genidma
commented
7 months ago You make some good points. The designs are from Doug-Engelbart.
We need to consider the 'arc of technology.' Kurzweil categorizes this as LOAR (Law of exponential returns). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change#Kurzweil's_The_Law_of_Accelerating_Returns More on LOAR via the books that Kurzweil has written.
I would think that there are going to be agents amongst us within 1 to 2 years (maximum 6 years). These agents are going to have human level intelligence. I would think that work as we know it will come to an end or that the workweek will be reduced to 20 hours. Humans will be incentivized to take care of their health, which will save trillion and trillions of dollars. As more smart people join the internet, the world's problems are going to get solved and outer space will open up. This will then bring about a world of abundance.
As universal good prevails, the good agents (humans and AIs) will collaborate together to enable net universal better realities. Again, if the arc of technology is exponential, then things could/will also get better exponentially.
Julian-Dumitrascu
It seems there was a time during which people didn't really communicate remotely. Maybe telecommunication looked something like this: person 1 talked to person 2; person 2 met person 3 and told them something they had heard from person 1. As a child, I played Chinese telephone. It seems we've been writing for at least 5,000 years. We are writing more words than ever. People started long ago to send letters (with or without an envelope). I think I've enjoyed writing since 1992, when I was 15. I had enjoyed reading for several years. One of my inclinations is to write long texts. In the beginning they were letters.
2. How useful is it to communicate remotely?
2.1 I may have appreciated public communication at least since 1991. 2.1.1 I liked finding out that some people communicated publicly thousands of years ago, in agoras or through books. Some of these writings we can read today. I might enjoy reading too much for my own good. During my early teenage my mother's mother asked me to take breaks from reading and spend time outside. (I used to read inside.) I've been doing office work since 1999: a lot of time spent inside reading and writing. 2.1.2 I enjoy public conversations and talks a lot. When we have them over the Internet, it's easier to communicate with people who are far away, so I have taken the opportunity of getting to know other people and of understanding other cultures better. Today we inform one another more than ever. 2.2 I'm having a huge number of private conversations. They are more detailed, so we use software like AirTable to manage all the data necessary e.g. for transactions.
3. Why is our relationship with computers so bad?
3.1 It seems some people cared about selling computers, not about the people who use them. A computer is a machine; the same as for the other machines, it is useful to learn how to use it. I am inclined to say that it is simple to use a computer; I say things like this to encourage users, and to help them have a good feeling about this machine and make it serve them well. A lot of complex work is done to help us use computers. 3.2 Ergonomics 3.2.1 When you care e.g. about the screen worsening your sight, you can consult with us. If it is useful to change your monitor, we can help you pick one and we can deliver it to you. 3.2.2 Some people use a regular keyboard with less than the number of fingers they have. When you want someone to help you type faster, we can teach you. 3.2.2.1 One saves time / energy. 3.2.2.2 One avoids some health costs. One strains one's arms when one types with fewer fingers. 3.2.3 We help people choose and use ergonomic chairs, keyboards, and pointers. 3.3 It seems difficult to configure one's computing environment optimally. It would take a lot to discuss why. We can have at least one separate conversation about this. We're willing to do what it takes to increase your related benefit-cost ratio as much as you like.
4. Feelings
4.1 Many people are really open to starting dialogues over the Internet. An acquaintance said in 2002: "I've done business with people I haven't met." I like this and I'll communicate with anybody, even if we never meet. It is enough for me to cooperate with people on improving one thing or another. 4.2 I'm used to starting dialogues without devices. When my parents subscribed to a landline (around 1990), I'd share the number with people with whom I would talk on the telephone: 0040238561957 They were usually short talks about us meeting. I think people will always spend time together, irrespective of what tools we're going to use. I like computers as a tool that helps us to communicate, organise our thoughts, and coordinate our activities. 4.3 Some people are afraid of computers or, rather, of what costs other people could cause to them while they are using computers. We can communicate about what costs are actually possible and the extent to which we can avoid some of them. 4.4 One can be uncomfortable communicating with a person about whom they hardly know anything and with whom it doesn't seem easy to estimate how much time they're going to spend offline. It helps that more and more people create more and more data sets about themselves and their activities, and share these over the Internet.
I've just shared some thoughts. It is natural to start a conversation by expressing oneself. We can organise such a conversation gradually, to make it clearer and more useful.