<p>Hi guys, I'm relatively new to this forum although I've been reading space.com for years. Top site. (^_^)</p><p>I was recently thinking how the exponential growth of technological development as proposed by futurists like Ray Kurzweil, Vernor Vinge and Hans Moravec might effect present day predictions of the utilisation of space by humanity and its offshoots in the near future. </p><p>One of the most potent examples of the exponential curve of advancing technological sophistication is in processing power which, as computer scientist G.E. Moore noticed, is doubling every eighteen months. Already we live in an age where the term 'ubiqitous computing' is used to describe the level of immersion our civilisation exists in with respect to its increasingly intelligent technological systems. Nearly every facet of our lives is in some way connected to, or regulated by computers and technology. This immersion is to the extent that it forms an integral part of economic theory where concepts like endogenous and exogenous economic growth compete to describe the impact of technology and innovation on our civilisation. </p><p>As Ray Kurzweil has extensively argued, this trend of exponential growth shows every sign of continuing into the fabled 'technological singularity' and is a trend that does not diminish with economic downturns (the opposite if anything). </p><p>One thing that this incredible phenomenon is dependent upon is the increasing miniaturisation of technology for the maximising of matter's potential. We have lived through a microtechnology revolution, witnessed its amazing transformative power and we are now entering the nanotechnology revolution. Already millions are being spent by groups like the Nanofactory Collaboration of Rob Freitas and Philip Moriarty to realise the practicalities of nanotechnology. Nanocomputing pioneer Neil Gershenfeld has speculated that we may reach Avogadro scale computing, nano-computing on the atomic scale, in twenty years conditional on the trend of exponentiation. </p><p>We are currently realising practical and commercial nanotechnology and once ubiquitous nanotechnology appears, 2020-30s on a Kurzweilian timeline, there will surely be an economic impetus to begin reconfiguring the dumb matter of the solar system for processing power (likely by this point there will already be a large, vibrant and growing commercial space based economy in the Earth-Moon system based on tourism). It would be a small matter to launch lightweight fleets of robots carrying self-replicative nanomachines onto the Moon and into the asteroid belt to create ever growing (in scope and complexity) self-replicating nano-computing networks utilising high bandwidth laser data links which would run on the massive amounts of sustainable energy freely available from the Sun. All that dumb matter out there is just waiting for us to start measuring and realising the MIPS per kilogram and get it thinking.</p><p>By the 2040s there could be far more computing power, networking, data storage and energy being used in space than anywhere on Earth, a vibrant playground for post human entities (uploads, AIs, post-humans, meta-humans and god knows what else) that will be emerging from the light cone of human civilisation. Earth, with its twentieth century merely human bureaucracies, meatbrains and centralised authorities, could well be left behind by the super-fast super-human meta-civilisation developing off world. And people are perturbed by China! </p><p>To often predictions of space development are projected on linear curves, neglecting the evidence of exponential growth.</p><p>'Thus, the wise man looks into space, and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too much; for he knows that there is no limit to dimension.' -Lao Tzu </p><p>Regards, </p><p>Atreju </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
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<p>Kurzweil makes some good predictions, but has he published any reasoning for their causes? Is there an analysis for the reason for exponential growth in IT techs that you know of? <br />Don't you think it's kind of meaningful that we havent seen any shockwave of the universe waking up from some other intelligence somewhere in space? Unless you count on dark matter/energy being their domain, or them being somewhere beyond the edge of our observable universe (e.g. somewhere in that colossal source of attraction that was noticed a few weeks/months ago).</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<p>Ah! The Rapture of the Nerds! 
