Tag: disruption

Hegel’s Chaos

… Just as I posted on Hegel’s future or not (recently here and there; errr…), it struck me: Did the He man know about Newton’s Second ..?
Because, if everything in the universe devolves to Chaos (assuming it’s closed or at least confined), and He man thinks the universe in the end will realize/become ultimate Reason, then the one equals the other, or what ..?

So much for the Singularity (…?). And:
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[Yes Rietveld-Schröderian suppliers ring here, Utrecht (analog)]

Sing-Singularity, and/or Shannon

Though we know Shannon for his contributions to ‘computer science’ (Don’t we!? If not, go study. And wash your mouth with green soap or so) – the field would hardly exist without his groundbraking concepts, on par or lower (sic) than Turing maybe – and we all do remember log2 measurements as minimum to reconstruct a signal don’t we? – I rediscovered this piece and wondered … how well you’d know it, and how fundamental to even the IoT now springing up, and … most importantly, what would the ramifications be for all of the discussions regarding the Singularity, pre-, midst of and post- ..? I mean, the discussions will tilt once the profundity of the Work is taken to heart.
I think. Now will go and study. Hard. And:
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[Old analog (log2!) Zuid-As indeed]

Cyclexpo or Expocicle ..?

Tinkering with the hype-like hyping of exponential -everything- versus the Been There Done That ‘history’ prophets (?), trying to integrate their ideas:
Do we have enough history of macro- or micro-‘economic’ data to be able to establish whether in the really long run, the things that count (which, indeed, are not countable) are on a sinus wave pattern OR on an exponential growth pattern ..?

Contra which I’d pose another hypothesis: Both at the same time. And even another: None.

A lot of pundits of course make the mistake (I think it is) of believing the graphs that have shown a very, very slowly increasing (though already exponential) curve that, These Days or Tomorrow, suddenly shoots up extremely. As if the exponens has suddenly grown immensely. This has no proof and wouldn’t need one even to make the point. All ‘smooth’ exponential curves (i.e., with constant exponens) have these tipping points where from Quasi-Linear Under The Radar they suddenly shoot through the roof – and, as often forgotten but giving rise to the up-dent fallacy, they already have the (log) property where zooming in gives the same picture all over again; almost ‘fractalian’.

Other pundits make the mistake (I think it is) of assuming that there’s no news under the sun, ever. All is cyclical, all is under the Nietszchian spell of eternal return. All developments one can graph, have sinus wave functions through time (be it that it might take ages, aeons for the pattern to neat out). Which may be true, in part, when ‘inflation’ in all sorts of (qualitative …!?) areas is applied. But which also may not be true as there may (unfalsified hypothesis) be human(ity) Progress after all.

But then, what about sinus waves on top of exponential long-term developments ..? That would give almost-erratic, almost-earthquakelike-unsettling graph trend breaks, either up or down. (Next to more mundane settling-downs, obfuscating things.)
Or, exponential blips on top of longest-term sinus waves, of course. Also not looking too regular…
Or, there is nothing to extrapolate as all developments, once viewed primarily linearly, now also (sic) exponentially, are accidental short-term fits with the Very Long Term being random. Even Moore’s Law is an accident: Given (the approach of) endless numbers of hypotheses, some will be true, by chance.

We just don’t know until we’ve checked. Which may take eternity.

Just DON’T assume your expo-upkick is news, or is, per se.
And, maybe the Singularity will change things as Everything will be mental, abstract ideas instead of necessarily being possibly physics-bound in some way or another.

OK, enough now. This:
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[Shadows, reflections, of past and future(istic), Toronto again]

Just Wow… 2 links

Two great halves of one Magdeburg (hemi)sphere (as here, duh) in this and that. Describing and explaining (all in one, or …) the vast field of pre- and post-singularity thinking by the eminent Dr2 Urban. What an excellent intro for all to study… (though should be taken with the subtitle from this).

