New efforts!

[JanessaVR]

My view on cybernetics?  They have as much potential to be abused as they can be used beneficially.  Some people here already mentioned the "Idiot super soldier", or soldier who'd kill his own grandmother, mother, and children without a second thought or any realization what he'd done(like starcraft resocialized marines).  The total memory wipes, inhibition, self-awareness and self-preservation removal would be a standard for especially unethical individuals using such tech for their armies.

But then it could be used greatly to enhance and advance mankind.  Think about it, knowledge expanded drastically to a point of perfect awareness of things as they truely are in the blink of an eye from just one person sending the exact details to everyone to see.  Or the ability for everyone to be a mathematical genius ect.  Imagine the productive edge we could have if we could really utilize the technology for good things know?  Just the above statement is also a problem as with any technology.

I already plan on uploading as soon as it's available and feasible, as I regard virtual reality as a better environment that actual reality.  It also completely solves every problem with the frailty of the human body - by abandoning it as soon as possible.

Whether this happens before or after my (hopeful) revival from cryostasis is up in the air.  At present, I'm not optimistic that it will arrive in time and I'm probably headed for a LN2 nap for at least a few decades (hopefully not for another 40 years or so).

[Twisted Toon]

Sadly the abuse would likely outweigh the beneficial uses. 

As to your idea of data being sent from one to everyone.......that sounds like the first step to becoming Cybermen or the Borg.

Yeah, my first thought was Cybus Enterprises. Everyone is offered a "free upgrade".

You can trust me on this. *thumbs up*

I'd rather not be upgraded though.

[Arcana]

Joshex, it's not how fast the electrons are moving through the system, they are always moving at high speeds(though you can influence that with different grades of copper).  It's how compact the systems are.  The smaller you make the various components the less travel time the electrons have.  But this also means more heat is generating in an increasingly smaller space.  This also eventually lead to using multiple processors as it was discovered it was easier to avoid overheating that way.

Less space to travel = less travel time = much higher speeds.  Miniaturization in a nutshell.

Its more complex than that.  The heat is ultimately a function of the current (the movement of the electrons**) and the voltage potential they are moving within (W=VA, in other words).  Smaller electronics and better designed electronics allow for lower voltages and therefore lower power consumption (and heat generation).  Reducing the current distances doesn't help power generation directly by much, since what tends to matter is less total heat generated and more heat density.

Incidentally, the reason why heat is a problem is often not what people think.  Most people think that heat eventually destroys the chip circuitry and it can do that, but often the problem is runaway electron flux.  Say you have a right angle circuit on your chip that you expect current to flow through.  The electrons don't go shooting through that pathway like bullets, they move more like a gas filling a hallway.  Its a relatively slow process (relative to the distance scales involved and the kinetic energy of the electrons).  That's good, because you want the electrons to flow in the current paths.  But as temperature gets higher, resistances actually drop and electron flow speed increases.  This actually makes circuits run faster.  The bad news is that as they run faster, they generate more heat***.  At some point the electrons can be pushed around so quickly they stop flowing like a gas and start moving like bullets, freed from moving in random walks and moving in more ballistic paths.  When they reach that right angle they don't flow around the corner, they slam into the wall and either ricochet down the turn or embed themselves into the silicon wall.  This damages that part of the circuit and can eventually destroy the turn.  That part of the circuit breaks, and the circuit fails.

Its very much like trying to make water flow through a right angle turn.  At slow speeds water flows around the turn.  At high speeds it erodes the turn.


** Electrons don't exactly move through semiconductors, but a discussion of electron-hole dynamics is another story entirely.

*** The tipping point where the heat gain from heat-induced electron efficiency induces increased power generation at an accelerating rate is generally referred to as thermal runaway and it can turn a semniconductor chip into a puddle in seconds if power isn't broken by the process.

