s value as a testing ground for the future developments of cyberspace, as well as it’s value as an indicator of the social and moral issues humanity will face over the next few decades as our technology continues to advance at an ever increasing rate.  Any views, questions, advice, or suggestions are welcome.  I am not yet certain of exactly where I wish to go with this, in terms of what topics to cover, questions to ask and answer, or even how I wish to format it.  *************************************************************** Chapter One: Welcome to Your Second Life “Why am I here?” I asked myself for the twentieth time in the last hour. I felt like a fool.  Why had I allowed Shasta to talk me into this?  An idle fantasy?  A chance to escape the humdrum daily grind and allow myself the freedom of just being myself?  This was crazy.  It ...

The Lights In the Tunnel - Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future : "What will the economy of the future look like?" This is from IEET, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. At least that is where I found the link. Now if you have ever been to IEET, you might find I have one major issue with most of them, which is that they all seem to see all these issues as being still safely decades down the road. I've just started reading this PDF, and I can already say it appears to NOT suffer from that same failing. I have been saying for years now that our economic crisis is not going to get better. That we MUST come up with humanitarian solutions to reduce the misery and suffering of the mass of humanity, because we are going to face greater and greater misery and suffering as jobs vanish to machines. And that we must DO IT NOW, before things get even worse. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. The economy of scarcity is collaps...

"Lifeblogging" Sony Glasses Go Beyond Mere Eye-Tracking This article on Gizmodo annoyed me, because it used the word "worrisome" to describe the device Sony is working on. I wrote this piece originally for H+ just prior to it's going on hiatus, but it applies just as much here. Lifeblogging. I’d like you to imagine your life on camera. Like a contestant on Big Brother, imagine that your every word and deed is permanently recorded. Your every social interaction, your conversations, even your facial expressions, are logged and documented with time and date stamps, stored electronically with full random access and search functions. If this Orwellian scenario strikes a note of fear in you, than I would have to say you are one of the millions of people who have listened to a lot of propaganda, and not someone who has seriously evaluated the concept of lifeblogging. http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/overview/02.html#LL Lifeblogging is exactly what I described ab...

Val's Nanotech discussion thread - ImmInst.org Forums : "Watch this. Get used to it. You're going to see a LOT more of this in the future."

"Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?" It's the question which has driven mankind since the first hominids stood up for the first time. It drove us to chip stones into tools, to harness fire, tame animals, work in groups, and learn to speak. It shaped our thoughts, and evolution, made us curious about the world, and seek answers. And the answer we found was "No. We can do better." It drove us to find grains, cultivate them, build farms, form communities, governments, and trade. It produced writing, and record keeping and stories, and laws. The People asked "Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?" And Hammurabi said "No. We can do better. It drove us to build cities, and roads, pyramids and temples. To create The Hanging Gardens and the Colossus. The Great Lighthouse and the Great Library. It drove us to create Kings, and Pharaohs and Prophets. It drove Alexander to build Empires until he wept that there were no ...

We live in a world of flux, and nothing truly shows that more than how the internet is affecting the way we live our lives.  Here in America we are seeing some pretty dramatic effects now that nearly 50% of all Americans have access to the internet. As that number proceeds to 100% within just a few years, those effects will be even more dramatic. What effects might I be talking about? Primarily access to information. Until recently, we’ve relied on newspapers and news programs to keep us informed of our world, and we are now becoming aware of how sadly little those venues choose to tell us. On the internet, not only can we find far more of the story, we can find out how much or how little the other news sources are telling us.  Because of that, American politics are in the process of undergoing a turbulent time as they are having to adjust to a different reality than just a few years ago. It’s going to take a few more years, but the move from a secretive, hidde...

I recently read an   article on a DNA prototype nanofactory , and several responses to it by various futurists such as   Michael Anissimov ,  Jamais Cascio ,  Chris Phoenix   and others. It was quite interesting to watch the various discussions that arose from the posts. But it also illustrated quite well a problem I have seen for years, the tendency of many futurists to have tunnel vision, to only focus on the final stages and ignore those which lead to them. A half sphere of polymer cubes built by researchers at the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Image: Javier Gomez Fernandez Most everyone is focused on Nanotechnology, and its final stages of development towards a true molecular manufacturing technology, but MM is only one part of the future. It's a very important one to be sure, but it doesn't exist in isolation. It is surrounded by hundreds, even thousands of other technologies just as profound, if more "commonplace" in comparison. ...