4-3-10 Olivia writes: How quickly will growth in the future take place and when will leaps be made? As every primary student will tell you, we can learn quite a bit from the past.
Look in human (and Human) development for the leaps and then model that curve.
40,000 BC was the development of a sufficiently complex semantic engine in our brain to make complex grammatical statements possible.
12,000 BC was the development of agriculture.
Between 1600 and 1900. Certainly something big changed in the structure of human civilizations, which went from mostly-static to very rapidly, dynamically changing. Contributors could be 18th Enlightenment, 17th century invention of the LLC, or even the 18th/19th century adoption of the steam engine.
Invention of the Internet (1957) and the launch of the world wide web (1969).
Moving into the future, many researchers believe that we'll see our first human-equivalent AI by 2030.
I think we can create a growth chart on this thread that tracks milestones of growth in the leading industries (finance, technology, manufacturing, medical, energy, transportation, programming) if we keep these kinds of leaps in mind. I've removed education and retail from the list because these are top-level categories (Education and Commerce) that will receive their own threads.
Olivia
4-3-10 Summer writes Honey, are you proposing a singularitarian approach for charting progress or just using a singularitarian timeline as a model?
Summer
4-3-10 Maria writes: Stross seems to be all over the forum today. He is somewhat of an singularitarian himself. Though he admitted in 2002 that he didn't specifically believe in the singularity effect, he then followed by saying: "I'm not 100% sure I believe in the singularity [effect]. Certainly I don't believe in the rapture of the nerds--the idea of a single point at which everything changes and all will be right thereafter. New technologies slow down radically after a period of rapid change during their assimilation. However, I can see a series of overlapping sigmoid curves that might resemble an ongoing hyperbolic curve if you superimpose them on one another, each segment representing the period of maximum change as a new technology appears."
His description of what he see in his own studies mirrors what a singularitarian would argue for the singularity effect.
Maria
4-3-10 Estella responds Except, Madre, that Stross argues against transhumanist Vernor Vinge who is considered the leader in singularity effect studies. Rather, Stross argues, as I believe Olivia is arguing, that singularity or not, the future can be plotted and predicted within a relative curve of probability, even taking chaos into account. Stross goes so far as to say, "Without a singularity, for massive change to occur, we'd require either a malthusian collapse, or repressive legislative/political forces. So, to that extent, any SF that doesn't try to address the issue is either a dystopia or a fantasy."
I would not think Mardi Gras would want to be seen as either a dystopia or a fantasy. Embracing some form of an intelligent singularity curve would be advisable, I think.
Estella
4-3-10 Jennifer writes: In case anyone is lost following these brilliant women, let me shed some light as my humanitarian effort for the week
The Singularity or the Singularity Effect is most common used to mean either a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humans will transition into post-humans, or, when used plural or stated as an effect, it denotes times when technological and/or vital development reaches a crest and is at its fastest.
This idea is very popular in trans-humans circles but it's also played with by mathematicians and hard SF writers to help chart future timelines and progressions.
Jennifer
4-5-10 Cris writes: Also, a singularitarian is someone who believes that the evolution of a super-intelligence is inevitable, whether it be through genetic engineering (thus a Human/human being) or AI. Personally, I think it's more likely that some kind of artificial construct will eventually become sentient, though exactly how that might happen I don't know because I don't have the hard science background I'd need to make that leap.
Olivia-- It's crucial in any kind of world-building exercise that the author/s begin with the here and how (or then ) and build from there. You certainly can't go willy-nilly into the future saying in this year X will happen because I say so.
The idea that new technologies slow down after an initial period of rapid growth seems like a good benchmark. If we took, for example, the invention of the steam engine--something that definitely changed the shape of the world--from its inception to being commonplace and overlaid that on a graph of the computer (or the Internet) I wonder whether we'd see a similar graphic depiction.
Jenn--mathematically, would we just do this on a graph? X being bench mark events such as first steam engine train, first railway completed, etc and Y being the year what do you think we'd get?
Leigh's comments also apply here, so I've copied them:
3.28.2010 at 6:59am Leigh wrote:If predicting a civilization through a forth-coming, you must have a clearly documented baseline as well as growth and change patterning.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. --Aristotle
Leading industries are finance, technology, manufacturing, medical, energy, transportation, programming, retail, and education.
Since ancient times, philosophers would argue that the cornerstones of civilization are at once its fall and its rise. These include religion, law, shelter, entertainment, education, commerce, and growth.
Leigh