[Arcana]

Assuming that augmentation actually becomes widespread, I think athletics will be a driving force against augmentation. You'll get an Olympics that isn't "fair," as rich nations have people that are augmented ("what do you mean, our archers can't have super vision??") and poor nations don't (or they resort to cheapsky illicit methods to augment their athletes); or you'll end up with a "split" Olympics, one for natural folks and one for augmented; or you'll have only a select group of rich folks who truly believe that their kid can make it through a few decades of rigorous training and the ostracism associated with being the only non-augment at their school in the hopes that they can compete in the still "natural only" Olympics.

Or you'll get two tiers of sports in general, augmented and not, and augmented athletes will be able to do more cool stuff, so there won't be any money left for natural sports, but everyone will be augmented anyways.

Or I suppose there's always the NASCAR solution.

[Brigadine]

Or I suppose there's always the NASCAR solution.

As a NASCAR fan from birth I ask... What NASCAR solution?!

[Arcana]

All that being said, I really think the smartphone and tablet are already dying technologies.  Both will likely be beaten by implanted tech with its promise of a truly immersive experience.  When all 5 of our senses are fed, who would want to play on a PC, tablet or smartphone?  I don't believe we are too far off from implanted tech with high speed.  We do have implanted tech today, but it's slow and very limited.

William Gibson once said the future has already arrived, its just not evenly distributed.  In many parts of the world, the smartphone is the *first* and *only* access to both communications technology and computing technology ever for most of the population.  Even if smartphone technology was superceded by some form of implanted communications technology, smartphone and tablets aren't going anywhere anytime soon.  Such technologies have to coexist within ecosystems of vastly larger numbers of less technologically capable devices.  Consider that smartphones have been around for approaching a decade now and most of the web still looks bad on mobile devices.  Its only recently that there has been a concerted push to encourage content writers to optimize for mobile devices. 

The world wide web (HTML/HTTP) was not the first such technology to come around.  Before WWW was WAIS, and before that gopher.  WWW came along at just the right time when explosive growth in users of the internet was happening.  User growth fueled the adoption of WWW, and WWW opened the doors to explosive growth in a non-technical population of internet users.  The combination of the two caused a form of lock-in, where www was synonymous with the internet and became the backbone technology of internet users.  And that's why WWW was, in some respects, the end of the line.  Before WWW, you could make another protocol and see if it stuck.  After WWW, you had a far better chance of improving WWW than creating an all new protocol.  HTML5 has gobbled up even most one-way streaming protocols like RTSP.

Implanted technology that shows me in my head what everyone else sees on 27" monitors is nifty, but not a paradigm shift and not so big of an advance that it moots the rest of the world's smartphones.  It may even put you at a slight disadvantage if everyone else in the world is optimizing for smartphones and not iBrains.  The advantages of such hypothetical technology are real, but will most likely be anchored by the need to be compatible with the rest of the world.  It won't put the rest of the world out of business even if its better.  That's not typically how technology tends to spread.

[Arcana]

As a NASCAR fan from birth I ask... What NASCAR solution?!

In NASCAR competitions, why doesn't the guy with the jet-powered car always win?

[LaughingAlex]

Sadly the abuse would likely outweigh the beneficial uses. 

As to your idea of data being sent from one to everyone.......that sounds like the first step to becoming Cybermen or the Borg.

The idea of data being sent to everyone would be one that, well, you'd need to make sure individualism is still protected. 

The first paragraph I described was actually what you saw in the borg/cybermen.  But see, in that case it's more assimilation through using the technology to brainwash.  The borg outright mind-wipe those they assimilate.  The cybermen also delete their emotions.  Replacing the frontal lobes is certainly the worst way to use cybernetics.

No, what I was talking about is more somewhat like what we do today already with smart phones and tablets.  People could bring up information within an instant.  Course, sometimes assholes misuse technology even today and throw out faulty and misleading information to, often designed to instill fear and doubt OR just outright lie.  But access to information is what net neutrality today is all about.

See, the first paragraph your seeing cybernetics being used to brainwash to an extreme.  But any technology that can be used ethically, again can be used unethically :/.

[Arcana]

Seriously? Who the hell wants to play an mmo with a 3d world and tons of actions and character abilities without a keyboard and mouse?

