The Human Trilogy – First Call:
“The Human Thinking”
Your Choice: Human or Cyborg?
Why Being a Google or Facebook User Makes You an Investor in the End of Humanity!
By Liviu Plesoianu
Author’s NOTE:
> This book might manage to reach the most intimate core of your humanness. If this would be the case, then please share it with all other human-beings you are connected to.
> The book can be read by scrolling down this page (use the Table of Contents to jump to the desired chapter)
Table of Contents
⇒ Summary
⇒ What Do Google and Facebook Leaders Have to Say Regarding the World They Are Building For Us?
⇒ “I am just a normal Facebook and Google user! I have nothing to do with all these!”…
⇒ Let Us All Embrace Technology, BUT in a Human Manner…
⇒ i-Pod, i-Phone, i-Pad, i-Cloud, i-…ROBOT!
⇒ The “Human Solidarity” Vs. the “Cyborg Singularity”
⇒ Google – Or the Most Ardent “Singularity” Supporter (and Developer)
⇒ First of all, what is the “Technological Singularity”?
⇒ What is the “Transhumanism”?
⇒ What about the “Singularity University”?
⇒ 2012 – The Year Google Hired Ray Kurzweil
⇒ Google’s Obsession for “Machine Learning”
⇒ Some Revealing Quotes about Artificial Intelligence from Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Founders and Owners)
⇒ More on Google and the “Singularity”
⇒ Google and the “Immortality”
⇒ Google, NASA, DARPA, Bilderberg
⇒ Google and Robots
⇒ The Future that Google Prepares for Us
⇒ The “Internet of Things”
⇒ Smart Cities
⇒ A(rtificial)I(ntelligence)
⇒ Facebook and AI
⇒ The Virtual and Augmented Reality
⇒ Facebook and the “Evil-Eye”
⇒ The Microsoft HoloLens
⇒ Intel RealSense
⇒ Considerations upon Real and Virtual Reality
⇒ Billions of Dollars Invested In VR/AR By All Major Tech Companies
⇒ Faceboogle’s Obsession to Get All Humans “Online”
⇒ Faceboogle and Christians
⇒ “You shall not take the name of the [DIGITAL] LORD your [Virtual] God in vain!”
⇒ Faceboogle and Buddhists
⇒ Faceboogle and religious people
⇒ Faceboogle and esotericists
⇒ The “clouds” – cloud computing
⇒ The “ether” – Ethernet
⇒ The “Artificial Intelligence” that will replace Wisdom
⇒ Gog – Google; Gog – Goggle(s)
⇒ Virtual/Augmented Reality Instead of Spiritual Clairvoyance
⇒ Faceboogle and atheists – Why the Singularity Empties No Room for Any Kind of Real Atheism
⇒ Faceboogle and Parents
⇒ Faceboogle, companies and sci-tech workers
⇒ Faceboogle and “the Borg”
⇒ Curious About What the International Public “Institutions” Are Doing With Your Money?
⇒ Science and Technology Leaders Concerned about Artificial Intelligence Bringing “The End of Humanity”
⇒ “What Can I Do?”
⇒ Join the Team of Humans
Summary
Each and every time you are using Google or Facebook services, you are turning yourself into one of the billions of people who are actually funding these corporations. The fact that so many “users” are accessing their services via their websites attracts a huge number of companies which are advertising there aiming at selling you something. Ultimately, the money from advertising (generated on your behalf) is used by Google and Facebook to rapidly build a world devoid of humanity, a world populated and run by cyborgs and machines. And the most striking fact, as you will very soon find out from the following lines, is that the top managers and owners of Facebook and Google do not build this cyborg future in disguise. They are not hiding it at all! The most prominent figures of Faceboogle are actually talking and writing a lot about their intentions and there are literally thousands of articles, books, podcasts and videos around the web containing their thoughts, “visions” and plans for the so-called “enhanced- human”.
*I will use the “Faceboogle” term a lot in the book as, behind their apparent strife, both Google and Facebook are in fact sharing the same vision of the “future-Earth”.
From the ever growing sources of material regarding the anti-human work of Google and Facebook, I have chosen just small parts that I consider illustrative enough to our subject of discussion. Starting from fragments and quotes here, you can continue to investigate and update on their fast-paced work towards what they are so pleased to call – “The Technological Singularity” (the following chapters will offer plenty of details regarding terms as “Singularity” or “Transhumanism”).
What Do Google and Facebook Leaders Have to Say Regarding the World They Are Building For Us?
This is no “exalted” book. Its message is not anti-technological. Many of these words are written on an iPad and many books and articles from which the numerous quotes are extracted were read in their digital version. The author has a 15 years background as Head of Digital Marketing for some big European corporations and always stays tuned to the latest sci-tech news and developments. Also, the author spent many of his teenhood days and nights playing very addictive games, surfing the web, making websites, posting and sharing pictures, videos, feelings and thoughts. He travelled to Silicon Valley and imbued himself with the Google and Apple substance while visiting their headquarters in Mountain View and Cupertino.
…BUT the author is also a human being. First, he decided to leave the digital corporation environment when he felt it was not possible for him anymore to help “e-masters” sell billions of dollars expensive illusions to their “e-slaves”. For, as this book will reveal, digital marketing is nothing, overall, but a means of enslaving people while convincing them that, on the contrary, they are “set free” by the myriads of tech products and services which are invading all their proximities.
Secondly, he established his own company and worked for a couple of years in the digital sphere avoiding any compromise and always doing a thorough filtering of his clients based on their white, black or grey business goals criterion. Then, while searching for information regarding future trends in science and technology, the author had the biggest surprise of his life! He found out that – without knowing it – he was nothing else, in fact, but an investor in the post- human era…
…How is that? What is the meaning of the title of this book? Why do I keep saying that by simply using Google and Facebook services you are turning yourself into a money-active supporter of the End of Humanity? …Before slicing the tech-apocalyptic pie, I think nothing would give more life to your interest and more appeal to your attention than the next few quotes. They are just glimpses of what this book tries to reveal:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity – technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google), “The Law of Accelerating Returns”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology. (…) Oculus’s mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. (…) After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. (…) One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.
(…) The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together. I can’t wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us.” – Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Owner
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In our brains, the massively distributed nanobots will interact with our biological neurons. This will provide full immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses, as well as neurological correlates of our emotions, from within the nervous system. More important, this intimate connection between our biological thinking and the nonbiological intelligence we are creating will profoundly expand human intelligence.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google), “The Singularity is Near”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The team at Oculus is working to better understand human perception in an effort to create virtual, shared experiences that will completely change the way we communicate and collaborate. Michael Abrash – chief scientist at Oculus – discussed how the shift to virtual reality is going to bring huge changes to the world and to almost everything about how we live.”
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/03/f8-day-two-2015/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„By 2030, electronics will utilize molecule-sized circuits, the reverse- engineering of the human brain will have been completed, and bioMEMS will have evolved into bioNEMS (biological nanoelectromechanical systems). It will be routine to have billions of nanobots (nano-scale robots) coursing through the capillaries of our brains, communicating with each other (over a wireless local area network), as well as with our biological neurons and with the Internet. One application will be to provide full-immersion virtual reality that encompasses all of our senses. When we want to enter a virtual-reality environment, the nanobots will replace the signals from our real senses with the signals that our brain would receive if we were actually in the virtual environment.
We will have a panoply of virtual environments to choose from, including earthly worlds that we are familiar with, as well as those with no earthly counterpart. We will be able to go to these virtual places and have any kind of interaction with other real (as well as simulated) people, ranging from business negotiations to sensual encounters. In virtual reality, we won’t be restricted to a single personality, since we will be able to change our appearance and become other people.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google), “We Are Becoming Cyborgs”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/human-body-version-20
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„How do you define real? If it’s what you can feel, smell and taste and see, then real is just electrical signals that you can interpret in your brain. That’s why you are going to care a lot about VR. (…) An experience is what your mind infers from the data it receives (…) VR done right truly is reality as far as the observer is concerned.” – Oculus VR’s chief scientist, Michael Abrash, F8 2015 (Facebook’s annual developers conference)
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“So What’s Left? Let’s consider where we are, circa early 2030s. We’ve eliminated the heart, lungs, red and white blood cells, platelets, pancreas, thyroid and all the hormone-producing organs, kidneys, bladder, liver, lower esophagus, stomach, small intestines, large intestines, and bowel. What we have left at this point is the skeleton, skin, sex organs, sensory organs, mouth and upper esophagus, and brain.
The skeleton is a stable structure, and we already have a reasonable understanding of how it works. We can now replace parts of it (for example, artificial hips and joints), although the procedure requires painful surgery, and our current technology for doing so has serious limitations. Interlinking nanobots will one day provide the ability to augment and ultimately replace the skeleton through a gradual and noninvasive process. The human skeleton version 2.0 will be very strong, stable, and self-repairing.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google), “Human Body Version 2.0”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/human-body-version-20
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„We are rapidly growing more intimate with our technology. Computers started out as large remote machines in air-conditioned rooms tended by white-coated technicians. Subsequently they moved onto our desks, then under our arms, and now in our pockets. Soon, we’ll routinely put them inside our bodies and brains. Ultimately we will become more nonbiological than biological.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google), “We Are Becoming Cyborgs”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/human-body-version-20
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„Although the environments will not be completely convincing at first, by the late 2020s they will be indistinguishable from real reality and will involve all of the senses, as well as neurological correlations of our emotions. As we enter the 2030s there won’t be clear distinctions between human and machine, between real and virtual reality.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google), “The Singularity is Near”
…It goes without saying that the present book can by no way cover all issues related to Singularity and Transhumanism. Also, there is not sufficient time and room here to write about all Artificial Intelligence and Virtual-Reality/Augmented-Reality investments, about all companies that are currently developing this. The goal of this book is to help you become aware of what is actually happening on your behalf. And, of course, this book is primarily about Google and Facebook precisely because they are the most important “players” in the field, with Google leading the way and Facebook happily paving the road.
If the message of this book is rightly understood, than you, dear reader, will be much more alert from now on, being able to notice all developments that are leading towards the Singularity. You will see beyond the veil of the sci-tech media clichés and will grow a strong will, mind and heart that will make you able to stand fast against the so-called transhumanist “mainstream”.
The book you are reading now will give you the opportunity to get a good look at the architecture of the “digital world” they are trying to impose upon us in the detriment of our true humanness. Beside the author’s comments and considerations, you will get the whole picture from the “architects” themselves. There is no better way to put it than the way they express it with their own words.
There are actually thousands of articles, podcasts and videos that refer directly to the subject of this book – the “Singularity”. After reading the following chapters, you will most probably feel the need to continue searching the web for yourself. You will be simply overwhelmed… There are hundreds of new multi- media articles that are added each and every week!
Considering the great number of daily updates, this book should be taken as an awakening pill. It exposes the main currents and streams that are rapidly conducting us to the “post-human” era. The task of further grasping the truth behind the very appealing digital curtains is then incumbent to each and every one of us. But the simple fact of taking this awakening pill will surely make it a whole lot easier to read behind the lines of the sci-tech articles and to hear and watch through the veil of the mainstream sci-tech media.
“I am just a normal Facebook and Google user! I have nothing to do with all these!”…
“I have nothing to do with all these. I am a decent, good human being and all I do is searching for things on Google, as well as posting and sharing nice and inspiring photos and videos on Facebook and YouTube.”
The above is a very common reaction that I have noticed at so many people. Though understandable up to a certain point, this is nevertheless a relevant symptom for the very dangerous disease that spreads all around the Earth with the speed and ferocity of a real viral epidemic: the disease of “Easiness”. For, it is nothing else but this mere easiness that sets the cornerstone, the first stone placed in the construction of the un-human digital empire. The less we are prepared to think things thoroughly from one end to the other, the more room we are emptying in our heads and hearts for the post-human content of the Singularity bringers.
On the contrary, if we decide to watch the whole mental movie of the money-chain, we rapidly come to understand that there is no one else than us who feeds the Dragon. All the money used by Google and Facebook in order to turn us into non-human cyborgs and virtual pets comes directly from us! The very minute we start taking more than a sporadic glimpse of what Faceboogle prepares, we come to know all these things.…All Google or Facebook “users” should feel extremely frustrated each and every time their money is spent without them being first consulted. Do you really think this is democracy!? This is digital despotism! Even when people vote for their politicians to represent them at the head of the state, they always have the option of reading “the platform” of each political party. They can choose to vote or not to vote, to believe or not to believe in the promises made by the politicians. BUT still, they ARE able to read what the political parties promise to develop and achieve for them. Are Google and Facebook doing this, at least? NO! Would it be so difficult for a tech-giant, with billions of dollars at its disposal, to develop an online platform where “users” will be informed and – the most important – ASKED if they agree with what Google and Facebook intend to do with their money!?
*To only give you a tiny contextual glimpse regarding how much money these giants generate by the simple fact that you are using their services, I will just write here that Google has made 66 billion dollars in 2014 (with 90% of revenues coming from advertising). So, to put it short, by the fact that you and the other billion people are using Google services (like “Search”) and websites (like “YouTube”), Google attracts hundreds of thousands of companies that are paying for ads with a total value of 60 billion dollars (results for 2014). We are the biggest, the most important investors of Google and Facebook! They would have no penny to spend on their nightmare visions if it weren’t us to give them money!
Therefore, it is more than obvious that the first and most crucial thing is that Internet “users” should become aware of the fact that ALL the money Google, Facebook and other online giants generate is actually money made on their behalf. Without users, there would be no money! Without many users, there would be no big money! Without big money, there would be no online giants! It is very simple…
And it should make you feel really empowered, dear human readers!
Because – in reality – it is YOU who OWN this money, these businesses. Therefore, it is YOU who should decide where at least part of this money goes! It is your human right! And you should fight for this human right, to the same extent that you are fighting for all your other human rights!
The implications for our future are enormous. For instance, we cannot just keep saying things like “We want Peace on Earth!” while, at the same time, we continue to feed these heartless dragons. While we are making 100 new Facebook groups each and every day calling them names like “Peace on Earth” and alike, big preparations are underway for new, catastrophic confrontations. Will we ever be able to stop them just by “giving a like” on Facebook to some “Peace on Earth” Page or Group? We can already see that there is no real connection, there is no transfer into reality between the daily millions of “Peace- likes” and the real, actual peace.
We should not just “like” Peace or Humanness! We should be willing to actually do something so that “Peace and Humanness on Earth” truly becomes a real thing. And the first step is to actually do something for our fellow beings who are dying of hunger and associated diseases each and every second. For, you see, each hour we spend on a “Love for Humanity” Facebook Group is an hour when 900 children die of extreme poverty! This should give us a shake! For, while we are so preoccupied with “liking” and “sharing”, so many poor children die because nobody shares a real piece of bread with them. This is a CALL for all beautiful and kind human beings who do want to help their fellow human beings get out of hunger: if you want those children to live, then become aware that we need to share a piece of bread, not just a Facebook post! If we share a bread and so help a poor child live, then we can really say that we Love that poor child. But if we continue to just share Facebook posts about the tragedy of extreme poverty, then we can only say that we would “like” things to be different…
“Peace”, “Humanity”, “Love” – all these are not things to be “liked”. These are things that have to be streamed from our hearts into our deeds. If your inner candle is still burning, if your chest can no longer keep inside the mighty fire of Love, then let it go out, let it kindle the souls of your fellow human-beings! Let its warmth melt the icy-economics and stop this horrible madness: it is not “money inequality”, it is a massacre and nobody should call it differently!
Please, stop for a second and try to understand and feel this: through the fact that you are populating in such big numbers those Facebook groups and pages, even if you are always “sharing” peaceful and human thoughts and feelings, the huge amount of money Facebook generates on your behalf goes to projects like the “Oculus VR” (2 billion dollars invested in “immersive virtual reality”). It doesn’t go to those children that are dying of hunger…
First, although they are perfectly aware of the fact that they totally rely on your money, Facebook and Google simply don’t consider that this is actually YOUR money. Consequently, they do not feel that it is YOU who should decide where this money goes.
Secondly, without consulting you – their “users”, on whose behalf their money is triggered – they are investing this big money in “Immersive Virtual Reality” (Facebook) and “Robots, Artificial Intelligence and the actual merging of man with machine” (Google).
So, to put it bluntly, what truly happens is that we are actually funding a non-human future for ourselves and for the children of the Earth. By the simple fact that we are Google and Facebook “users”, we are feeding these giants with huge money while they are using it to build a nightmare future for all of us.
Let Us All Embrace Technology,
BUT in a Human Manner…
I have a “smartphone” and an iPad. I am using Internet a lot and I am doing almost all my work in front of a desktop computer or laptop. There is nothing wrong per se in using nowadays technology. This book is by no way a call to stop using modern technology. The real Call of this book and of the whole “Human Trilogy” is towards our Humanity and Humanness! We need to ponder Technology with Humanology. We need to learn how to kiss the Earth with our human-toe, and not indirectly fund a tech-tornado! A tech-tornado that will eventually destroy all that is really human in us and around us…
I have fixed my “smartphone” myself. I have fixed it when the telecom company had said that it cannot be fixed and that they would give me a big discount for buying “the latest number in the series”. Each time I am wearing a watch, it is not a “smart”-watch, but the watch a dear, beloved grandma bought for me many years ago. In the meantime, the battery stopped. And I am still wearing it without new batteries. The Time this watch shows is much more relevant to me than the actual current “time” that I can anyway get from so many other sources and devices!
So, my point is: we can embrace all the latest technologies without any problem. But if our hug is really human, then only those technologies that come out as fruits of the Humanology will be able to stay with us. Technology should be dependent upon us. We should never become dependent upon technology.
We should always remain creators of technology. We should never become creations of technology. We can use “apps”, but should never let apps use us.
i-Pod, i-Phone, i-Pad, i-Cloud, i-…ROBOT!
Step by step, Intelligence is taken away from the Human-Beings and transferred to the “Smart-devices”. Through the “user-friendly” mirage, all that requires human thinking is replaced and made “obsolete”. “Internet makes me smarter” is just the beginning of it. “Smart”-Phones, “Smart”-Watches and all other “Smart”-Devices are just the beginning of it. After embracing the “wearable technology” (like “smart-clothes” that are always connected to the “cloud”), the next step will be the actual merging of the human being with the machine. If we are just a little bit aware and alert, we will rapidly see and understand what the plan is: technology evolves, through the decades, in such a way that – slowly but surely – it incorporates in us and, finally, will incorporate us. The sci-tech products and services are getting closer and closer to us. We are just a few years behind the moment when – through the nanobots – technology will finally penetrate our bodies and minds, it will literally get under our skin! Our biological “substrate” will gradually be replaced by swarms of blood-cell sized robots (the “nano(ro)bots”) that will ultimately take full control of our neocortex and turn our minds into instruments of a global Artificial Intelligence.
Although the Heads (indeed, they are much more heads than hearts) of Google, of Facebook and of many other sci-tech giants give zillions of lectures trying to persuasively convince us that by merging with the machines we will exponentially increase our IQ, what happens in the real world is that we are gradually giving away our own consciousness. The price for all of us to be paid for gaining “an infinite intelligence” is no less than our own ego, our own “sense of self”, our own consciousness, our own… “I”. In this sense, it is not by chance that the most “revolutionary” products of the last decade are called: i-Pod, i- Phone, i-Pad. These names are nothing but the perfect expression of the replacement of the human “I” with the Artificial Intelligence (AI). To the extent that a human being doesn’t work to keep an “I” on “AI”, this is what actually happens. After the i-Pod, the i-Phone the i-Pad and the i-Cloud, the next thing that will soon come will be the… i-ROBOT. After we have gradually replaced our own human uppercase “I” with all the lowercase “i”s of technology, the last portion that we shall lose will be replaced by the “i-Robot”. This will be the “Technological Singularity”. After so much sleepy and foggy acceptance of humanless high-tech, expressed by an almost automatic pressing of the affirmative “Return” key, this will be the point of no Return for humanity…
In the first phase, people began to depend up to 100% upon table- calculators in order to do basic arithmetic. Is it good to use them? Yes, of course, they are really helpful. There is no point in wasting half an hour to do math operations that a table-calculator or a computer will do in a second. But the idea is to also be able to do math operations by myself. If I know how to do it, then there is no problem in letting myself being helped by a machine. But if I don’t know how to do it and if I am 100% dependent over the machine, then it means that I have already transferred part of my thinking and part of my intelligence to the machine. It means that my life is “easier”, but my being is less “free”. *Please note that by no way I am saying “don’t use these machines to do your calculations”. No, we should use them. They really make our life easier and they can really be called a “bless”. BUT, only call them a “bless” if you use them to make your life easier whilst not being 100% dependent on them! Make your life “easier”, but keep yourself “free”…
In the second phase, people began to depend up to 100% on computers and all computer-related technology. Again, it is perfectly fine to use computers for anything that helps you become more productive, more effective. BUT, don’t loose your freedom in the process!… Please note how they are always putting a lot of emphasis on “easy access”. It has gone so far that, without exaggerating, a person that would have encountered no problem filling-in a registration form ten years ago will not be able (or not be willing) to do it now unless the registration-form is made for the understanding of a two years old child! And really – there is no exaggeration in this! Just test it on yourself (like I’ve already tested it on myself). Step-by-step, we become the “Slaves of Easiness”. They tell us “it’s for our own sake”, but what they are actually doing is turning us into the best possible kind of slaves – the slaves that have absolutely no clue about the fact that they are slaves… Again, this is nothing but actual transfer of our thinking, of our Intelligence into machines.
In the third phase, people began to depend up to 100% on “Smart”- Devices. The best example, of course, is that of the “Smart”-Phones. After only a few years of development and sales, we became the “slaves of our phones”. For almost anything, there is an app that “does it”. Again, I cannot stress enough upon the fact that there is nothing wrong in using smartphones, that there is nothing wrong in using apps. BUT, again, we should use them just up to the point where they start using us. If we become overly dependent on these “Smart”-Devices, then we literally begin to transfer our thinking, our Intelligence into them.
The “Smarter” smartphones get, the less “smart” we become. For the sake of “Easiness”, we are ready to give away our human intelligence and to become the slaves of our smartphones. In fact, the question already is: are we using the smartphones, or are the smartphones using us?
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In about 40 years, the pace of change is going to be so astonishingly quick that you won’t be able to follow it unless you enhance your own intelligence by merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering)
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2014/09/27/Richard-Florida-Ray-Kurzweil-Innovation/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Ray Kurzweil made a startling prediction in 1999 that appears to be coming true: that by 2023 a $1,000 laptop would have the computing power and storage capacity of a human brain.
(…) The implications of all this are mind-boggling. Within seven years – about when the iPhone 11 is likely to be released – the smartphones in our pockets will be as computationally intelligent as we are. It doesn’t stop there, though. These devices will continue to advance, exponentially, until they exceed the combined intelligence of the human race. Already, our computers have a big advantage over us: they are connected via the Internet and share information with each other billions of times faster than we can. It is hard to even imagine what becomes possible with these advances and what the implications are.”
In the fourth phase, there will be what Google and Facebook so rapidly develop (Google’s Robots and Facebook’s Virtual Reality, to put it roughly). And how is that Google and Facebook are so rapidly developing all these? It’s simple – because they have billions of dollars at their disposal! And how is that they have so many billions? Again – it is very simple: because we are feeding them each and every time we are using their services… Oh, it’s so easy, of course! We need some info, so we just “google it”. We need to “get in touch”, so we just “login to Facebook”. But when was the last time we stopped and asked ourselves this decisive question: “What happens with the billions they make on my behalf? What happens with my money?”
The “Human Solidarity” Vs. the “Cyborg Singularity”
From the “market” perspective, Google and Facebook are competitors, they fight for segments, and they struggle to take the bigger part of the pie. But from the human perspective – the one that seems to interest no one! – Google and Facebook are just the two big hands of the same giant. If we foresee their developments, if we just follow their own speeches and read their own articles and books, we will see without any doubt that they are actually working together. Their aim is the Singularity.
Even if you don’t use computers that much (or smartphones, tablets and alike), they are still shaping your future (and the future of your successors). It is something that concerns all of us. Not a single human being on Earth can be excluded from this. It is about the near future of Earth and of humanity. And when I say “near” I really mean the next two decades. Many of us will still be here when it happens and, certainly, most of our successors will be.
There are good-hearted human beings who are using Facebook and Google to “spread the message of love and brotherhood” on Earth. Nevertheless, the fact that they are doing this by using the services of two companies that are working so hard to alienate human life is nothing but a terrible inconsistency!
The scope of this book is not to present the alternatives we all have, the healthy alternatives to Google and Facebook. This will be addressed in another book, called “The Solidarity”. And – yes! – the “Solidarity” strongly opposes the “Singularity”. While the “Singularity” is the nightmare vision of a “new Earth” devoid of human beings (that are to be replaced with the “much better” cyborgs), the “Solidarity” proposes the bright vision of a “new Earth” populated by human beings who work everything out of the powerful, mighty Universal Brotherhood Impulse.
What Google and Mr. Kurzweil are saying, in essence, is that the human being is just a humble, almost insignificant creature, full of manufacturing defects, that has to be replaced by the machine-man, by the almighty, omniscient cyborg (which in fact is more a replica of “God” than a replica of the human being). This is, in its essence, the “Singularity” – the post-human era, the Age of Machines.
On the contrary, the “Solidarity” is all about human beings developing their humanness in the context of a social-global interaction. The adherents of the “Solidarity” are not against technology (including Internet or robotics). They are just totally devoted to the human-being. We do not consider ourselves pitiful beings that are incapable of solving their issues. We don’t think that – being “incapable” of solving, for instance, the “war” issue – we need machines, cyborgs and nanobots to heal the wounds of humanity. We can do this by ourselves. Anyway, if we are to heal humanity’s wounds, this can’t be done without humans. And it certainly cannot be done by replacing humans with cyborgs. The world of the cyborgs will have absolutely nothing to do with the human world.
If, for instance, Mr. Kurzweil talks about eradicating malnutrition by placing billions of nanobots inside our bodies, I say – from a totally different, HUMAN perspective – that it is very simple to eradicate malnutrition and extreme poverty without becoming Cyborgs. We only need to switch the use of the hundreds of billions that are spent – ON OUR BEHALF! – for war! Do you honestly think that there would be one – just one! – human being on Earth that would continue to speak about the USA as the “biggest enemy” if the USA would cut at least half of its military budgets and use it to eradicate extreme poverty around the world?
