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Introduction To The Future

This is a PAST event. See "Meeting Notes" section for audio, video, documents and other information.

Original event date/time: Friday January 27th, 2006, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

This will be the first official Rocky Mountain Future Salon meeting, a discussion group on a variety of future-related topics including accelerating change, technical singularity, intelligence amplification and other contemporary aspects of computing and science. Potential questions for discussion to be brainstormed and circulated before the meeting.

Abstract:

The purpose of "Introduction To The Future" is to introduce a variety of ideas about the future, some of which I agree with, and some of which I disagree with. But the point here is simply to present the ideas and invite you all to discuss them.

So this won't be a lecture, or a straight, linear talk with a pre-determined conclusion. But it could be more fun for exactly that reason.

Here's a summary of the ideas I plan to present (time permitting):

• The "Laws" of technology: Moore's Law, Rock's Law, Kryder's Law, Gilder's Law, Wirth's Law, Amara's Law, etc.

• The Semiconductor Roadmap: 130 nm, 90 nm, 65 nm, 45 nm photolithography manufacturing. Possible future transitions to nanotechnology-based computing. Ray Kurzweil's concept of "Paradigm Shifts" in computing hardware. Hans Moravec's comparison of computing power with the computing power of the brain.

• Charles Darwin's principle of natural selection, and generalizations to sociological and technological evolution, e.g. Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.

• Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar, cosmological "generalizations" of Moore's Law.

• Energy flow and Cosmology: Eric Chaisson's Energy Rate Density, Nikolai Kardachev's Kardachev Scale, relationship between energy flow and Darwin's evolution.

• Vernor Vinge's Singularity

• Accelerating Change and it's impact on humanity: Alvin Toffler's concept of "Future Shock", Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction".

• Impacts of Moore's Law outside the traditional "computer" field: brain-computer interfaces, neutraceuticals/nootropics, genetic engineering.

• Utopian Futures: Max More's Transhumanism (or Extropianism), Eliezer Yudkowsky's Singularitianism, Alcor.

• Dystopian Futures: Bill Joy, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us", Theodore Kaczynski and Neo-Ludditism, Jarad Diamond and ecological collapse, Marshall Brain and Manna, global warming, peak oil, grey goo.

This is a past event.

Meeting Notes: