Tim Tyler: Technology explosion

Technology Explosion is a simple name for a familiar phenomenon - namely that technological evolution is accelerating in an explosive manner.

Technology is exploding in the same way that the atomic nucleii in a nuclear bomb explode: by exhibiting an unconstrained exponential growth process.

The Technology Explosion is analogous to I. J. Good's Intelligence Explosion. Transcript: http://alife.co.uk/essays/technology_explosion/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• technology
• explosion
• evolution

[sjatkins]

The intelligence of humans will not increase exponentially without major upgrades to the brain. Yet elsewhere you are opposed to cyborgs. This seems inconsistent. Uploading is a much more difficult proposition. Do you support it? The brain is very limited in many wasy regardless of how much technology outside itself it integrates with. It is the bottleneck or our development.

[tmtyler]

We can do software upgrades to the brain - but hardware upgrades are more challenging. I expect brain hardware to mostly be replaced, not upgraded.

Video about the significance of uploading on my ToDo list. For now: uploading will become technically possible someday - but will probably be of minor significance.

[cynocephalusw]

You can find thousands of examples of decontextualisation rows like this: Spear, bow and arrow, crossbow, gun. ..Decontextualisation is a constant in change.

[cynocephalusw]

Another interesting phenomenon in technology explosion is what I call decontextualisation. In decontextualisation things, that are connected closely are then separated and made independent, mainly by creating a new layer, which is corresponding between the former layers. Here some instances:

Mammals nourish their offspring by feeding them with milk. This makes the offspring independent of searching for food. A spear makes the hunter independent of getting close to prey.

[cynocephalusw]

Using the metaphor of an explosion, we have to consider, that there is something I call metaheat, which has to lead the seemingly directional evolution in a more and more stochastic manner and finally will stop the evolution, because the meta-heat phenomenons will destroy the fundaments of the information cumulating evolutionary process. It may be a little bit like a supernova.

[lookinthru]

Also, ...... I can easily imagine an alien engineering team determining that, instead of using metal and plastic,..... Screws and nuts, ...... Their machinery could be much more easily self replicated if they were designed to assemble themselves from local elements, one molecule at a time,....... The blueprint for construction would have to be coded in chemistry and dispersed fractally throughout the machine.......... Not hard to envision at all..........

[lookinthru]

Yah, ..... Very interesting...... All of nature is indeed technology........ What is the difference between a seed pod designed to travel the air or sea currents, ..... And a space ship carrying peole to another planet........ They are essentially the very same technology.......... The one is simply an extrapolation and optimization of the earlier design, adapted for different variable sets. The Lotus Flower seed pods looks quite like an Apollo command module.............