[ExI] dropping the ball, was RE: seamless uploading

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amon Zero
Subject: Re: [ExI] seamless uploading

 

On 14 July 2011 17:39, Amon Zero <amon at doctrinezero.com> wrote:

On 14 July 2011 12:31, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:


We're getting pretty close to dropping the ball entirely. Few seem to
be aware or care.



Maybe you're watching the wrong trajectory? 



>.By which I'm not trying to be snide in any way, just saying that
conceptions of "the future" have a tendency to shift over time. Just because
the future we were expecting might not ever arrive, it doesn't mean that
dramatic developments aren't in the post, you know?  -A

 

 

Ja.  Consider the impact of the development of the internet, and the www in
the early 90s, which is still rocking our world.  Where would we be without
having the world at our fingertips?  That stunning development changed
everything, and is still having an enormous impact.  For those of us who are
heavy internet users, that alone tacks on about 20 IQ points.  

 

Never was this so apparent as when I was involved in a lawsuit recently with
four plaintiffs, none of which are internet users apparently.  They needed
their lawyers to do *eeeeverything* for them at 300 bucks an hour, and they
did it all wrong anyway.  We saw contradictory testimony, easily falsified
sworn affidavits, self-contradictions eeeverywhere, irrelevant testimony
which went on for days, all of which would have been avoided had they sat
down with a good internet connection and learned a little about Oregon law.

 

My ability to just look up a few laws and outline a case made it simple for
my lawyer, and we won everything.  We didn't get fully paid for legal
expenses and probably never will, but at least we didn't lose our property.
Without the internet, we probably would have lost it all.  Those without an
information pipe really are living in a different world than you and I
inhabit.

 

There are plenty of developments I can see coming.  We have a crying need to
replace the education system as we have known it, where one adult stands up
in front of about 30 kids and talks.  That needs to be replaced by computer
based learning.  I have watched my own son do his educational software,
which isn't great but is improving all the time.  I fear school will be
mostly a waste of time for him.  I look at what I have learned just since I
became a heavy internet user in the past 15 years and how effective an
education tool it is.  

 

Our world is slow to change, but it does eventually change.  I can envision
a world in which plenty of us live in homes which are mostly dark when it is
dark outside, mostly cold when it is cold outside, but all with low-power
high bandwidth internet connections.

 

spike

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