I can't think of a good way to do that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  A lot of people were skeptical about the utility of smartphones, and its now taken for granted.  Partially, that's because its difficult to know how something can be used until it actually is used.  But another reason was that it was impossible to forsee how software developers could attack the problem not by adding more functionality to the phone, but by changing how the applications themselves worked to function within the new environment.

Any triple-A MMO that's been designed to work on desktops is not going to translate well to smartphones.  But is it possible to make an MMO just as rich in experience on a smartphone?  Not sure.  I do know that in my opinion the current user interface paradigm of minimaps and powerbars is something I've always felt was not optimal.  Its just become comfortable.

[LaughingAlex]

Depends on the gameplay of the game in question and how you control the character.

I will say this about "less than a mouse and keyboard"; people play both CO and DCUO on a gamepad at times.  Some, not everyone, just a few here and there.

[Mistress Urd]

In NASCAR competitions, why doesn't the guy with the jet-powered car always win?

Smokey Yunick

[LaughingAlex]

I can't think of a good way to do that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  A lot of people were skeptical about the utility of smartphones, and its now taken for granted.  Partially, that's because its difficult to know how something can be used until it actually is used.  But another reason was that it was impossible to forsee how software developers could attack the problem not by adding more functionality to the phone, but by changing how the applications themselves worked to function within the new environment.

Any triple-A MMO that's been designed to work on desktops is not going to translate well to smartphones.  But is it possible to make an MMO just as rich in experience on a smartphone?  Not sure.  I do know that in my opinion the current user interface paradigm of minimaps and powerbars is something I've always felt was not optimal.  Its just become comfortable.

I just thought of it, with regards to mmorgs I think it is possible to make an mmorpg with a rich experience for a smart phone/tablet.  But I'd make very heavy use of cloud computing to do so.  But when it comes to user interface you'd probably be something similar of a game like say, fallout 1 or 2.  And you could have a top-down 2d gameplay with 3d graphics with such gameplay, take a look at Divine Divinity: Original Sin.

It doesn't take much to play an rpg on a phone so I don't see why it'd take a lot to play an mmorpg on one.  As for a game with 3d movement, or even fully 3d movement?  I don't think that'd be a good idea without some peripherals.

[Arcana]

It doesn't take much to play an rpg on a phone so I don't see why it'd take a lot to play an mmorpg on one.  As for a game with 3d movement, or even fully 3d movement?  I don't think that'd be a good idea without some peripherals.

Consider the mouse.  On paper, the mouse as an input peripheral is a horrible idea.  You have to take one hand off your keyboard: this significantly lowers your typing speed.  You can't see what your mouse hand is doing at the same time as looking at the cursor its controlling: this makes it extremely difficult to perform fine control with it.  The space it operates within is generally smaller than the space the cursor functions in, which means there's a significant hit in mapping resolution.  It would be a much better idea to design your user interfaces in such a way to only use a keyboard, perhaps by using extra keys for the functionality you would have wanted the mouse to perform.

Thing is, that's all true, and its also all irrelevant in ways no one could foresee until people actually started designing around a mouse.  It opens the door to the graphical user interface, which is a quantum leap beyond text-based console interfaces.  And yet even after the mouse revolution should have taught people better, the exact same thing happened with touch interfaces.  They have all of the problems their detractors claimed it had: it just didn't matter in the new paradigm they launched.

Sometimes the reason we can't think of a good way to do something is because there's genuinely no good way to do it.  But I believe one day someone is going to crack that nut with smartphones, or at least tablets and phablets, and games we traditionally refer to as triple-A class MMORPGs.  And when they do, it'll seem ridiculously obvious.  It just doesn't seem like it now.  The wheel as a transportation machine seems like an obvious invention also, and yet humans were using wheels for pottery production for hundreds of years before someone got the idea to use it for transportation.  I can almost imagine a pottery wheel manufacturer rolling one to its delivery site, as pottery wheel makers had done for dozens of generations, and then suddenly eureka.

