I wanted to post this primarily to point some people to the direction of a website that I have been reading on a daily basis for the past week or so.. It is Ray Kurzweil's website and is a wonderful reference for cyberstudies and transhuman issues. Last night was an unusual night as I went to dinner with a bunch of friends last night and the conversation went to talk about cybernetic and transhuman issues. Someone suggested that we have already reached the time when machine intelligence has exceeded human intelligence. I had never thought of this because I have been of the mindset of waiting for some amazing machine that will one day talk to me just like I would talk to a friend. But the conversation last night was about how currently we depend so much on computers and machines, the machines really don't depend on us. Take for example email, I use email for reminders of daily appointments, I use my computer to remember my phone numbers my addresses, birthdays, to do lists, my current reading list. My computer is far more then just a computer it is a communication device to my friends and family, a store house of my visual and auditory memories, and even an alarm clock. I have started to think of my computer as my prosthetic brain. It is not that I can't remember all of the names and places and information that I need, I could write it on paper, but I have saved an enourmous amount of my brains storage capacity for other information.
On another note I saw the movie JARHEAD last night. what an amazing film. I would suggest taking the time to see this. I started thinking about some of the things that were happening in my life at the time of the first gulf war. I was amazed at how much time had passed since 1989. After the film all I could think about was energy, how energy is wasted in past there was an outlet for humans to use thier energies ( even if it was killing someone). I can only say go see it. I had to of course put a machine twist to it. The gulf war was a war that was won my technology on both the war front and the home front. CNN brought the war to us in an antispetic way and the war was brought to the soliders in way that some of the soilders did not even fire a round the entire time they were engaged in "combat". TRANSHUMAN WARFARE
