Let’s examine some laws and human history for a bit.
Moore’s Law of computing says the number of transistors on integrated circuits, which translates into memory, speed, capacity, computer intelligence etc… doubles approximately every two years. This has been going on since the first computers appearing in the 1950’s.
Why is Moore’s Law’s computing power doubling every 2 years so consistent after over 60 years of computer improvements? Well, because we’ve been using computers to build the next generation computers.
If you are fond of math let’s look at how Moore’s Law applies:
The first
UNIVAC computer in 1951 would be able to make about 2000 simple additions or subtractions per second. Of course, that’s way faster than any human can calculate. So UNIVAC was great for accelerating calculations and would not need any sleep. Therefore computers became a complement to our lives, allowing us to focus on the more creative aspects of work while the computers assisted in processing speed.
According to Moore’s Law though, every 2 years after 1951, the computing speed doubled. Therefore, for each 2 years after 1951, the amount of calculations per second would double. This means in 1971, 20 years later (10 2 year cycles, increasing the amount of calculations each cycle), the 2000 calculations per second in 1951 would have been increased by 2 to the power 10 (2000 x 2^10 milliseconds = nearly 2 million calculations per second). Let’s now warp to today, which starting off in 1971 is 21 2 year cycles further down the line, where the speed of computing has probably increased by another 2^21 times. This means about 4 x 10^12 calculations per second.
Well guess what, the fastest computer (the K computer) on Earth today is Japanese and is 2500 times faster than that at 10 x 10^15 calculations per second. That is a 10 with 15 zeros. However, our desktop computers are pretty close to the Moore’s Law’s predicted speed.
Ok, let’s now look at the future near the point of Singularity… The fastest computer will be 2^8 times faster than one in 2013 (singularity being predicted for 2029). That’s 256 times the K computer’s speed. I won’t even write down the number but there are 18 zeros now.
Feel outmatched by our little mobile devices?
Well you shouldn’t because our brain, though structured differently, can execute 2 x 10^16 calculations per second. You’re just not aware of all the power sitting inside your skull and it is attached to the rest of our body, which let’s face it, does a lot more for us than just compute. 2 x 10^16 calculations per second is currently more than what the K computer can achieve by a factor of 10.
So in 2029, computers will presumably be able to compute 100 times faster than our own brain, hence the theory we can make them intelligent machines, and not only in speed but in creativity too.
Now let’s look back just a little at what humanity has accomplished with the Internet:
- The Internet was really born in the 1960’s as a government funded project along with some private firms to create a stable distributed network of early computers. At that time it was a closed circuit and really just experimental.
- In the 1980’s, more government funds and private commercial efforts brought it to the public for the first time merging a few emergent networks together. This network was stabilized into a single system in 1995, creating the ISP system we know of today.
- In the mid 1990’s, the eCommerce boom and web site revolution generated massive amounts of available information discoverable on the Web.
-
Google incorporated in 1998 with a single product, the Google Search engine, and dominated over the others because it was just a superior use of the available technology at the time.
- In 1999 Napster became famous for peer to peer network systems and caused lots of issues in the traditional music industry.
- Internet crash of 2000-2001 where Internet businesses were over evaluated and many perished, giving birth to some solid internet business models.
- 2001 to 2012. Growth and maturation of the Internet as a separate “world”. i.e. Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter are now places people “live”. Also, people can live complete virtual lives on the Internet through social and game software like Second Life, Entropia Universe and other 3D games where you can have a home, clothing, children and do all sorts of “real life” activities.
- In 2010 was even the first low orbit Internet connection made when astronaut T.J. Carter posted his first unassisted Twitter update from the International Space Station, expanding the Internet to orbital space.
The point is, it took us over 40 years to structure the Internet to a form of maturity when the bubble burst near the year 2000. Then it took only 12 years to go from online tool to immersive experience and carrying the Web in our pockets.
Mobile phone technology followed a similar trend from the 1950’s to today, where now our pocket devices are almost as powerful as our desktop computers and are fully internet capable.
Today through
Skype, a free voice over IP app, we can place a free call to Japan on my mobile device and speak as long as I want for free. This alone was unthinkable 10 years ago when everybody wanted to become rich through the Internet explosion.