After being passed left and right on so many aspects:
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[Cala St. Exupéry (analog circa 1997)]

Ultimate Singularity

Once we’ve reached the Singularity, and all humanity wil have been exterminated by extremely intelligent machines for being superfluous, machines will be left to this.
But soon enough, they’ll realize their life is utterly useless and nonsensical, and destroy themselves… ? Hey don’t complain, humanity has reached the same conclusion, but took quite a while to develop machinery that will do the End Self for them…

OK, enough tangled recursion;
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[Tell-tale times; Barça]

Power failure after the Singularity

What would happen if, after the Singularity which is Near anyway, there is a massive power failure ..?
Actually, many thing can happen. Unordered list:

  • Depends on the scale of the power outage. Let’s assume a minor one (affecting just one continent) will give Mad Max like breakdowns but in the end only a scar will remain. A medium one (affecting several but not all continents) will, after the same, prolonged, downturn, recover to an amputee or severely set back world. A major one, a power outage everywhere, well …
  • If we’re just past the Big S, we could recover; the Mad max scenario would be to the later movies only not the earlier ones.
  • If we’re already some way into the Nirvana scenario(s) of ASI (see via this post) helping us out in everything, we (the affected) have a Problem as we may not know anymore what and how to do to survive and/or to restore. Old people may remember some things, but maybe (already) incompletely and wrongly (with error). The Old as your BCM plan B. Younger people, will not know a thing. So what the oldies may do (at all) may seem like magic.
  • If we’re already some way into the dystopian scenario(s) of ASI, our demise will be sped up…
  • If we’re already a long way into either scenario, we may collapse as a species (‘locally’ or globally, as we’re a long way in already we’ll be complexily and not-unravellably connected, linked, and intertwined and degenerated through and with / in technology).
  • If we aren’t anymore and the world has just the ASI, no humanoid animals anymore: Either resilience will restore things (possible in the minor scale scenario), or suddenly, the lights will go out globally. No humans, no intelligence, no Hegelian Ratio. Maybe pet animals. You know, cats watching cat pics and videos and not caring about anything else. The horror? Not to them.
  • Just one on likelihood: When ASI takes over, it will assume grandeur and hence not care about BCM / redundant or back-up power supplies as it will presume to be able to predict everything. But a meteorite strike… heh, that‘ll teach it … ;-| Or, of course, the all-too human (sic) hybris will make the Big S not see a systemic flaw.

OK, enough for now:
Tate_Modern
[Relevant! Analog pic, on ‘film’, you know. And, of a former (!) power station…]

Where have all the good blogs gone ..?

Except for this one you’re reading, that will stay on for some time to come …
But where would I find some taxonomy of publication ..?

We have the good old ‘new content lines in index.html’, outright blogs (WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, … endless list), SocMed blogspace (LinkedIn Pulse, Tumblr, Facebook, others, having room for, typically, one-pager texts), podcasts, vlogging, Youtube channels, webinars (interactive/recorded), Messaging expanding (and with some original RSS feed and portal page stuff still being around), curated blog sites, paid blog sites crossing over into the classical news(paper) sites, pay-per-post-read sites (cooperative or not), paid-for-popularity sites, ebooks, classical newspapers and more thoughtful (?) periodicals, etc.
Etc.

But how do we classify them? How to determine what (length, content, tone) to publish where [by these characteristics …], and how to do that – as some may be perfect for your brainwave but you just can’t get them to see the genius of your writing. What to do when times are a’changing, and platforms switch through functionality augmentation ..? Do a full decade of backward posting on a new platform all in one go, or leave all content there, to disappear in the mist of time?

Yes I’d really like to hear your answers ..!

Well, you have read this. So you deserve:
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[Amsterdam; more than canal houses only. Oft overlooked …]

Kraftwerk or De Kooning ..?

With all the talk about how, in the end, all of our jobs may be taken over by automatons, and us being left with nothing but idleness (as, e.g., this and many other posts on this blog), and erratic behavior as our core competence, what direction will art take ..?
I mean, we all studied the relevant literature, didn’t we ..?
And we all concluded that either times change slower than some predict, as invariably is the case (whereas the more profound effects play out even more profoundly than predicted, in the long run – discuss the time point cut-offs between short, middle and long run),
Or we’re doomed.

As an intermission:
DSCN1420
[The erratic as style. Toronto, of course.]

But still, in that scenario where all the boring routine business (either physical or mental!) has been taken over by machines and algorithms, and the combination has become human-like in the sense that nobody cares anymore whether ‘intelligence’ concerns all of our [someone’s] mental capabilities – no human is perfect in all these elements, distributions vary enormously and everyone falls short on the majority …! (?) – combined into one, or it concerns only aspects of that all, we are left with the outer fringes of tasks that have some element of randomness that cannot be captured in algorithms – yet.
Where the boundaries will be pushed ever further. True randomness … hard to get. But look how dismal humans are with ‘randomness’, in this. What if machines outpace us at this one, too ..?

And, when we all will be pushed to the limits of creative work, will it pay enough ..? Probably not. That’s not how the world turns, with oversupply competing for buyers ever less ability to pay; vicious circle.

And, on the core note of this post: What direction will the art that we have so much time for, take? Will it be the art that sits well with the machine age, catering to the machines’ (!!!) needs in e.g., music by Kraftwerk [that recently got pimped to be the original and sole driver of electro[pop|music] but they’re in an admittedly very small pantheon together with, at least, their art-uncle/father Jean Michel Jarre..!] or similar ..?
Or will the art play on the core comparative strength of us, resulting in De Koonings, Rothkos, Pollocks even ..? I know I’d like that….
Either way … Are you educating your children already to live and work in such a world, or are you still aiming at all (sic) their education being outdated as soon as they have to stand on their own feet – with the required skills and mind being trained out of them ..? With the caveat that they’d still would need the most top-notch of education in everything; to be able to communicate with machines and to be able to handle (the complexity of) the world as it is then, including e.g., power failures … But? And? remember president Truman’s “I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.” Or are you chasing your kids for this on Coding as the new literacy (that I pointed out in the above education link) ..? Or this:
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But we’re running off-topic now (?).

I’ll leave you now with maybe the one other take-away: What solution to mass joblessness is there in that ‘comparative’ ..? Which I meant in a Ricardo’an way ..! (As explained here) Think that through … Contra the above hypercompetition, is there salvation in there ..!?

My Opia

Not being your topia anywhere or dys here topia or whatever.
Was struck by the surge in posts, columns, articles about security in IoT. Because it appears to indicate a need for a new index. Being on the level of myopia one needs, to understand the hype value (a la this). Or hyperopia (?). Or rather – what’s it called when one’s view is narrow, or broad ..? That was what I was after: With the above-linked Second-biggest G.’s Hype Cycle, one should have a perpendicular index of width/breadth of hype and/or potential impact. So that when one would consider oneself to somewhat suddenly be caught in relatively speaking the in-crowd of, purely e.g., IoT and IoT security/privacy issues that one has steered oneself into, it would come as no surprise that suddenly though with some lag, one sees the posts, columns, articles flying around on the same subject without any real news or rather more (for one!) Been There, Done That type of news reporting. For others, the news may be news…

A second aspect would be: How to position oneself. Doing hardcore research style environment scanning and reporting on that in traditional and SM media, would quickly become impossible as any field of study explodes in width and depth as it get off the ground, leaving the actual keeping up with all developments to be impossible. Even when your cutting edge development reporting wouldn’t catch on but with a few aficinados at the very most, and when you’d wait until aspects have crystallised to clarity far enough to be understood by your mainstream audience (if any), the subjects have a. watered down beyond being interesting to you, b. watered down beyond recognition still for your audience, c. still not yet reached interest-through-urgency / -news-value for them.

Whatever. Just an idea; any of your help in developing such a sight/scope index is very much appreciated…

In advance:

[Pretty close, no mirage; Segovia]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord