Some thoughts on where the social web and technology trends are really leading us.. I think the impact will be more profound and sudden than we could ever imainge…
Just read the article “DST’s Yuri Milner: Facebook Is Going To Be The Social Graph That Unifies All Civilization” on TechCrunch..
While the article itself wasn’t that great it was nice to read the thoughts from DST (the Russian company who invested US $200 million in Facebook a year ago and are investors in trending and promising companies like Zynga and Groupon) CEO Yuri Milner which basically were around the profound impacts that social sites will have on the human race.
A comment from Milner that struck me was;
Charlie Rose:
Backstage you told me about an article in the NYT that spoke to you when we think about why social networking has become such a phenomenon.
Yuri Milner:
Story was that human civ. started to develop with first social network. Emerged where population conc. was high. Helped propel to where we are now. Facebook is next step of creating huge human brain to embrace hundreds of million, possibly billions of people. Facilitate exchange of information never seen in hisotry of civilization…
I strongly believe that the rate of progress for the human race from a social and science perspective will continue on its ever accelerating path..
Think about the profound impact the printing press had on the human race. The Web was initially not more than the printed words delievered via a new medium. However, imagine now where the Social and “Understanding” Internet (which is underlined by fast processing, endless space, “everyone connected”, elaborate tools and algorithms and change in culture) allows for unrestricted, real time intelligent collaboration between anyone, Web 3.0 style classification and understanding of content and knowledge…
Technological Singularity may be closer than we think…..
From wikipedia:
Technological singularity refers to a prediction in Futurology that technological progress will become extremely fast, and consequently will make the future (after the technological singularity) unpredictable and qualitatively different from today. It is most often associated with the ideas of futurist Ray Kurzweil.[citation needed]
Although technological progress has been accelerating, it has been limited by the basic intelligence of the human brain, which has not changed significantly for millennia.[1] However with the increasing power of computers and other technologies, it might eventually be possible to build a machine that is more intelligent than humanity.[citation needed]
Theoretically, if a machine built by humans could bring to bear greater problem-solving and inventive skills than humans, then it could design a yet more capable machine. If built, this more capable machine then could design a machine of even greater capability. These iterations could accelerate, leading to recursive self improvement