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Are we heading towards a tech armageddon?

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TaoPhoenix:
Hmm.

Getting back to the non-lightsaber topics, I'll float some ideas on these themes. Yes, there is an Armageddon coming, "but not with a bang, but a whimper". Drawing on the pun, the whimpering will be us. Some of this won't quite hold logical consistency with itself, but here goes.

I'm on the side that innovation is a technical thing. It's a function of *doing something*. In one sense, it's impossible *not* to innovate because at the ultra smallest sense, every action of any kind that isn't performed to a tight process spec, is innovation. If you are in accounting and you are entering an invoice, and your spec is to enter five pieces of info into the computer system, there isn't much room for innovation, because there is only "one correct answer". But nearly everything else is "small innovation". Borrowing a writer's trick for breaking writer's block, let me tell you about a nice square piece of paper. What is "more boring" than paper? So I'll fold it in half. (Mock drama). "Look at me! I folded a piece of paper in half!!!" Well okay, I'm being funny. But *six* folds later, I have a 3d visual representation of an *upright piano*! Isn't that innovative? Now what if we were in a world when the grand piano style was invented first, and "all pianos must be the grand design because it simply doesn't work any other way" would be the "conventional wisdom". Then some salesman walks into a boardroom pitching his new piano design, and makes seven folds in a piece of paper and shows them a vertical design that costs 80% less to make. *Now* is it innovation?

But part of the problem with innovation is that it's the tree falling in a forest problem. If I innovate, and never show anyone, is it still innovation? So then there's some of those old philosophy chestnuts going on here. Your typical mad scientist, and all that. That's why it's always frustrating when techies tend to get outplayed by ex-jocks in suits who get the good-ol-boy-network thing. What use is my innovation if they have a vested stake in something else?

Then we have innovation vs utility. Right this minute I can probably dream up something innovative ... let's see... a data glove input alphabet system that goes to the monitor eyeglasses you wear for the perfect "meatspace" privacy in computing. Plenty innovative, but if an idea is too far ahead of its time, especially if it has some usability design mistakes, then it's still innovation and someone will go "gee, that's innovative, I'm going back to what I know now."

More in the next post.

TaoPhoenix:
So that's some of my basic ideas about innovation. (And look, I "innovated" by splitting my posts so that if someone quotes me, it's not One Long Incredibly Unbroken Post Moving From Topic To Topic.")

Now let's make some guesses about innovation. Hoping my wording doesn't sound facile, Microsoft is Microsoft, Apple is Apple, Google is Google, Facebook is Facebook, and they'll sit there on the corporate landscape being themselves. Then once you get off that little narrow perch, you get a mind numbing explosion of "companies that are not themselves". Sun is not really Sun anymore, it's Oracle's excuse for a lawsuit. Borders Books is not Borders Books anymore, having become Nothing. RIM which used to be spoken of in hushed tones for its Blackberry line, joins the multitudes of companies that are "not really themselves anymore", but they still technically exist for now.

I think the current impression of "mobile tablets" is a brilliant marketing cover-up for the fact that Tablets are *currently* underpowered all-in-one computers. If I imagine my current computer screen instead as a 24 inch tablet, sitting on a dock base, with a keyboard and mouse, I can do "real work". Then I can put it on the car seat and lay it on a restaurant table and switch to the touch interface. All that it takes is a few years replacing fragile spin-disk hard drive storage with solid state storage, better power usage, and a few other things, and there's your Computer of the Future. Then you just have 3+1 form factors, based on screen size: Phone, "Lap-Tablet", and "Work Tablet". (The fourth +1 factor is Monitor Glasses, where the computer is your phone in your pocket.)

But then let's go back to one of Paul Keith's original phrases: "then nothing". I'm kinda nervous about never getting past the Microsoft-Apple-Google-Facebook quad. (Facebook astounds me, it feels like a Less-Is-More version of AOL. "Look, it's full of Faces and everyone likes Faces! They're so cute and smiley!")

So between that "final form factor trilogy" on the tech side, and that corporate quad and your choice of four more, what if we hit a "temporary gap" in innovation? (Say we're 20 years out from the Driverless Cars.) So without any real innovation, what do we do with ourselves?

I think the unfortunate answer is definitely becoming one giant fishbowl, but with mechanized systems to do the dystopian functions. And yes, it is 1984, as well as Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451, and several more "Warning" books that are being taken as guidebooks! THAT is the current cultural feature that is maddening me the most! Instead of warnings, all those old stories are in the hands of power mongers and they're all going "neat, let's do that!"  :mad:

Target:
I see your Jedi, and raise you an Indiana Jones~!-Renegade (May 30, 2012, 10:58 PM)
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that's not innovative...

Paul Keith:
what if we hit a "temporary gap" in innovation? (Say we're 20 years out from the Driverless Cars.) So without any real innovation, what do we do with ourselves?

I think the unfortunate answer is definitely becoming one giant fishbowl, but with mechanized systems to do the dystopian functions. And yes, it is 1984, as well as Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451, and several more "Warning" books that are being taken as guidebooks! THAT is the current cultural feature that is maddening me the most! Instead of warnings, all those old stories are in the hands of power mongers and they're all going "neat, let's do that!"  :mad:-TaoPhoenix (May 30, 2012, 11:41 PM)
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I just want to say I have no disagreement with any of what you said except for this.

This is the thing. When we have gaps, innovation is fine. Gap means part of innovation is based on resurrecting repeat discoveries to "fill up" the gap.

It's like if society forgets everything but survives as cave men. Re-finding and re-establishing the internet would be an innovation even when to us, it may not be anymore.

The unique part about Brave New World is that it is only dystopian fiction because there's no other category to put it but it is only dystopia to us, the readers not to the characters inside unlike other dystopian fiction.

Of course my reference pertains not only to Brave New World but also to how Postman contrasts it to 1984. As a full book, it's not totally that far off from dystopian fiction. There are, however, aspects of it that aren't a warning but of a social preference. Take watching TV. We know it's bad and as a society we are warned that it's bad but many of still consume it as if it's not on the level of smoking and worse of all, even the critics, rarely realize there's a non-Luddite criticism for TV and few rarely understand/know of the difference between Postman's warning and that of the Luddite version.

This special quality of TV is often ignored in both dystopian fiction and negative utopian fiction. Dystopian fiction often demands that TV must be a brain washing tool. Negative utopian fiction often demands that TV is on par with being addicted to a sex toy. Because of this, there's always "something" because we know, if we're given a hint of control, we'd not be content with "nothing" which is why many books on dystopian fiction provides a main plot line of rebellion. Only if we willingly accept "something" will there be truly "nothing" for by accepting "something", we are most receptive in accepting the idea that "nothing should replace that something".

Paul Keith:
To simplify the difference between the warnings of Dystopia, Negative Utopia and Armageddon, here's a post found in the IMDB page for the doc Inside Job and why it's confusing but also simple to understand:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/board/flat/197798231

People who are buying into the message in this movie are doing *exactly* what the big bankers want you to do. Their nightmare would be:
1. To have to compete against start-up banks and each other in a free market
2. When their ill-advised loans fall through, in a free market no one would bail them out and they would actually face the possibility of losing money.

They want neither of these. What they want is a system that locks out competition and gives them a no-lose situation where even if their loans fail, the government taxpayer has their backs.

This movie is their piece of propaganda. They will pretend it is against their wishes and say, "Oh, please don't regulate us!" Meanwhile, they work pen in hand with legislators to make sure the legislation freezes out competition and perpetuates the status quo.

Their worst nightmare is a free market system which would allow competition among the banks, allow new entrants into the industry, and no one to bail them out. The Freddy Kruger in their nightmares isn't someone like Barney Frank, it's Ron Paul.

You can tell this movie is the ruling class explanation for the financial disaster because it is being pushed into the school curriculum and teachers are showing this movie to their students. This is playing right into the bankers wishes. There are two explanations as to the economic failure: not enough regulations, and the other explanation is that there was too much government interference. They really don't want people to think too hard about the second possibility.-bbagnall
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So you are saying that it is bad that we believe in the messadge of this movie, then go telling is that bankers fear the messadge in this movie, then claim its propaganda. so it turns out, you want the banks to be bailed out. good call! -Strazdamonas
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I agree wholeheartedly. a real free market will ACTUALLY punish those that take risk without losing out. Keynesian school of thought only works if the private sector is actually trying, not just waiting to take advantage of policy that protects them.

The real problem in my opinions are the bailouts. Bailouts are only needed if the sufferers were really needing basic human necessities to survive, not to save the private sector from indulging in bonuses.

I still don't get how lobbyist still have a job or how lobbying is legal. But this said, the general public usually goes along with the media brainwashing, so if Occupying a city park or protesting WTO meetings is the best we can come up with, nothing will change sadly.-kickingasses
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The above type of propaganda would never happen in a dystopian society because they don't need to.

It would happen in a negative utopian society but either people would rebel or they would never criticize such attempted propaganda.

In reality though, people will both praise and criticize but not enough people will stand up hence in order for people to stand up: a greater disaster is required to happen hence the likelihood of this killing the thought of society being ever for true economic reforms.

It gets better (and worse) assuming we're taking the idea of a metaphorical armageddon with a more literal mechanic and IMO this branch of tech is more complicated than economics. As complicated as economics is, it is still currency distribution even if things like behaviour economics can be said as distributing the currency of will rather than the currency of paper or gold. PCs/mobile and the internet though deal with a much wider net of subjects: information, education, entertainment, usability, security, the list goes on and on.

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