We just have to stop this madness and inhumanity! A trillion dollars per year for military expenditures!?? This being just the military budget of one country? What is this!?? Who dares to talk about the right to “the pursuit of happiness” while humans are deprived of THEIR money and are driven into stupid wars that do nothing but kill tens of thousands of innocent beings of Earth?
Let Google invest in the “Singularity” and let Facebook continue to be its companion. I am a Human-Being and I will go the Human-Way! And you, dear reader, will have to decide: you either go the cyborg-way, or the human-way. There is nothing in-between! So you can’t delude yourself – “I am just using this for my communication/information/business/entertainment needs” is just hiding the head deep into the sand, avoiding reality, trying not to feel guilty.
But there is guilt, because we are indeed free people, totally responsible for all our deeds and for all the choices we make. I had to write this book precisely because I have noticed that the large majority of people using Google and Facebook are simply lacking this knowledge, missing this information regarding what Google and Facebook are building.
BUT after reading this book, no one can continue to say “I am just using this for my communication/information/business/entertainment needs”. All that you can read here makes it more than obvious that this is simply not possible. You cannot say that you don’t want to feed the Dragon that wishes to destroy the human-element as long as you are giving him his daily portion of food “just to ride him a little bit”…
Anyway, I am aware of the fact that, at this point of lecturing, you may still think these words are just exaggerations. If this is the case, then – please – after finishing this book just go on reading all the online and offline literature regarding the “Singularity” and the “Virtual/Augmented Reality”. You will be surprised to get the feeling that this book is actually very “light”, that it should have been even more incisive!
They are so far already on their way towards their non-human goals of cyborgness, that any second becomes really crucial. The “Cyborg Singularity” is growing. It is growing into a Monster. For no other word could better describe it – it is a “Monster” that will devour billions of sedated human-beings. The only way to stop this is to start growing right now the healthy alternative – the “Human Solidarity”.
Google – Or the Most Ardent “Singularity” Supporter
(and Developer)
First of all, what is the “Technological Singularity”?
According to the definition given by the number one Singularitarian – Mr. Raymond Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering), the technological Singularity is “… a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed”. Also, in his book – “Singularity is Near”, Kurzweil writes that “The singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-singularity, between human and machine nor between physical and virtual reality”.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Vernor Vinge (the one who originated the “technological singularity” notion):
“The Singularity is the event or sequence of events likely to happen at the intersection of machine and human intelligence i.e. the period when Artificial Intelligence at first matches and eventually surpasses our biological intelligence.” According to Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge: “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”
http://www.singularitysymposium.com/
What is the “Transhumanism”?
The other crucial concept of the Singularitarians is the “Transhumanism”, defined as the belief that technology will give us the opportunity to transcend ourselves and to reach a far superior state of being. The way to this is by the merging of man with the machine (through the means of biotechnology, nanorobotics and Artificial Intelligence). By becoming cyborgs and gradually replacing all our “biological substrate” with a new, enhanced technological substrate, in just a few years from now we will gain immortality and start to spread in the whole Universe, awakening the cosmos and giving it purpose. After merging with the robots, we will start populating our Solar System and, then, the rest of the Universe by sending self-replicating nanobots everywhere.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Foreword by Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering) to “Virtually Human”:
“In her book Virtually Human, Martine Rothblatt, PhD provides a compelling and convincing case for virtual humans. After all, what difference does it make if our mental circuits are biological or electronic if the result is the same?
(…) One piece of evidence of the expanding power of AI is IBM’s Watson, which won a televised Jeopardy! Contest against Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, the best two (biological) human players in the world. Indeed Watson got a higher score than Rutter and Jennings combined.
(…) Thus one significance of AIs actually reading at human levels, which I maintain will happen by 2029, is that they will then be able to combine their human-level understanding with Internet scale and thereby apply that comprehension to tens of billions of documents.
(…) computational devices in the 2030s will be the size of blood cells and we will introduce them into our bodies and brains noninvasively.
(…) a non biological immune system that will download new software from the Internet to deal with new pathogens.
(…) These “nanobots” will also go into the brain via the capillaries and connect our neocortex (the outer layer of the brain where we do our thinking) to the cloud. So today, just as we can access many thousands of computers in the cloud when we need them, in the 2030s and beyond we will be able to access additional neocortex to think deeper thoughts.
(…) In the 2030s we will directly expand the size and scope of our neocortex into the cloud.
(…) In my books, I make the case that recreating the computational capacity of the human brain requires about 10^14 (10 to the fourteenth power or 100 trillion) calculations per second. We already have that capacity in our supercomputers and personal computers will have that power in the early 2020s. The software for human-level intelligence will take longer but we are also making exponential gains in modeling and recreating the powers of the neocortex. Creating synthetic models of the neocortex is what I am currently working on as a Director of Engineering at Google. I make the case in my books that we will have the software capabilities for human-level AI by 2029. Watson is already a significant milestone in that effort.
(…) Once that is possible, we will be able to create specific personalities including those of people who have passed.
(…) That movie illustrates my efforts to preserve the documents, music and other memorabilia of my father so that future AIs can create an avatar with his memories, skills and personality.
(…) my idea of creating an avatar to bring back biological humans.
(…) Ultimately we will be able to access the information in our brains that constitutes our memories, skills and personalities and back them up. In my timeline, that is a 2040s scenario. One way that will happen is that by the mid 2030s our thinking will be a hybrid of biological and nonbiological thinking. The nonbiological part (largely in the cloud) will be subject to my law of accelerating returns. Thus by the 2040s, the nonbiological part of our thinking will greatly predominate. It will be capable of fully understanding and modeling the biological part. And it will be fully backed up just as we back up all nonbiological processes today.”
What about the “Singularity University”?
…it was September 2008 when the founding conference of the “Singularity University” took place. The Singularity University was jointly founded by Peter H. Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil. The corporate founders are: Google (who fully supported Kurzweil’s Singularity years before hiring him and who helped setting the Singularity University up with more than $250,000 in donations), Nokia, Cisco, Autodesk, Kauffman, ePlanet Capital and, of course, Genentech.
*You might already be aware by now of the connection between Google, Apple and Genentech; if not, just read this article: “Now Google wants to tackle death: Internet giant backs company seeking the fountain of youth”:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Based on that we are announcing, here at TED, in true TED tradition, Singularity University. It’s a new university that’s founded by Peter Diamandis, who is here in the audience, and myself. It’s backed by NASA and Google, and other leaders in the high-tech and science community. And our goal was to assemble the leaders, both teachers and students, in these exponentially growing information technologies, and their application. But Larry Page made an impassioned speech at our organizing meeting, saying we should devote this study to actually addressing some of the major challenges facing humanity. And if we did that, then Google would back this. And so that’s what we’ve done.” – Ray Kurzweil
http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_announces_singularity_university/transcript?language=en
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„Singularity University has a Space Act Agreement with NASA Ames Research Center, permitting SU to house its facilities in the NASA Research Park and facilitates partnership with NASA through joint public events, speaker presentations, team projects collaboration and NASA Ames STEM program.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The NASA site, the Ames Research Center, houses an odd collection of unusual buildings, including a giant wind tunnel, a huge supercomputing center and a flight simulator facility with equipment capable throwing people 60 feet into the air.
Today, the government operates NASA Ames as a bustling, public-sector- meets-private-sector technology bazaar. Start-ups, universities and corporations have set up shop here, and Google plans to build a new campus here over the next few years that will include housing for workers.
A nondescript structure, Building 20, is the Singularity University headquarters, and most students stay in nearby apartments on the NASA land.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13sing.html?pagewanted=3&fta=y
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Singularity University announces Google support for increased global access and diversity in tech:
Google becomes a title sponsor of Singularity University (SU) to support SU Graduate Studies Program (GSP)”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“At a recent Singularity University lunch, he (Peter Diamandis) hopped up to make a speech peppered with passion and conviction.
“My target is to live 700 years,” he declared. The students chuckled.
“I say that seriously,” he retorted.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13sing.html
2012 – The Year Google Hired Ray Kurzweil
“I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining Google as Director of Engineering this Monday, December 17, 2012” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google).
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“And now? Now, he works at Google. Ray Kurzweil who believes that we can live for ever and that computers will gain what looks like a lot like consciousness in a little over a decade is now Google’s director of engineering. The announcement of this, last year, was extraordinary enough. To people who work with tech or who are interested in tech and who are familiar with the idea that Kurzweil has popularized “the singularity” – the moment in the future when men and machines will supposedly converge – (…) this was headline news in itself.
But it’s what came next that puts this into context. It’s since been revealed that Google has gone on an unprecedented shopping spree and is in the throes of assembling what looks like the greatest artificial intelligence laboratory on Earth; a laboratory designed to feast upon a resource of a kind that the world has never seen before: truly massive data. Our data. From the minutiae of our lives.
Google has bought almost every machine-learning and robotics company it can find, or at least, rates. It made headlines two months ago, when it bought Boston Dynamics, the firm that produces spectacular, terrifyingly life-like military robots, for an “undisclosed” but undoubtedly massive sum. It spent $3.2bn (£1.9bn) on smart thermostat maker Nest Labs. And this month, it bought the secretive and cutting-edge British artificial intelligence startup DeepMind for £242m.
And those are just the big deals. It also bought Bot & Dolly, Meka Robotics, Holomni, Redwood Robotics and Schaft, and another AI startup, DNNresearch. It hired Geoff Hinton, a British computer scientist who’s probably the world’s leading expert on neural networks. And it has embarked upon what one DeepMind investor told the technology publication Re/code two weeks ago was “a Manhattan project of AI”. If artificial intelligence was really possible, and if anybody could do it, he said, “this will be the team”. The future, in ways we can’t even begin to imagine, will be Google’s.
(…) Kurzweil has worked with Google’s co-founder Larry Page on special projects over several years. “And I’d been having ongoing conversations with him about artificial intelligence and what Google is doing and what I was trying to do. And basically he said, ‘Do it here. We’ll give you the independence you’ve had with your own company, but you’ll have these Google-scale resources.”
And it’s the Google-scale resources that are beyond anything the world has seen before. Such as the huge data sets that result from 1 billion people using Google ever single day. And the Google knowledge graph, which consists of 800m concepts and the billions of relationships between them. This is already a neural network, a massive, distributed global “brain”. Can it learn? Can it think? It’s what some of the smartest people on the planet are working on next.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Exponential Finance: Ray Kurzweil Stresses Humanity’s ‘Moral Imperative’ in Developing Artificial Intelligence:
(…) The Co-Founder of Singularity University and now Director of Engineering at Google offered his long-held belief on what the future holds for humans and artificial intelligence: convergence.
“We are going to directly merge with it, we are going to become the AIs,” he stated.
(…)This mind-boggling future begged the question, what is Kurzweil working on right now at Google?
“[Google] is a pretty remarkable company,” he said. “The resources are incredible: computation, data, algorithms, and particularly the talent there. I think it’s really the only place I can do my project which has been a 50-year quest to recreate human intelligence…I think we are very much on schedule to achieve human levels of intelligence by 2029.”
He explained that his team is utilizing numerous AI techniques to deal with language and learning, and in the process, collaborating with Google’s DeepMind, the recently acquired startup that developed a neural network that learned how to play video games successfully.
“Mastering intelligence is so difficult that we need to throw everything we have at it.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering): “I will say that it will be difficult to end our existence if we are fully digital because there will be a lot of backup copies of our “mind file” so we could never be sure that we erased them all. It is like trying to erase every copy of an e-mail today. There are usually additional copies stored on a server somewhere.”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ask-ray-living-in-virtual-worlds-as-an-avatar
RELEVANT QUOTE:
We will gradually eliminate our biological “substrate”:
“As you go out to the 2040s, now the bulk of our thinking is out in the cloud. The biological portion of our brain didn’t go away but the nonbiological portion will be much more powerful. And it will be uploaded automatically the way we back up everything now that’s digital.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873245047045784125813 86515510
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Our organs will be fully replaced by “nanobots” (Ray Kurzweil – Google’s Director of Engineering):
“A key question in designing this technology will be the means by which these nanobots make their way in and out of the body. As I mentioned above, the technologies we have today, such as intravenous catheters, leave much to be desired. A significant benefit of nanobot technology is that unlike mere drugs and nutritional supplements, nanobots have a measure of intelligence. They can keep track of their own inventories, and intelligently slip in and out of our bodies in clever ways. One scenario is that we would wear a special “nutrient garment” such as a belt or undershirt. This garment would be loaded with nutrient bearing nanobots, which would make their way in and out of our bodies through the skin or other body cavities.
(…) Today, that word might be “software,” or “biotechnology,” but in another couple of decades, the word is likely to be “nanobots.” Nanobots – blood-cell-sized robots – will provide the means to radically redesign our digestive systems, and, incidentally, just about everything else. In an intermediate phase, nanobots in the digestive tract and bloodstream will intelligently extract the precise nutrients we need, call for needed additional nutrients and supplements through our personal wireless local area network, and send the rest of the food we eat on its way to be passed through for elimination.
(…) This technology should be reasonably mature by the 2020s. Nutrients will be introduced directly into the bloodstream by special metabolic nanobots. Sensors in our bloodstream and body, using wireless communication, will provide dynamic information on the nutrients needed at each point in time.
(…) At this stage of technological development, we will be able to eat whatever we want, whatever gives us pleasure and gastronomic fulfillment, and thereby unreservedly explore the culinary arts for their tastes, textures, and aromas. At the same time, we will provide an optimal flow of nutrients to our bloodstream, using a completely separate process. One possibility would be that all the food we eat would pass through a digestive tract that is now disconnected from any possible absorption into the bloodstream.
This would place a burden on our colon and bowel functions, so a more refined approach will dispense with the function of elimination. We will be able to accomplish this using special elimination nanobots that act like tiny garbage compactors. As the nutrient nanobots make their way from the nutrient garment into our bodies, the elimination nanobots will go the other way.
Periodically, we would replace the nutrition garment for a fresh one. One might comment that we do obtain some pleasure from the elimination function, but I suspect that most people would be happy to do without it.
(…) Ultimately we won’t need to bother with special garments or explicit nutritional resources. Just as computation will eventually be ubiquitous and available everywhere, so too will basic metabolic nanobot resources be embedded everywhere in our environment.
(…) Once perfected, we will no longer need version 1.0 of our digestive system at all. I pointed out above that our adoption of these technologies will be cautious and incremental, so we will not dispense with the old-fashioned digestive process when these technologies are first introduced. Most of us will wait for digestive system version 2.1 or even 2.2 before being willing to do dispense with version 1.0. After all, people didn’t throw away their typewriters when the first generation of word processors was introduced. People held onto their vinyl record collections for many years after CDs came out (I still have mine). People are still holding onto their film cameras, although the tide is rapidly turning in favor of digital cameras.
However, these new technologies do ultimately dominate, and few people today still own a typewriter. The same phenomenon will happen with our reengineered bodies. Once we’ve worked out the inevitable complications that will arise with a radically reengineered gastrointestinal system, we will begin to rely on it more and more.”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/human-body-version-20
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering), “The Singularity is Near”:
“What are the implications for the human-machine civilization when strong AI and nanotechnology can create any product, any situation, any environment that we can imagine at will?
(…) As the Singularity approaches we will have to reconsider our ideas about the nature of human life and redesign our human institutions.
(…) For example, the intertwined revolutions of G, N, and R will transform our frail version 1.0 human bodies into their far more durable and capable version 2.0 counterparts. Billions of nanobots will travel through the bloodstream in our bodies and brains. In our bodies, they will destroy pathogens, correct DNA errors, eliminate toxins, and perform many other tasks to enhance our physical well-being. As a result, we will be able to live indefinitely without aging.
(…) In our brains, the massively distributed nanobots will interact with our biological neurons. This will provide full immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses, as well as neurological correlates of our emotions, from within the nervous system. More important, this intimate connection between our biological thinking and the nonbiological intelligence we are creating will profoundly expand human intelligence.
(…) Warfare will move toward nanobot-based weapons, as well as cyberweapons. Learning will first move online, but once our brains are online we will be able to download new knowledge and skills.
(…) Intelligence on and around the Earth will continue to expand exponentially until we reach the limits of matter and energy to support intelligent computation. As we approach this limit in our corner of the galaxy, the intelligence of our civilization will expand outward into the rest of the universe, quickly reaching the fastest speed possible.
(…) Beyond the next two decades we will use nanoengineered methods such as nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs.
(…) We will not notice the absence of many of our organs, such as the liver and pancreas, since we do not directly experience their operation. But the skin, which includes our primary and secondary sex organs, may prove to be an organ we will actually want to keep, or we may at least want to maintain its vital functions of communication and pleasure. However, we will ultimately be able to improve on the skin with new nanoengineered supple materials that will provide greater protection from physical and thermal environmental effects while enhancing our capacity for intimate communication. The same observation holds for the mouth and upper esophagus, which constitute the remaining aspects of the digestive system that we use to experience the act of eating.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Our machines will become much more like us, and we will become much more like our machines.” – RODNEY BROOKS
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering): “Well, it’s going to go through several stages. We’ll go through a stage in the 2020s and 2030s where we are putting these intelligent nanobots in our bloodstream which will keep us healthy from inside, augment our immune system, provide dramatic gains in human life expectancy and then expand our mental functions. We’ll still be humanlike, but we’ll have these mental prostheses. Now, some people might say that search engines are already a memory enhancement. I certainly use them. In fact I may be on interviews and I’m sitting there on my search engine looking up facts in real time. And one woman said that her son’s computer may as well be in his brain because he carries it around with him all the time. So this will be getting more intimate. These devices will be inside our bodies and brains, expanding human capability, but over time and because of this exponential growth, that non-biological portion of our intelligence will ultimately predominate, and we’ll have human level intelligence that doesn’t have a physical body in real reality, but will be able to project bodies in virtual reality.
We’ll be spending more and more time in virtual reality, for example, if you want to go on virtual reality, the nanobots shut down the signals coming from your real senses, replace them with the signals that your brain would have been receiving had it been in the virtual environment and to your brain it feels like you are in that virtual environment. It can be just as realistic and compelling as real reality, incorporating all of the senses. You go to move your arm and your legs but it moves your virtual body. Except for your real body, your virtual body doesn’t have to be the same body you have in real reality.
Design of new virtual reality environments and new bodies to inhabit those environments will be a new art form. You can go there with one other special person or 100 people, for anything from a conference to an intimate encounter, and have these virtual experiences involving all of your senses.”
http://www.ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-ray-kurzweil- transcending-biology
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering), “The Singularity is Near” – We Are Becoming Cyborgs:
“We Are Becoming Cyborgs. The human body version 2.0 scenario represents the continuation of a long-standing trend in which we grow more intimate with our technology. Computers started out as large, remote machines in airconditioned rooms tended by white-coated technicians. They moved onto our desks, then under our arms, and now into our pockets. Soon, we’ll routinely put them inside our bodies and brains. By the 2030s we will become more nonbiological than biological. As I discussed in chapter 3, by the 2040s nonbiological intelligence will be billions of times more capable than our biological intelligence.
(…) Expand Your Mind. The most important application of circa-2030 nanobots will be literally to expand our minds through the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence. The first stage will be to augment our hundred trillion very slow interneuronal connections with high-speed virtual connections via nanorobot communication. This will provide us with the opportunity to greatly boost our pattern-recognition abilities, memories, and overall thinking capacity, as well as to directly interface with powerful forms of nonbiological intelligence. The technology will also provide wireless communication from one brain to another.
(…) By that time we will have moved beyond just the paradigm of nanobots in a biological brain. Nonbiological intelligence will be billions of times more powerful, so it will predominate. We will have version 3.0 human bodies, which we will be able to modify and reinstantiate into new forms at will. We will be able to quickly change our bodies in full-immersion visual-auditory virtual environments in the second decade of this century; in full- immersion virtual reality environments incorporating all of the senses during the 2020s; and in real reality in the 2040s.
(…) Nanobots will be introduced without surgery, through the bloodstream, and if necessary can all be directed to leave, so the process is easily reversible. They are programmable, in that they can provide virtual reality one minute and a variety of brain extensions the next. They can change their configuration and can alter their software. Perhaps most important, they are massively distributed and therefore can take up billions of positions throughout the brain.
(…) MOLLY 2004: So I would experience sexual pleasure even though I’m not actually, you know, with someone?
RAY: Well, you would be with someone, just not in real reality, and, of course, that someone may not even exist in real reality. Sexual pleasure is not a direct sensory experience, it’s akin to an emotion. It’s a sensation generated in your brain, which is reflecting on what you’re doing and thinking, just like the sensation of humor or anger.
(…) We can expect that the full realization of the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions will enable us to eliminate virtually all medical causes of death. As we move toward a nonbiological existence, we will gain the means of “backing ourselves up” (storing the key patterns underlying our knowledge, skills, and personality), thereby eliminating most causes of death as we know it.
(…) Currently, when our human hardware crashes, the software of our lives – our personal “mind file” – dies with it. However, this will not continue to be the case when we have the means to store and restore the thousands of trillions of bytes of information represented in the pattern that we call our brains (together with the rest of our nervous system, endocrine system, and other structures that our mind file comprises).
At that point the longevity of one’s mind file will not depend on the continued viability of any particular hardware medium (for example, the survival of a biological body and brain). Ultimately software-based humans will be vastly extended beyond the severe limitations of humans as we know them today. They will live out on the Web, projecting bodies whenever they need or want them, including virtual bodies in diverse realms of virtual reality, holographically projected bodies, foglet-projected bodies, and physical bodies comprising nanobot swarms and other forms of nanotechnology.” – Ray Kurzweil, “The Singularity is Near”
…Google is able to pump billions of dollars into Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity” dream only because we are supporting Google by being its users. As Google users, we are feeders of the Dragon, no less…
Google’s Obsession for “Machine Learning”
Peter Norvig, a Director of Research at Google, says that the company has already employed “less than 50 percent but certainly more than 5 percent” of the world’s top experts in machine learning.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google has made another key acquisition in artificial intelligence, gobbling up DeepMind, a young company started by Demis Hassabis, Mustafa Suleyman, Jaan Tallin and Shane Legg.”
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2014/01/google-makes-another-major-ai-aquisition.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Biggest Thing Google Didn’t Announce Was Its Robot Brain that Learns:
(…) But with millions upon millions of our pictures to learn from—and the content of our emails, our text messages, virtually everything else on our phones—Google’s robot brain is poised to start figuring things out at a blistering pace. For better and for worse, our personal data is what feeds the beast. It’s simultaneously thrilling, eerie, and terrifying to watch a machine identify the faces of those close to you, or suggest something you were just thinking of.
(…) Not just Google’s self-driving cars, but Amazon’s delivery drones, MIT and DARPA’s amazing and terrifying robots, and the augmented reality insanity that Magic Leap may or may not be working on. Of course we already have robots that can play Jeopardy, and search engines that can parse whole sentences. Nvidia has GPUs that are letting cars teach themselves how to drive. Microsoft’s Azure cloud is an enormous and smart cybermind in its own right. But Google’s robot brain has ever-more unprecedented access to our personal data, petabytes of private data to index. We’re only just starting to see what it can do.”
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a15783/google-robot-brain/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Enter University of Reading’s Dr. Kevin Warwick, whose cutting-edge neural implant research has enabled him to control machines and communicate with others using only thoughts and physical motions.
In 1998, Warwick implanted a transmitter in his arm enabling him to control doors and other devices. Then in 2002, this bold scientist, who had earned the nickname “Captain Cyborg” from his colleagues, implanted electrodes directly into his nervous system. This allowed a remote robot arm to mimic the actions of Warwick’s own arm and enabled him to control a wheelchair with just his thoughts.
Next, Warwick implanted a chip in his wife Irena’s arm, linking their brains together through the Internet. “When she moved her hand three times,” he said, “I felt three pulses and my brain recognized that my wife was communicating.” This was the world’s first electronic brain-to-brain communication.
(…) Future thought talking might work like this: armed with innovative electronic implants that convert brain signals to recognizable speech, you simply think of whom you wish to communicate with, and with their approval, you’re connected. In addition to reading each other’s thoughts, you could also gaze through the other person’s eyes; and even experience their feelings of joy, excitement, sadness, or depression.
(…) At a recent interview, Dr. Warwick said, “We’re looking at the first mainstream thought experiments within a decade, and by 2030, mind-to-mind communications could become a commercial reality.”
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pelletier20141231
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“3 research efforts. The Blue Brain Project, where scientists seek to simulate the brain in a machine by reverse-engineering the human brain; the U.S. government’s Brain Activity Map, where researchers strive to demystify how neurons direct thoughts and physical actions; and Intel’s Human Brain Project where scientists hope to one day transmit thoughts direct from brain to machine.
Positive futurists believe that these projects will eventually lead to allowing a mind, with its consciousness and memories, everything that describes one’s humanness, to be transferred to a new body should disaster strike the old one. This would completely eliminate all unwanted deaths.”
