My next book is Rapture For The Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ, due out from Random House in fall of 2008. Amazon has a page up, but no jacket image or description yet. Until the publisher makes a sample chapter available, I’ll post samples here:
Survival Of The Smartest: Will Computers Out-Evolve Us?
(from Rapture For The Geeks, by Richard Dooling.)
Alongside the snail’s pace of biological evolution, where it can take millions of years just to develop something as basic as an opposable thumb, computers go from megabytes to gigabytes in five years. Fourteen years from the personal computer to the World Wide Web!
Biological evolution and human technology both show continual acceleration, indicated by the shorter time to the next event (two billion years from the origin of life to cells; fourteen years from the PC to the World Wide Web).
–Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005), page 17.
Even on a grander time scale, human evolution is about as fast-paced and exciting as continental drift. It’s taken roughly four million years for human brains to triple in size (from 400 ml to 1400 ml); one hopes we’ve tripled our processing power, as well. Woo hoo! During that time we have “evolved'’ from throwing rocks at each other to throwing bombs at each other. We’ve gone from foraging on the savannas to pawing through the meat cooler at Bag & Save. Progress, maybe, but nothing close to the relentless acceleration of technological evolution.
We are sluggish biological sorcerers with whiz-bang technological apprentices. What if the tech apprentices are about to take over? Are you with them, or against them? Are you ready to journey to the near future and acquire the knowledge and skills you’ll need to succeed in a world run by supercomputers?
If you proceed beyond this chapter, you should at all times keep in mind the teachings of Jack Handey, an insightful stand-up atomic philosopher and quantum cybernetic humorist: “When you’re riding in a time machine way far into the future, don’t stick your elbow out the window, or it’ll turn into a fossil.'’
What If The Universe Came With A Search Box?
When you’re in a panic to make an appointment and you can’t find your car keys or your billfold or purse, do you instinctively begin formulating search terms you might use if the real world came with Google Desktop Search or a command line interface? Whoever created the infinite miracle we glibly call “The Universe'’ is surely at least as smart as the guys in Berkeley California who made Unix. The Unix creators wisely included a program called “find,'’ which enables you to instantly find any file on your system, especially any file in your “home'’ directory. Another command called “grep'’ enables you to find any line of text in any file on your entire system. Mac OS X uses Spotlight to do essentially the same thing, with some spiffy visuals added; even Microsoft finally included “Instant Search'’ in Vista.
So why can’t the Creator of the Universe come up with a decent search box? Why can’t you summon a command line and search your real-world home for “Honda car keys,'’ and specify rooms in your house to search instead of folders or paths in your home directory? It’s a crippling design flaw in the real-world interface. And while we’re at it, how about an UNDO button? Wouldn’t that come in handy in the real world? Especially if you just totaled your car or contracted a venereal disease? Why can’t you just hit Ctrl-Z or click on the swirly little UNDO arrow icon and put everything back the way it was before? If only your mouth came with a backspace key.
If you have one of those days where all of life seems corrupted, broken, full of error messages and warnings, and the kids are all out somewhere performing illegal operations, buffer overruns, segmentation faults, and destabilizing the system. On those days, what you need is called: Real Life System Restore. Restore Your Life To Last Known Good Configuration?
(from Rapture For The Geeks, by Richard Dooling.
I have to admit, I’m feeling something like rapture hearing there’s a new Dooling book on the way. It’s been quite a wait (tough on us impulsive types). Thanks for the good news.
Left by Steve C on February 15th, 2008