[Teikiatsu]

Seriously? Who the hell wants to play an mmo with a 3d world and tons of actions and character abilities without a keyboard and mouse?

I'm reminded of a discussion on the CoX forums, where the author managed to hook up a nintendo power glove, wii controller and dance revolution floormap for his powers and movement.

[LadyVamp]

William Gibson once said the future has already arrived, its just not evenly distributed.  In many parts of the world, the smartphone is the *first* and *only* access to both communications technology and computing technology ever for most of the population.  Even if smartphone technology was superceded by some form of implanted communications technology, smartphone and tablets aren't going anywhere anytime soon.  Such technologies have to coexist within ecosystems of vastly larger numbers of less technologically capable devices.  Consider that smartphones have been around for approaching a decade now and most of the web still looks bad on mobile devices.  Its only recently that there has been a concerted push to encourage content writers to optimize for mobile devices. 

The world wide web (HTML/HTTP) was not the first such technology to come around.  Before WWW was WAIS, and before that gopher.  WWW came along at just the right time when explosive growth in users of the internet was happening.  User growth fueled the adoption of WWW, and WWW opened the doors to explosive growth in a non-technical population of internet users.  The combination of the two caused a form of lock-in, where www was synonymous with the internet and became the backbone technology of internet users.  And that's why WWW was, in some respects, the end of the line.  Before WWW, you could make another protocol and see if it stuck.  After WWW, you had a far better chance of improving WWW than creating an all new protocol.  HTML5 has gobbled up even most one-way streaming protocols like RTSP.

Implanted technology that shows me in my head what everyone else sees on 27" monitors is nifty, but not a paradigm shift and not so big of an advance that it moots the rest of the world's smartphones.  It may even put you at a slight disadvantage if everyone else in the world is optimizing for smartphones and not iBrains.  The advantages of such hypothetical technology are real, but will most likely be anchored by the need to be compatible with the rest of the world.  It won't put the rest of the world out of business even if its better.  That's not typically how technology tends to spread.

I'm not a psychic.  I don't know what the timeline is for this thought I suspect it's on the 20 - 40 year road map.  I don't think we'll have it in 10 years beyond in the lab research projects.  It's very possible I won't live long enough to see it.  At 44, I'm at that grey point.

I used gopher and ftp and wais.  I was in college when mosaic was born.  I got to work with some of the earliest versions of tech including html 1.0.  It was very crude and sometimes didn't even work.  But, like the car and bag phones of those days, it gave birth to html5 just like those phones gave birth to the cell network and smartphones of today.  The tech itself isn't all that innovative so much as it became the framework that built the paradigm shift.  I can see that with inplant tech.  What we think of today is only a tiny, easily buffed out scratch in the paint of the what that framework will provide.

And yes there are both good and evil uses just as we have good and evil uses of smartphones.

Oh and I don't need to modify all those sites if I can have that 27" monitor in my head.

[LadyVamp]

As a NASCAR fan from birth I ask... What NASCAR solution?!

don't know what they use now but when I was growing up, restrictor plates on the carbs kept the well funded shops from building cars that always won.  It also seemed to increase the number of crashes and car pile-ups.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I feel like there is a very important name to drop in all of this "augumented/robot" technology conversation.

Dmitry Itskov

Not sure who that is?  Don't wanna google search it?  Heres a few links.

http://2045.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Itskov

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2045_Initiative

Enjoy

[blacksly]

In NASCAR competitions, why doesn't the guy with the jet-powered car always win?

Heat-seeking missiles.

No, wait, different story.

[LaughingAlex]

I feel like there is a very important name to drop in all of this "augumented/robot" technology conversation.

Dmitry Itskov

Not sure who that is?  Don't wanna google search it?  Heres a few links.

http://2045.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Itskov

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2045_Initiative

Enjoy

2045 is a bit early for the singularity.  I recall it's around the 2055ish range.

[Sinistar]

I'm reminded of a discussion on the CoX forums, where the author managed to hook up a nintendo power glove, wii controller and dance revolution floormap for his powers and movement.

Probably the best use ever of the Nintendo power glove.