</p><p>I am also strongly of the opinion that at some point exponential growth of industry will happen in space, and at least on the scale of the universe it will change things very rapidly.</p><p>This is also the main reason I do not believe in other space faring species within the observable universe: Exponential growth, even without any dramatically new discoveries in physics, should be visible as a spherical effect that spans multiple galaxies.</p><p>My problems with Kurzweil's claim are</p><p>(*) It is a form of inductive reasoning. It is like jumping out of a sky scraper, passing a hundred stories and extrapolating that there is probably at least a hundred more to go.</p><p>(*) I think we are approaching the limits of the serial speed of CPU's. We are now going to go in a different direction with more parallel processing and entirely new technology such as genetic engineering. There is even less reason to expect this to follow the same curve. There may be a hiatus of some decades before something like self replicating machines really take off.</p><p>(*) Although it might be right about how quickly this future might arrive, I am very dubious of any claims of what this future might be. It may not be human or even sentience-friendly. My own speculations lead me to fear that once a race starts expanding across a galaxy, speed of expansion becomes the only relevant measure of evolutionary fitness, and all notion of human politics and compromise are replaced with moving faster, consuming faster and moving on to consume the next system faster, until all that is left is a fast expanding spherical effect that reduces everything within its radius to the maximum possible state of entropy.</p><p>(*) If we accept dna as a kind of computer then there has already been an exponential explosion in computational ability on this planet. I suspect it transformed this world very quickly yet then sat around for about a bilion years before developing any sort of backbone. Huge computational power does not mean transendence.</p>
</p><p>I am also strongly of the opinion that at some point exponential growth of industry will happen in space, and at least on the scale of the universe it will change things very rapidly.</p><p>This is also the main reason I do not believe in other space faring species within the observable universe: Exponential growth, even without any dramatically new discoveries in physics, should be visible as a spherical effect that spans multiple galaxies.</p><p>My problems with Kurzweil's claim are</p><p>(*) It is a form of inductive reasoning. It is like jumping out of a sky scraper, passing a hundred stories and extrapolating that there is probably at least a hundred more to go.</p><p>(*) I think we are approaching the limits of the serial speed of CPU's. We are now going to go in a different direction with more parallel processing and entirely new technology such as genetic engineering. There is even less reason to expect this to follow the same curve. There may be a hiatus of some decades before something like self replicating machines really take off.</p><p>(*) Although it might be right about how quickly this future might arrive, I am very dubious of any claims of what this future might be. It may not be human or even sentience-friendly. My own speculations lead me to fear that once a race starts expanding across a galaxy, speed of expansion becomes the only relevant measure of evolutionary fitness, and all notion of human politics and compromise are replaced with moving faster, consuming faster and moving on to consume the next system faster, until all that is left is a fast expanding spherical effect that reduces everything within its radius to the maximum possible state of entropy.</p><p>(*) If we accept dna as a kind of computer then there has already been an exponential explosion in computational ability on this planet. I suspect it transformed this world very quickly yet then sat around for about a bilion years before developing any sort of backbone. Huge computational power does not mean transendence.</p><p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Kurzweil makes some good predictions, but has he published any reasoning for their causes? Is there an analysis for the reason for exponential growth in IT techs that you know of? Don't you think it's kind of meaningful that we havent seen any shockwave of the universe waking up from some other intelligence somewhere in space? Unless you count on dark matter/energy being their domain, or them being somewhere beyond the edge of our observable universe (e.g. somewhere in that colossal source of attraction that was noticed a few weeks/months ago). <br /> Posted by nimbus</DIV></p><p>Exponential growth in the development of technology is analogous to chaos theory in that exponentiation underlies both through the growth of perturbations or novelty in the initial conditions of a dynamical system. If you take technological development as a dynamical and deterministic system then you can measure the trend of exponentiation from very small effects burgeoning into much greater and influential effects due the growth of novelty and innovation tracking an ever more sophisticated and logarithmic curve. In fact it is arguable that exponential technological growth is just an aspect of an ever developing complexity that reaches right back through evolution and the most simple organisms all the way to modern transhuman beings. </p><p>The Fermi Paradox