In the Wired Magazine article, Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us, Joy explains how within decades most of the functions now carried out by human workers will be performed by robots. With the vast majority of human beings rendered obsolete in the eyes of the controllers as a result of this shift, which will easily outstrip even the impact of the industrial revolution, the elite, “may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity,” writes Joy. Joy’s forecast is echoed by respected author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. In his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil made a series of predictions about technological advancements that would occur at each 10-year juncture. Kurzweil’s short term predictions were stunningly accurate – he foresaw the rise of the iPhone and smart phones in general as well as the Kindle. Kurzweil predicted that by 2009, “Computer displays have all the display quality of paper—high resolution, high contrast, large viewing angle, and no flicker. Books, magazines, and newspapers are now routinely read on displays that are the size of, well, small books.” Kurzweil also described the iPad ten years before its emergence as well as the rise of wireless telephone communications using “high-resolution moving images.” He also foresaw iTunes, You Tube and on demand services like Netflix as well as how all this technology would prompt a huge debate about privacy and identity theft, which is exactly what has occurred. Kurzweil forecast that unmanned drones would be used for combat operations by 2009, which also unfolded. Given his accuracy, Kurzweil’s predictions for future decades – 2019, 2029 and beyond – are chilling. By 2019 Kurzweil predicts that our computers will be implanted in eye glasses and contact lenses, a process already underway with the development of Google Glasses. By this time, a $4000 computer will have the same computing power as a human brain, according to Kurzweil.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 05:51:51 +0000
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