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pelletier20141230
Some Revealing Quotes about Artificial Intelligence from Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Founders and Owners)
“Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the Web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.” – Larry Page Interview, October 2000
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/pag0int-3
“Google will fulfill its mission only when its search engine is AI-complete. You guys know what that means? That’s artificial intelligence.” – Larry Page, May 2002 (“The Big Switch”, page 212)
“HAL (the sentient Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer that controls the Discovery One spacecraft and interacts with the ship’s crew in Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”) had a lot of information, could piece it together, could rationalize it. Hopefully it would never have a bug like HAL did where he killed the occupants of the spaceship. But that [level of artificial intelligence] is what we’re striving for, and I think we’ve made it a part of the way there.” – Sergey Brin, November 2002
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-july-dec02-google_11-29/
“If you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” – Sergey Brin, 2004
http://www.newsweek.com/all-eyes-google-124041
“Every time I talk about Google’s future with Larry Page, he argues that it will become an artificial intelligence.” – Steve Jurvetson, January 2005
http://jurvetson.blogspot.ro/2005/01/thanks-for-memory.html
“One of our big goals in search is to make search that really understands exactly what you want, understands everything in the world. As computer scientists, we call that artificial intelligence.” – Larry Page, October 2005
“The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly. You could ask ‘what should I ask Larry?’ and it would tell you.” – Larry Page, May 2006
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/may/23/searchengines.news
“People always make the assumption that we’re done with search. That’s very far from the case. We’re probably only 5% of the way there. We want to create the ultimate search engine that can understand anything. Some people could call that artificial intelligence.” – Larry Page, May 2006
http://memepunks.blogspot.ro/2006/05/google-ai-twinkle-in-larry-pages-eye.html
“Google wants to be the best in search. To reach that goal Google wants to have the world’s top AI research laboratory.” – Google internal company paper, October 2006
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-10-26-n80.html
“One of my favourite things is artificial intelligence, but it has gotten a very bad rap, but my prediction is that when AI happens it’s going to be a lot of computation and not so much clever algorithms but just a lot of computation. My theory is that if you look at your programming, your DNA, it’s about 600 megabytes compressed, so it’s smaller than any modern operating system, smaller than Linux or Windows or anything like that, your whole operating system, that includes booting up your brain. So your program algorithms probably aren’t that complicated, it’s probably more about the overall computation. We have some people at Google who are trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale to make search better. Very few [other] people are working on this, and I don’t think it’s as far off as people think.” – Larry Page, February 2007
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/changing-the-world—larry-page/3394966
“Only a fraction of the world’s information is indexed on our computers. We are continually working on new ways to index more.” – Larry Page
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/403532/whats-next-for- google/page/2/
“The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.” – Sergey Brin
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/403532/whats-next-for-google/page/2/
“The solution isn’t to limit the information you receive. Ultimately you want to have the entire world’s knowledge connected directly to your mind.” – Sergey Brin
http://www.kottke.org/plus/misc/google-playboy.html
“You should presume that some day we will be able to make machines that can reason and think and do things better than we can.” – Sergei Brin
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2460571,00.asp
“We want Google to be the third half of your brain!” – Sergey Brin
http://www.businessinsider.com/sergey-brin-we-want-google-to-be-the-third-half-of-your-brain-2010-9
Sergey Brin says, in “The Google Story”:
“Why not improve the brain? You would want a lot of compute power. Perhaps in the future, we can attach a little version of Google that you just plug into your brain. We’ll have to develop stylish versions, but then you’d have all of the world’s knowledge immediately available, which is pretty exciting.”
More on Google and the “Singularity”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“So what is the Singularity?
Within a quarter century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses (like The Matrix), “experience beaming” (like “Being John Malkovich”), and vastly enhanced human intelligence. The result will be an intimate merger between the technology-creating species and the technological evolutionary process it spawned.
And that’s the Singularity?
No, that’s just the precursor. Nonbiological intelligence will have access to its own design and will be able to improve itself in an increasingly rapid redesign cycle. We’ll get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it. That will mark the Singularity.
When will that occur?
I set the date for the Singularity – representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability – as 2045. The nonbiological intelligence created in that year will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.
(…) That will bring us to the nanotechnology revolution, which will achieve maturity in the 2020s. With nanotechnology, we will be able to go beyond the limits of biology, and replace your current “human body version 1.0” with a dramatically upgraded version 2.0, providing radical life extension.
And how does that work?
The “killer app” of nanotechnology is “nanobots,” which are blood-cell sized robots that can travel in the bloodstream destroying pathogens, removing debris, correcting DNA errors, and reversing aging processes.
Human body version 2.0?
We’re already in the early stages of augmenting and replacing each of our organs, even portions of our brains with neural implants, the most recent versions of which allow patients to download new software to their neural implants from outside their bodies. In the book, I describe how each of our organs will ultimately be replaced. For example, nanobots could deliver to our bloodstream an optimal set of all the nutrients, hormones, and other substances we need, as well as remove toxins and waste products. The gastrointestinal tract could be reserved for culinary pleasures rather than the tedious biological function of providing nutrients. After all, we’ve already in some ways separated the communication and pleasurable aspects of sex from its biological function.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering)
http://www.kurzweilai.net/singularity-q-a
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity. They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process. For those who haven’t noticed, the Valley’s most-celebrated company – Google – works daily on building a giant brain that harnesses the thinking power of humans in order to surpass the thinking power of humans.
Larry Page, Google’s other co-founder, helped set up Singularity University in 2008, and the company has supported it with more than $250,000 in donations. Some of Google’s earliest employees are, thanks to personal donations of $100,000 each, among the university’s “founding circle.” (Mr. Page did not respond to interview requests.)
(…) Mr. Kurzweil credits a low-fat, vegetable-rich diet and regular exercise for his trim frame, and says he conquered diabetes decades ago by changing what he ate and later reprogramming his body with supplements. He currently takes about 150 pills a day and has regular intravenous procedures. He is also co-writer of a pair of health books, “Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever” and “Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever.”
(…) As far back as the 1950s, John von Neumann, the mathematician, is said to have talked about a “singularity” – an event in which the always- accelerating pace of technology would alter the course of human affairs. And, in 1993, Vernor Vinge, a science fiction writer, computer scientist and math professor, wrote a research paper called “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.”
“Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence,” Mr. Vinge wrote. “Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”
In “The Singularity Is Near,” Mr. Kurzweil posits that technological progress in this century will be 1,000 times greater than that of the last century.
He writes about humans trumping biology by filling their bodies with nanoscale creatures that can repair cells and by allowing their minds to tap into super- intelligent computers.
Mr. Kurzweil writes: “Once nonbiological intelligence gets a foothold in the human brain (this has already started with computerized neural implants), the machine intelligence in our brains will grow exponentially (as it has been doing all along), at least doubling in power each year.
“Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence,” he continues. “This is the destiny of the universe.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13sing.html?pagewanted= all&_r=1
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Technology and the New, Improved You:
The ‘N’ revolution will enable us to redesign and rebuild – molecule by molecule – our bodies and brains and the world with which we interact, going far beyond the limitations of biology.
(…) We’ll have millions – billions of blood cell-sized computers in our bloodstream in the 2030’s keeping us healthy, augmenting our immune system, also going into our brain, putting our neocortex on the Cloud,” says Kurzweil. “Basically expanding our neocortex to the Cloud.
(…) We’re going to expand who we are. We’re going to become more non-biological.
(…) A new implant developed by UC-Berkeley neuroscientist, Robert Knight, could create a game-changing relationship between you and your machines. You may soon be able to transmit thoughts via the Internet using a translator chip implanted in the brain that converts thoughts into words.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023035194045793529913 17516828
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“And of course once our neocortex is uploaded to the Cloud, it positions Google perfectly for searching our every thought and pre-thought.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“It shouldn’t be seen as coincidence that these developments are happening simultaneously. What appears on the surface to be discoveries in entirely different fields are coalescing rapidly as we approach the theoretical date of The Singularity – the full merger of human and machine – estimated to occur between 2029-2045.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The funding is already there, and a massive amount of money is waiting to be made by companies like Google. Here again, for those who might only see the bright side to this technology, we ought to question who is really in control of it.”
…There is no coincidence that Google’s operating system is called “Android”. If we just “google” for a couple of hours, we will be able to get most of the picture. Google has absolutely everything one would ever need to make the “Singularity” nightmare dream come true. And they are not even hiding or trying to mask this wish! While they are so rapidly working towards the Singularity, they also keep talking about it… Things are as clear as they could possibly be. There is absolutely no doubt: Google invests billions of dollars to alter the human being! Their ultimate – and fully acknowledged – goal is to make us cyborgs, to merge the human-being with the machine. And they will first convince many by actually extending their life spans through injections of nanobots. BUT will this be a life extension of US? Or just the life extension of a SURROGATE?
Google and the “Immortality”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google Ventures and the Search for Immortality:
“If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” Bill Maris (the president and managing partner of Google Ventures) says one January afternoon in Mountain View, California.
(…) Ray Kurzweil. He famously predicted that in 2045, humankind will have its Terminator moment: The rise of computers will outpace our ability to control them. To keep up, we will radically transform our biology via nanobots and other machines that will enhance our anatomy and our DNA, changing everything about how we live and die.
“It will liberate us from our own limitations,” says Maris, who studied neuroscience at Middlebury College and once worked in a biomedical lab at Duke University. Kurzweil is a friend. Google hired him to help Maris and other Googlers understand a world in which machines surpass human biology. This might be a terrifying, dystopian future to some. To Maris, it’s business.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google Ventures and its president and managing partner, Bill Maris, have $425 million to invest this year. Much of it will be spent on projects that promise to “radically transform our biology via nanobots and other machines that will enhance our anatomy and our DNA, changing everything about how we live and die.
(…) “It will liberate us from our own limitations,” Maris said.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google’s project to ‘cure death,’ Calico, announces $1.5 billion research center”
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6102377/google-calico-cure-death-1-5-billion-research-abbvie
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Founder and Google CEO Larry Page has announced he is teaming up with Apple’s chairman Arthur Levinson for a health and well-being project called Calico”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Larry Ellison, of Oracle Software fame, is another billionaire who is seeking to defy death by exploiting his wealth and power for the interests of immortality. He created the Ellison Foundation, an organization that doles out over $40 million per year in research to find the cure for mortality. In his biography, Ellison touts his belief that death is just another opponent that he can ‘outfox’.”
http://guardianlv.com/2015/05/immortality-paypal-billionaire-seeks-to-defy-death
Google, NASA, DARPA, Bilderberg
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Boston Dynamics has been heavily funded by DARPA, the defense- oriented U.S. research agency, and supplies its robots to the military via several contracts. Google will honor the company’s existing military contracts.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“I am one of five members of the Army Science Advisory Group (ASAG), which advises the U.S. Army on priorities for its science research.
Although our briefings, deliberations, and recommendations are confidential, I can share some overall technological directions that are being pursued by the army and all of the U.S. armed forces.
(…) Nanoweapons. The next step beyond smart dust will be nanotechnology-based weapons, which will make obsolete weapons of larger size. The only way for an enemy to counteract such a massively distributed force will be with its own nanotechnology. In addition, enhancing nanodevices with the ability to self-replicate will extend their capabilities.
(…) The U.S. Army already conducts all of its nonphysical training using Web-based instruction. The accessible, inexpensive, and increasingly high- quality courseware available on the Web is also fueling a trend toward homeschooling.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering), “The Singularity is Near”
Darpa Director LEAVES Pentagon FOR Google:
(She is now the leader of Google’s Advanced Technology And Projects group – ATAP!)
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Darpa director leaving the Pentagon for Google:
One of the most top-secret Pentagon departments – the same that spawned America’s drones, military robots, electromagnetic guns and other sci-fi weaponry – is about to lose its top officer to Google.”
http://rt.com/usa/darpa-pentagon-google-defense-503/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The U.S. Military Wants to Inject People’s Brains With Painkilling Nanobots That Could Replace Medicine:
“Warning: This is not science fiction. The U.S. Military is making plans to inject people’s brains with artificially intelligent nanobots that will give them awesome, Wolverine-like powers to heal themselves.
(…) DARPA, the American government’s controversial, ultra high-tech military gadget and research lab, is developing wireless, “ultra-miniaturized” and injectable electronic devices that could eventually – and quite literally – get on people’s nerves.”
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238677
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“NASA and Google have signed a memorandum of understanding:
(MOU) that outlines plans for cooperation on a variety of areas, including large- scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The MOU also highlights plans for Google to develop up to one million square feet within the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field.”
http://googlepress.blogspot.ro/2005/09/nasa-takes-google-on-journey-into-space_28.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA Ames Research Center and Google have signed a Space Act Agreement that formally establishes a relationship to work together on a variety of challenging technical problems ranging from large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces.”
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/dec/HQ_06371_Ames_Google.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Killer robots will leave humans ‘utterly defenceless’ warns professor:
Robots, called LAWS – lethal autonomous weapons systems – will be able to kill without human intervention.
Killer robots which are being developed by the US military ‘will leave humans utterly defenceless‘, an academic has warned.
Two programmes commissioned by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are seeking to create drones which can track and kill targets even when out of contact with their handlers.
Writing in the journal Nature, Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkley, said the research could breach the Geneva Convention and leave humanity in the hands of amoral machines.
(…) Professor Russell said: “LAWS could violate fundamental principles of human dignity by allowing machines to choose whom to kill – for example, they might be tasked to eliminate anyone exhibiting ‘threatening behaviour’“
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Killer robots a small step away and must be outlawed, says top UN official:
A senior UN official says battlefield robots that can kill without human control are a ‘small step’ away and should be banned.
Killer robots programmed to open fire without human control are just a “small step” from the battlefield and military powers should agree to outlaw them, a top United Nations official has said.
Angela Kane, the UN’s high representative for disarmament, said governments should be more open about programmes to develop the technology and she favoured a pre-emptive ban before it was too late.
(…) “It becomes a faceless war and I think that’s really terrible and so to my mind I think it should be outlawed. The decision is really in the hands of the states who have the capability to develop them.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Britain prepared to develop ‘killer robots’, minister says:
Britain is prepared to develop a new generation “killer robots” to protect troops on the battlefield, a minister has said.
Alistair Burt, a Conservative foreign minister, said that the technology represents a “step on” from drones used in Afghanistan because the robots are capable of automatically selecting and killing target.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Russia’s Terminator-Style Killer Robot to Learn to Run:
“A prototype terminator-style Russian combat robot in development at an advanced military research foundation will learn to run and complete an obstacle course by the end of this year, the fund’s head told news agency RIA Novosti on Monday.
(…) the robot is upping its game by learning to run and clear an obstacle course by the end of the year, said Andrei Grigoryev, head of the Foundation for Advanced Research Projects — Russia’s answer to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is making killer robots of its own.
“Its intended purpose is to work in extremely dangerous conditions,” Grigoryev told RIA. A human will control the robot remotely from a safe location, he added.
Grigoryev also said Monday the foundation had completed a project to create a special computer interface that will allow human users to control robots with their mind, RIA reported.
Russia has become an enthusiastic proponent of killer robots: The manufacturer of Russia’s new Armata battle tank, UralVagonZavod, has said the tank will eventually be used as the basis for a completely automated drone tank with no human drivers aboard.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“US Special Forces are testing insect-sized reconnaissance drones:
Since March, US Army Special Forces have been testing Black Hornets, lightweight reconnaissance drones from Prox Dynamics that are small enough to fit in your pocket. Each Black Hornet PD-100 is a micro unmanned aerial vehicle that weighs just 0.6 ounces and measures only 4 by 1 inches. Three onboard cameras provides full-motion video and still images to the operator. The camera array contains a thermal imaging camera for night missions. The Black Hornet has a range of just over a mile, and can remain in the air for up to 25 minutes per flight. The device is designed to operate quietly, and can navigate in winds up to 20 mph.
(…) I would imagine that in the future we’ll see them being used by local law enforcement as well. A future where war and crime is fought entirely with machines is a step closer.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“MIT’s ‘cheetah-bot’ can now jump over hurdles:
MIT researchers’ previously shown ‘cheetah-bot,’ a robot that resembles — you guessed it — the fastest land animal on earth, can run up to 10 mph. The robot’s latest enhancements, however, have enabled the mechanized feline to jump by leaps and bounds. The machine has been described by MIT as the “the first four-legged robot to run and jump over obstacles autonomously.”
In experiments on a treadmill and an indoor track, the robot successfully cleared obstacles up to 18 inches tall — more than half of the robot’s own height, MIT announced Friday. The ‘cheetah-bot’ maintained an average running speed of 5 miles per hour during the experiments.
The MIT research on the four-legged robot is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and is meant to eventually create agile machines that could be applied in a number of different situations.”
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/05/29/mit-cheetah-bot-can-now-jump-over-hurdles/
…So, we have the Singularity University, sponsored by Google. We have Ray Kurzweil as one of its founders. And we also have NASA, who offers free space for the Singularity University and who works in full cooperation with Google.
Then, we have DARPA (the U.S. research agency that invented the Internet and the GPS). We have DARPA, who heavily funded “Boston Dynamics” (a company specialized in developing super-fast and animal-like robots, having very close ties to the U.S. military). We have Google, who bought “Boston Dynamics” from DARPA. And we also have DARPA director leaving the Pentagon for Google (Regina Dugan). After being the first female director of one of the most top-secret Pentagon departments, she is now the leader of Google’s Advanced Technology And Projects group (ATAP).
Recently, Google’s ATAP has announced its cooperation with Levi’s “to design wearable technology by weaving touch-pad style capabilities into the fabric”:
http://rt.com/news/265384-google-levis-interactive-fabric/
Also, let us not forget to mention Vinton Gray “Vint” Cerf. He is one of “the fathers of the Internet”. Cerf was a manager for the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Cerf has been working for Google as a Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist since October 2005…
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Silicon Valley and the Ingestible Bilderberg ID Chips:
(…) This week, the Bilderberg Group is gathering in Austria for their [2015] annual bull session.
(…) A scan through the list of Bilderbergers over the years shows that Silicon Valley has only recently established a clique within the clique. This year’s list features three Google participants: Eric Schmidt; Demis Hassabis, the AI whiz behind Google DeepMind; and Regina Dugan, the former head of DARPA turned
Google executive whom Alex Jones warns invented “ingestible ID chips”.
(…) More serious and significant here is the fact that Google is so well- represented, with three participants. Three names from one company is a rarity, something you might’ve seen in the past from a Goldman Sachs or Lazard – but not Silicon Valley. It shows not just Big Tech’s continued takeover of older established institutions of power, but specifically, Google’s – and it tracks with Google’s new role as the biggest lobbyist spender in Washington.
(…) Another Facebook billionaire, New Republic publisher Chris Hughes, went Bilderberg in 2011.
But of all the Facebook bilderbergillionaires, Peter Thiel has been at it the longest – a “participant” every year since at least 2007. That’s one year longer than Eric Schmidt [Google], who got his Bilderberg on in 2008.
(…) Perhaps the most surprising Bilderberg name that keeps popping up year after year is LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, a Bilderberg Group “participant” since 2011.”
http://pando.com/2015/06/12/silicon-valley-and-the-ingestible-bilderberg-id-chips/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google director Regina E. Dugan pushing RFID microchips“
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvYnWBdmcQk
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Ex-DARPA Head Wants You to Swallow ID Microchips:
(…) Former DARPA director and now Google executive Regina Dugan is pushing an edible “authentication microchip” along with an electronic tattoo that can read your mind. No this isn’t a movie script about a futuristic scientific dictatorship, it’s trendy and cool!
(…) Dugan, who is Head of Advanced Technology at (Google-owned) Motorola, told an audience at the All Things D11 Conference that the company was working on a microchip inside a pill that users would swallow daily in order obtain the “superpower” of having their entire body act as a biological authentication system for cellphones, cars, doors and other devices.
“This pill has a small chip inside of it with a switch,” said Dugan. “It also has what amounts to an inside out potato battery. When you swallow it, the acids in your stomach serve as the electrolyte and that powers it up. And the switch goes on and off and creates an 18 bit ECG wide signal in your body and essentially your entire body becomes your authentication token.”
Dugan added that the chip had already been FDA approved and could be taken 30 times a day for someone’s entire life without effecting their health, a seemingly dubious claim.
Would you swallow a Google microchip every day simply to access your cellphone?
Privacy advocates will wince at the thought, especially given Dugan’s former role as head of DARPA, the Pentagon agency that many see as being at the top of the pyramid when it comes to the Big Brother technocracy.
Indeed, when host Walt Mossberg asked Dugan, “Does Google now know everything I do and everywhere I go because let’s face it….you’re from Google,” she responded by laughing and saying Mossberg should just swallow the pill.
In addition to the edible microchip, Motorola is also working on a wearable e-tattoo that could also read a user’s mind by detecting the unvocalized words in their throat.
(…) During the D11 conference, Dugan predicted that if the e-tattoo was made to look cool with different artistic designs, young people would want to have it fused to their skin, “if only to piss off their parents.”
The edible microchip and the wearable e-tattoo are prime examples of how transhumanism is being made “trendy” in an effort to convince the next generation to completely sacrifice whatever privacy they have left in the name of faux rebellion (which is actually cultural conformism) and convenience.”
Google and Robots
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“This is the eighth robot company the company has acquired this year, all feeding into a robotics project headed up by former Android head Andy Rubin”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The company also seems to be on the path to making true robotics with no less than eight additions including Meka Robotics, Redwood Robotics, Schaft, Industrial Perception, Bot & Dolly, Autofuss, Holomni, and Boston Dynamics. The later, along with Schaft are leading humanoid robotics makers that have been highlighted in the DARPA Robotics Challenge.”
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2014/02/will-google-make-waves-in.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“And the third revolution?
The robotics revolution, which really refers to “strong” AI, that is, artificial intelligence at the human level, which we talked about earlier. We’ll have both the hardware and software to recreate human intelligence by the end of the 2020s. We’ll be able to improve these methods and harness the speed, memory capabilities, and knowledge-sharing ability of machines.
We’ll ultimately be able to scan all the salient details of our brains from inside, using billions of nanobots in the capillaries. We can then back up the information. Using nanotechnology-based manufacturing, we could recreate your brain, or better yet reinstantiate it in a more capable computing substrate.
Which means?
Our biological brains use chemical signaling, which transmit information at only a few hundred feet per second. Electronics is already millions of times faster than this. In the book, I show how one cubic inch of nanotube circuitry would be about one hundred million times more powerful than the human brain. So we’ll have more powerful means of instantiating our intelligence than the extremely slow speeds of our interneuronal connections.
So we’ll just replace our biological brains with circuitry?
I see this starting with nanobots in our bodies and brains. The nanobots will keep us healthy, provide full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system, provide direct brain-to-brain communication over the Internet, and otherwise greatly expand human intelligence. But keep in mind that nonbiological intelligence is doubling in capability each year, whereas our biological intelligence is essentially fixed in capacity. As we get to the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.
(…) But perfecting our biology will only get us so far. The reality is that biology will never be able to match what we will be capable of engineering, now that we are gaining a deep understanding of biology’s principles of operation.
Isn’t nature optimal?
Not at all. Our interneuronal connections compute at about 200 transactions per second, at least a million times slower than electronics. As another example, a nanotechnology theorist, Rob Freitas, has a conceptual design for nanobots that replace our red blood cells. A conservative analysis shows that if you replaced 10 percent of your red blood cells with Freitas’ “respirocytes,” you could sit at the bottom of a pool for four hours without taking a breath.
(…) But isn’t there an overall limit to our ability to expand the power of computation?
Yes, I discuss these limits in the book. The ultimate 2 pound computer could provide 1042 cps, which will be about 10 quadrillion (1016) times more powerful than all human brains put together today. And that’s if we restrict the computer to staying at a cold temperature. If we allow it to get hot, we could improve that by a factor of another 100 million. And, of course, we’ll be devoting more than two pounds of matter to computing. Ultimately, we’ll use a significant portion of the matter and energy in our vicinity. So, yes, there are limits, but they’re not very limiting.
And when we saturate the ability of the matter and energy in our solar system to support intelligent processes, what happens then?
Then we’ll expand to the rest of the Universe.
Which will take a long time I presume.
Well, that depends on whether we can use wormholes to get to other places in the Universe quickly, or otherwise circumvent the speed of light. If wormholes are feasible, and analyses show they are consistent with general relativity, we could saturate the universe with our intelligence within a couple of centuries. I discuss the prospects for this in the chapter 6. But regardless of speculation on wormholes, we’ll get to the limits of computing in our solar system within this century. At that point, we’ll have expanded the powers of our intelligence by trillions of trillions.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering)
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“A robot prepared for self-awareness: Expanded software architecture for walking robot Hector:
(…) a year ago, researchers at Bielefeld University showed that their software endowed the walking robot Hector with a simple form of consciousness. Their new research goes a step further: they have now developed a software architecture that could enable Hector to see himself as others see him. “With this, he would have reflexive consciousness,” explains Dr. Holk Cruse, professor at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University. The architecture is based on artificial neural networks.
(…) Dr. Cruse explains further, “the robot may then be able to “think”: what does this subject expect from me? And then it can orient its actions accordingly.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331113454.htm
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„Designer’s toolkit for dynamic DNA nanomachines: Arm-waving nanorobot signals new flexibility in DNA origami
(…) This not only opens the way for practical nanomachines with moving parts, but also offers a toolkit that makes it easier to program their self-assembly.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150326151644.htm
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Physicists at the Argonne National Laboratory have successfully created self-assembling micro-robots:
(…) if we do one day have production lines that entirely staffed by self- assembling nanobots, it does mean that a computer could theoretically take charge and begin building more computers like itself…”
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/92244-self-assembling-micro-robots-created-judgment-day-looms
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Researchers create self-assembling nanodevices that move and change shape on demand:
(…) By emulating nature’s design principles, a team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100622091740.htm
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Prototype of a robotic system with emotion and memory:
(…) Researchers have developed a prototype of a social robot which supports independent living for the elderly, working in partnership with their relatives or carers.
(…) ACCOMPANY’s results demonstrated that a social robot can potentially help to prevent isolation and loneliness, offering stimulating activities whilst respecting autonomy and independence. The project received “excellent results” from its final review in Brussels.
Dr. Amirabdollahian said: “This project proved the feasibility of having companion technology, while also highlighting different important aspects such as empathy, emotion, social intelligence as well as ethics and its norm surrounding technology for independent living.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150205141151.htm
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“But what if the self-assembling robots become self-aware, start producing more factories, and then bypass their human orders and start producing robot soldiers that enslave the human race?
(…) Harvard and MIT engineers, showing a reckless disregard for the robocalypse, have created origami robots that can self-assemble themselves – from a flat piece of paper and polystyrene – and walk away in just four minutes. “Getting a robot to assemble itself autonomously and actually perform a function has been a milestone we’ve been chasing for many years,” says Harvard’s Robert Wood.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google patents robots with personalities in first step towards the Singularity:
(…) The company outlines a process by which personalities could be downloaded from the cloud to “provide states or moods representing transitory conditions of happiness, fear, surprise, perplexion, thoughtfulness, derision and so forth.”
(…) “The personality and state may be shared with other robots so as to clone this robot within another device or devices,” it said in the patent.”
The Future that Google Prepares for Us
RELEVANT QUOTES from Ray Kurzweil’s (Google’s Director of Engineering) “Singularity is Near”:
“In the early part of the second decade of this century visual-auditory virtual-reality environments will be full immersion, very high resolution, and very convincing. Most colleges will follow MIT’s lead, and students will increasingly attend classes virtually. Virtual environments will provide high- quality virtual laboratories where experiments can be conducted in chemistry, nuclear physics, or any other scientific field. Students will be able to interact with a virtual Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison or even to become a virtual Thomas Jefferson.”
“The nature of education will change once again when we merge with nonbiological intelligence. We will then have the ability to download knowledge and skills, at least into the nonbiological portion of our intelligence. Our machines do this routinely today. If you want to give your laptop state-of-the-art skills in speech or character recognition, language translation, or Internet searching, your computer has only to quickly download the right patterns (the software). We don’t yet have comparable communication ports in our biological brains to quickly download the interneuronal connection and neurotransmitter patterns that represent our learning. That is one of many profound limitations of the biological paradigm we now use for our thinking, a limitation we will overcome in the Singularity.”