may well be explained by the technological singularity. The fundamental aspect of the singularity is that it represents a point where speculation, prediction and comprehension break down. What could be more incomprehensible than the silence we find all around us? </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Ah! The Rapture of the Nerds! I am also strongly of the opinion that at some point exponential growth of industry will happen in space, and at least on the scale of the universe it will change things very rapidly.This is also the main reason I do not believe in other space faring species within the observable universe: Exponential growth, even without any dramatically new discoveries in physics, should be visible as a spherical effect that spans multiple galaxies.My problems with Kurzweil's claim are(*) It is a form of inductive reasoning. It is like jumping out of a sky scraper, passing a hundred stories and extrapolating that there is probably at least a hundred more to go.(*) I think we are approaching the limits of the serial speed of CPU's. We are now going to go in a different direction with more parallel processing and entirely new technology such as genetic engineering. There is even less reason to expect this to follow the same curve. There may be a hiatus of some decades before something like self replicating machines really take off.(*) Although it might be right about how quickly this future might arrive, I am very dubious of any claims of what this future might be. It may not be human or even sentience-friendly. My own speculations lead me to fear that once a race starts expanding across a galaxy, speed of expansion becomes the only relevant measure of evolutionary fitness, and all notion of human politics and compromise are replaced with moving faster, consuming faster and moving on to consume the next system faster, until all that is left is a fast expanding spherical effect that reduces everything within its radius to the maximum possible state of entropy.(*) If we accept dna as a kind of computer then there has already been an exponential explosion in computational ability on this planet. I suspect it transformed this world very quickly yet then sat around for about a bilion years before developing any sort of backbone. Huge computational power does not mean transendence. <br /> Posted by kelvinzero</DIV></p><p>Lol, yep its the rapture alright (^_^) Prepare ye sinners!</p><p>Current forecasts are for Moore's law to continue into the 2020s as far as putting transistors on a chip are concerned before we truly hit the limits of silicon, though Kurzweil has been quick to point out that although we will soon reach the limits of 2D silicon chip development the potential of 3D silicon chips extends the power and operability of this tech and is being well looked into by intel and other companies.</p><p> I agree that more exotic forms of processing capability will likely emerge. There is a whole plethora of potential tech presently being studied such as DNA or molecular computing which is a fast developing interdisciplinary area of science. There is also fascinating work into nanocomputing by Gershenfeld and others as I mentioned above plus developments in spintronics, plasmonics and of course quantum computing. The present development of nanowiring for small but extremely powerful devices will revolutionise computing in the next decade. </p><p>Work being done right now by the Nanofactory Collaboration at the Uni of Nottingham UK and at Zyvex labs in the US into building the worlds first nanofactories for diamandoid mechanosynthesis are already looking into the practical challenges of replication and nanofabrication while IBM's Swiss laboratory is funding research into developing self-assembly devices and the utilisation of nanopatterning and soft lithography. Of course there are still many challenges to overcome before we emerge into a nanotech revolution on the scale of the microtech revolution we've seen over the last thirty years. </p><p>Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns, while admittedly controversial, posits the phenomenon of accelerating acceleration where 90% of the progress happens at the very end of the development period, in which case you may see the emergence of basic nanotechnology over a decade or two then a sudden surge into mature ubiquitous nanotechnology in a much shorter space of time. What this space I guess.</p><p>I understand fears about rapid development leading to entities that may not be at all friendly to human dervied sentience. Charles Stross in his novel Accelerando speculated on runaway entities that in the fierce competition for computing resources in the conversion of the matter of the solar system become profoundly inhuman, like some crazy form of runaway recursively intelligising malware and botnets that take over the economic system of the solar system. An unsettling vision to be sure.</p><p>Personally I would hazard to speculate that the posthuman Universe will see such issues and fears dealt with in a similar frame to how we have dealt with merely human fears such as nuclear war, pandemics and computer virus's, none of which have yet destroyed civilisation in the way they might have or have been feared to. </p><p>While the Starseed launchers of the future may well release data loads of sophisticated malware entities into the nanocomputing nodes of the solar system, some will also be carrying advanced ad-aware entities and superhuman security AIs too. Who knows, perhaps even an uploaded Blade Runner as well. </p><p>Still, there's a lot of development to go until this future arrives and as AI pioneer Ben Goertzel has noted, while we are close to the computing power necessary for human equivalent AIs, we still don't have a clear roadmap of how to do it yet. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
