[ExI] mazlow's heirarchy of needs

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
Subject: Re: [ExI] mazlow's heirarchy of needs

 

>.In Maslow's defence, I think you would prefer the net to go down in your
house rather than the sewage system.

 

On the contrary sir.  I would honestly prefer to dig a hole in the back
yard, bang together a rudimentary shelter and make do without running water
than go without running information.  Do let us ponder how things have
changed, so quickly.  As recently as ten years ago, I would have thought
such a notion insane.  But now I would rather do without sewer than
internet.  Astonishing!  I never would have thought some technology would
come along that would make television irrelevant, but it did.  In all this
traumatic five days, I had to keep reminding AT&T that I don't get TV, don't
want it, haven't had it for five years now and never missed it.  I didn't
even care about the phone, but I missed that internet, and it was a hellish
five days without it.  There is an important lesson in here.  What if
*everybody's* internet went down simultaneously?  Oh we would be so screwed.

 

>. But it is amazing how fast we have adapted to a world where information
is accessible. It is also integrated in many parts of our life: the food,
shelter, social stuff are all partially linked to it.

 

It sure is!  Our world will not work right without internet.  This suggests
we need to think more about emergency procedures if it goes down, for
whatever reason.


On 06/12/2012 01:06, spike wrote:

 

>>.Isn't is astonishing that a mere 20 yrs ago, we didn't really even have
the internet.  What the heck did we do?  Go around not knowing stuff?


>.I think that is about right.Cheers for a globalized, networked and
non-not-knowing-stuff world! -- Anders Sandberg. 

 

A couple weeks ago we had a discussion here on why aerospace don't use
up-to-date processors.  It occurred to me that medical instruments don't use
the latest stuff either, for the same reasons: in any application where
someone's life is hanging on a microprocessor, the overall performance is
nearly irrelevant, but reliability is everything.  So the manufacturer is
better off using an old, tried and true processors with lots of reliability
data, rather than the latest hotrod.

 

By extension, we need to think long and hard about how the internet has
gradually become or is in the process of becoming a feature of modern
society on which many lives hang, or will soon.  If the net went down
everywhere, I honestly feel we could have hundreds of deaths indirectly
resulting, within days.  Example left as an exercise for the reader.  I can
think of a bunch of manufacturing processes that wouldn't work because it
depends so heavily on just-in-time delivery of components.  I don't know how
grocery stores would do their orders; we no longer have the proper
infrastructure to do snail-mail based inventory or restocking.  All
paper-based mail inventory systems are an order of magnitude too slow.

 

The internet going down is more catastrophic than the apocalypse.  If Jesus
were to return, whooping ass and so forth, we could google on some sort of
strategy for how to deal.  But if that internet goes down, we are profoundly
screwed.

 

Hmmmm.

 

spike

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