10-29-2018, 01:40 PM
A question remains: will the information age overtake human capacity? Or will the limit of human intelligence itself stall progress?
Machine intelligence can now do tasks that a not-very-bright person can do, such as to take orders in a fast-food restaurant. The use of smart-phone apps to order ahead suggests that the not-very-cerebral act of taking orders may be something that people will not do much longer unless people are willing to pay for the privilege.
The Industrial Age clearly made life better on the average (although the ferocity and lethality of wars and persecutions has become more intense because the capacity for organization is much higher than it used to be). Industrial technology made necessities far cheaper and more easily available. Information can at most refine whatever exist and substitute machine minds for human minds.
I am tempted to believe that the Information Age feels mature because it can do little more to improve life except perhaps in scientific and medical research. How many channels of cable television do you need?
Machine intelligence can now do tasks that a not-very-bright person can do, such as to take orders in a fast-food restaurant. The use of smart-phone apps to order ahead suggests that the not-very-cerebral act of taking orders may be something that people will not do much longer unless people are willing to pay for the privilege.
The Industrial Age clearly made life better on the average (although the ferocity and lethality of wars and persecutions has become more intense because the capacity for organization is much higher than it used to be). Industrial technology made necessities far cheaper and more easily available. Information can at most refine whatever exist and substitute machine minds for human minds.
I am tempted to believe that the Information Age feels mature because it can do little more to improve life except perhaps in scientific and medical research. How many channels of cable television do you need?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.