I am also strongly of the opinion that at some point exponential growth of industry will happen in space, and at least on the scale of the universe it will change things very rapidly.This is also the main reason I do not believe in other space faring species within the observable universe: Exponential growth, even without any dramatically new discoveries in physics, should be visible as a spherical effect that spans multiple galaxies.My problems with Kurzweil's claim are(*) It is a form of inductive reasoning. It is like jumping out of a sky scraper, passing a hundred stories and extrapolating that there is probably at least a hundred more to go.(*) I think we are approaching the limits of the serial speed of CPU's. We are now going to go in a different direction with more parallel processing and entirely new technology such as genetic engineering. There is even less reason to expect this to follow the same curve. There may be a hiatus of some decades before something like self replicating machines really take off.(*) Although it might be right about how quickly this future might arrive, I am very dubious of any claims of what this future might be. It may not be human or even sentience-friendly. My own speculations lead me to fear that once a race starts expanding across a galaxy, speed of expansion becomes the only relevant measure of evolutionary fitness, and all notion of human politics and compromise are replaced with moving faster, consuming faster and moving on to consume the next system faster, until all that is left is a fast expanding spherical effect that reduces everything within its radius to the maximum possible state of entropy.(*) If we accept dna as a kind of computer then there has already been an exponential explosion in computational ability on this planet. I suspect it transformed this world very quickly yet then sat around for about a bilion years before developing any sort of backbone. Huge computational power does not mean transendence. <br /> Posted by kelvinzero</DIV></p><p>Lol, yep its the rapture alright (^_^) Prepare ye sinners!</p><p>Current forecasts are for Moore's law to continue into the 2020s as far as putting transistors on a chip are concerned before we truly hit the limits of silicon, though Kurzweil has been quick to point out that although we will soon reach the limits of 2D silicon chip development the potential of 3D silicon chips extends the power and operability of this tech and is being well looked into by intel and other companies.</p><p> I agree that more exotic forms of processing capability will likely emerge. There is a whole plethora of potential tech presently being studied such as DNA or molecular computing which is a fast developing interdisciplinary area of science. There is also fascinating work into nanocomputing by Gershenfeld and others as I mentioned above plus developments in spintronics, plasmonics and of course quantum computing. The present development of nanowiring for small but extremely powerful devices will revolutionise computing in the next decade. </p><p>Work being done right now by the Nanofactory Collaboration at the Uni of Nottingham UK and at Zyvex labs in the US into building the worlds first nanofactories for diamandoid mechanosynthesis are already looking into the practical challenges of replication and nanofabrication while IBM's Swiss laboratory is funding research into developing self-assembly devices and the utilisation of nanopatterning and soft lithography. Of course there are still many challenges to overcome before we emerge into a nanotech revolution on the scale of the microtech revolution we've seen over the last thirty years. </p><p>Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns, while admittedly controversial, posits the phenomenon of accelerating acceleration where 90% of the progress happens at the very end of the development period, in which case you may see the emergence of basic nanotechnology over a decade or two then a sudden surge into mature ubiquitous nanotechnology in a much shorter space of time. What this space I guess.</p><p>I understand fears about rapid development leading to entities that may not be at all friendly to human dervied sentience. Charles Stross in his novel Accelerando speculated on runaway entities that in the fierce competition for computing resources in the conversion of the matter of the solar system become profoundly inhuman, like some crazy form of runaway recursively intelligising malware and botnets that take over the economic system of the solar system. An unsettling vision to be sure.</p><p>Personally I would hazard to speculate that the posthuman Universe will see such issues and fears dealt with in a similar frame to how we have dealt with merely human fears such as nuclear war, pandemics and computer virus's, none of which have yet destroyed civilisation in the way they might have or have been feared to. </p><p>While the Starseed launchers of the future may well release data loads of sophisticated malware entities into the nanocomputing nodes of the solar system, some will also be carrying advanced ad-aware entities and superhuman security AIs too. Who knows, perhaps even an uploaded Blade Runner as well. </p><p>Still, there's a lot of development to go until this future arrives and as AI pioneer Ben Goertzel has noted, while we are close to the computing power necessary for human equivalent AIs, we still don't have a clear roadmap of how to do it yet. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div><p>Im not really an apocalypse enthusiast but I dont think we have dealt with any of those things: nuclear war, pandemics or computer viruses.</p><p>About malware entities and ad-aware entities: sure. But which side do you think the nazis thought they were?</p>
