June 17 2008 / by Alvis Brigis
Category: Culture Year: 2020 Rating: 6 Hot
How smart will humans become as change accelerates through
2020?
Futurists and sci-fi authors often present scenarios in which
humans interact with discrete artificial intelligence (like a robot
or software program that talks to us), but far less frequently
offer visions of
runaway human intelligence enhancement (people made smarter by
advances in communication, science & technology) and the
resulting cultural and behavioral changes. The most interesting of
these I’ve encountered include the rapid-time expanding-shrinking
problem-solving networks in Vinge’s Rainbows End,
Stephenson’s Metaverse idea,
Hesse’s Glass Bead
Game concept, Cascio’s participatory
Panopticon, the increasingly
smart mobs envisioned by Howard Rheingold, some of examples
listed in the ASF’s Metaverse Roadmap, and
what Richard Florida calls The Rise of the Creative Class .
But though each of these are important visions in their own right,
I remain a bit surprised at the overall lack of speculation re:
what it might be like for humans to gradually bootstrap their
intelligence over the coming years. 
Given the deluge of brain-enhancing, capability-extending new
technologies and ideas soon to be made widely available and
affordable, it’d be great to see more thinkers, writers, and
bloggers venture into the territory of plausible near-term culture
and Intelligence
Amplification (IA). Supported by a large body of consistent,
powerful growth trends and near-term predictions (check them out on
the Future
Scanner), a wide range of social scenarios could be generated,
many of which would be interesting, entertaining and ultimately
valuable to people working to navigate the future (aka, everyone).
In particular, I’d love to see/read simulations in which the most
plausible near-term intelligence enhancing technologies and
software are combined into believable slice-of-life vignettes.
What follows is a list of some powerful trends and technologies
(some broad, some specific, many related to information and
communication) that forward-thinkers might consider when developing
scenarios for how human culture and social cognition will change as
we approach 2020:
Drivers of Near-Term Intelligence Growth
WIDENING BANDWIDTH: Faster
internet connections,
pervasive WiFi – perhaps
syndicated through people’s mobile devices.
GROWING GLOBAL INFORMATION: The
amount of preserved digital data is
growing exponentially as we capture more information about
everything around us.
EVOLVING SOCIAL MEDIA: New
media structures on a wider and more fluid web are evolving to
better organize and process data. Portals like Wikipedia, Digg, Facebook, Medium, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Predictify are just the first
in a long wave of innovation that promises to convert massive
information into knowledge more efficiently.
VIDEO-to-VIDEO CHAT: Expect most cell phones to enable
video-to-video chat by 2012 or so. (cont.)
EVOLVING 3D / IMMERSIVE MEDIA: Google Earth, Second Life, and Grand Theft Auto 4 are
good examples of just how rich, intricate, engaging and useful
simulated environments can be. Such structures allow for new
contextual knowledge displays and are being used to
teach kids and adults in new ways that result in
greater systems topsight
and
abstraction ability . Ultimately they have the potential to
organize humans in myriad new ways.
BETTER SEARCH: A web that
better utilizes user feedback, new forms of data
structuring/sorting (social media and
semantic apps) and increased computer speeds to return
increasingly meaningful search results. Some thinkers already argue
that Google is an extension of the brain. Others are drawing
correlations between Google Page Rank and cognitive
processes.
NEW INTERFACE PRODUCTS:
Touchscreen
OLED surfaces, steadily cheaper
digital cameras, powerful
mini-projectors,
BCIs, rapidly evolving haptics,
holographic
projectors,
augmented reality systems, new version of mobile devices like
the
iPhone,
reactive surfaces, etc
PORTABLE POWER: Battery life
span more energy transfer technology are improving, enabling
increased connectivity and a more mobile web.
TIME-SAVERS:
Robots, more efficient machines (perhaps
self-driving cars) and better-managed processes may well reduce
the % of rote work that people do in a day and up their
creative/recreational interaction.
TRANSLATORS: Text translation
software is already getting much better. Advances is speech
recognition will also be considerable as software and computers
advance through 2020.
RISING VALUE OF ATTENTION: As
the web evolves, our attention will continue to command more value
in the form of more relevant ads, micro-payments and even more
lucrative attention network contracts.
HEALTH BENEFITS: Advances in
nanotech, biology, pharmaceuticals, etc will begin to chip away at
many common diseases (cancer) and ailments.
GENETICS: As our genetic
lineage is quantified and we develop a better understanding of the
life sciences that will change the way we view ourselves.
AND SO FORTH: Clearly the list
doesn’t end here, but hopefully it’s comprehensive enough to
illustrate just how much cultural change and intelligence
amplification we could see over the next 11 1/2 years. My bet (no
shocker) is that the manner in which the average person interacts
with information, others and their general environment will be very
different come 2020 as the above forces transform our daily lives.
Furthermore, I think that will amount to a serious rise in
abstraction ability (which theorist
Jim Flynn links to intelligence).
I hope to follow up soon with some scenarios and future fiction
generated from this list of drivers (and from the Future Scanner as
well) and would be truly psyched if some FB readers decide to to
venture some near-term social scenarios as well. Any takers?
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