From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Feb 19 2002 - 14:55:01 MST
Ian Pearson and Ian Neild of BTexact Technologies (an offshoot of British
Telecom), use the information available from many sources plus their own
expertise, to assign probable dates to significant technological events. And
the results can be very interesting and instructive. Consider these few
examples:
- 2003 - first synthetic organic life form.
- 2005 - computers that write their own software.
- 2006 - first artificial electronic life, and first organism brought back
from extinction.
- 2010 - highest earning celebrity is synthetic.
- 2015 - machine use of human-like creativity
- 2020 - electronic life form given basic rights, and insect-sized robots
banned in gardens due to effects on wildlife.
Ian and Ian's timeline offers many, many more examples in the areas of
Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology, Business & Education, Demographics,
Displays, Energy, the Environment, Home & Office Technology, Living in a
Cyberworld, Machine Senses, Materials Sciences,
Computer Electronics, Robotics, and more. They offer a thought-provoking
walk through a possible future history.
The paper is available at
[url]http://www.btexact.com/white_papers/downloads/WP106.pdf[/url].
I find it particularly interesting that others think, as I do, that we are
not far from the point of having to recognize that "artificial life" has
rights and that these rights may not be very different from those we assign
ourselves. I suspect that this may well lead to a redefinition of rights and
a reevaluation of the value we assign to humans. For example, what is the
difference between a human child and a neural net which you raise? If it is
wrong to teach a neural net anti-social behavior, should we regard it as
less heinous when we allow a human parent to do so?
As for banning robotic insects, while their uses are obviously vast, I can
see a bird getting severe indigestion from one. Perhaps a better idea would
be a built in bird scarer.
Regards
Hermit
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:43 MDT