<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Im not really an apocalypse enthusiast but I dont think we have dealt with any of those things: nuclear war, pandemics or computer viruses.About malware entities and ad-aware entities: sure. But which side do you think the nazis thought they were? <br /> Posted by kelvinzero</DIV></p><p>That's true but neither have those issues yet blighted our society to the extent in which they could severly cripple or destroy us. We live in the shadow of such threats but we can still see and enjoy the light. </p><p>As for the Nazis, they were a great example of how morality and ethics can go utterly haywire. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<p>In 1900 transprotation was by horse and buggy or steam powered ships or trains. With in 44 years we had automobiles, powered flight, jet engines and rockets. In the 60 years since those discoveries were have had little or no meaningful change to transportation. This sounds less exponential and more asymptotic to me...</p><p>*sigh*</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>In 1900 transprotation was by horse and buggy or steam powered ships or trains. With in 44 years we had automobiles, powered flight, jet engines and rockets. In the 60 years since those discoveries were have had little or no meaningful change to transportation. This sounds less exponential and more asymptotic to me...*sigh* <br /> Posted by origin</DIV></p><p>Although the trend of exponential growth in technology is often discussed and studied as an aggregate this does not mean that every single technology being used by humans is subject to this exponentially accelerating degree of refinement and sophistication. Cutlery has remained much the same for the last century and more, for example. </p><p>However, many technologies are subject to exponential growth, they are primarly the ones that are being driven by the acceleration of information technologies. A potent example is where information systems have allowed for great leaps in biotechnology. The power of new and better information technologies have fundamentally altered the science of medicine, particularly in areas like genetics, the study of proteins and in neuroscience. It took us 14 years to sequence HIV; we recently sequenced SARS in only 31 days!</p><p>But many technologies are not yet part of this information driven acceleration to this degree, though they soon will be as Kurzweil has noted in an interview with CRN:</p><p><font face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica"><font face="Times New Roman"><font size="2">'The transportation and energy industries are currently pre-information fields. Ultimately, however, information technologies will comprise almost everything of value, because we will be able to build anything at extremely low cost using nanoengineered materials and processes. We will have new methods of doing things like flying and creating energy. '</font></font></font></p><p>The full interview can be found at: http://www.crnano.org/interview.kurzweil.htm </p><p>The impact of information systems in transportation is still pretty evident though. Just think of the massive fleet of UAVs circling the skies of Afghanistan, the aerodynamic instability of the F-117 or the suite of avioics employed in the new F-22 Raptor, not to mention the use of powerful processors in the VTOL F-35 Lightning. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<p><font size="2">I'm not sure where any of this leads to the Earth being the Sol Systems' Ghetto, rather than the center of business, culture & learning in 30 years.</font></p><p><font size="2"> As far as information transforming transportation technology goes, we've had the tech to build Nuclear powered rockets for nearly 60 years & we haven't built a single one. Dr Robert Bussard even designed a fusion engine that could provide the holy grail of SSTO that would truly open up the Solar System. Nobody in Government or business would fund him. </font></p><p><font size="2">Information may be what will bring our next evolution, but money is what will rule the roost for the next many foreseeable generations to come. </font> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>
<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>I'm not sure where any of this leads to the Earth being the Sol Systems' Ghetto, rather than the center of business, culture & learning in 30 years. As far as information transforming transportation technology goes, we've had the tech to build Nuclear powered rockets for nearly 60 years & we haven't built a single one. Dr Robert Bussard even designed a fusion engine that could provide the holy grail of SSTO that would truly open up the Solar System. Nobody in Government or business would fund him. Information may be what will bring our next evolution, but money is what will rule the roost for the next many foreseeable generations to come. <br /> Posted by boris1961</DIV></p><p>Money is indeed the key issue. The reason why exponential growth has been so explosive in information systems and not in transportation systems is affordability. The price/performance relationship between information technology and cost, where cost decreases as capability increases (a 100mhz processor costs a lot less now than ten years ago), has driven the revolution in microtechnology, a great case of free market supply and demand. In transportation however, there has not been such a phenomenon because there has not been the same drive of demand for ever faster ever more powerful capabilities which can affordably be met by the supply of technology. Nuclear rockets just aren't economical, yet. Transportation is still very much a pre-information industry, but as Kurzweil points out, nanotechnology will alter this situation significantly, when our control of the molecular then atomic scale allows us to almost program reality and we can take benefit from new materials, techniques, hardware and a much greater control, mastery and understanding of the underlying physics of matter and energy. </p><p>This is of course conditional on the law of accelerating returns holding true. At the moment it seems to be.</p><p>As for how this will reveal Earth as a backwater by the 2040s. If the above condition continues and we follow the exponential curve from a microtechnology revolution into a nanotechnology revolution then we may see the price/performance relationship of information systems effecting space industries. Converting dumb matter like the asteroids into vast nanocomputing networks that will support large and diverse environments will be the realisation of this. Initiated by swarms of self-replicating nanomachines launched into space by starseed launchers, they will represent a far more cost-effective space platform with huge potential and massive potential returns in processing power and bandwith, far more cost effective than tin cans of monkey's floating around and carrying all that weight with them. </p><p>When processing power and bandwith become the major commodity of value (and that's already increasingly evident) then it will only be a matter of time before Earth becomes a backwater. Unless the Earth is converted into computronium its hard to see how an Earth based society could compete with the proto-matrioshka brain that will start to emerge mid-century from out of all that converted dumb matter in the asteroid belt and elsewhere in the solar system. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
Can you break it down for a layman, what exactly is the unique substrate that enables IT? I cant help but think that if we get a world recession, the exponential curve is going to take a hit. You can't run a singularity on a skeleton workforce, can you? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Money is indeed the key issue. <br />Posted by Atreju</DIV></p><p><font size="2">Yeah, it sure is. Time is equaly important. There isn't a chance that in 30 years Mars, Ceres or Zimbabwe is going to be the Solar Systems center of Business, Culture & Learning. Period. </font></p><p><font size="2"><font size="7">"IF" </font><font size="2">SpaceX manages to get a ship into orbit this year, we still won't have a viable off planet colony for many years to come. Even if we did get a colony on Mars by 2015, it won't be anything more than a frontier outpost in 25 years.<br /><br /></font></font></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>
Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Yeah, it sure is. Time is equaly important. There isn't a chance that in 30 years Mars, Ceres or Zimbabwe is going to be the Solar Systems center of Business, Culture & Learning. Period. "IF" SpaceX manages to get a ship into orbit this year, we still won't have a viable off planet colony for many years to come. Even if we did get a colony on Mars by 2015, it won't be anything more than a frontier outpost in 25 years. <br /> Posted by boris1961</DIV><br />He's way ahead of you.. He's not saying SpaceX, he's saying the singularity exponential will have picked up by then. Or that's the only way I make sense of it anyway. [insert evil 'hyperbolical' quip here ] <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
] <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div><p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Can you break it down for a layman, what exactly is the unique substrate that enables IT? I cant help but think that if we get a world recession, the exponential curve is going to take a hit. You can't run a singularity on a skeleton workforce, can you? <br /> Posted by nimbus</DIV></p><p>It might perhaps be better to speak of the ubiquitous principle of information since information underlies everything, particularly biological systems like DNA. Evolution has been driven by the increasing sophistication of information systems culminating in the world's most powerful processor, the human brain. Evolution builds on past innovation through the flow of information. As Kurzweil has noted: 'A primary reason that evolution – of life-forms or of technology – speeds up is that it builds on its own increasing order, with ever more sophisticated means of recording and manipulating information. Innovations created