Neverside

They wouldn't be able to be called Humans because homo sapiens are Humans. Homo erectus wasn't Human.

___________________

Signature Guidelines

Originally posted by pingu:

I haven't read the thread, but here goes my opinion:

Can you think it? That's how far technology will go.

^Possibly the best thing said in the entire convo. I concur with you on every lvl.

___________________

Neverside - In Development. Expected Release: Unknown.
Tortustudios.com - In Development. Expected Release: Summer 2006.( You can visit it now)

Originally posted by vierstein:

Why can't humans be called humans if we keep evolving?
I mean if we don't leave an extra species behind I see no reason why the name should be left behind.

Things are defined by their properties. Sounds vague, yes, but think about how you can tell what is a chair and what is an elephant. One is mobile, the other is not. One is large, the other is small(er). One has rough grey skin, the other has smooth wooden "skin". If you take humans from the moment when we branched off from the other apes and became a seperate species until today, you will notice that there have been some basic characterstics of biology, behaviour, society, existance and so on which have always held true. A human has at no point been able to fly. Humans have always lived for a set amount of time, and them died. Stuff like that. So if there are a core set of properties which have always been common to humans, than you could say that these form the essence of mankind. If enough of these are altered, what you end up with can no longer properly be called mankind. It could be better, it could be worse, but it's not man. Trying to define what is a human in an inherently philsophical question, and there are many opinions. But if you look at it from the point of view of a disinterested observerk, say a Martian, than the classification system for humans should be no different than for anything else. Which means properties. Change enough of them, and you've got a different thing on your hands.

So the question is: what would you rather be, human or something else. There is no guarantee that it will be better, no guarantee that it will be worse. But if or when humanity modifies itself past a certain point en masse, it will mean the death of humanity. A death are surely as if we had been wiped out by a metor or a plague. I for one see no real reason to do away with mankind. If for no other reason than for self-preservation. Every animal, from an ant to a lion to a dog, has an instinct for self-preservation. If I see myself as a human being, and a human being ceases to exist when I become something else, than this means quite literally the death of me.

I think that technology will progress far faster than most people would think. Progress grows exponentially, and so far we are used to thinking of progresss, if we think of it at all, as linear. So if X amount has changed within the past decade, X amount will change in the next decade, nor three times more. Well, we'll see.

Originally posted by pingu:

I haven't read the thread, but here goes my opinion:

Can you think it? That's how far technology will go.

It will go even further than that, further than you can imagine. A caveman could never have imagined the Internet, no matter how hard he tried (and yet somehow a good number of them ended up on it anyway...wierd). We can only imagine the next step, and once the next step has come we will imagine further, implement that, gain new powers to imagine, implement that. Quite a scary thought.

Last edited by Rictor, June 12th, 2006 10:40 AM (Edited 1 times)

Originally posted by schoi:

we will be able to talk to computers. We cant really do that yet.

We have speech recognision but it sucks.

TV Guide magazine will go out of business. Nobody will watch TV on a pre-determined schedule.

As wide area wireless devices become more common and more powerful, a new breed of proximity based p2p filesharing networks will appear. You will share files with your neighbors, and your neighbors neighbors, and so on. The RIAA and MPAA will ***** and moan, but 99% of these networks will go undetected.

In the next 15-20 years, video games will reach somewhat of a plateau in terms of their graphics, and consumers will become more interested in tactile feedback and physical interaction with the game world. I dont think it will be Virtual Reality in the classic sense where you are sitting in a chair with a visor, but for example the computer mouse (or something similar) will move to 3 dimensions instead of just two. We can already see this sort of thing in the upcoming nintendo Wii, but I think that is only the beginning.

Consider the current popularity of games like DDR or Guitar hero.

Sometime within the next 50-100 years, a new mode of mass communication will arise. Our grandparents may never watch scheduled Television.

___________________

Hello. I am Joe Shoop's Portfolio

Originally posted by Rictor:

Originally posted by pingu:

I haven't read the thread, but here goes my opinion:

Can you think it? That's how far technology will go.

It will go even further than that, further than you can imagine. A caveman could never have imagined the Internet, no matter how hard he tried (and yet somehow a good number of them ended up on it anyway...wierd). We can only imagine the next step, and once the next step has come we will imagine further, implement that, gain new powers to imagine, implement that. Quite a scary thought.

Well, I guess that is as far as technology will go. You kind of proved his point now, didn't you? If we imagine it and implement it, then continue with that cycle, it will only go as far as we can think of. Further and then we set new bounds. I don't think Pungu defined it for one person or a small minority of people, but rather the world society.

___________________

Neverside - In Development. Expected Release: Unknown.
Tortustudios.com - In Development. Expected Release: Summer 2006.( You can visit it now)

when i comes to it.

i do puzzle.

..

wifi everywhere, then VoWifi, to put those greedy cellphone providers out of business.

also, machines will become self aware. I'm working on the cisco MARS appliance, and it's very close to being self aware. it like, fixes itself, and learns, and does repairs, and tells ME i did something wrong.

we're getting there..

___________________

:: pop ::

Originally posted by nykoelle:

also, machines will become self aware. I'm working on the cisco MARS appliance, and it's very close to being self aware. it like, fixes itself, and learns, and does repairs, and tells ME i did something wrong.

we're getting there..

I think you are a little off there. In fact, what that device is doing....is nothling like becoming self-aware.

Originally posted by Wikipedia:

Self-awareness is the understanding that one exists. Furthermore, it includes the concept that one exists as an individual, separate from other people, with private thoughts

Way off.

___________________

Happywebmasters.com Resident Photoshop Expert

I said on the way to being self aware... one of the main things in the step to that is the ability to learn an adapt. A machine similar to our desktop cannot adapt to threats and learn and protect itself. We can give it software to do that, but that always has to be updated by a human. The device I'm working on has the capacity to read the packets and learn, see what is in them, and how the network responds to them, and decides itself through many, many, many many many algorithms, what to do, then adds that information to it's internal database, and goes on from there.

I still say that's another step in our direction to awareness. It's learning, primitave, but it's still legitimate learning.

___________________

:: pop ::