A random sample of my current brainwaves.
The AI conundrum.
Two examples... First... Open AI has a built-in ideological bias that means we can not trust it. This bias belongs to the software engineers who create these entities and therefore it is a flaw not a feature. Second... AI automation will become an integral part of life in the latter part of C21st. The reason is that inexpensive AI automation can replace expensive human labour when the process is full of repeatable activities and thus there are many single-points of failure. BUT... There will soon be an opportunity for ordinary folks to purchase hunks of AI automation [like large robots on production lines] with loans that look like home mortgages.
The first example illustrates the built-in limits of AI; whereas the second example illustrates the great business opportunities that AI could potentially serve up to all of us.
The emergence of "reusable technology".
The most liberating breakthrough for humans will be our focus on reusable technology [not to be confused with "renewable sources of energy"] will take us deep into the next Century. For hundreds of years humans have been locked into "dedicated use technologies" and these have been so successful that they have got us to where we are right now. BUT... We all that progress has stalled. Humans have hit a wall. This wall was obvious when the Apollo missions ended because that was powered by obsolete thinking, habits, and beliefs.Then NASA took some baby steps in embracing the first principles of "reusable technology" with the Shuttle Program. Simply put the principle was to embrace complexity [new thinking], build-in redundancy [habits], and to shun single-us as you begin to believe in reuse [beliefs].
Humans are wasting huge amounts of time and resources on "renewable energy" in all its forms. The full force pursuit of "single-use technologies" will lead us to a cul-de-sac of stagnation. However... SpaceX has burst the "single-use bubble" with the work it is doing with Starship. Starship exists as a beta-test of the "reusable technologies" that can take humans to Mars and beyond. Meanwhile back here on Earth we are trapped in a bubble of obsolete thinking, habits, and beliefs.
Online learning grows up.
Online learning is about to be a force for distributed technologies. Small group learning online with facilitated access to the core subjects will recreate old principles of a Monastic University for our times. Content will be created in words, images, ideas, prototypes, etc that can blast through the passive "one think" model adopted by Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, and Cambridge today. Learning will once again be made "fit for purpose" not based on a prevailing ideology or philosophy. Online classes will be as relevant on a Starship cruiser heading for Mars as it is in any regional area of Europe.
Online learning will use technologies that access the mind not the brain. All that brain-based learning will be left behind on the clouds [servers] that you access from your handheld device. The brain will be treated as a separate entity to the more important human entity - the mind. Online learning will be accessible and capable of dealing with complexity, contradiction, new patterns formed by chaos, uncertainty/ambiguity, etc. The notion of singularity will be quickly outdated once this new era of mind-based online learning begins to evolve. The great testing grounds for this new ear of mindfulness will be inside the human colony on Mars. Those who survive, and thrive, on Mars will live inside their heads more than inside their environs as humans do on Earth.
Richard.
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