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Originally posted by twhiteheadI'm not so convinced.
We are already enjoying an average lifespan that is for the richer half of the world 100% longer than in the past. That is 150% longer adult lifespan.
My father lived 20 years longer than he expected to, mostly due to medical advances that occurred near or during those 20-years.
I however think it highly unlikely that even if we do achieve near immo ...[text shortened]... uters and the internet but then my children will witness far more remarkable things than I have.
Computer power is increasing exponentially and massive leaps
are being made in cybernetics.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6989239/
The new playstation3 is being used worldwide with massive computing
power to crack protein folding (Key to creating proteins as active agents)
The blue ray technology on the PS3 can potentially store a terabyte
of information on a single DVD. That's more information than the
brain amasses in a lifetime.
The human genome has yet to be deciphered and is being crunched
already at a phenomenol rate and stem cell research will allow us to
store DNA from birth to be re-used at a later date (telomeres intact).
I believe longevity will increase exponentially too quite soon.
As for the issue of 'price' I'm hoping robotics will kick in and give us
all a hand with that issue.
Originally posted by Thequ1ckMany others in the past have looked at trends and made predictions. Nearly every scifi book or story that talks about the year 2000 has us colonizing the stars and talking thinking robots walking all over the place.
I believe longevity will increase exponentially too quite soon.
I think the challenges to extending life will be harder than you think and take a bit longer and almost certainly be a gradual process.
You claim that a DVD holds more information than the human brain, but it cannot compete when it comes to meaningful data storage. When it comes to computing power the human brain does multi processing which beats the single thread computing of most of todays computers by far.
Originally posted by twhiteheadWith 10,000 machines joined together the researchers calculate they should be able to do a thousand trillion calculations per second.
Many others in the past have looked at trends and made predictions. Nearly every scifi book or story that talks about the year 2000 has us colonizing the stars and talking thinking robots walking all over the place.
I think the challenges to extending life will be harder than you think and take a bit longer and almost certainly be a gradual process.
You ...[text shortened]... oes multi processing which beats the single thread computing of most of todays computers by far.
If that was achieved it would be nearly four times as fast as the world's most powerful supercomputer, IBM's BlueGene/L System, capable of 280.6 trillion calculations per second.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5287254.stm
Phase 1.
That's 400 teraflops being delivered through the distributed computing
of the PS3 alone.
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Deep Blue, the chess machine that bested world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, used specialized chips to process chess moves at a the speed equivalent to a 3 million MIPS universal computer (see Figure 3-4). This is 1/30 of the estimate for total human performance.
...Then the 100-trillion-synapse brain would hold the equivalent 100 million megabytes. ...
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
http://gaggio.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/04/18/neuromarketing-high-speed-light-based-brain-activity-detecto.html
Mathematician and author Vernor Vinge greatly popularized Good’s notion of an intelligence explosion in the 1980s, calling the creation of the first ultraintelligent machine the Singularity. Vinge first addressed the topic in print in the January 1983 issue of Omni magazine. He later collected his thoughts in the 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity," which contains the oft-quoted statement "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended." Vinge clarifies his estimate of the time scales involved, adding, "I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
Originally posted by Thequ1ckThe problem is not speed but programming and design. Even if a computer were to be designed that mimicked the human brain it would need 20 years of inputs to equal an adult human, just like a human does.
Deep Blue, the chess machine that bested world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, used specialized chips to process chess moves at a the speed equivalent to a 3 million MIPS universal computer (see Figure 3-4). This is 1/30 of the estimate for total human performance.
...Then the 100-trillion-synapse brain would hold the equivalent 100 million megaby ...[text shortened]... ccurs before 2005 or after 2030."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
We do not have a working 'brain' program that is just waiting for the hardware to run on. Hardware is not the current limiting factor.
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Originally posted by twhiteheadAgreed.
The problem is not speed but programming and design. Even if a computer were to be designed that mimicked the human brain it would need 20 years of inputs to equal an adult human, just like a human does.
We do not have a working 'brain' program that is just waiting for the hardware to run on. Hardware is not the current limiting factor.
However this link shows us that we are already heading towards an
imaging program that can scan brain activity on a microsecond basis.
Improve that 1000,000 fold (10 years of technology at todays pace)
and you have a machine that can scan all electical activity in your brain
and the technology to put it on a CD-ROM (todays technology).
Imagine if in 100 years we have chips that run or quantum
interactions and have unlimited computing power. Given this
situation, together with a cohesive understanding of macromolecular
forces (brought about by todays molecular folding projects) and
a sample of your DNA. We could feasibly download your brain
brain activity, whack it onto a CD-ROM and in 100 years time
superimpose that activity onto a brain 'grown' in cyberspace based
on your DNA in a cyber-womb.
Bingo, you're in legoland.
This is only an example, my question is, if a mechanism like this
were feasible, what sort of philosophies and religions might occur.
Wouldn't it be easier to believe that we were already 'there' than it
would be to believe in the combined coincidence of creation and cusp?