“Technology typically starts out with unaffordable products that don’t work very well, followed by expensive versions that work a bit better, and then by inexpensive products that work reasonably well. Finally the technology becomes highly effective, ubiquitous, and almost free.”
“Today the delay between early and late adoption is about a decade, but in keeping with the doubling of the paradigm-shift rate every decade, this delay will be only about five years in the middle of the second decade and only a couple of years in the mid-2020s.”
“Although the environments will not be completely convincing at first, by the late 2020s they will be indistinguishable from real reality and will involve all of the senses, as well as neurological correlations of our emotions. As we enter the 2030s there won’t be clear distinctions between human and machine, between real and virtual reality.”
“Given that the computational capacity of our solar system is in the range of 1070 to 1080 cps, we will reach these limits early in the twenty-second century, according to my projections.”
“Moreover, once we bump up against the limits of matter and energy in our solar system to support the expansion of computation, we will have no choice but to expand outward as the primary form of growth.”
“Expanding Beyond the Solar System. Once we do expand our intelligence beyond the solar system, at what rate will this take place? The expansion will not start out at the maximum speed; it will quickly achieve a speed within a vanishingly small change from the maximum speed (speed of light or greater).”
“These nonbiological sentries would not need to be very large and in fact would primarily comprise information. It is true, however, that just sending information would not be sufficient, for some material-based device that can have a physical impact on other star and planetary systems must be present. However, it would be sufficient for the probes to be self-replicating nanobots (note that a nanobot has nanoscale features but that the overall size of a nanobot is measured in microns). We could send swarms of many trillions of them, with some of these “seeds” taking root in another planetary system and then replicating by finding the appropriate materials, such as carbon and other needed elements, and building copies of themselves.
Once established, the nanobot colony could obtain the additional information it needs to optimize its intelligence from pure information transmissions that involve only energy, not matter, and that are sent at the speed of light. Unlike large organisms such as humans, these nanobots, being extremely small, could travel at close to the speed of light.
Another scenario would be to dispense with the information transmissions and embed the information needed in the nanobots’ own memory. That’s an engineering decision we can leave to these future superengineers.
The software files could be spread out among billions of devices. Once one or a few of them get a “foothold” by self-replicating at a destination, the now much larger system could gather up the nanobots traveling in the vicinity so that from that time on, the bulk of the nanobots sent in that direction do not simply fly by. In this way, the now established colony can gather up the information, as well as the distributed computational resources, it needs to optimize its intelligence.”
“Intelligence as the Destiny of the Universe. In The Age of Spiritual Machines, I introduced a related idea – namely, that intelligence would ultimately permeate the universe and would decide the destiny of the cosmos.”
The ultimate goal of the Singularity: “Once a planet yields a technology-creating species and that species creates computation (as has happened here), it is only a matter of a few centuries before its intelligence saturates the matter and energy in its vicinity, and it begins to expand outward at at least the speed of light (with some suggestions of circumventing this limit). Such a civilization will then overcome gravity (through exquisite and vast technology) and other cosmological forces – or, to be fully accurate, it will maneuver and control these forces – and engineer the universe it wants. This is the goal of the Singularity.”
“What I should say is that intelligence is more powerful than cosmology. That is, once matter evolves into smart matter (matter fully saturated with intelligent processes), it can manipulate other matter and energy to do its bidding (through suitably powerful engineering).”
“If it is possible to engineer new universes and establish contact with them, this would provide yet further means for an intelligent civilization to continue its expansion. Gardner’s view is that the influence of an intelligent civilization in creating a new universe lies in setting the physical laws and constants of the baby universe. But the vast intelligence of such a civilization may figure out ways to expand its own intelligence into a new universe more directly.”
“Even if we are limited to the one universe we already know about, saturating its matter and energy with intelligence is our ultimate fate. What kind of universe will that be? Well, just wait and see.”
Being a Singularitarian: “As I see it the purpose of the universe reflects the same purpose as our lives: to move toward greater intelligence and knowledge. Our human intelligence and our technology form the cutting edge of this expanding intelligence (given that we are not aware of any extraterrestrial competitors).
Having reached a tipping point, we will within this century be ready to infuse our solar system with our intelligence through self-replicating nonbiological intelligence. It will then spread out to the rest of the universe.”
“We need a body, but once we incorporate MNT fabrication into ourselves, we will be able to change our bodies at will.”
“Will space travel ever become real?
A century from now, we will send swarms of intelligent nanobots to explore other celestial bodies. There is no reason to send large squishy creatures like humans.
What is the next step for computers?
Over the next decade, we will see realistic virtual reality that is ubiquitous as well as augmented reality. We will gain mastery of our biology and will start to update the outdated software that runs in our bodies. Computers will master natural language. They won’t wait for you to ask them a question, they will be watching us and listening in and will offer help that they see we need. They will know our needs before we do.”
“Will future machines be capable of having emotional and spiritual experiences?
We have discussed several scenarios for a nonbiological intelligence to display the full range of emotionally rich behavior exhibited by biological humans today. By the late 2020s we will have completed the reverse engineering of the human brain, which will enable us to create nonbiological systems that match and exceed the complexity and subtlety of humans, including our emotional intelligence.
A second scenario is that we could upload the patterns of an actual human into a suitable non biological, thinking substrate. A third, and the most compelling, scenario involves the gradual but inexorable progression of humans themselves from biological to nonbiological. That has already started with the benign introduction of devices such as neural implants to ameliorate disabilities and disease. It will progress with the introduction of nanobots in the bloodstream, which will be developed initially for medical and antiaging applications. Later more sophisticated nanobots will interface with our biological neurons to augment our senses, provide virtual and augmented reality from within the nervous system, assist our memories, and provide other routine cognitive tasks. We will then be cyborgs, and from that foothold in our brains, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will expand its powers exponentially.” – Ray Kurzweil, “The Singularity Is Near”
The „Internet of Things”
What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing concept that describes a future where everyday physical objects will be connected to the Internet and be able to identify themselves to other devices.” (…) „Most of us think about being connected in terms of computers, tablets and smartphones. IoT describes a world where just about anything can be connected and communicate in an intelligent fashion. In other words, with the Internet of Things, the physical world is becoming one big information system.”
http://www.techopedia.com/definition/28247/internet-of-things-iot
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“What’s the Internet of Things:
(…) According to the New York, USA based research firm, ABI Research, over 30 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to the Internet of Things, or as CISCO has decided to call it, the Internet of Everything by 2020. And that’s not to say it’s all in the future. Already, millions of devices are part of the Internet of Things. It’s happening, now!”
http://theinternetofallthings.com/whats-the-internetofthings/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Experts are heralding the Internet of Things (IoT) computing phase as the next industrial revolution, estimating 50 billion connected devices and IoT solutions reaching $7.1 trillion by 2020.”
http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/24/heres-why-the-internet-of-things-just-became-very-interesting/
Goldman Sachs describes what will come next in their “Internet of Things – Volume 2” note:
“Like the mobile revolution, IoT will create new companies and new categories. The importance of IoT expands beyond “pure play” enablers… as the market begins to take shape {and} continues to evolve; we expect a similar ecosystem of software vendors to develop.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“IBM commits $3B for new Internet of Things business unit:
Technology giant IBM (the International Business Machines Corporation) announced today the formation of a new Internet of Things (IoT) business unit and said it would invest $3 billion in it over the next four years.”
http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/30/ibm-commits-3b-for-new-internet-of-things-business-unit/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Samsung Announces ARTIK Platform to Accelerate Internet of Things Development:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“At the Internet of Things World conference in San Francisco today, Samsung rolled out a new family of low-power chips that will power all kinds of connected “things,” from washing machines to drones.
(…) Samsung has said that it intends to make all of its products – from phones to washing machines – connected devices by 2020.
(…) The introduction of the Artik platform has special implications for SmartThings, the connected home and Internet of Things company Samsung purchased 18 months ago. SmartThings already had a development cloud and integration platform that developers could use to create connected systems of IoT devices. SmartThings CEO Alex Hawkinson said 19,000 device types have already been connected to the SmartThings platform.
(…) The new Artik chips will be placed in all of those products, and they will all connect to the common SmartThings Open Cloud. And all Samsung groups will use a common set of development tools to connect the devices to the cloud, the company said.”
http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/12/samsung-rolls-out-family-of-artik-iot-chips-and-tools/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Itron Launches ITRON RIVA™ Developers Community for Internet of Things”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Apple helps the Internet of Things ‘Spring Forward’ with ResearchKit”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“HP Helps Communications Service Providers Drive New Revenue Opportunities with HP Internet of Things Platform”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google buys Nest for $3.2B – its key to the connected home:
Google will help us fully realize our vision of the conscious home and allow us to change the world faster than we ever could if we continued to go it alone,” Fadell wrote in a blog post today. “We’ve had great momentum, but this is a rocket ship.”
For Google, Nest could serve as its gateway into the connected home, the notion that all of our appliances and gadgets will soon communicate with one another. That’s a concept that we’ve seen breathlessly promoted at CES and other big tech events over the past few years, but Nest remains one of the few companies to deliver on its promises.
(…) Google has talked about plans for its own connected home platform, Android @Home”
http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/13/google-buys-nest-for-3-2b-its-key-to-the-connected-home/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„Patent details Google’s ideas for smart home doorknobs, doorbells, wall switches, and more”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google is reportedly building a new version of Android to power the Internet of Things:
(…) Google is preparing to release an Android build capable of running on devices with as little as 32 megabytes of RAM, codenamed “Brillo”. The previous threshold for Android was 512 megabytes, but that’s meant for smartphones and wearables. Brillo is reportedly aimed at the myriad of sensors and dongles that comprise your connected life.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Microsoft makes big play for Internet of Things with IoT versions of Azure and Windows 10”
Smart Cities
Smart cities “evolve towards a strong integration of all dimensions of human intelligence, collective intelligence, and also artificial intelligence within the city. The intelligence of cities “resides in the increasingly effective combination of digital telecommunication networks (the nerves), ubiquitously embedded intelligence (the brains), sensors and tags (the sensory organs), and software (the knowledge and cognitive competence).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Smart cities are the point of convergence where forward-looking intelligent design (both physical and electronic) meets multiple technologies, and they all come together to create an efficient interactive environment unlike anything we were ever experienced before. The primary goal is efficiency from the cost perspective, as well as from the perspective of those who are occupants.
Some have even gone as far as to project that smart cities will drive tens of billions of wired and wireless connections in just a few years. It is a tech haven where roadway sensors, sidewalks sensors, infrastructure sensor networks, Apple Watches, smartphones, your vehicle, and even the shirt on your back are connected. Sources tell me about an application integrating multiple sensor systems that monitors sidewalk foot traffic that is very insightful:
The foot traffic is analyzed, and then the large-screen advertising displays in the windows change to match the dominant demographic determined by the sensors.
The result of all this connectivity is efficiency, effectiveness, and service to the citizens that live in or visit the smart city, whether virtually or physically. Of course, this will produce a substantial amount of data from those sensors and systems. The data will be processed and turned into information that is applied to the daily operation of the smart city, as well as its interaction with the people.
What has many concerned is just how much will be learned about the normal routines of individuals that frequent the smart city. The first concern is privacy. As individuals interact with the connected infrastructure, patterns will emerge that will predict their activities with a fair degree of accuracy.”
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/205499-smart-cities-haven-for-tech-geeks-or-hacker-paradise
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The internet of things and smart cities: Will an IBM computer be your next mayor?
(…) The internet of things wouldn’t only be used by humans, either–things could communicate with each other. For example, your car could communicate with other cars and traffic signals, so that the light always turns green just as you arrive – or, really, with fully autonomous and networked cars, you wouldn’t need signals at all; cars would just automagically avoid each other by braking and accelerating at the right time. Fridges could communicate with supermarkets and arrange food deliveries; ditto natural gas and oil and septic tanks. With an Internet of Things, we could tack the word “smart” onto almost everything; smart cars, smart homes, smart supermarkets, and even smart cities.
Of course, creating the network that would underpin these smart devices and cities would be a monumental undertaking, but – perhaps unsurprisingly – companies like IBM and Cisco are already working on such systems.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“IBM picks Surat, Allahabad & Vizag among 16 global locations for smart cities project”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Digital India seeks to transform the nation into a digitally- empowered society and a knowledge economy. The programme will place technology at the centre of all efforts to foster change. In other words, Digital India will be an overarching programme covering multiple domains and departments backed by the singular vision of transforming these as part of a larger central goal, which is the transformation of India.” – Anil Chaudhry, Country President & Managing Director, Schneider Electric India
A(rtificial)I(ntelligence)
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“After decades as a sci-fi staple, artificial intelligence has leapt into the mainstream. Between Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, IBM’s Watson and Google Brain, machines that understand the world and respond productively suddenly seem imminent.
The combination of immense Internet-connected networks and machine-learning algorithms has yielded dramatic advances in machines’ ability to understand spoken and visual communications, capabilities that fall under the heading “narrow” artificial intelligence. Can machines capable of autonomous reasoning – so-called general AI – be far behind? And at that point, what’s to keep them from improving themselves until they have no need for humanity?
The prospect has unleashed a wave of anxiety. “I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” astrophysicist Stephen Hawking told the BBC. Tesla founder Elon Musk called AI “our biggest existential threat.” Former Microsoft Chief Executive Bill Gates has voiced his agreement.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/does-artificial-intelligence-pose-a-threat-1431109025
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“One step closer to Artificial Intelligence: Scientists create cells replicating human brain processes:
Australian scientists have for the first time developed an electronic long-term memory cell that mimics the work of a human brain. Researchers say the discovery is a step towards creating a bionic brain.
(…) “This is the closest we have come to creating a brain-like system with memory that learns and stores analog information and is quick at retrieving this stored information,” said project leader and co-leader of the RMIT Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group, Dr Sharath Sriram.
(…) The new electronic cell could also help to create artificial intelligence, said co-author Dr Sumeet Walia.
“Once we are capable of storing and remembering and recalling the past events, from there we can actually start working on developing it as a storage component for full area of artificial intelligence networks. For example robots, or even computers that behave like a human brain,” Walia told ABC.”
http://rt.com/news/257993-artificial-intelligence-scientists-brain/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Demis Hassabis (co-founder of DeepMind, acquired by Google in 2014):
“The idea behind DeepMind was really to create a kind of Apollo Programme mission for AI,” Hassabis said. “Now at DeepMind we have over 100 research scientists – 100 PhDs – top people in their machine learning fields and neuroscience fields working on solving AI.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Big internet companies like Baidu, Google and Facebook sit on huge quantities of information generated by their users. Reams of e-mails; vast piles of search and buying histories; endless images of faces, cars, cats and almost everything else in the world pile up in their servers. The people who run those firms know that these data contain useful patterns, but the sheer quantity of information is daunting. It is not daunting for machines, though. The problem of information overload turns out to contain its own solution, especially since many of the data come helpfully pre-labelled by the people who created them. Fortified with the right algorithms, computers can use such annotated data to teach themselves to spot useful patterns, rules and categories within.
(…) At a recent competition held at CERN, the world’s biggest particle-physics laboratory, deep-learning algorithms did a better job of spotting the signatures of subatomic particles than the software written by physicists – even though the programmers who created these algorithms had no particular knowledge of physics.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“And yet, in the midst of this potentially existential crisis, HP Enterprise is working on a risky research project in hopes of driving a remarkable comeback.
Nearly three-quarters of the people in HP’s research division are now dedicated to a single project: a powerful new kind of computer known as “the Machine”. It would fundamentally redesign the way computers function, making them simpler and more powerful. If it works, the project could dramatically upgrade everything from servers to smartphones – and save HP itself.
“People are going to be able to solve problems they can’t solve today,” says Martin Fink, HP’s chief technology officer and the instigator of the project.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine-dreams/
Facebook and AI:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Robots Are Coming: Zuckerberg, Kutcher Invest in Artificial Intelligence Startup:
Mark Zuckerberg already knows a lot about you, your mom, your dad, your friends, what your new baby looks like, where you went on vacation and what you wore to that party last weekend. Now, he wants to get inside your brain.
The Facebook founder, along with Hollywood actor-investor Ashton Kutcher, recently participated in a $40 million investment round for San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup Vicarious.
(…) “We are building software that thinks and learns like a human,” the company’s homepage says. Peter Thiel, a heavyweight Silicon Valley investor, has said, “Vicarious is bringing us all closer to a future where computers perceive, imagine, and reason just like humans.”
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232428
In the second day of F8-2015 (the annual Facebook developer conference), Mike Schroepfer – Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer – delivered a keynote on the next generation of technology that Facebook is building in order to “connect the world”:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„Facebook AI Research:
Some of the leading minds in AI research are working at Facebook to build intelligent machines, and they’ve already published a number of influential papers. One of the group’s more recent advances is a technology called Memory Networks, which enables a machine to perform relatively sophisticated question answering, as in this example of a machine answering questions about a Lord of the Rings synopsis.” – Mike Schroepfer – Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/03/f8-day-two-2015/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„About Facebook AI Research:
We’re committed to advancing the field of machine intelligence and developing technologies that give people better ways to communicate. In the long term, we seek to understand intelligence and make intelligent machines. How will we accomplish all this? By building the best AI lab in the world.
Research at the lab covers the full spectrum of topics related to AI, and to deriving knowledge from data: theory, algorithms, applications, software infrastructure and hardware infrastructure.
Our long-term objectives of understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines are bold and ambitious. But making significant progress towards AI can’t be done in isolation, and will require the full engagement of the international research community. Everyone at Facebook strongly believes that scientific and technological progress comes from open interactions within the research community. In that spirit, Facebook AI researchers are expected to contribute to the research community through publications, open source software, participation in technical conferences and workshops, and through collaborations with colleagues in academia.”
https://research.facebook.com/ai
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Baidu’s Minwa Supercomputer Beats Google, Microsoft With New Artificial Intelligence Record:
The Chinese search company Baidu said its Minwa supercomputer has set a new benchmark for artificial intelligence by accurately identifying all but 4.58 percent of a set of 1,000 pictures. Humans have an error rate of about 5 percent, while AI software from Microsoft has a 4.94 percent error rate and Google’s is wrong on 4.8 percent of its guesses.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Facebook for robots helps droids get smarter:
(…) Being a robot just got a little bit more sociable, now that droids have their own social network.
(…) You can see MyRobots.com as the Facebook for robots and smart objects,” says project co-ordinator Carlos Asmat of Montreal, Canada.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Facebook Acquires Wit.ai, a Startup That Helps People Talk to Robots”
http://recode.net/2015/01/05/facebook-acquires-wit-ai-a-startup-that-helps-people-talk-to-robots/
The Virtual and Augmented Reality:
Facebook and the “Evil-Eye”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology.
Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. For the past few years, this has mostly meant building mobile apps that help you share with the people you care about. We have a lot more to do on mobile, but at this point we feel we’re in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences.
This is where Oculus comes in. They build virtual reality technology, like the Oculus Rift headset. When you put it on, you enter a completely immersive computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away. The incredible thing about the technology is that you feel like you’re actually present in another place with other people. People who try it say it’s different from anything they’ve ever experienced in their lives.
Oculus’s mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences.
Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won’t be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there’s a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We’re going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.
But this is just the start. After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home.
This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life.
Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.
These are just some of the potential uses. By working with developers and partners across the industry, together we can build many more. One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.
Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together. I can’t wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us.” – Mark Zuckerberg
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971
And now, some comments on Mark Zuckerberg’s wall:
„One day you Will became king of the world”
„Plenty of us have been waiting for this project our entire lives.”
„Once I had a life, then I got an internet connection and Facebook. Now you are gonna build a virtual world around me and I am afraid, soon, no one will ever need to get out of their room!”
„Great strategic decision!!”
„What’s so amazing in this story is that yesterday’s science fiction is today’s reality. The future is here. Looking forward to see it available!”
„Where the digital and physical experiences collide. Brilliant move! Looking forward to seeing what becomes of it.”
„Facebook going to be even more addictive…” „The future is NOW. Congratulations!”
„This could prove to be one of the smartest moves FB has ever made — congratulations!”
“Wow…I guess Facebook is no longer just a Social Media company”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Letter to the Team” from Brendan Iribe (CEO at Oculus VR):
“As you may have heard this morning, Oculus has agreed to join Facebook.
Facebook shares our vision for connecting a billion people through virtual reality with the power of shared presence.
No team, ever, has had a better shot at delivering on the dream of virtual reality. This will be the team that solves the hardest problems and delivers the final platform. We need you now, more than ever, to go out and find the very best engineers in the world to help us deliver the final platform, the Holodeck.
This is a truly special moment. The work we’ve done has captured the world’s attention and changed the perception of the medium forever. This partnership is a huge affirmation of everything we’ve done. Congratulations, guys.
Now, let’s get back to changing the world.
– Brendan”
https://www.oculus.com/blog/letter-to-the-team-from-brendan-iribe/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Oculus Rift CEO: we want to put 1 billion people in virtual reality:
Oculus Rift and Facebook have ambitious aims for their virtual-reality headset – the two companies want to put 1 billion people into a massive virtual world.
The virtual reality startup, leveraging the $2bn investment gained from Facebook’s recent surprise acquisition, is working on a new massively multiplayer online (MMO) world that aims to go beyond gaming to create a new communication network, said Oculus’s chief executive, Brendan Iribe.
“This is going to be an MMO where we want to put 1 billion people in VR,”
Iribe told attendees of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York on Tuesday.
(…) “If you let go, you can have a real conversation with a person. That’s the holy grail we’re trying to get to,” said Iribe.”
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/07/oculus-rift-ceo-billion-people-virtual-reality
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“First, Facebook wants to connect everyone on the planet to the Internet, using drones and satellites.
Second, the company is working with artificial intelligence technology to help people cull through the massive clutter of information on the Internet to find the images and data that are truly useful to them.
And third, Facebook wants to build an immersive technology that “teleports” users to a new place and gives them new experiences with people they care about.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Zuckerberg: Virtual reality is kind of terrible today, but it will be the future of computing:
(…) Ten to 15 years ago the primary way people were connecting to the internet was on computers,” he said. “Maybe you had a laptop, but it was still a computer.
“Now mobile phones are clearly the main way we communicate, but they will not be the last way that we do computing.”
Zuckerberg said he believes that over the course of the next 10 to 15 years there will be an evolution from mobile to a “more natural” way of communicating and computing, something “even more built into our lives than mobile phones are.”
(…) “I think that’s going to be really powerful.”
(…) There will be another platform after computers that becomes the primary computing platform and we’re really excited to build that as well.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“We forecast that AR/VR could hit $150B revenue by 2020”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“One Facebook user asked: “What is your vision of Oculus?”
Mr. Zuckerberg said he saw the headset as serving the same function as Facebook does – allowing people who aren’t in the same place to communicate. He added that Facebook users creating 3D films and sharing them with their friends will soon be a “wild” reality.
“Our mission to give people the power to experience anything,” he said. “Even if you don’t have the ability to travel somewhere, or to be with someone in person, or even if something is physically impossible to build in our analogue world, the goal is to help build a medium that will give you the ability to do all of these things you might not otherwise be able to do.
“This will be incredibly powerful as a communication medium as well. Just like we capture photos and videos today and then share them on the internet to let others experience them too, we’ll be able to capture whole 3D scenes and create new environments and then share those with people as well.
It will be pretty wild.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Steve Paulson: So the body, the human body, you’re saying, will become an old technology, going the way of the typewriter?
Ray Kurzweil: Eventually, we’ll be able to create human body version 2.0, and 3.0, going beyond the limitations of biology, and also spending increasingly more time in virtual reality environments, and like any other technology, virtual reality at first will have some limitations, will be crude in certain ways, but eventually it will be just as realistic and compelling as real reality, but have the advantage that you can choose from a million virtual reality environments, some of which would be fantastic environments that couldn’t exist in real reality. You can have different bodies.”
http://www.ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-ray-kurzweil-transcending-biology
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The 2030 Scenario. Nanobot technology will provide fully immersive, totally convincing virtual reality. Nanobots will take up positions in close physical proximity to every interneuronal connection coming from our senses.
(…) If we want to experience real reality, the nanobots just stay in position (in the capillaries) and do nothing. If we want to enter virtual reality, they suppress all of the inputs coming from our actual senses and replace them with the signals that would be appropriate for the virtual environment. Your brain experiences these signals as if they came from your physical body.
(…) You could decide to cause your muscles and limbs to move as you normally would, but the nanobots would intercept these interneuronal signals, suppress your real limbs from moving, and instead cause your virtual limbs to move, appropriately adjusting your vestibular system and providing the appropriate movement and reorientation in the virtual environment.
The Web will provide a panoply of virtual environments to explore. Some will be re-creations of real places; others will be fanciful environments that have no counterpart in the physical world. Some, indeed, would be impossible, perhaps because they violate the laws of physics. We will be able to visit these virtual places and have any kind of interaction with other real, as well as simulated, people (of course, ultimately there won’t be a clear distinction between the two), ranging from business negotiations to sensual encounters. “Virtual-reality environment designer” will be a new job description and a new art form.
(…) Become Someone Else. In virtual reality we won’t be restricted to a single personality, since we will be able to change our appearance and effectively become other people. Without altering our physical body (in real reality) we will be able to readily transform our projected body in these three-dimensional virtual environments. We can select different bodies at the same time for different people. So your parents may see you as one person, while your girlfriend will experience you as another. However, the other person may choose to override your selections, preferring to see you differently than the body you have chosen for yourself. You could pick different body projections for different people:
Ben Franklin for a wise uncle, a clown for an annoying coworker.
(…) In addition to encompassing all of the senses, these shared environments can include emotional overlays. Nanobots will be capable of generating the neurological correlates of emotions, sexual pleasure, and other derivatives of our sensory experience and mental reactions.
(…) Experience Beamers. “Experience beamers” will send the entire flow of their sensory experiences as well as the neurological correlates of their emotional reactions out onto the Web, just as people today beam their bedroom images from their Web cams. A popular pastime will be to plug into someone else’s sensory-emotional beam and experience what it’s like to be that person, a la the premise of the movie Being John Malkovich. There will also be a vast selection of archived experiences to choose from, with virtual-experience design another new art form.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google), “The Singularity is Near”
The Microsoft HoloLens:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“A roomful of reporters chase invisible balls around a cold San Francisco hotel conference room. Some are crawling on their knees, others shouting “Reset balls!” and wiggling their fingers at no one in particular.
It’s not a mass hallucination but part on a hands-on demo of Microsoft’s new augmented-reality headset, the HoloLens. The unreleased device overlays 3D virtual objects (in this case, falling origami balls) on top of your real surroundings.”
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/03/technology/microsoft-hololens-bet/index.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“We’re dreaming about holograms,” said Alex Kipman of Microsoft, as he unveiled a new set of technologies that will bring 3D imaging and augmented reality to Windows. “It’s actually three technologies that will work together: Windows Holographic, which will enable 3D imaging in all future builds of Windows 10. Windows HoloLens, a headset for viewing and interacting with 3D images. And finally, the HoloStudio application will let you make your own holograms.
(…) “All of the infrastructure is in the top of the device,” Kipman said, adding that HoloLens is “a stand-alone fully untethered holographic computer.”
(…) The HoloLens itself is “the most advanced holographic computer the world has ever known,” said Kipman. The headset will be completely wireless, with its own high-end CPU and GPU – and it will have a third chip, a Holographic Processing Unit, or HPU.”
(…) “It really is a trip into a new dimension!”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The company has patented technology which will let wearers of augmented reality glasses, like the HoloLens, to read the emotional reactions of people they are looking at. The patent has been granted right on time for Microsoft’s Build conference. It covers “see-through, head-mounted display and sensing devices” that “detect audible and visual behaviors of a subject in a field of view of the device.”
(…) The patent reveals a big plan for its futuristic headset – the ability to interpret and analyze the emotions of the person you are seeing, through the headset.
An interesting application of this technology has been described in the patent:
You are giving a presentation in a room full of people wearing the HoloLens. The augmented reality headset “can interpret visual and audio input, interpret emotional states exhibited by other individuals within a wearer’s field of view, and provide the wearer with feedback regarding the subject’s emotional state.”
However, its use won’t just be limited to professional use. Microsoft clearly mentions in the patent that it can be used for “romantic situations involving a one-on-one relationship between individuals.”
http://www.augmentedrealitytrends.com/augmented-reality/microsoft-patent.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In today’s world, some relationships end because people become bored with each other. If we have many fascinating virtual worlds to visit together, and if we can take on different appearances and characteristics that go with the virtual environments, then life and relationships can maintain their interest and intensity.” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google)
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ask-ray-living-in-virtual-worlds-as-an-avatar
Intel RealSense:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Your World in 3D:
You’ll be able to scan real-life things – like a piece of art, a child’s toy, even your own face – and create a digital 3D version.”
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/realsense-overview.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„At present, the popular social networking site remains, in format, little more than an updatable bulletin board. But with an affordable Oculus Rift product, it could vault into being a VR-powered portal for experiencing the lives of family and friends in a compellingly real way. A birthday party? You’re at the table. A wedding? You’re seated in the front row. When Oculus’ chief scientist Michael Abrash addressed the F8 crowd for a keynote address titled “Why Virtual Reality Will Matter to You,” he cited 1999’s The Matrix as his inspiration. “That movie made me believe in VR, it gave me a deep sense of what it might be like to bend and stretch our reality,” he said.
Then a slide popped on screen that, for Abrash, distilled the essential appeal and fundamental inevitability of VR’s imminent ubiquity. It was lines of dialogue spoken by Morpheus, the character played by Laurence Fishburne, in which reality is defined as simply being electrical signals interpreted by the brain.
The implication: Whether those signals are real or artificially created doesn’t matter, if we react to the stimuli, then what we are experiencing is by definition real.
Abrash leveled a gaze at the audience and, in a voice that projected unwavering certainty, declared: “You are going to care about virtual reality, sooner or later.”
(…) VR now is poised not only to challenge reality’s stranglehold on the way we engage with life, but possibly even eclipse it for sheer thrills.
Gaming. Concerts. Family reunions. Sporting events. Even sex – all of it will be experienced in a hyper-real fashion and with a commonness that technologists predict will rival our incessant smartphone use today.
The promise of VR was on display at Facebook’s F8 developers’ conference here last week, where attendees tested Oculus’ latest iteration, Crescent Bay, and demoed Samsung’s Oculus-powered Gear VR. But with Sony, HTC and others working on their own goggles, there’s a good chance we will all soon be diving into an alternate pixelated reality.
(…) “You can have Superman powers in the virtual environment, going where you want and accessing information at will,” says Todd Richmond, director of advanced prototype at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, the lab where Oculus Rift goggle founder Palmer Luckey interned.
(…) VR has been around for decades, but it will stick this time because there’s enough computational power and the price point will just keep going down,” says Richmond, a VR group member with the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers who is helping the Army and Navy design new equipment that can be demoed by human operators in VR before being built. “Gaming and the adult film industry will drive this tech first, and then by 2017 it will be massive.”
(…) “Everyone will be contributing these virtual world stories, and soon cyberspace as we know it will end simply because we’ll be online all the time living in this blended reality,” says Alessandro Voto, researcher at the Institute for the Future, a non-profit that helps companies or organizations plan for a world five to 100 years out.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„Gear VR Innovator Edition on the Galaxy Note 4 provided developers a platform for building and sharing the first generation of mobile virtual reality. With
Gear VR Innovator Edition now coming to the Galaxy S6 series, more people will be diving into virtual reality using their Android smartphones than ever before.”
https://www.oculus.com/blog/gear-vr-innovator-edition-coming-to-galaxy-s6-series/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
„Gear VR enables virtual reality anywhere, anytime, and it’s the most integrated VR system we’ve developed to date. Working closely with Samsung, we’ve expanded the Note 4’s native performance by developing a highly optimized VR graphics path with integrated system software. This is just the first step toward true consumer mobile VR.
(…) Alongside Innovator Edition, we’re also launching the Oculus VR Store, an integrated discovery and distribution system for VR content built for Gear VR. It’s very basic in terms of functionality today, but it’s the beginning of a true made-for-VR content distribution and discovery platform for Oculus developers everywhere.
(…) You can swim with blue whales; pilot arcade fighters through asteroid fields; dungeon crawl; use extrasensory abilities to solve puzzles; collect swirling, 16-bit minotaurs; and a lot more with these first experiences.”
https://www.oculus.com/blog/gear-vr-innovator-edition-now-available/
FB Comment: „When entering these virtual environments, viewers feel like they have somehow been magically transported to the depicted locations (even the lunar surface to watch 3d movies).”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Virtual reality defies physical reality:
Video games and other virtual realities free us from the limitations of physical matter. They allow our minds to create almost any reality we can imagine. We can then immerse ourselves in that reality and experience it, subject only to the limitations of our current electronics technology.
Future video games may offer us a fully lifelike immersion in virtual realities, similar to the holodeck in the popular Star Trek science fiction series.” – Lee Woofenden
http://leewoof.org/2013/01/26/video-games-virtual-reality-and-spiritual-reality/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The team at Oculus is working to better understand human perception in an effort to create virtual, shared experiences that will completely change the way we communicate and collaborate. (…) The shift to virtual reality is going to bring huge changes to the world and to almost everything about how we live.” – Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist at Oculus (Facebook)
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Oculus: Virtual Reality Will Spread “Like Wildfire”:
(…) “You cannot hold back VR. You can’t hold back cellphones. You can’t hold back the PC. It’s going to happen.”
(…) “There’s no holding this back. This is going to take off like wildfire and it is going to be, within some number of years, almost every household out there will be enjoying VR,” he said [Oculus VR CEO, Brendan Iribe].
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-virtual-reality-will-spread-like-wildfire/1100-6420623/
Considerations upon Real and Virtual Reality
We all need a magical world. Because we are actually born into one and our profound being, our deep self knows it! The only problem is that we no longer have the open eyes to see it. And we are now placed before the most important choice of our lives: to fulfill our human destiny by developing our supersensible eyes, or to throw away all that constitutes our humanity and start wearing Virtual Reality eyes!…
The human beings cannot live in a world devoid of spirit. This is why they always seek to bring some “magic” back into their lives.
The biggest perversity of all times is this: they are first drowning us into an unbearable ocean of materialism. They blind our inner eyes to the point that we are no more seeing our spirit, our spiritual being. In the same time, they know very well that it is simply impossible for a human being to live in pure materialism, in a world totally devoid of spirit. They know for sure that we will then try to find this spirit, outside and inside. Then, the spiritual revolution that ought to be is detoured, is deviated from its course. We are given the “movies” and “virtual reality” solutions. First, we immerse in the cinematographic fantasy worlds, then we are given the 3D cinema glasses, so that we take a step forward towards the “alternative world”. We are watching these movies with heroes and mutant human beings having special and extraordinary powers. All this time, what actually happens is that we are arduously searching for our spirit, for all the extraordinary capacities and possibilities this spirit holds. But we are so much blinded by all that the current society places around us that we just start considering this “spiritual world” a mere fantasy. Instead, the “alternative world” of the fantasy-movies grows more and more into the very appealing “other option”.
To put it briefly, the idea is that we cannot live without our spirit, we cannot really breathe in a world devoid of spirit. Consequently, without knowing it, we are continuously searching for that extraordinary feeling that one experiences when one encounters his spirit and starts living consciously in the spiritual world. But our everyday living is shaped in such a way that we have almost no chance to actually come to a real, true experience and understanding of our own being and of the whole Universe around us. And yet, we still cannot breathe without our spirit. Well, this is exactly the point where they intervene. They give us the spectacular 3D movies. Then, as the next “logical” step, they bring in the Virtual Reality and the Augmented Reality.
We need to breathe the healthy elements contained by the spiritual world. We do have a spirit and this spirit needs the spiritual air! They know this very well and that’s precisely why they offer us the “Virtual Worlds”. Instead of the real spiritual world, we are given the virtual reality!
We need to socialize, deep inside us we feel the urge to find all others and become part of the great Community of Humans on Earth. They also know this very well – and that is why they offer us the “Social Networks”. But what we don’t see is that what we are given is just the illusion of the “Community of Humans”. In reality, we are – again – immersing in an ocean of trivialities, where the “information” lives for a just a second and where we just delude ourselves that we are “socially active” by just giving a “Like”.
The next step is really easy to predict. We don’t need to be provided with any prophetic abilities. What they are giving us now is the mix of “Social Networking” and “Virtual Reality”. As real and spiritual beings, we have reached the evolutionary stage when we are prepared and called to find again our spirits with the help of the human collectivity. In order to get a real feeling of personal life fulfillment, we need to acknowledge, accept and develop the “help others and let myself being helped” impulse. So, what gives a very special character to our current age is the urge to work closer, to come together and start building the new, truly human Earth with the help of all our fellow human beings. Well… instead of this we are given just an illusion of the Global Human Community, just a mockery, and we are also detoured from our path towards our spirit being hypnotized by the “Virtual Reality”.
It is not at all difficult to foresee what will soon and rapidly develop on a large scale. – We will see many people “socializing” in front of their monitors always wearing their “virtual reality” glasses. Who will prefer the aridity of the material world that surrounds us when one could so easily “escape” into a virtual world that so much resemble the 3D movies and fantastic stories that have been delivered to us for years now?
Would a frustrated teen, tormented by his sexual drives, still try to get into a relationship with a real girl? If he is rejected several times and he does not find anything or anyone to help him grow into a more self-confident person, will this young and psychologically fragile boy buy a VR headset and use it to fulfill his sexual needs and desires!?
How many frustrated human beings will be ready to give up their empty lives when they will be called from these colorful and “personalized” worlds?
The Evil Eye is “a window into nothing”…
“But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had been opened in the world of sight. . . In the abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.” – The Mirror of Galadriel, The Lord of the Rings
The enormous difference between reality and virtual reality is that reality will not disappear if we close our eyes or fall asleep. But the virtual reality will vanish in a second if we just… disconnect the device that creates it. By plunging into the virtual worlds, we are doing nothing but denying the reality of the Universe and of our own being.
Of course, virtual reality comes exactly when people are called to develop their inner capacities that would permit them to communicate with each other on a higher level. In the new morning of humanity, when we are ready to discover and develop our inherent abilities that would allow us to see through the veil of matter, we are just taught that we need no effort, that all it takes is lying down and waiting for the tech-giants to provide us the “higher worlds”. In fact, what we will “sense” will be nothing but a computer creation. And we will become the slaves of the “Digital Messiah”.
The level of frustration, mostly among the members of new generations, is maximum. All new generations that dwell on Earth right now bear in their core the Impulse towards Universal Brotherhood and the Impulse towards the great regaining of our spiritual sight. They simply cannot refrain from this Impulses. BUT they are born and raised in a world that totally covers their deep human possibilities. Through a cynical and purely materialistic education, followed by an even more cynical and materialistic work environment, they are pulled out completely from their human-core. They become ego-less people and that void is filled with false “I”-s: the i-Pads, the i-Phones… There is no coincidence in the naming of these products. They are called exactly as they should be called. Even the lowercase “i” is written exactly as it should be. Because it is not the real uppercase “I” of the human being. But a poor surrogate. Devoid of our higher, uppercase “I”-s, we are filled those empty spaces with tech-“i”-s, with mere surrogates. It is as if the core of a plum would be extracted and replaced by a plastic replica…
What should have focused our attention on the development and the actual manifestation of the Impulse towards regaining our inner, spiritual sight is now detoured and replaced by “Technology trends”. Devoid of our human “I”, detoured from our human path that would ultimately take us to the core of our human-being, we are sedated with technology. We simply do not see that staying in line for hours (even days) in order to get the “latest iPhone” is nothing but the greatest humiliation of our human-being. But this only happens because we are distracted from our great journey since the early stages of our childhood. There is not much, there is almost nothing that the society we are born in places in our vicinity to help us discover and develop our inner capacities.
As written above, the young generations that are living on Earth right now are the first ones being left without their inner core. This alone is sufficient enough to give birth to a monster of frustration among them. But that’s not all. Not even close! What happens next is that they are given the “fantasy” movies to grow their frustration even more. Why is that? Because all those “fantasy” movies are poured with real glimpses about the stunning worlds we would be able to bring forth if only we would be allowed to follow our inner maps. …But of course, this doesn’t happen. “Education” and “Professional Life” makes it almost impossible. And what happens is that the youngest among us are reaching the maximum level of frustration. Lacking their core, being so dry and thirsty, they are served the “amazing worlds”. …This is exactly the moment when “Virtual Reality” steps in. For the torn souls of the teens, for the tormented spirits of the young generations, the “Virtual Reality” will surely be perceived as a “Panaceum Universalis”.
…What are the options at hand? Physical drugs or Digital drugs, both evil and destructive. And what is the main difference between the two? – The second one is called… “evolution”.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Wearable Device Changes Your Mood:
Wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Got a case of the Tuesdays? Did some person — a woman you thought you knew really well? — did that someone’s racist post on Facebook really stick in your craw and leave you peeved all morning, questioning the nature of humanity, until you had to just unfriend said person, even though you’ve known her for twenty-plus years?
Is Your Personality Affected By Your Birth Season?
Well, have we got something for you. It’s Thync, a wearable device that zaps your brain with low levels of pulsed electrical energy to calm you down or energize you up. It could be, for all intents and purposes, the world’s first digital drug.”
http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/wearable-device-changes-your-mood-150602.htm
Try to imagine the world that comes… If a teenager will spend 100 days staying and living for 10 hours a day in the virtual worlds of his like, will s/he still be able to really come back to real reality? You have most certainly experienced the strange feeling of “getting out” after a captivating movie, or after a few days of sickness that kept you in your bed. Well, this feeling is just 0.0001% of what that young human will experience after staying in the virtual worlds 10 hours a day for 100 days… It will be extremely difficult for her/him to make the difference. S/He might even start seeing this world, the real one, as a “fantasy”, as a “virtual world”.
VR will be the most powerful narcotic. It will alienate human beings and make them lose contact with the reality around them and within themselves.
It is already sinister. You just have to enter for only an hour the “shooting games” world. There are myriads of games where you, as the main character, have the “mission” and “license to kill”. The more beings you are shooting dead, the more “points” you get, the greater “hero” you become. Well… just imagine all the hundreds of thousands of people who are already addicted to “normal” “shooting games” start “playing” these games in virtual environments, in the most immersive way possible. What do you think – after “playing” for 10 hours, after shooting down people for 100 days in a “virtual world” that will perfectly resemble the real world, how many of these “players” will see little difference in actually starting to shoot people around them in real reality?
The more these VR devices succeed on addressing all our senses, the more immersive the experience gets. …Just wait a second and try to meditate upon this word – “immersive”. All the tech-guys are using it as if it would be the greatest possible human achievement! And yet, “immersive virtual realities” mean nothing else but the total drowning of the human-self into an ocean of nothingness. VR/AR is, indeed, “a window into nothing”.
If smartphones and the so-called “social networking” already separate us, then just imagine the level of separation that VR will bring. Humans will become aliens for humans. This will happen while unreal virtual creatures will become our “friends” and “heroes”. We are already heading at the fastest possible speed towards this “ideal”.
The artificial worlds, then the artificial beings – this is the succession. And, in the meantime, we will be totally and pleasurably enslaved by nanotechnology, with all its life extension and healing promises. Just think of it and try to be honest on yourself: if you or one of whom you love would be in a critical health condition, would you still think of the future consequences or just accept being injected with nanorobot repairers!? …Nevertheless, the health recovery and the life expansion would be just an illusion as long as you will no longer be you, but a half-human half-robot creature.
We do want to extend our life span, as we are totally unaware of our true spiritual core. Even if we are believers, even if we are members of a certain religious denomination, we are rarely really feeling our spirit. The consequence? – VR, AR, AI…
The “Singularity” is nothing but the by-product of sci-tech materialism.
First, we will immerse in this virtual worlds through our visual and hearing senses. Then, we will just want more, we will also wish to smell, to taste and to touch. This will come, too, with the help of nanorobots and gradual merging with mechanisms and machines. At a fast rate, without even noticing it, we are transforming into androids. We have already passed over the line and reached the stage where we no longer just “extend” our egos (as we have been doing for decades with objects such as our cars), but actually replace them for many hours a day. We have fallen under technology’s spell. We can no longer live without our iPads, iPhones – that is “I”-replacements. And, as these “i”-s replace our real “I”-s, it goes without saying that, when we meet, we don’t talk much, but continue to use our “smartphones” and all the other “smart”-devices. We become just the bearers of the lowercase “i”-s. Rapidly, we are transformed into vehicles used to transport the “smart”-things from one place to another. When we meet, it is the smartphones that really meet. We just happen to be there…
I am pretty sure that what follows is that we will be able to compose our own worlds buy using free or paid ready-made elements. For instance, if you want to build your special relaxation corner, you will be able to build it and populate it with objects of your desire. Will you want a miniature Zen garden? – You will be able to buy it or rent it for just a few cents from a VR objects designer.
It will open a totally new digital commerce field. We already have its precursor in the current game apps for smartphones and tablets, where, for instance, we install a “free” game app called “Dress-up the girl”, then we are restricted from using all clothes unless we make some “in-app purchases”.
It will be pretty much the same with VR. At first, there will be plenty of free items to use. Then, after VR usage becomes mainstream, a myriad of “VR elements” will be put at your disposal. It’s the same strategy the drug dealers use: “give them the first shots for free and then they will become so addicted that they will be more than willing to fill-up your pockets”.
One of the biggest downsides of VR is that we will be less aware of the environmental issues. Who cares that there is so much pollution out there if I can choose at anytime to go to my perfect, clean virtual world!? – You might argue that we will still be affected, that our real bodies will be affected by pollution, even if we no longer perceive it as a real, present danger. Well, again, Mr. Kurzweil would make you regain your comfort:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Like most of our biological systems our red blood cells perform their oxygenating function very inefficiently, so Freitas has redesigned them for optimal performance.
Because his respirocytes (robotic red blood cells) would enable one to go hours without oxygen,12 it will be interesting to see how this development is dealt with in athletic contests. Presumably the use of respirocytes and similar systems will be prohibited in events like the Olympics, but then we will face the prospect of teenagers (whose bloodstreams will likely contain respirocyte-enriched blood) routinely outperforming Olympic athletes. Although prototypes are still one to two decades in the future, their physical and chemical requirements have been worked out in impressive detail.
Analyses show that Freitas’s designs would be hundreds or thousands of times more capable of storing and transporting oxygen than our biological blood.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering)
http://www.kurzweilai.net/human-body-version-20
…We have already seen this. At the beginnings, iPhones were “the too expensive new thing”. But after only a few years, Apple’s sales of the iPhone have risen strongly, from around 1.4 million iPhones sold in 2007 to almost 170 million units worldwide in 2014. In total, Apple has sold over 590 million iPhones from 2007 to 2014! Apart from this, iPhone opened the door for all other smartphones. In total, only in 2014, 1.2 billion smartphone units were sold globally (for a total value of 381 billion dollars).
So, if 1.4 million iPhones were sold in 2007 (at a time when iPhones were practically the only smartphones on the market) and over 1.2 billion smartphones were sold in 2014, just imagine what the story will be like in the case of Oculus Rift and the other VR devices that will follow.
We can say, without exaggerating, that what Oculus Rift is right now for the virtual reality industry is perfectly similar to what the iPhones represented for the smartphones industry. Oculus Rift is, by all means, the iPhone of VR.
Also, another important element that we should consider is the fact that technological development is accelerating:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense “intuitive linear” view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The “returns,” such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity – technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering), “The Law of Accelerating Returns”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns
…This means that we will not have to wait for another 7 years for the VR devices to exceed the 1 billion units sold psychological line. It might very well take just a couple of years!
And guess who jumped in first to produce real videos for the Oculus Rift (and all other VR headsets)? – The “adult” industry: „Feel the real sex with beautiful women and men like you were there! 3D Videos compatible with all the VR headsets and viewers available”:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The end of the world is nigh! A sex robot that uses Oculus Rift virtual reality display has been unveiled at the Oculus Game Jam in Tokyo. Ressentiment’s invention connects a haptic controller called the Novint Falcon to an industrial vibrator made by Tenga.
The user dons the Oculus Rift headworn virtual reality display to view sex acts simulated by the Oculus and performed by the Falcon and Tenga.
Separately, Oculus Rift is just a head-mounted 3D viewer that makes video games even cooler. Tenga is cylindrical vacuum pump that helps men beat off. The Novint Falcon is device that jitters and shakes to simulate things like shooting guns for video games. By combining their powers, Ressentiment has created a Voltron-like sex robot that will change history!”
http://us.tomonews.net/virtual-reality-sex-could-soon-be-reality-34624180862979
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Would you let a ROBOT teach you how to have sex? Therapist says AI ‘sex surrogates’ could become commonplace – and even be used to treat pedophiles”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“With Sexbots Gaining Momentum, Are Human-Robot Marriages Inevitable?”
Billions of Dollars Invested In VR/AR By All Major Tech Companies:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“You’ll be able to buy Morpheus, PS4’s virtual reality headset, in 2016:
“Morpheus – and VR – could well be the next big thing.” – Andy Hartup
http://www.gamesradar.com/project-morpheus-announcement/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“A new add-on for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset allows the person wearing it to experience smell, heat, cold, and more. A VR research and development company called Feelreal demonstrated the Bluetooth-powered mask recently at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The Feelreal mask uses heaters, coolers, misters, a vibration engine, a microphone, and even a “removable cartridge with seven unique smells.” These smells are: Ocean, Jungle, Fire, Grass, Powder, Flowers, and Metal.”
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-oculus-rift-add-on-pumps-in-smells-and-more/1100-6425824/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Augmented and Virtual Reality Market to Hit $150 Billion by 2020”
http://www.augmentedrealitytrends.com/augmented-reality/future-prediction.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Vive – The New VR Headset from HTC and Valve”
http://www.augmentedrealitytrends.com/virtual-reality/vive-vr-headset-from-htc-valve.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Lenovo VR Goggles announced, takes on Samsung and Oculus:
Lenovo has entered the Virtual Reality race at its TechWorld event in Beijing today, with the introduction of the Lenovo VR Goggles. The virtual-reality headset works with Lenovo Android phones and provides an immersive experience by sliding the smartphone into the headset and using it as a display.”
http://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-vr-goggles-announced-takes-on-samsung-and-oculus-611911/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Virtual reality allows you to experience a world which you might not be able to experience in real life. 2015 is expected to be the year when this technology will go mainstream. Developers are busy developing different virtual reality headsets for the consumers.”
http://www.augmentedrealitytrends.com/virtual-reality/xg-vr-headset.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Today, we’re incredibly excited to announce that the Oculus Rift will be shipping to consumers in Q1 2016, with pre-orders later this year.”
https://www.oculus.com/blog/first-look-at-the-rift-shipping-q1-2016/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Render the Metaverse” – A Virtual Reality Art Competition held by Otoy and Oculus (Facebook):
“OTOY officially invites all content creators and artists to “Render the Metaverse” and make inspirational artwork for Virtual Reality!”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Facebook buys British virtual reality start-up Surreal Vision:
Surreal Vision aims to make a computerised version of the world so real that users are unable to distinguish between the two.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Facebook teams up with Microsoft to push Oculus Rift:
(…) Facebook has teamed up with Microsoft to make the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset work with Windows 10 and the Xbox games console.
Oculus also announced the launch of touch controllers on Thursday, which are designed to enable people to pick up guns, throw Frisbees or carry out other actions within the fantasy scenes they see through the headset.”
…Reality is fantastic already, meaning that there is an infinite number of wonders, of real wonders that are just waiting for our deeper sight. We need not “augment” reality, reality is already very rich! The right way for us would be to develop the “organs”, to open the “eyes” that will allow us to see beyond the veil of matter.
The more we lose our sensitivity, the more we need “more”. In reality, this “more” is actually “less”. The more we “augment” reality, the more information and virtual objects we “add” over it, the less we are capable of understanding it, of receiving its spiritual messages. For one who “sees”, there is Spirit everywhere. Every inch of “matter” is embraced by the spirit. In fact, the right way to put it is that matter itself is nothing else than condensed spirit.
What we should focus on is “unlocking” the real “higher” worlds…
Faceboogle’s Obsession to Get All Humans “Online”
In 2013, Facebook launched Internet.org. Conceived as a global partnership and having also Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung as founding members, Internet.org aims at giving Internet access to the 5 billion of the Earth’s population that is not currently connected.
Soon after its launch, Internet.org released its first product – a mobile app that allows free mobile access to a series of basic web services, such as: AccuWeather, BBC News, Facebook, Messenger, and Google Search.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Facebook plans to offer Internet service using aerial robots:
(…) Facebook has repeatedly stated that they want to bring affordable Internet access to those portions of the world which still lack connectivity. According to the Financial Times, Facebook instead acquired the 5-person team behind Ascenta for just under $20 million.
(…) Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition of Ascenta as his latest contribution to the Internet.org’s Connectivity Lab. That lab is charged with providing solutions to bring affordable access to the 60% of the world’s populations not presently using the Internet. Facebook, as does the Internet.org, also has a Connectivity Lab.
Google last year announced a similar project, Project Loon, one of their moon shots from the GoogleX Lab. Their idea is to build a ring of balloons flying around the globe in stratospheric winds to provide Internet access to the earth below.”
http://www.therobotreport.com/news/facebook-plans-to-offer-internet-service-using-aerial-robots
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Facebook wants solar drone to bring Internet far and wide:
The Aquila mission is part of a broader desire on the part of Facebook, the world’s largest social network, to bring Web access to underserved countries through its Internet.org initiative. Internet.org is looking into a wide range of technologies, including lasers and satellites, that could be used to beam Internet access to people around the globe.
Under the program, the drones would fly over areas where Internet access is either unavailable or spotty at best.
“Aircraft like these will help connect the whole world because they can affordably serve the 10% of the world’s population that live in remote communities without existing internet infrastructure,” Facebook CEO said in a post to the social network.
Internet giant Google, meanwhile, has its own aerial programs to help people get online. Project Loon, developed by the company’s oft-secretive Google X laboratory, aims beam Internet access from balloons. Google also has a drone program in the works.”
http://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-solar-powered-drones-to-take-flight-this-summer/
…The more users they have, the more money they make! This is the only real reason why they are so eager to give “free-Internet” to the 5 billion human-beings who are currently not “connected”. If they get the other 5 billion people on their ground, they can continue playing God. They are already doing this, but they wish to accelerate the tech-development. For this, they need more money and more adherents. To get it, they will play the “good Samaritan” role, of course…
In reality, their goal is not to eradicate poverty, to erase all diseases, or to offer you wealth, power and immortality. They just want to “cloud” your consciousness so that you will not be able to see what your true human path is.
The “technological mainstream” is nothing but a highway without speed limits towards the end of humanity. Google’s final goal is the post-human era, an era when human-beings have given up their “I”-s and have allowed them to be replaced by the cold-“smartness” of the machines.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The most dramatic (positive) change in our global economy is about to occur between 2016 and 2020.
Three to five billion new consumers, who have never purchased anything, never uploaded anything, and never invented and sold anything, are about to come online and provide a mega-surge to the global economy.
(…) In 2010, 1.8 billion people were connected. Today, five years later, about 2.9 billion are connected… In other words, on a planet with a population of 7+ billion people, 4+ billion still don’t have access to the Internet. But by 2020, I expect the entire world will be connected.
(…) Global connectivity is central to Google, and as such, they are betting on multiple approaches to interconnecting humanity.
(…) The implications of 7+ billion connected minds are staggering, and we need to be talking about them. Again, the Rising Billions represent tens of trillions of dollars flowing into the global economy.” – Peter Diamandis, Co-Founder of the “Singularity University”
http://singularityhub.com/2015/04/06/rising-billions-dramatic-positive-change/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“What is Project Loon?
Many of us think of the Internet as a global community. But two-thirds of the world’s population does not yet have Internet access. Project Loon is a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill coverage gaps, and bring people back online after disasters.
(…) Project Loon balloons float in the stratosphere, twice as high as airplanes and the weather. In the stratosphere, there are many layers of wind, and each layer of wind varies in direction and speed. Loon balloons go where they’re needed by rising or descending into a layer of wind blowing in the desired direction of travel.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google To Provide Free Internet For All Humans On Earth Via It’s Satellites:
(…) you’d be surprised to know that even now 2/3rd of Earth’s population doesn’t have access to internet. This is where Google comes in who has decided to change this by launching a myriad of satellites in order to provide internet services to the 4.8 billion people who are still offline.
(…) According to the information; the company is spending about $1 billion on this project which will rival Facebook’s effort to provide free internet to the world.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Now Google is going to dominate space: Search giant to launch 180 satellites to provide internet access for the ENTIRE planet:
(…) Two-thirds of the world still remain without internet access. Google is planning to change this by launching a fleet of 180 satellites to provide web access for the 4.8 billion people not yet online, and now Elon Musk and an ex- Google employee plan to launch around 700 satellites in an even larger project.”
Faceboogle and Christians
There is no “Creator”, the Universe is a dumb “machina” and it is the human-machine civilization that will make it “intelligent” and “conscious”:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“RAY: The universe is not conscious – yet. But it will be. Strictly speaking, we should say that very little of it is conscious today. But that will change and soon. I expect that the universe will become sublimely intelligent and will wake up in Epoch Six. The only belief I am positing here is that the universe exists. If we make that leap of faith, the expectation that it will wake up is not so much a belief as an informed understanding, based on the same science that says there is a universe.
MOLLY 2004: Interesting. You know, that’s essentially the opposite of the view that there was a conscious creator who got everything started and then kind of bowed out. You’re basically saying that a conscious universe will “bow in” during Epoch Six.
RAY: Yes, that’s the essence of Epoch Six.” – Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, “Singularity Is Near”
…Instead of Christ coming with the heavenly clouds, we are being approached by the Digital Messiah coming from and through the computer clouds:
Bible, Matthew 24:30:
“And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory.”
Bible, Revelation 1:7:
“BEHOLD, HE IS COMING WITH THE CLOUDS, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Twenty years from now, we’ll have nanobots, because another exponential trend is the shrinking of technology. They’ll go into our brain through the capillaries and basically connect our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud providing an extension of our neocortex. Now today, I mean, you have a computer in your phone, but if you need 10,000 computers for a few seconds to do a complex search, you can access that for a second or two in the cloud. In the 2030s, if you need some extra neocortex, you’ll be able to connect to that in the cloud directly from your brain. So I’m walking along and I say, “Oh, there’s Chris Anderson. He’s coming my way. I’d better think of something clever to say. I’ve got three seconds. My 300 million modules in my neocortex isn’t going to cut it. I need a billion more.” I’ll be able to access that in the cloud. And our thinking, then, will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking, but the non-biological portion is subject to my law of accelerating returns. It will grow exponentially.” – Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering
http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_get_ready_for_hybrid_thinking/transcript?language=en
…Please notice how the most important of all Ray Kurzweil’s books has a title that directly mocks the biblical “The Kingdom of God is near” – “The Singularity is near”.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In a conversation with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, which Kurzweil reports in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Gates asks, “So, is there a God in this religion?”
Kurzweil replies:
“Not yet, but there will be. Once we saturate the matter and energy in the universe with intelligence, it will ‘wake up’, be conscious, and sublimely intelligent. That’s about as close to God as I can imagine.” A surprising number of self-dubbed Singularitarians are buying into Kurzweil’s vision, including Russian multimillionaire Dmitry Itskov and the Dalai Lama. And last year Google hired Kurzweil to be director of engineering to make self-replicating artificial intelligence a reality.”
http://thechristians.com/?q=node/836
…The human biological body is not “the Creation of God”, but an “anachronism” that will be replaced by the “cyborg”:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Paulson: Does the physical body become irrelevant? Does it become an anachronism?
Kurzweil: Well, you know we don’t abandon old technologies immediately – people didn’t throw their manual typewriters away when the first clumsy word processors appeared, but it’s hard to find a mechanical typewriter today. We tend to keep these old technologies around.
Paulson: [laughing] So the human body, you’re saying, will become an old technology, going the way of the typewriter.
Kurzweil: Eventually, we’ll be able to create human body version 2.0 and 3.0, and you can have different bodies, a couple could become each other to experience the relationship from the others perspective. A teacher could assign a student not just to dress up as Ben Franklin, but to be Ben Franklin in a virtual Congress. So there’s applications for relationships, for education, and certainly for entertainment.”
http://www.ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-ray-kurzweil-our-cyborg-future
“You shall not take the name of the [DIGITAL] LORD your [Virtual] God in vain!”
Please note how, years passing by, technology really becomes „The New Messiah”. And I really mean it! – Saying anything against the “mainstream tech” is perceived as an outrageous blasphemy: “You shall not take the name of the [DIGITAL] LORD your [Virtual] God in vain!”
We talk a lot about the ethics of so many things, but we are seldom paying attention more than a minute to the necessary ethics of technology.
The mixture of mainstream technology and cynical capitalism is what paves the road to the Post-Human Empire. The mainstream technology is being praised and perceived as “The New Messiah”. In the same time, there is almost no talk about it being “right” or “wrong”, “good” or “bad”. All the talk is about “being there before the Momentum”, “investing in the Next Thing”, “smart market moves” etc.
Also, notice that the large majority of the most successfully crowdfunded campaigns are technology-related. Maybe the perfect example is the Oculus Rift itself: 9,522 backers pledged $2,437,429 to help bring this project to life! This is huge!
Faceboogle and Buddhists
One of the most perverted things that Mr. Kurzweil does, alongside all other Singularitarians, is to justify the gradual elimination of the human biological body by calling upon Buddhist (and, generally speaking, meditation-based) concepts.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“MOLLY 2004: That actually sounds kind of appealing. You know, some Buddhist philosophies emphasize the extent to which there is inherently no boundary at all between us.
RAY: Sounds like they’re talking about the Singularity.” – Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, “Singularity Is Near”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Another connotation of the word “spiritual” is “containing spirit,” which is to say being conscious.
Consciousness – the seat of “personalness” – is regarded as what is real in many philosophical and religious traditions.
A common Buddhist ontology considers subjective – conscious – experience as the ultimate reality, rather than physical or objective phenomena, which are considered maya (illusion).
(…) The Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution.
However, it is precisely in the world of matter and energy that we encounter transcendence, a principal connotation of what people refer to as spirituality.” – Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, “Singularity Is Near”
The “2045 Initiative”:
It was founded in February 2011 by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov with the participation of “leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of an individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality.
(…) The “2045” team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Future prospects of “2045” Initiative for society:
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android “avatars” controlled by a “brain-computer” interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc. Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.”
“Dmitry Itskov, founder of 2045 Initiative, with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, at his Dharamsala residence”
http://2045.com/dialogue/29819.html
…The real sages of Tibet and India would never press their stamp on such a project. It would just be against all that they know and all that they are. The fact that the Dalai Lama himself joins and encourages such a project is emblematic for both the level of nowadays materialism and the lack of understanding towards what the real human being is.
All real Tibetan and Indian sages know through their meditation and esoteric training that we, humans, are actually living in a reality that infinitely outlines what our ordinary senses allow us to experience. And all real Tibetan and Indian sages know through their total dedication towards the good of humankind that the “2045 Avatar” project is just a mockery of what an “Avatar” really is. The “2045 Avatar” project, sadly backed-up by The Dalai Lama, aims at nothing else but de-humanizing the beautiful Earth…
Faceboogle and religious people
Before anything, I must say that I had to make two distinct chapters for Christians and Buddhists as the Singularitarians (Google’s Ray Kurzweil being the top-first of them) are directly and mainly addressing their spiritual concepts and believes. Nevertheless, the present chapter concerns all religious people, including Buddhists and Christians.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Humans will become God-like cyborgs:
(…) homo sapiens will upgrade themselves into some idea of a divine being, either through biological manipulation or genetic engineering or by the creation of cyborgs, part organic part non-organic.
“It will be the greatest evolution in biology since the appearance of life. Nothing really has changed in four billion years biologically speaking. But we will be as different from today’s humans as chimps are now from us.”
(…) “God is extremely important because without religious myth you can’t create society. Religion is the most important invention of humans. As long as humans believed they relied more and more on these gods they were controllable.
“But what we see in the last few centuries is humans becoming more powerful and they no longer need the crutches of the Gods. Now we are saying we do not need God just technology.
“The most interesting place in the world from a religious perspective is not the Middle East, it’s Silicon Valley where they are developing a techno-religion. They believe even death is just a technological problem to be solved.” – Yuval Noah Harari, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
For a religious human, there is absolutely no consistency in affirming the religious values and, at the same time, using Google and Facebook services. This two things simply cannot go together. For this is not a fundamentalist view, but an effort to show to what extent Faceboogle can become fundamentalist in their anti-human work.
From the believers in Reincarnation perspective:
There is a critical implication regarding the whole future of humankind: if the Singularity succeeds, if it becomes reality as we are approaching the half of this century, this means that, starting from the 21st century on, there will be no human bodies left on Earth for the spirits to incarnate in (as the human bodies will be totally replaced by the machines, by the robots).
From the believers in the God-given one single life perspective:
There will be no continuation for the human-beings as the Creation of God, as there will be no God-created biological body left to receive a human soul.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Random strokes on a canvas are just paint. But when arranged in just the right way, they transcend the material stuff and become art. Random notes are just sounds. Sequenced in an “inspired” way, we have music. A pile of components is just an inventory. Ordered in an innovative manner, and perhaps with the addition of some software (another pattern), we have the “magic” (transcendence) of technology.
Although some regard what is referred to as “spiritual” as the true meaning of transcendence, transcendence refers to all levels of reality: the creations of the natural world, including ourselves, as well as our own creations in the form of art, culture, technology, and emotional and spiritual expression. Evolution concerns patterns, and it is specifically the depth and order of patterns that grow in an evolutionary process. As a consummation of the evolution in our midst, the Singularity will deepen all of these manifestations of transcendence.” – Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, “Singularity Is Near”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“We do assume that humans are conscious, at least when they appear to be. At the other end of the spectrum we assume that simple machines are not.
In the cosmological sense, the contemporary universe acts more like a simple machine than a conscious being. But as we discussed in the previous chapter, the matter and energy in our vicinity will become infused with the intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and emotional intelligence (the ability to love, for example) of our human-machine civilization. Our civilization will then expand outward, turning all the dumb matter and energy we encounter into sublimely intelligent – transcendent – matter and energy. So in a sense, we can say that the Singularity will ultimately infuse the universe with spirit.” – Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, “Singularity Is Near”
Please, try to read at least two times these quotes:
1.Mr. Zuckerberg of Facebook: “Bring this future to the world and unlock new worlds for all of us”…
2.“The future, in ways we can’t even begin to imagine, will be Google’s“
Think on it and feel it with all your being…
…Beyond the veil of matter much lies hidden. Only, to get to know and experience what is there, we need to go through an esoteric training. This has been done for millennia, in very different forms. It is done now, too, everywhere on Earth. There are tens of thousands of people who meditate, who pray, who started an alchemical work upon themselves, trying to transmute their lower drives into higher capacities and qualities.
Of course, in order to reach the spiritual mountain tops, one needs to be ready to climb for many a day. The journey is very beautiful but there are also numerous obstacles on the path. Only one who is ready and capable of constantly finding new ways to surpass these obstacles will be in the position to flag his spirit on the higher rocks of one’s humanness.
There are two dominant groups that are sharing our beautiful blue planet these days. There are those who are not aware of the spiritual world but who, nevertheless, cannot simply live without their spirits. They are the ones who are already giving themselves to extreme entertainment, extreme sports and extreme experiences. They are the ones who will be totally mesmerized by “the next thing” – Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Their spirit is calling for their attention and work, but they do not realize this. Therefore, they are sleep-walking and sleep-running towards nowhere just to find something that would fill their emptiness, that would mask the spiritual void for a while.
The other group consists of people who are already engaged on the path towards the inner and outer spiritual worlds. But even among them, there are just a few with a will strong enough to continue the journey even when everything seems impossible. All others will finally give in to Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, too. Even if, at first, they will be more skeptic than the members of the first group, after “tasting” the VR/AR in a “spiritual” framework, they will also get the drug. It will be very hard to renounce this when it will prove to be so simple to get into a sort of psychedelic trance by just accessing – let’s say – a “virtual meditation camp” and pushing the “Unio Mystica button”…
Instead of taking off the veil that hides the spiritual worlds, many will prefer to put virtual reality headsets over their eyes. The spiritual “Third Eye” will be replaced by the “Virtual Reality Eye”, by the Facebook “Oculus”. * It has to be said here that “the taking off of the veil” simply means free willing to work so that we reach the heights of our own being as an effect of our own, free-willed struggle.
…The last human stronghold to be conquered by the Singularitarians – “Love”:
…In 1959 Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy founded what is now known as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Marvin Minsky is listed on Google Directory as one of the all time top six people in the field of artificial intelligence.
Isaac Asimov once described him as one of only two people he would admit were more intelligent than Asimov was (the other being Carl Sagan).
…Ray Kurzweil has referred to him as his mentor.”
http://www.singularitysymposium.com/marvin-minsky.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Artificial intelligence pioneer and cognitive scientist Marvin
Minsky whispers sweet nothings to The Boston Globe in an interview about emotion:
What, in your view, is love?
“There’s short-term infatuation, where someone gets strongly attracted to someone else, and that’s probably very often a turning-off of certain things rather than something extra: It’s a mental state where you remove your criticism. So to say someone is beautiful is not necessarily positive, it may be something happening so you can’t see anything wrong with this person. And then there are long-term attachments, where you adopt the goals of the other person and somehow make serious changes in what you’re going to do.”
http://mindhacks.com/2006/12/12/marvin-minsky-on-love/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Minsky argues that emotions are different ways to think that our mind uses to increase our intelligence. He challenges the distinction between emotions and other kinds of thinking. His main argument is that emotions are “ways to think” for different “problem types” that exist in the world.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine
FURTHER READING:
“The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Emotion-Machine-Commonsense-Intelligence/dp/0743276647
…What is the human “Soul”? – Just “an emerging property” of “a lot of neurons”:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Will super intelligent machines ever have souls?
Kurzweil: The soul is a synonym for consciousness… and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we’ve now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don’t see anything that can be identified as a soul – there’s just a lot of neurons and they’re complicated but there’s no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it’s an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself.
And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property and this would be more than an abstraction because these future entities… will be convincing.
It also won’t be clear – you won’t be able to walk into a room and say, “OK, humans on the left, machines on the right,” because it’s going to be all mixed up. You’ll have biological humans but they’ll have machine processes in their brain, there may be a lot more complexity in the machine intelligence in their brain than the biological portion of their brain. It’s not going to be a clear distinction of where humans or biological intelligence stops and machine intelligence starts. (So) we will attribute consciousness to entities even if they have no biology, even if they’re fully machine entities: they will seem human, they will seem conscious, we will attribute souls to them.”
http://www.cnet.com/news/q-a-kurzweil-on-tech-as-a-double-edged-sword/
Currently, things are so clear, so obvious and the situation is so serious that no one who perceives oneself as a spiritual being has any excuse if one continues to use the services of such companies. Because it is beyond any doubt that we are dealing here with companies putting all their money at work to develop a “post-human world”, a world that would be totally devoid of real humans and humanity.
The slaves of the Digital Messiah are, from their master’s perspective, the perfect kind of slaves – the ones who are totally unaware of their condition, and the ones who are 101% positive that the digital mainstream is the best thing that could have ever happened to them.
But the good thing is: there would actually be no talk about transhumanism if the souls and spirits of Earth inhabitants were not ripe enough for new beginnings. On a deeper analysis it should be said that human beings need not oppose transhumanism, as it is transhumanism itself that opposes them! What should be the beginning of a new human age is turned upside-down into the beginning of the post-human age of “spiritual machines”!
Faceboogle and esotericists
Don’t look at what Google and Facebook were. Don’t even look at what Google and Facebook are right now. Instead, imagine what Google and Facebook will be in just a few years from now…
Just putting things together, one gets this:
1.1998 = 3 x 666.
2.Google was founded on September 4, 1998.
3.Mayan Calendar ends on December 21, 2012.
4.“I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining Google as Director of Engineering this Monday, December 17, 2012” said Ray Kurzweil (the world’s number one Singularitarian).
For all true esotericists, there is a lot of food for thought in the above…
BUT that is not all. You see, all people seriously trained or interested in the esoteric field already know a lot about the 7 Epochs of Evolution. These epochs are not always called the same (they are wearing slightly different names according to the esoteric traditions they belong to). But – in true esoteric essence – the 7 Epochs bear the same meaning and are always perceived as the 7 big stages for the evolution of humankind.
In accordance with this division in 7 different stages of evolution, we are now living in the 5th Big Epoch.
BUT the esotericists are not alone in this game. There is also another person who talks about epochs of evolution: Mister Ray Kurzweil! Only, he states that there will not be any 7th Epoch. His system only counts for… 6.
Now, I think all the readers of this book who are at least a little bit acquainted with esoteric numerology will rapidly grasp what lies behind the fact that Google’s No.1 Singularitarian repudiates the 7 Epochs system and only speaks about the… “6”.
It goes without saying, also, that Ray Kurzweil’s “epochs” have a totally different meaning from the epochs described in the traditions of all esoteric streams. This is – in essence – the significance of each of Kurzweil’s “6” epochs:
EPOCH 1: The Universe at the level of Physics and Chemistry (“Information in atomic structures”)
EPOCH 2: The Universe at the level of Biology (“Information in DNA”)
EPOCH 3: The Universe at the level of Brains (“Information in neural patterns”)
EPOCH 4: The Universe at the level of Technology (“Information in hardware and software designs”)
EPOCH 5: The Universe at the level of the merger of Technology and Human Intelligence (biology is integrated into technology and “technology masters the methods of biology, including human intelligence”)
EPOCH 6: “The Universe wakes up” (“Vastly expanded human intelligence – predominantly nonbiological – spreads through the universe”)
“EPOCH SIXTH”:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“RAY: The universe is not conscious – yet. But it will be. Strictly speaking, we should say that very little of it is conscious today. But that will change and soon. I expect that the universe will become sublimely intelligent and will wake up in Epoch Six. The only belief I am positing here is that the universe exists. If we make that leap of faith, the expectation that it will wake up is not so much a belief as an informed understanding, based on the same science that says there is a universe.
MOLLY 2004: Interesting. You know, that’s essentially the opposite of the view that there was a conscious creator who got everything started and then kind of bowed out. You’re basically saying that a conscious universe will “bow in” during Epoch Six.
RAY: Yes, that’s the essence of Epoch Six.” – Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, “Singularity Is Near”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Kurzweil predicts that as the “computational density” of the universe increases, intelligence will rival even “big celestial forces”. There is disagreement about whether the universe will end in a big crunch or a long slow expansion, Kurzweil says the answer is still up in the air because intelligence will ultimately make the decision.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“We are now in what I call the fifth epoch, in which we are unlocking the secrets of biology and using these biologically inspired paradigms to guide our technology.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering)
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ask-ray-science-and-god
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“It is the Sixth Epoch, “The Universe Wakes Up,” that is a truly fascinating idea. Essentially, after the singularity occurs (the exponential intelligence and technology explosion after Seed AI is created and replaces organic intelligence as the dominant form of intelligence), Kurzweil predicts, the new super-intelligent civilization (machine or machine/human hybrid) will expand throughout the galaxy and eventually the universe, turning matter into computational substrates, until the entire universe is one giant computer. Quoting Wikipedia, by 2199, “with the entire universe made into a giant, highly efficient supercomputer, A.I./human hybrids (so integrated that, in truth it is a new category of “life”) would have both supreme intelligence and physical control over the universe. Kurzweil suggests that this will open up all sorts of new possibilities such as doing the infinitely impossible and beyond.”
The 6th epochs of evolution: http://www.capitalideasonline.com/articles/index.php?id=1913
RELEVANT QUOTE:
Rudolf Steiner – 1924:
“Ahriman’s efforts are directed towards making a cosmic machine out of that which he allows to stream forth from the Earth into universal space. His ideal is ‘measure, number and weight’ and nothing else than these.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c15.html
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“And here we come to a chapter that must not be withheld from modern knowledge. If, in the future, people were to do nothing themselves toward acquiring a new wisdom, then, without their consciousness, the whole of culture would become ahrimanic, and it would be easy for the influences issuing from Ahriman’s incarnation to permeate all civilization on the earth. Precautions must therefore be taken in regard to the streams by which the ahrimanic form of culture is furthered. What would be the result if people were to follow the strong inclination they have today to let things drift on as they are, without understanding and guiding into right channels those streams which lead to an ahrimanic culture? As soon as Ahriman incarnates at the destined time in the West, the whole of culture would be impregnated with his forces. What else would come in his train? Through certain stupendous acts he would bring to humanity all the clairvoyant knowledge which until then can be acquired only by dint of intense labor and effort. People could live on as materialists, they could eat and drink – as much as may be left after the war! – and there would be no need for any spiritual efforts. The ahrimanic streams would continue their unimpeded course. When Ahriman incarnates in the West at the appointed time, he would establish a great occult school for the practice of magic arts of the greatest grandeur, and what otherwise can be acquired only by strenuous effort would be poured over humankind.
Let it never be imagined that Ahriman will appear as a kind of hoaxer, playing mischievous tricks on human beings. No, indeed! Lovers of ease who refuse to have anything to do with spiritual science would fall prey to his magic, for by means of these stupendous magic arts he would be able to make great numbers of human beings into seers – but in such a way that the clairvoyance of each individual would be strictly differentiated. What one person would see, a second and a third would not see. Confusion would prevail and in spite of being made receptive to clairvoyant wisdom, people would inevitably fall into strife on account of the sheer diversity of their visions. Ultimately, however, they would all be satisfied with their own particular vision, for each of them would be able to see into the spiritual world. In this way all culture on the earth would fall prey to Ahriman. Human beings would succumb to Ahriman simply through not having acquired by their own efforts what Ahriman is ready and able to give them. No more evil advice could be given than to say: “Stay just as you are! Ahriman will make all of you clairvoyant if you so desire. And you will desire it because Ahriman’s power will be very great.” But the result would be the establishment of Ahriman’s kingdom on earth and the overthrow of everything achieved hitherto by human culture; all the disastrous tendencies unconsciously cherished by humankind today would take effect.
Our concern is that the wisdom of the future – a clairvoyant wisdom – shall be rescued from the clutches of Ahriman. Again let it be repeated that there is only one book of wisdom, not two kinds of wisdom. The issue is whether this wisdom is in the hands of Ahriman or of Christ. It cannot come into the hands of Christ unless people fight for it. And they can only fight for it by telling themselves that by their own efforts they must assimilate the content of spiritual science before the time of Ahriman’s appearance on earth.” – Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 5th November, 1919
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Already the title of Kurzweil’s 2005 publication – “The Singularity is Near” – illustrates the spiritual or religious overtones of his ideas. The title has an obvious resonance with ‘‘the kingdom of Heaven is near’’; it is in other words a gospel, a message of good news.
(…) There is an existential choice confronting us today: whether to see humans as essentially spiritual beings, or as highly complex bio- computers. This choice has obvious ramifications for education as well as for the future of human being in general.
(…) In an earlier book Kurzweil [29] claims that if current predictions regarding the pace of computational speed are correct, then in a not too distant future we will need neural implants if we want to take full advantage of the superfast computers available at that time. This will of course be a significant step towards the singularity.
(…) For Kurzweil, singularity is the moment when ‘‘the universe wakes up’’. This notion of ‘‘waking up’’ also figures prominently in traditional religious, not to say esoteric spiritual teachings. However, in ancient and spiritual cosmologies the universe itself was always already ‘‘awake’’, i.e. filled and ruled by gods or supranatural beings with a consciousness far exceeding that of humans. It is humanity that is asleep. Another archetypal idea of Kurzweil along the same lines is that of intelligence ‘‘as the destiny of the universe’’. Again, from spiritual points of view, there is/are already one/several cosmic intelligence/s permeating the universe, but humans have lost their connections to it/them.”
https://www.academia.edu/12090009/Digital_ghosts_or_Earth_angels
The “clouds” – cloud computing
Instead of Christ coming with the heavenly clouds, we are being approached by the Digital Messiah coming from and through the computer clouds:
Bible, Matthew 24:30:
“And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory.”
Bible, Revelation 1:7:
“BEHOLD, HE IS COMING WITH THE CLOUDS, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“As you go out to the 2040s, now the bulk of our thinking is out in THE CLOUD. The biological portion of our brain didn’t go away but the nonbiological portion will be much more powerful. And it will be uploaded automatically the way we back up everything now that’s digital.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873245047045784125813 86515510
The “ether” – Ethernet
“We have seen that the question of Man’s relationship to the Machine, which began with the Industrial Revolution, now urgently confronts our changing sense of what is Humanity. Materialism has attempted to reduce the Human to a machine. It presents to us the untruth that when the brain has been reversed- engineered, then machines will be able to become humans; that is, spiritual machines. This voice of technology mocks spiritual explanations while it offers to our spiritual aspirations an imitation of the etheric within virtual reality so that we lack the will to seek the truth within the Etheric.” – Andrew Linnell, “Technology Confronts the Etheric Realm. Constructing a New World Using the Fallen Etheric Forces”
The “Artificial Intelligence” that will replace Wisdom
Wisdom is knowledge permeated by love. Thus, it is by no way similar to the Artificial Intelligence. Google’s Universe is a cold-Universe, a cold-blooded Universe. And Ray Kurzweil is Google more than even Google itself realizes!
Do you really think and expect that – after doing everything to diminish spirituality and to increase materialism – The False Prophet will come and speak about “spirituality”? No, he will come and speak about “intelligence”. He will define humanness by “intelligence” and subsume all human feelings and emotions to this “intelligence”. He will state that he can help us reach our ultimate goal of evolution: “unlimited intelligence” and “immortality”.
Gog – Google; Gog – Goggle(s)
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The names ‘Gog’ and ‘Magog’ are found in the Old Testament, in the Pseudepigrapha and the Qumran-writings, in the Targums and in other Jewish texts, in the New Testament, in the writings of the Church Fathers, and even in the Koran. In most of these texts Gog and Magog are persons or nations opposing God’s people in the endtime-tribulations.”
http://books.google.ro/books/about/Gog_and_Magog.html?id=vettpBoV OX4C&redir_esc=y
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In the Book of Ezekiel Gog is the name of an individual and Magog the name of his land, in Genesis 10 Magog is a person, and in Revelation both Gog and Magog are nations (“the hostile nations of the world”).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog_and_Magog
Virtual/Augmented Reality Instead of Spiritual Clairvoyance
I see your colored aura, I see your etheric and astral bodies, while you are just wearing your VR glasses to “see” me and yourself in your virtual worlds…
Facebook’s Virtual and Augmented Reality is nothing but a mockery of nature and a mockery of Creation. The “Immersive VR” is an endeavor to replace nature and to replace the Creation of God. Ultimately, given the final objective of the Singularity – spreading the machine-intelligence throughout the whole Universe – Human is to be replaced with Machine, and God with Gog (the AI- God of Google and of Facebook’s VR Goggles).
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Based on the link between virtual reality and spiritual philosophy, I will make some radical futurological predictions, hinted at in the Prelude. I will argue that as virtual reality technology becomes more prevalent, recognition of the virtuality of everyday reality will increase, thus having an “enlightening” effect that I call electronic eschatology. In other words, the possibility is open for future generations to use VR as a short-cut to spiritual experience – a short cut sure to be preferable in many ways to the psychedelic experience.” – “Unification of Science and Spirit”, Ben Goertzel
http://goertzel.org/books/spirit/uni3.htm
The clairvoyance, the Imaginations that should develop right now are chained by means of VR. The golden age of Spirit is replaced by „the golden age of Virtual Reality”.
Our world needs no “augmentation”. It is already fully augmented! It only needs us to develop our higher perceptions, our deeper sensitivity. We are living in a multilayered world. There are countless strata, with different levels of profundity and different grades of substantiality. To get to know all these worlds, all these layers, all these strata, we need to develop our hidden higher capacities. For instance, the opening of the “Third Eye” is exactly what gives us the great ability to see beyond the veil of matter. But no one should be fooled on this – the opening of the Third Eye is not something that happens after a fortnight play. It takes a little bit more work, strong will and dedication. All real things call for our work. …And why is that? – Simply because without our free will and determination to work in order to achieve something, there would be no real free achievement of a truly free human-being. Freedom, together with Love, represent our deepest cores. Without our freedom, we are just slaves in the hands of the “masters of puppets”. And without Love, our Freedom turns into a cold journey, which lacks the warmth that melts the icy crust around our hearts.
As long as all humans on Earth are offered the “gift” of Virtual and Augmented Reality, it becomes absolutely necessary that they are also given the information regarding their inner hidden capacities that – once developed – would allow them to really see beyond the veil of the material world.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Spiritual Machines series of experimental VR videos are made to be seen through the Oculus Rift VR as part of Mike Saijo’s solo exhibition “We Are Spiritual Machines” at Porch Gallery – Ojai. Opening May 10, 2014 – June 29, 2014. This was filmed at the orange groves of Krishnamurti Foundation of America. Intended to be experienced with an olfactory component of fresh Orange Blossom scent tinctured in Ojai by Trance Essence.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQKLmVqW89U
Comments regarding the “spiritual” experiences brought by Virtual Reality and the Singularity:
Comment: „achieving the singularity is the meaning of life”
Comment: „I’m really looking forward to guided meditation apps. Imagine transporting yourself to Tibet and the beautiful landscapes there.”
Comment: „Well, maybe your dreams are super vivid, but mine don’t usually appear nearly as “clear” as in VR. I think it’s a much more potent form of transportation than dreams or visualization can provide based on my experiences. VR has actually made my dreams more vivid and longer as well. I think it’s also increasing my ability to recall them more clearly as well. In addition,
I find my ability to recall memories to be sharper too. Definitely a powerful tool for cognitive enhancement.”
Comment: „I mean, never before could humans experience what it is like to be disembodied, or having another body, or being in impossible places. (well, only through deep meditation and altered states of consciousness).”
Comment: „I cannot help but think that this medium is (or can be) a great tool for spiritual-personal growth.”
http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/2sbfb6/vr_and_spirituality/
Spirit is a form of… Matter:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In the cosmological sense the contemporary universe acts more like a simple machine than a conscious being. But as we discussed in the previous chapter, the matter and energy in our vicinity will become infused with the intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and emotional intelligence (the ability to love, for example) of our human-machine civilization. Our civilization will then expand outward, turning all the dumb matter and energy we encounter into sublimely intelligent – transcendent – matter and energy. So in a sense, we can say that the Singularity will ultimately infuse the universe with spirit.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering), “Singularity Is Near”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution.
However, it is precisely in the world of matter and energy that we encounter transcendence, a principal connotation of what people refer to as spirituality.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering), “Singularity Is Near”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Challenge of the Times: The Mechanistic, Eugenic and Hygienic Aspects of the Future (Lecture, December 1, 1918):
(…) The fact that in our epoch there is no consciousness of the difference between the physical plane and the spiritual world, but the physical plane is looked upon in a certain instinctive way as the only world, is connected with the other fact that it longs to create a paradise on this physical plane.
(…) First, there are the capacities having to do with so-called material occultism. By means of this capacity — and this is precisely the ideal of British secret societies — certain social forms at present basic within the industrial system shall be set up on an entirely different foundation. Every knowing member of these secret circles is aware that, solely by means of certain capacities that are still latent but evolving in man, and with the help of the law of harmonious oscillations, machines and mechanical constructions and other things can be set in motion.
(…) These things are at present in process of development. They are guarded as secrets within those secret circles in the field of material occultism. Motors can be set in motion, into activity, by an insignificant human influence through a knowledge of the corresponding curve of oscillation. By means of this principle it will be possible to substitute merely mechanical forces for human forces in many things.
(…) The possibility will thus come about of rendering unnecessary nine-tenths of the work of individuals within the regions of the English-speaking peoples. Mechanistic occultism will not only render it possible to do without nine-tenths of the labor still performed at present by human hands, but will give the possibility also of paralyzing every uprising attempted by the then dissatisfied masses of humanity.
The capacity to set motors in motion according to the laws of reciprocal oscillations will develop on a great scale among the English-speaking peoples.
This is known in their secret circles, and is counted upon as the means whereby the mastery over the rest of the population of the earth.” – Rudolf Steiner (December 1, 1918)
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA186/English/AP1941/19181201p01.html
The “immortality” of the human spirit is copied and pasted as the “digital immortality”. The healing capacities of our spirit are replaced by the “healing nanobots”. The spiritual “ether” is replaced by the “Ethernet”. The spiritual “clouds” are replaced by the “computer clouds”. The “Kingdom of God is near” becomes “Singularity is near”. Our human heart, through which our spiritual love comes to expression is going to be replaced by “nanobots”. Our human brain, through which spiritual thoughts enter the material world will also be replaced by the “nanobots”. Ultimately, there will be no real, biological human body and no human spirit will be able to inhabit one (no matter if we talk about a single life or about reincarnation). The etheric and astral worlds that we are living into are not anymore to be seen by developing the clairvoyance of our “third eye”, as the “third eye” will be exchanged for the “evil eye”, the “Oculus”. Thus, instead of the real, amazingly beautiful spiritual worlds that we could be able to gaze into by developing our inner sight, we will be given the illusory worlds of Virtual and Augmented Reality. Also, we will stop developing our telepathic capacities and start “connecting” with all others by sharing the same global artificial mind.
…BUT what is, at the end of the day, the huge difference between all the above? – It is all about our FREEDOM! To develop, for instance, the inner capacity of seeing the etheric and astral worlds means to develop something that is part of us, part of our spirit. On the contrary, to wear VR/AR headsets and to immerse in illusory worlds is to use something that is not part of us, something that will alienate us, that will make us totally estranged from our real inner essence.
Faceboogle and atheists – Why the Singularity Empties No Room for Any Kind of Real Atheism
Also, in the case you, dear reader, are an atheist, please consider the near future (coming in very fast during our life span) when all your surroundings will be populated by cyborgs, by half-man half-machine beings. A world that replaced biology with the help of synthetic nanorobots. A planet that hosts a strange species that suddenly decided to stop living in the real world and shut down the natural senses and perceptions in favor of the artificialness of the virtual and so called “augmented” worlds.
The purpose of this book would be totally missed if someone would say: “I am an atheist. I simply don’t believe in the existence of a ‘Spirit’. Therefore, I will not be affected in any way by the Singularity!” – No, this would be a total misunderstanding of the powerful message of this book. It is not – essentially – about you, dear reader, believing or not in the world of spirit. IT IS – essentially – about you willing or not willing to be free. For giving yourself totally to the “Augmented” Reality, or, much worse, taking into your own body some billions of nanobots – that will “improve” and even replace your biological parts – will just turn you into a non-you. The “better version of you” will simply be a “nowhere-to- be-found-you”. There can be no doubt about that.
Even if we are atheists and start from the premise that all that we are is pure biology, that all that we are is this biological body, the fact of erasing, of eliminating this biological body simply means allowing ourselves to be extinct. If “I am this body of flesh”, then I will simply disappear the moment I repudiate exactly this body of flesh and bones. All that I am now – if we continue to build on the foundation of atheism – is the result of natural evolution. I am part of the nature itself. I am the most highly evolved animal on the planet. My mind, my feelings, my desires – all these are products of my natural, biological body of flesh and bones. This is right atheism. To consider that my “mind”, for instance, is something that transcends my body of flesh and bones is to immediately stop being an atheist in the right sense. If my mind is not dependent on my body, this can only mean that it transcends it, that it can also live without it. BUT this would turn my mind exactly into the Spirit that I do not believe in, isn’t it?
From an atheistic perspective, there cannot be any “me” without my biological body, which is the final product, the ultimate result of millennia of natural evolution. This is me! And all the talking about “improving”, about “accelerating evolution” through the means of robotics and computation is just a mambo-jumbo mixture of theism and atheism, of spirituality and materialism. If I am a true atheist, than I will never accept to pervert my body in the name of “accelerated evolution”. Even if I acknowledge and perceive myself as a being that would certainly need some improvements, I will – at the same time – be contented with what I am, because what I am is the natural result of the Darwinian, real evolution of nature.
On the contrary, if I want to “evolve” by erasing my biology – which is what I actually am – and by replacing my body with a machine, then I am simply not an atheist anymore. And that is simply because there is no room for “transcendence” in the mind of a true atheist. Even the transcendence of the mind, which is – my mind being independent of my biological body, would finally imply a spiritual world. You can call it “material mind transcendence” for as long as you want, it is still “transcendence”. And “transcendence” is all about spirit and spiritual worlds!
In conclusion, if anyone of us wishes to live outside her/his biological body (this being the ultimate goal of the Technological Singularity and of Transhumanism), this automatically and necessary means that this one of us is a human-being who believes in spirit and spiritual worlds.
So, basically, from a pure humanistic-atheistic perspective, in the post- Singularity era there will be nothing human left, but just a tech-mockery of the human-being, as long as the entire biological body that defines who and what we are will ultimately be completely thrown to the bin and replaced by the “digitalized mind” and the non-biological “substrate”.
I personally know many atheists and they are all really decent, clever, lovely and loving human beings. I respect their “belief” or, maybe better said, their “non-belief”, but I know for sure, at the same time, that they would never envisage for them and for their children a completely non-biological future. The perspective of entirely losing your biological body and turning yourself into a “software” would be a horrible one for all atheists whom I happen to know.
Faceboogle and Parents
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google has created plans for a creepy toy that records your children:
These cuddly creatures are straight out of a Toy Story nightmare.
Would you want your children’s’ toys to react to their voices, move their heads to face them, record them and send all data recorded back to Google HQ?
Well, these new patents for probably the creepiest toys in the world show potential plans for Google to do just that.
(…) Google highlighted in the plans how they would make the toys especially cute – so even the youngest members of the family would want to interact with them.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Huggable, the robotic teddy bear for sick children, is now in Boston Children’s Hospital:
In what is either a truly genius or entirely creepy move, a collaboration between the Boston Children’s Hospital and M.I.T. has combined the nostalgic comfort of the teddy bear with the technological advances of the 21st century to produce Huggable, the robotic teddy bear that talks to sick children. According to a report from the New York Times, the lovable plush toy — but make that machine — is meant to “alleviate anxiety, pain, and isolation for children in a hospital.”
(…) Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, who leads the personal robots group at M.I.T.’s Media Lab, told the Times, “We could someday see this as a standard of care, where every child who comes into the pediatric hospital might get something like this. It’s not only the health and emotional and recovery benefits, but also logistical and financial, improving efficiency to the overall health system.”
Already, the hospital has invested a cool half million dollars in research surrounding social robotics, which includes the Huggable program. If it works, teddy bears may never be the same again.”
…We can talk a lot about many things, BUT the fact is that we are uploading photos with our children on servers belonging to a network that is part of the Singularity team. The fact is that by posting photos of our children on Facebook we are giving those kids on the digital altar as an offering to the Digital Gods. We are posting pictures with our kids on a network that wants to transform them into digital pets, into virtual beings “living” in virtual worlds!
The nowadays teens were born to be the first generation who makes the big, global shift towards a humanity aware of its noble destiny – that of spiritualizing the human world.
But these teens were detoured from their path and are therefore reaching right now the climax of frustration (they are not fulfilling the main goal of their life and, beside this, they are totally unaware of this goal; hence, they have no chance to understand the deep and real roots of their frustration).
The teens are given, instead, the Digital Drug. The Digital Messiah (or the Faceboogle Messiah) offers them the “calming”, “soothing”, “exhilarating” Digital Drug. Their “I”s are put to sleep and, at an ever faster pace, are replaced by the digital-“i”s (i-Pod, i-Phone, i-Pad, i-Watch, i-Cloud… i-Robot).
The teens are frequently and so ugly spoken of as the “dumb, a-cultural new generation”. …This, of course, has only the effect of doubling their frustration!
The teens are then offered:
– “Unlimited Intelligence” (by merging with the machine) – See the ingestion of nanobots to increase our IQ!
– Wild experiences (by fully immersing in the Virtual Worlds).
*The new generations are growing up these days watching zillions of movies with “human”-mutants as the main characters. This, together with the 3D Cinema experience, is just a preparatory work for fully immersive Virtual Reality where nowadays 3D mutant movies watchers will virtually become the very heroes they are so much fond of right now.
Also, paradoxically, while many speak about their “dumbness”, nowadays teens need to pass harder and harder examinations. Of course, they will not be able to cope with the huge amount of information and will not bare the multitasking daily schedule unless they take in some mind-enhancing… nanobots.
*Speaking about “nanobots”, one need not be Einstein and ingest a billion or two of nano(ro)bots to “enhance her/his IQ” in order to see that if we allow this tiny robots to circulate through our capillaries and to modify the way our neocortex works, these swarms of microscopic robots will also be able – through external programming or hacking – to control all that we think, feel and do…
There is no real difference between Google and Facebook from the human perspective. Google (the company) and „goggles” (the Virtual Reality headset eye-glasses of Facebook-Oculus) are similar words that designate elements of the same sinister puzzle. Right now, just a few human beings are able to see the final outcome. But this happens only because many of you, dear readers, have never been informed about all these things. This is exactly the purpose of this book – to help you become aware, to acknowledge what is really happening. The final picture that this finished tech-puzzle will reveal will not at all resemble the real and extraordinary human being, but just an ugly mockery.
We are at the crossroads of human civilization. And we should imbue ourselves with the feeling of the greatest task we have ever had: to put humanity back on its human track. We, humans, have to face the Dragon…
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“There is now a grand project under way involving many thousands of scientists and engineers working to understand the best example we have of an intelligent process: the human brain. It is arguably the most important effort in the history of the human-machine civilization. In “The Singularity Is Near” I made the case that one corollary of the law of accelerating returns is that other intelligent species are likely not to exist. To summarize the argument, if they existed we would have noticed them, given the relatively brief time that elapses between a civilization’s possessing crude technology (consider that in 1850 the fastest way to send nationwide information was the Pony Express) to its possessing technology that can transcend its own planet. From this perspective, reverse-engineering the human brain may be regarded as the most important project in the universe. The goal of the project is to understand precisely how the human brain works, and then to use these revealed methods to better understand ourselves, to fix the brain when needed, and – most relevant to the subject of this book – to create even more intelligent machines.” – Ray Kurzweil (Google’s Director of Engineering), “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed”
…“Vastly extend the powers of our own intelligence.” – The obsessive focus on “intelligence” can make us get Ray Kurzweil’s understanding of the human being. For Kurzweil, what defines us is “intelligence”, while all our emotions and feelings – including love – are nothing but complex expressions, “patterns” of this intelligence. Kurzweil also keeps repeating that his main work at Google is to translate all that relates to the human brain into algorithms. These algorithms will then be used to create AI that will be “conscious”, that will be capable of understanding and showing emotions and feelings. Gradually but at an ever faster pace, AI will become the same as the human Intelligence. Ultimately, there will be no noticeable difference between them, in terms of human behavior and human inner and outer thinking-feeling “mechanisms”. THE only BIG difference will be that AI will be trillions times “better” than our current, “biological” human intelligence.
By the fact that we are no longer capable of doing even basic arithmetic calculations, we are already becoming the slaves of our own technology. Think about this… There are countless discussions and debates today regarding the “dumbness” of the new generations. Many worry that the “a-cultural” teen world will lead humankind to ruin. BUT, at the same time, Ray Kurzweil and Google promise us the “merge with the machine”. By using nanobots, we will connect our brains to the “cloud”, we will be “online” – connected to the Internet – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And, the most important thing, these nanobots will help us connect and expand our neocortex to the “web”, to the “cloud” from within ourselves. We will no longer need to use an interface, a computer connected to the network of information. With the help of the nanobots, we will be linked to the “cloud” in a “natural” way. We will be able to access any information through our brain directly.
So, going back to the worries regarding the lack of interest for learning… well, there is no problem! It only takes a big portion of nanobots! Some ten billions of nanobots taken into our bodies will suddenly solve the “learning” issue…
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Nicholas Negroponte is one of the founding fathers of the Internet and today’s cyber-culture. In a recent video interview with Big Think, Negroponte describes future nanobots hacking our neurons to make us learn faster and better.
Negroponte created the prestigious MIT Media Lab and expanded ideas from his popular Wired columns into the bestselling book Being Digital, which made famous his forecasts on how the interactive world, the entertainment world and the information world would eventually merge. Many of Negroponte’s forecasts from the 80s have been realized, and it seems likely that his prediction on the long term future of learning in the 2040s – via neurohacking and nanobots – will be realized as well.
(…) Negroponte believes that the disruptive technologies of the next decades will be synthetic biology and the interface between biology and silicon. He says:
“The key to my prediction is the best way to interact with the brain is from the inside, from the bloodstream. Because if you inject tiny robots into the bloodstream they can get very close to all the cells and nerves and things in your brain, really close. So if you want to input information or read information, you do it through the bloodstream. [So] in theory you could load Shakespeare into your bloodstream and as the little robots get to the various part of the brain they deposit little pieces of Shakespeare or the little pieces of French if you want to learn how to speak French. So in theory you can ingest information.”
The tiny robots – or nanobots – developed by advanced nanotechnology, would be far too small to be seen and would operate on the nanoscale (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter). Able to communicate wirelessly with each other and with the external world, the nanobots would hack the brain like read/write computer memory. They would be ingested, perhaps in a pill, read the information encoded by the neurons and synapses in the brain and write new information into the brain. For example, as in Negroponte’s example, Shakespeare or a new language.”
https://hacked.com/nicholas-negroponte-future-learning-nanobots-will- hack-brain/
…So, everything looks bright! The nanobots will heal us, will ultimately make us “immortal” (uploading our consciousness to a machine or directly to the “cloud”), will solve the malnutrition, plus the extreme poverty and all its related diseases. Our organs will be replaced by these swarms of invisible, wirelessly connected tiny computers that will turn us into super-intelligent “brains”. We will no longer need to learn the usual way, as we will just download information directly into our brains… And, eventually, we will expand throughout the whole Universe, giving “meaning” to the entire Cosmos and “waking up Intelligence” in the entire world!…
The “only” thing is:
Our brains will be “cloud-brains”, meaning we will not be the artisans of our own knowledge and cultural acquisitions, but just “users” of the collective and artificial “Internet Brain”. We will share the big Cloud-Brain, the big Web-Brain, being trapped in that web, being blinded by that cloud. We will not be our own masters, but the happy-slaves of the new Digital Empire!
We will not get healthy and “immortal”, but happily accept to give up ourselves and to be replaced by nonbiological machines that will have absolutely nothing to do with us.
Faceboogle, companies and sci-tech workers
All the talk is around “trends” and “business opportunities and figures”. If Facebook manages to create a powerful VR/AR trend with its Oculus, then 99% of the articles, congress panels and TV shows will only be about “the cool new thing” and “the big money that will come”. This is the most obvious characteristic of the current way of relating to anything that has the high potential to affect the human beings: “how much money it will be able to generate”. There is no room for discussion around the ethics of the new trends and developments. Or, even if there are a few, they are just marginal in comparison with the other 99%.
The “10 good reasons to invest in robots” kind of title is the perfect showcase of the way our civilization is used to tackle things. The most important aspect is “how to profit, how to attract money from the new tech-stream”.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Finally, Facebook wants to build the next major computing platform, which Zuckerberg believes could be augmented reality and Oculus. He also wants to bring the internet to more people through Internet.org.
“We’re going to prepare for the future by investing aggressively,” Zuckerberg said.
“The strength of the business today is putting us in a strong position to invest in the future,” Wehner added.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/zuckerbergs-3-5-and-10-year-facebook-plan-2014-10
…What Faceboogle does is to enslave its users. We are trapped in there. They create the algorithm, then they give us the “Analytics”, the tools to live in their artificial Universe.
BUT the most important thing is that all the people who are running a business with online presence or who are working in the sci-tech and digital marketing field should understand that they have an enormous responsibility.
Each and every time when they are paying for Google or Facebook ads, they are not “just promoting their business”, but they are sponsoring and funding the End of Humanity, or “The Singularity”. Also, all the people who are working in the digital marketing field or in the sci-tech area should be aware of the direct effects of their professional deeds. If we really are to be called “human beings”, then we should not do things “just because we can”, we should not develop products and entire industries “just because we are able to develop them”. We should first of all think about the consequences.
By no way should we even consider stopping the technological advance. BUT we should place it in a purely human framework! If we continue to further science and technologies without paying at least the same attention to the development of the real human being, then we will be the artisans of the end of the human civilization…
Of course, if there are people who work in the direction of the “Singularity” being perfectly aware of what they are doing, well… this is their free choice. They have the right to envision such a future of Earth, as well as they have the right to think about what the human being is the way they are thinking. In the same time, if many of you, dear readers, never had the chance to thoroughly weigh all these things, this book should be a good opportunity to decide: Human or Cyborg?
The dead-end we are rapidly heading to is the “Cyborg-END”. BUT if you are a businessHUMAN, if you are a HUMAN digital marketing specialist, if you are a HUMAN sci-tech inventor and developer, then you should reconsider all your activity and take a different road – The HUMAN Road!
