We are now in the transition from the Information Age to the Shift Age. In recent columns I have positioned the recent financial melt down and global economic collapse as the beginning of a painful transitional restructuring between ages. Just as the 1970s with all its stagflation and unprecedented turmoil was the transitional period between the Industrial Age and the Information Age, so is this time a transitional period between the Information Age and the Shift Age.
The changes that we observe around us are accelerating, and in a positive feedback loop the successive cycles feed on the previous ones’ effects. The source of these changes is technology, as application of the increased knowledge we have of the world around us. As individuals, and as societies we have demonstrated to be very capable of adapting to the changes of our environment, but this necessarily has limits.
Smartphones now
account for 10% of all cell phone sales, according to research
released Monday at the Smartphone
Summit in Vegas (and their sales are about to overtake those
for laptops). When that happens, I’m predicting that, among the
huge changes having data storage with you at all times will mean,
will include major differences for disaster management and
terrorism survival.
This is an issue near and dear to me. Those with long memories
may remember that I got my start in homeland security creating a
series of “Terrorism Survival” modules (I no longer maintain them,
sadly, since the sales were never enough to justify the expense)
that could be downloaded to your smartphone. Users could navigate
from the broadest category of preparations or response to extremely
detailed information in only 3 clicks. In a worst-case scenario,
where users weren’t able to communicate at all, they still had the
most important information literally in the palms of their hands (I
calculated that having the same information in the original paper
forms would have required that each time you left the house in the
morning you’d have to heft a 300+ page bundle — and when things
went to hell in a handbasket you’d still have to figure out where
in that bundle the relevant information was located!). (cont.)
By Edward Willett This piece was originally posted
hereon Edward’s blogHassenpfeffer.
I’m a hard-line skeptic when it comes to the topic of ESP (extra-sensory perception). I don’t believe in
telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, or people bending flatware
just by looking at it.
That said, I’m pretty confident that in the near future
mind-reading will be possible. Not for us, though: for our
machines.
In fact, machines can already read our minds, to a limited
extent.
Just recently, Ambient Corporation demonstrated a
neckband that translates thought into speech…sort of.
It takes some training to use, and requires “a level above
thinking,” according to Michael Callahand, inventor of the Audeo with fellow
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researcher Thomas
Coleman and co-founder with Coleman of the Ambient Corporation.
Rather than broadcasting a person’s thoughts, it picks up on
nerve signals deliberately, but soundlessly, sent to the vocal
cords, and relays those signals wirelessly to a computer, which
then converts them into words spoken by a computerized voice.
The current system only recognizes about 150 words and phrases,
but an improved version is supposed to be out by the end of the
year that doesn’t have a vocabulary limit, because instead of
recognizing specific words and phrases, it will identify the
distinct bits of sound, called phonemes, that we use to construct
complete words.
The potential replacement of humans by robots
for love and sex is not shocking, it is preferable. It could be
more satisfying for everyone, sexually and emotionally. Just as the
simultaneous relationships of polyamory require a more mature level
of self-knowledge and interpersonal communication, so too could
synthetic partners take human skill sets to a whole new level. What
would it be like to have a relationship with an AI that knows you
better than you know yourself?
Sex with robots is far more efficient, it avoids the whole
search problem and many other problems. Randomness, variability,
and exploration are lauded, applauded and possible, not shunned and
shamed. Not to mention far more acceptable than being gay or
non-mainstream sexually in any way in current society.
Adios taboos. How could sex with robots be avoidable in a
society demanding ever higher levels of self-expression and
fulfillment?
There are too many other dynamics in interhuman relationships
for ongoing sexual fulfillment, a quick glance at craigslist will
easily confirm this. Sex could become like going to the bathroom,
something most people prefer to do alone without other humans
around. It is very personal.
Views of space travel have grown increasingly pessimistic in the
last decade. This is not surprising: SETI still has
received no unambiguous requests for more Chuck Berry from its
listening posts, NASA is busy
re-inventing flywheels and citizens even of first-world countries
feel beleaguered in a world that seems increasingly hostile to any
but the extraordinarily privileged. Always a weathervane of the
present, speculative fiction has been gazing more and more inwardly
– either to a hazy gold-tinted past (fantasy, both literally and
metaphorically) or to a smoggy rust-colored earthbound future
(cyberpunk).
The philosophically inclined are slightly more optimistic.
Transhumanists,
the new utopians, extol the pleasures of a future when our bodies,
particularly our brains/minds, will be optimized (or at least not
mind that they’re not optimized) by a combination of
bioengineering, neurocognitive manipulation, nanotech and AI. Most
transhumanists, especially those with a socially progressive
agenda, are as decisively earthbound as cyberpunk authors. They
consider space exploration a misguided waste of resources, a
potentially dangerous distraction from here-and-now problems –
ecological collapse, inequality and poverty, incurable diseases
among which transhumanists routinely count aging, not to mention
variants of gray goo.
And yet, despite the uncoolness of space exploration, despite
NASA’s disastrous holding pattern, there
are those of us who still stubbornly dream of going to the
stars.
Cross posted from Evolution Shift
Smartphones 