by evolution encourage and enable faster evolution'. </p><p>Technology is an off-shoot of natural evolution and is similarly dependent on information systems for its refinement and sophistication. The flow of memes (ideas) in society increases in speed and capacity proportionally to the sophistication of technology, particularly, and unsurprisingly, to the sophistication of information communication technology. It is little surprising that IT is therefore at the epicentre of technological change and is the perhaps the most potent indicator of its exponentially increasing acceleration where innovation builds on and speeds up further innovation. Each stage of evolution provides more powerful tools for the next. </p><p>As for this phenomenon being negatively effected by the economic downturn, this is very unlikely. Harder times tend to further peoples creativity and ingenuity, necessity is the mother of invention after all. The twentieth century has seen a steady exponential curve of tech growth uninterrupted by recessions and crises. The depression era saw increasing sophistication of communication technologies, primitive computing and encryption machines that lead to the first computers as well as the development of the jet engine and the rocket. The economic crisis of the seventies coincided with the first transistors, personal computers and early networking. Rather than inhibiting technological development, a recession might actually benefit it. </p><p>More info on information systems, evolution and exponential growth can be found in Kurzweil's discussion of the law of accelerating returns: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0610.html </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Yeah, it sure is. Time is equaly important. There isn't a chance that in 30 years Mars, Ceres or Zimbabwe is going to be the Solar Systems center of Business, Culture & Learning. Period. "IF" SpaceX manages to get a ship into orbit this year, we still won't have a viable off planet colony for many years to come. Even if we did get a colony on Mars by 2015, it won't be anything more than a frontier outpost in 25 years. <br /> Posted by boris1961</DIV></p><p>Well I think nimbus has anticipated my reply. The scenario you've envisaged above is a linear acceleration of progress and if technology were tracking in such a way I would agree. However, I'm contending that the 'exponential' acceleration of progress will yield a much faster expansion and in a much less twentieth century style. </p><p>Tracking the curve of development into the field of ubiquitous nanotechnology (and I did say that this is conditional and not certain) in a similar way to how our present level of ubiquitous computing emerged from the first transistors and personal computers of the seventies, it's not unreasonable to forecast a radical shift in capability in the next 30-40 years. Rather than manned Apollo esque spaceflight, imagine much smaller vehicles carrying cargoes of self-replicating nanomachines capable of atomic scale engineering, capable of re-structuring the matter that composes the asteroids, the moon and the planets and turning it into something useful, like nanocomputing nodes connected by high bandwith laser data links and solar energy farms. Far more cost effective than sending people out there. Not that I'm saying we won't do that at some point too. </p><p>But once we start reshaping the solar system on that scale we will be creating an immensely powerful framework of information systems and environments within cyberspace. A sure Mecca for any sentient AIs, digital post humans and other entities wishing to expand their capabilities and who are not hampered by flesh, and all interacting within this space and feeding back into the exponential acceleration of technology and recursive intelligence explosion. Energy, processing power and bandwith will all be in much greater quantities in such an area than anywhere on an Earth resembling today's world. </p><p> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>He's way ahead of you.. He's not saying SpaceX, he's saying the singularity exponential will have picked up by then. Or that's the only way I make sense of it anyway. [insert evil 'hyperbolical' quip here ] <br />Posted by nimbus</DIV><br /><br /><font size="2"><font size="2">Colossus: The Forbin Project</font> <img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-surprised.gif" border="0" alt="Surprised" title="Surprised" /></font></p><p> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>
] <br />Posted by nimbus</DIV><br /><br /><font size="2"><font size="2">Colossus: The Forbin Project</font> <img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-surprised.gif" border="0" alt="Surprised" title="Surprised" /></font></p><p> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div><p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>I see, thank you. <br /> Posted by nimbus</DIV></p><p>No problemo </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div><p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Colossus: The Forbin Project <br /> Posted by boris1961</DIV></p><p>'And where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite.' -Major Motoko Kusanagi/Puppet Master (Ghost in the Shell) (^_~) </p><h2><strong><font size="1"><span class="mw-headline"><br /></span></font></strong></h2> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
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