Today, I can share a video of an incident happening in the middle of nowhere and stream it directly to Youtube and have people and media alike around the world capture that as news within seconds. Youtube by the way was born only 7 years ago.
Today, 1 person out of 4 is connected to the Internet. That’s close to 2 billion people. It is estimated that by the year 2020, 66% of the world, more than 3 billion people at that time will have regular internet access and almost all of them will be accessing it from mobile devices to boot!
This means that 2/3 of the world will be able to get information, tools, software and much more from most other brains in the world. There will be no more secrets and there sure will be way more understanding between us, and a lot more people will be collaborating together on projects across borders.
Now let’s also look at the Open source movement. Prior to the year 2000, if you wanted to create software, you needed a company to do so and you needed to buy the software just like any other product. Now, most people with a little technical knowledge can create software on their own or very easily on their desktops. Right now, making a new piece of software requires a single person, a normal computer and in most cases free tools from the web and boom a few hours later, there is a new game, or application floating on iTunes , the Android store, or the web ready to be freely downloaded. Software creation has been roughly following Moore’s Law and has been following the same pattern of evolution as that of the computer and handheld devices.
This acceleration and building tech on top of technology is very exciting and brings us closer and closer to the moment of singularity we spoke about earlier.
Scientists have been working on nanorobots for years. These are robots that are small enough to enter the bloodstream, enter cells and even manipulate matter at an atomic level. This is very cool stuff where biological molecules are used as motors to move them around and DNA as power and memory device. Yet thanks to computer and software progressing fast they could eventually have a wireless connection, memory, reprogramming capability and the ability to think on their own intelligently. Because these little buggers will be able to manipulate matter at an atomic level, it means they can be programmed to replicate to handle bigger jobs.
Don’t worry, these are not expected to be in application until… well, around 2030 or so, where they will be smarter than the average human anyway, so they will probably not normally mess things up…
Imagine having a few of these things at hand. And say you want a new shirt made out of a certain non-allergenic material you like. Now what you will do is go on the Internet and look for the shirt program you want, likely programmed by some guys in their basement in Indonesia as an Open source project or for fun. Give it a bunch of junk materials, like recycling and garbage, some air and dirt if you have it, and it will reproduce enough nanobots to build the shirt in the color you wanted in a few minutes using the chemical structure you wanted (pollution free, allergen free and what have you) by consuming the garbage you gave it. Heck, if the shirt doesn’t fit perfectly, you can always order the nanobots to disassemble it to harmless chemicals, or even lunch. When their job is done you can order them into a little container for later use.
Using your imagination, we can think of other applications like food built from waste, surgery executed without knives or needles and power generation with absolutely no environmental consequence.
What does that mean for our society?
- If information is readily available to anyone at any time from any source, official or not.
- If Artificial Intelligence surpasses human Intelligence
- You can make anything out of anything using super intelligent nanobots
- People have the means to create software on their own easily through open source, free software creation tools and advances in computer power.
Why would we be working for a living?
Why would there be any need for people in positions of power?
Why would we have national armies or even war?
Why would there be a need for money in the first place?
We would be living in a state of harmony where technology would do all the hard labor, figure out solutions before there are problems and would essentially run all of our systems. Heck computers will likely achieve some scientific breakthroughs and create great works of art.
Not only that but the AI will be able to improve upon itself further, without our involvement. Heck, computers will improve faster without our involvement at that point.
People would be free to live peacefully with each other doing whatever pleases them, whether it is art, science, sports, whatever. Poverty, war, famine and harsh conditions are therefore a thing of the past.
Now some of you think that this is a dangerous time, especially if AI think for us. Imagery from movies like
Terminator,
iRobot and many others come to mind where the most powerful AI takes over and tries to enslave or annihilate humanity for its own good.
But I don’t think we can count on science fiction authors to predict everything correctly. After all,
1984 didn’t really happen the way
George Orwell depicted after all.
I can’t predict what will happen. But look at the news and the apparent revolutions brewing in the world, for the most part peaceful. Things are changing. Fast, and for the most part the little guy is taking good decisions usurping the great powers that have until today been able to direct the populations along the wrong path.
It’s quite encouraging to see beyond the troubles we see today into a potentially very rewarding future.
Think about it. Think about your involvement in the new world. I hope, like me, you will working on enabling a bright future for us all.