Faceboogle and “the Borg”
Mr. Kurzweil promises to eradicate hunger, to stop poverty. But HOW will he/they make this possible? – By the use of nanobots! Billions of nanobots will circulate in our bodies and will give us all the nutrients we need…
But the ultimate goal of Mr. Kurzweil is not just the human-being, not just the Earth, not just our cosmic proximity or our solar system, BUT the whole Universe! At its final stage, the Singularity will transform us and the entire Universe into the… “Borg”.
“The Borg” is the “Cyborg”. The ultimate goal of the Singularity, of Ray Kurzweil and of Faceboogle is “The BORG”.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Borg is a collective proper noun for a fictional alien race that appears as recurring antagonists in the Star Trek franchise. The Borg are a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones a hive mind called the Collective, or the hive. The Borg use a process called assimilation to force other species into the Collective by violent injection of microscopic machines called nanoprobes. The Borg’s ultimate goal is “achieving perfection”. (…) Individual Borg rarely speak. Instead they send a collective audio message to their targets, stating that “resistance is futile”, generally followed by a declaration that the target in question will be assimilated and its “biological and technological distinctiveness” will be added to their own. The exact phrasing varies and evolves over the various series episodes and film.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek)
I am sure that all “Star Trek” (The Next Generation) fans will remember these phrases:
“We are the Borg! Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own! Resistance is futile!”
“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile!”
The Borg have existed and travelled through the Universe for hundreds of thousands of years. Also, in “Star Trek: First Contact”, we learn directly from the Borg Queen that the Borg were initially very human-like. They were “flawed and weak”. But then they decided to change that and to “evolve” into a half- organic half-synthetic species. As Star Track main character “Guinan” tells us, “the Borg are “made up of organic and artificial life”.
Now, let us please pay full attention to the following quote from Wikipedia regarding how the Borg is assimilating other species all throughout the Universe:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In Star Trek: First Contact, the method of adult assimilation is depicted with the more efficient injection of nanoprobes into the individual’s bloodstream through a pair of tubules that spring forth from the drone’s hand. Assimilation by tubules is depicted on-screen as being a fast- acting process, with the victim’s skin pigmentation turning gray with visible dark tracks forming within moments of contact. The individual is then taken away for complete assimilation by drones. The Borg are neither male nor female and individual’s reproductive systems are removed during the process of assimilation. The individual has all traces of individuality removed and implants are attached to the new drone so it can become an integrated part of the collective.
(…) Nanoprobes are microscopic machines that inhabit a Borg’s body, bloodstream, and many cybernetic implants. The probes perform the function of maintaining the Borg cybernetic systems, as well as repairing damage to the organic parts of a Borg. They generate new technology inside a Borg when needed as well as protecting them from many forms of disease and virus. Borg nanoprobes, each about the size of a human red blood cell, travel through the victim’s bloodstream and latch on to individual cells. The nanoprobes rewrite the cellular DNA, altering the victim’s biochemistry, and eventually form larger, more complicated structures and networks within the body such as electrical pathways, processing and data storage nodes, and ultimately prosthetic devices that spring forth from the skin.
(…) Also referred to as the “hive mind” or “collective consciousness”, the Borg Collective is a civilization with a group mind. Each Borg individual, or drone, is linked to the collective by a sophisticated subspace network that ensures each member is given constant supervision and guidance. The collective is broadcast over a subspace domain similar to that used by the transporter. Being part of the collective offers significant biomedical advantages to the individual drones. The mental energy of the group consciousness can help an injured or damaged drone heal or regenerate damaged body parts or technology. The collective consciousness not only gives them the ability to “share the same thoughts”, but also to adapt with great speed to defensive tactics used against them.”
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_%28Star_Trek%29
Now parallel the above quotes with these citations from Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near”:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In our brains, the massively distributed nanobots will interact with our biological neurons. This will provide full immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses, as well as neurological correlates of our emotions, from within the nervous system. More important, this intimate connection between our biological thinking and the nonbiological intelligence we are creating will profoundly expand human intelligence.
(…) For example, the intertwined revolutions of G, N, and R will transform our frail version 1.0 human bodies into their far more durable and capable version 2.0 counterparts. Billions of nanobots will travel through the bloodstream in our bodies and brains. In our bodies, they will destroy pathogens, correct DNA errors, eliminate toxins, and perform many other tasks to enhance our physical well-being. As a result, we will be able to live indefinitely without aging.
(…) Beyond the next two decades we will use nanoengineered methods such as nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs.
(…) Expand Your Mind. The most important application of circa-2030 nanobots will be literally to expand our minds through the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence. The first stage will be to augment our hundred trillion very slow interneuronal connections with high-speed virtual connections via nanorobot communication. This will provide us with the opportunity to greatly boost our pattern-recognition abilities, memories, and overall thinking capacity, as well as to directly interface with powerful forms of nonbiological intelligence. The technology will also provide wireless communication from one brain to another.
(…) We Are Becoming Cyborgs. The human body version 2.0 scenario represents the continuation of a long-standing trend in which we grow more intimate with our technology. Computers started out as large, remote machines in airconditioned rooms tended by white-coated technicians. They moved onto our desks, then under our arms, and now into our pockets. Soon, we’ll routinely put them inside our bodies and brains. By the 2030s we will become more nonbiological than biological. As I discussed in chapter 3, by the 2040s nonbiological intelligence will be billions of times more capable than our biological intelligence.
The compelling benefits of overcoming profound diseases and disabilities will keep these technologies on a rapid course, but medical applications represent only the early-adoption phase. As the technologies become established, there will be no barriers to using them for vast expansion of human potential.
(…) And biological evolution itself works very slowly, only incrementally improving designs that continue to apply these basic concepts. It is incapable of suddenly changing, for example, to structural materials made of diamondoid or to nanotube-based logical switching.
(…) However, it would be sufficient for the probes to be self- replicating nanobots (note that a nanobot has nanoscale features but that the overall size of a nanobot is measured in microns). We could send swarms of many trillions of them, with some of these “seeds” taking root in another planetary system and then replicating by finding the appropriate materials, such as carbon and other needed elements, and building copies of themselves.
Once established, the nanobot colony could obtain the additional information it needs to optimize its intelligence from pure information transmissions.
(…) The ultimate goal of the Singularity: “Once a planet yields a technology-creating species and that species creates computation (as has happened here), it is only a matter of a few centuries before its intelligence saturates the matter and energy in its vicinity, and it begins to expand outward at at least the speed of light (with some suggestions of circumventing this limit). Such a civilization will then overcome gravity (through exquisite and vast technology) and other cosmological forces – or, to be fully accurate, it will maneuver and control these forces – land engineer the universe it wants. This is the goal of the Singularity.
(…) What I should say is that intelligence is more powerful than cosmology. That is, once matter evolves into smart matter (matter fully saturated with intelligent processes), it can manipulate other matter and energy to do its bidding (through suitably powerful engineering).” – Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering at Google), “The Singularity is Near”
*Please note that “The BORG” first appeared in “Q Who?” – the sixteenth episode of the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, on May 5, 1989…
Curious About What the International Public “Institutions” Are Doing With Your Money?
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Singularity is Nearer: EU Commits 1 Billion To Fund The Human Brain Project:
Dr. Henry Markram’s Human Brain Project recently got 1 billion worth of funding from the European Union. The money will be spread in 100 million dollar payments over the next 10 years and is aimed at scaling up Markram’s past research in simulating parts of a rat brain to the first and most comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer and simulate the complete human brain.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Human Brain Project Begins:
The Human Brain Project’s is comprised of 130 research institutions throughout Europe and coordinated through the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL). In the launch of the project, neuroscientists, doctors, computer scientists, and roboticists will begin to refine the project in across six research platforms including neuroinformatics, brain simulation, high- performance computing, medical informatics, neuromorphic computing and neurorobotics, each composed of technological tools and methods to ensure the project’s objectives will be met.
(…) This project is considered the most advanced neuroscience project in the world.
(…) The mission of the neuroinformatics platform will be to extract the maximum amount of information possible from these sources and integrate it into a cartography that encompasses all the brain’s organizational levels, from the individual cell all the way up to the entire brain.
(…) In terms of neurorobotics, this research platform will focus on integrating neural network simulations into robots (initially virtual ones), who will benefit from new aptitudes such as learning abilities or resiliency. Another important component will be to create neuro-inspired technologies. Microchips that can be developed to imitate how networks of neurons function and take advantage of the learning ability and resiliency of neuronal circuits in specific applications.
The project was selected by the European Union as a FET Flagship project for its complexity and then co-funded by the EU with an estimated budget of €1.2 billion.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2013/10/07/the-human-brain-project-begins/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Neurorobotics sub-project will develop the Neurorobotics Platform which will offer scientists and technology developers a software and hardware infrastructure allowing them to connect pre-validated brain models to detailed simulations of robot bodies and environments and to use the resulting neurorobotic systems in in silico experiments and technology development.
(…) Although the capabilities to model virtual robots and environments already exist, and although various labs have created closed-loop set-ups with simple brain models, the HBP platform will be the first to couple robots to detailed models of the brain.”
http://prototype.neurorobotics.net/the-human-brain-project/
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Around the world, billions are being spent of nanotech research:
The US alone has spent nearly $4bn through its National Nanotechnology Initiative. Europe has spent over $1.2bn, Japan almost $1bn and many more.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“In what used to be something only seen in science fiction movies, scientists have successfully used nanobots in a living animal for the first time in history. The research was performed by a group of scientists at the University of California, and was recently published in the journal ACS Nano. The project led by Professors Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang involved having the tiny devices delivering nano-particles into the stomach lining of a mouse.
http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/nanobots-used-inside-animals-first-time-01139576
Science and Technology Leaders Concerned about Artificial Intelligence Bringing “The End of Humanity”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Speaking at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium in October, Tesla boss Elon Musk referred to artificial intelligence as “summoning the demon.”
“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.
With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“The Spectrum computer’s inventor Sir Clive Sinclair has gone even further, saying he believes it is unavoidable that artificial intelligences will wipe out mankind.
“Once you start to make machines that are rivalling and surpassing humans with intelligence, it’s going to be very difficult for us to survive,” he told the BBC. “It’s just an inevitability.””
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31023741
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence.
He told the BBC: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence,” Bill Gates wrote. “First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Is the world heading towards a post-human future? Sir Martin Rees warns that super-intelligent robots could wipe out humanity:
(…) Artificial intelligence is progressing at a frightening pace leading humanity towards its ultimate destruction.
This is according to British theoretical astrophysicist, Sir Martin Rees, who believes we are facing an ‘inorganic post-human era’.
(…) Sir Martin, who is one of the world’s most eminent astronomers, says that while Earth has existed for 45 million centuries, this century is special.
Over nearly all of Earth’s history, threats have come from nature, but from now on, the worst dangers come from us – and specifically artificial intelligence.
(…) The fact that AI isn’t constrained by Earth’s biosphere, makes it an even deadlier threat.
‘Interplanetary and interstellar space will be the preferred arena where robotic fabricators will have the grandest scope for construction,’ said the Astronomer Royal.
(…) Sir Rees highlights progress Deep Mind, a London company owned by Google, who recently create a machine that could figure out the rules in old Atari games without human interventions.
The 72-year-old is also concerned by the safety of driverless cars, and their ability to discriminate between objects on the road.
‘And what about the military use of autonomous drones?‘ he asks.
‘Can they be trusted to seek out a targeted individual and decide whether to deploy their weapon?’
Sir Rees suggests that super-intelligent robots could be the last invention that humans ever make.
Once machines have overtaken human capabilities, they could design and assemble a new generation of even more powerful machines.”
“What Can I Do?”
We, humans, are now exposed to the most harmful experience we have ever gone through. But this very harmful experience is needed so that, by overcoming it, we become much stronger and much more conscious. We literally find ourselves on the edge of our individual and collective destiny. We either collapse and totally lose our humanity, or we consciously cross beyond this terrible threshold and gain much strength.
We need to start exchanging our personal and national spiritual treasures. This alone would be a real incarnation of the Brotherhood Impulse. This alone would worth be called “sharing”. If you “like” what Facebook and Google envision and develop as the “future”, than there is no point in reading my next book – “The Solidarity”. …Actually, I do have a great faith in the human-being. And I am certain that reading this book will make many of you, dear readers, eager to join hearts, minds and wills so that a new, much more beautiful phase of human evolution can begin.
Instead of just “liking”, we should start “doing” and “making”. Instead of just “searching for information”, we should start “searching for ourselves”. What should define nowadays humanity is the proper mixture of thinking, feeling and willing. Also, this healthy mixture should find its way to practice, to the “doing” and the “making”. There are many of us who feel – through our higher Intuition – that “we are responsible for the state of being of the other humans” (this is the feeling part). Also, there are many of us who feel the urge “to do something to change the world for the better” (this is the willing part). But we first need to understand the mechanisms that are used to enslave us and then imagine and develop new, healthy alternatives that would set us free (this is the thinking part). Once we do, we should also start vigorously pouring this feeling-willing-thinking potion into the cups of all our actions (this being the action part).
…This is the road I chose to walk. First, I put all my experience, knowledge and money at work and developed – out of my thinking-feeling-willing mixture – an alternative. It would have been inconsistent to just reveal all these horrendous things and just stop there. The action that becomes “the making of the alternative” was also needed. Then, I wrote this book. The book you are reading now is the “thinking” part of the “Human Trilogy”. It is the “thinking” side, as there could be no right action, out of feeling and willing, without a true knowledge and understanding of the grounds and backgrounds.
The next book – “The Solidarity” – corresponds to the “feeling” function. Of course, there are not just the fruits of “human feeling” there, as the book you are reading now does not only bear the fruits of the “human thinking”.
Nevertheless, the truth is that each of the books that compound this “Human Trilogy” gives voice predominantly to one of the three human functions: thinking, feeling, willing.
“And what about the third book?” you may ask. Well, the last book of the “Human Trilogy” is going to be the sheer expression of the “human willing”. Meaning that it will give voice to what a human being can develop as own free will in order to perform the needed actions that will heal Earth and humanity.
The fact is that what we are doing right now when we are posting photos of our children on Facebook is giving these kids as an offering to the digital gods. As long as we become aware of the fact that Facebook is working intensively to give our kids “virtual reality worlds” that will replace or “augment” their real worlds, it becomes impossible to continue posting pictures with them there. We should be at least that consistent and responsible!
For, there can be no responsible action or loving care without full consistency between what we “understand” and what we “do” and “make”. One might be loving one’s kid a lot, but one might not be aware of the things this book struggles to reveal. But if someone prefers to walk the same old paths even though this information reached their mind, then one becomes a terrible accomplice.
A humanity that continues to accelerate the technological evolution while decelerating the spiritual evolution comes very near to the risk of losing its purpose and identity. The only way to balance the tech-(r)evolution is to join efforts and develop a spiritual or spiritualized science and technology. If we are unaware of our own spiritual identity, then it is very easy to exchange it for a smartphone or for some holographic lens. The human being is conceived in such a way that any of the empty spaces calls for content. This means that, if our hearts are empty and if our minds are not imbued by the substance of our spirit, then our inner void will necessarily attract the products of VR, AR and AI.
Ultimately, becoming a cyborg is nothing else but failing to evolve as a human…
I have worked here upon different major perspectives. Certainly, there are many others, but I preferred to stick to the most important ones. It is crucial for all of us to be aware of what is really happening and to make a choice. We do have a free will and, ultimately, this free will – that could also drag us to the abyss – is what will help us overcome the great danger we are all facing today. We are living now on the very edge of our destiny. To fall back on one side would mean to become narrow-thinking human beings. To fall further on the other side would mean to fall pray to the “Borg”. But we still have the third way – crossing this enormous threshold on the very edge of our time’s blade.
We should not make the mistake of refuting and refusing modern science and technology. This would be easy and stupid. We would only condemn us to a circle-evolution, which, of course, would be just a pseudo-evolution. If we completely renounce technology and science today, this will inevitably turn us back in time and, in a few decades, make us come to the same point. The sci-tech edge is a very difficult but, nonetheless, absolutely necessary step on our path towards a self-aware humanity. We simply cannot escape this. Anyway, it is already “mainstream”. And this is good! If it weren’t mainstream, if the developments were hidden or, at least, half-hidden, then it would have been really difficult to show these terrible plans to the public. But the arrogance of thinking that they could hypnotize the people of the world – to such an extent that it will be exactly these people who will turn into the most fervent worshipers of the “Digital-Gods” and so will be paving the road towards the post-human era – is nothing but the giant’s “feet of clay”.
There is an overwhelming spiritual current that traverses the Earth these years, from all directions. And there are billions of people who – in some way or another – are getting at least a glimpse of it. The only problem is that the others are building in the meantime such a horrible human society that even the most advanced spirit that lives on nowadays Earth would find it extremely difficult to maintain her/his awareness. – This is precisely what attracted this book. It was given birth to by humanity itself. The fact that someone wrote it is far less important. The situation out there, the fact that the mighty human currents cannot flow to all the human minds and hearts because they are obstructed in a cynical and perverted way – this is what made this book come alive.
The flame of the human heart will beautifully wave in the accords of the wind of change. No collective artificial brain will be able to stop it. What appears to many as a giant so huge that no one could stand against is just a feeble dwarf in front of the mighty real spirit of the human being!
It is not the fault of those who are really able to see through the veil of matter that Google’s and Facebook’s top management and top engineering people are incapable of being amazed by the real reality. There is nothing retrograde in wishing to remain human instead of turning into a cyborg. But it is also true that we, humans, climbed up to a point where we can no longer remain humans unless we really start to acknowledge our true humanity.
I see this terrible and horrifying danger of the Singularity as an extraordinary opportunity! The danger itself will awake many. And we need to be awake if we want to fulfill our human destiny. We need to be fully awake if we do want to change the Earth for the better. For, if we intend to eradicate poverty (this is the perfect example), we have to start working for this noble and purely human objective. We have to reconsider everything, all that constitutes our daily living. We will never eradicate poverty if we do not reconsider the business and working environment. We will never eradicate poverty if we do not revise our schooling and educational system. We will never eradicate poverty if we do not change the way we interact. …And it goes the same with all other problems we are facing!
In fact, it is not that those who are opposing the Singularity are retrograde people, or “luddites” how Mr. Kurzweil condescendingly calls them. The reality is exactly the opposite! There are many humans on Earth right now who are open to the spiritual currents of the epoch. And the Singularitarians are making every possible effort to oppose them, to shut the doors of their minds and hearts and not allow their higher selves to come in and manifest.
When I was a child, I often had that feeling of being an alien, an intruder. I could not cope with the aggressiveness and under-human behavior. But one beautiful morning a powerful thought entered my mind and changed it completely. That moment I understood I was completely wrong. The reality was exactly the opposite. I was not an alien, not an intruder. They were the intruders… I couldn’t have been an intruder as long as it was me who was amazed by the beauty of the world around me, it was me who preferred to show love and respect for others, instead of hate and violent language. As long as this is such an amazingly beautiful planet, they must be the intruders – the ones who are not capable of bearing human feelings and thoughts…
The situation described in this book is pretty much the same. If you don’t agree with the concepts of transhumanism and do not accept the Singularity as the proper future for Earth and mankind, this doesn’t mean that you are living in the past, that you are not willing to “adapt”. No, not at all! It only means that – thankfully! – you are a healthy human being. You are a healthy human being whose mind and heart will not allow anyone to turn you into a cyborg.
And yes – it is necessary to spread the word! It is more than necessary, it is crucial for Earth and for humankind! The Singularitarians are marching at maximum warp speed towards the Singularity. It is high time to start balancing the situation. And we need to do this on a global scale. This first book of the Human Trilogy functions as an alarm clock. Humanity was forced into a deep sleep and the intention is that it will continue to sleep right until it gets too late. Because, even if being optimistic is also a human gift, we should not delude ourselves: there actually is a point of no return! And this point is just a few years from now. The only way to avoid reaching the dead-end of the Singularity is to wake up now and to start balancing science and technology with human heart and spirit. Science and technology have to be imbued with our human spirit. There is no other way… We cannot refute the advancements of modern science and technology and, at the same time, we cannot just continue to shrink the human in us in favor of the machine.
Please note that they are so far advanced in their Singularitarian developments that it is already a common-place for each of us to think in these terms: “How should we adapt to all these changes?” There are zillions of business and digital-tech articles that aim at helping us understand the “mainstream”, “adapt” to it and, ultimately, “profit” from it.
Each of these terms bears an extremely important significance:
The “mainstream”. The fact that we are literally suffocated by the always new “tech-news” about “new tech-developments” makes us all fall in the trap of thinking that “this is the mainstream”. But this is not at all “mainstream”, it is just tech-propaganda. There are billions of people who are dying of hunger on Earth right at this moment. There are tens of thousands who are falling victims of armed conflicts and wars. This is the real “mainstream”! This is the real world we are living in. The digital “mainstream” is just a foggy, virtual one. There is much more reality in offering a real cup of tea and a real slice of bread to a real hungry child than “liking” a photo on Facebook about the “reality of hunger”. Well… there is no other way to experience “the reality of hunger” but by actually being an active part that strives to solve this. You have to really give water and bread to the poor and hungry people of the world in order to really experience this humanly-produced plague.
The “adaptation”. Of course, if they succeed on convincing you that what they are developing is “the mainstream”, than you will be left with no other chance but to “adapt” to the “changes”. And when I speak of “adapting”, I am including here repudiating all technology or starting to fight against it. As strange as it may seem, being reactionary to something is just another way of being into it…
The right way would be to positively start from the Human Element. This is the main subject of the second book of the “Human Trilogy” – “The Solidarity”. All that has to do with being a human and with preserving and further developing our own humanness is the only important issue now. We need not become reactionary, reluctant, caught up in the “negative-denial” trap. Instead, we should concentrate on our humanity. Then, we should reconsider all other issues from this purely human perspective. There is no other way if we really want to eliminate poverty, wars and the “Singularity” spectrum.
Humanity does not need to adapt to technology. This would just be an outrageous humiliation of the human-being. The only right and proper way is that technology adapts to humanity. Of course, this would presuppose that we are really interested in defining all elements that are composing our being…
The “wearable technology” will gradually bring us closer to the moment when we will be ready to accept the actual merging with the machine. If you just look at the evolution of technology in the last three decades, you will notice how devices are coming closer and closer to our body. “Mobility” is one of the mesmerizing drugs we are given. In order not to lose our “mobility” while still being “connected”, we receive the laptops, then the smartphones and smart- tablets, then the smart-watches, the smart-clothes etc. Everything has to be “intelligent”, everything around us and even “on” us has to be “smart”.
Right now, we are starting to “need” the “smart-clothes” and all the other devices that are generally called “the wearable technology”. Very soon, we will wake up in a morning and we will realize that we are wearing tech, we are living in “smart cities”, we are using tech-fridges, tech-coaches, tech-walls, tech- everything in an “Internet-of-Everything (IoT)” omnipresent environment.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Kurzweil: Well, some people feel we are already there, but we do have to interact with our computers, which for the most part are outside our bodies today, but they’re going to make their way inside our clothing, and ultimately inside our bodies. Once we can build computers that are the size of blood cells in the early 2020s, they’ll be interacting with our bodies and brains to vastly expand human intelligence.”
http://www.ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-ray-kurzweil-our-cyborg-future
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google, Levi Strauss Team Up To Bring You Smart Clothes: Hello, Project Jacquard:
In typical Google fashion, the search engine company is developing more tech that could spawn new business. This time, Google is teaming up with Levi Strauss to develop smart clothes (…)
Google and Levi’s Project Jacquard seeks to develop interactive clothes, woven with conductive yarns and adorned with sensors discreetly integrated into buttons and seams.
Wearers will interact with the smarty pants much like they would with a touchscreen.”
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Google Is Hacking Our Clothes to Work Like Touchscreens:
(…) Poupyrev is a technical program lead inside Google’s ATAP division, the top-secret lab run by former DARPA director Regina Dugan that is responsible for some of Google’s most insane and ambitious ideas. One of the most ambitious ideas to date: smart pants. OK, technically Poupyrev’s idea is called Project Jacquard. (The name comes from a classic style of intricate machine weaving.) It aims to bring conductive yarns to every garment and fabric on earth, and then to integrate touch sensors, haptic feedback, and more right into your jeans, car seats, curtains, everything. “If you can weave the sensor into the textile, as a material,” Poupyrev says, “you’re moving away from the electronics. You’re making the basic materials of the world around us interactive.”
(…) When he joined ATAP in January of 2014, Poupyrev knew little about the fashion industry. His real fascination is with the ways we interact with the world around us. Before joining Google, he was the principal research scientist in the Imagineering division at Disney.
(…) Jeans are just the beginning of Project Jacquard. The plan – to turn everything from your clothes to your chairs into interactive devices – is as much a moonshot as self-driving cars and diabetes-managing contact lenses. But if Google can integrate itself as a partner in the fashion industry, not a competitor or tech company that wants to slap touchscreens on a coat, Jacquard could be the core of a new kind of connected clothing. One that doesn’t have weird pockets for sensors, that looks exactly like a great pair of jeans always has.
You’d wear those, right?”
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/google-wants-turn-everything-wearable/
…Everything gets “smarter” and “smarter” all around us. We might still not notice it, but we are facing the rapid growth of a new world that has the power and drive to develop independently. While we are so “happy” to be “connected” all the time, while we are given our daily portion of the VR/AR drug, the tech- giants are hasting to build a robotic world that will totally numb and replace us, at a very rapid pace. What Mr. Kurzweil calls the “Singularity” is not a “culmination” of the human civilization, but the sheer end of it.
The “smarter” our surroundings get, the less “intelligent” we truly become. Because what actually happens is not an “augmentation” of our own intelligence by computational means, but just the replacement of our mind and thinking capacity with the robotic-brain.
Please note that 99% of all sci-tech nowadays is about “intelligence”. There is almost no discussion about “love”. Even in the 1% cases when “love” is considered, it is thought of as “emotional intelligence” – that is just one of the forms of intelligence. Here is the great danger we are facing now! Love and the human spirit find no place in the Silicon Valley Bible. The Digital Messiah is just “smart”. Incredibly smart, but just smart… The transhumanists envision and feverishly work to bring forth a near future where humans “radically increase their IQ” by merging with the Artificial Intelligence and gradually renouncing their biological “substrate”. The only problem is that such a world will have nothing really human in it. It would be a very smart but cold world, where “love” is nothing but a digitalized “pattern”.
There is absolutely nothing right with the “Emotional Intelligence” term. It does nothing but induce the idea that emotions, feelings are but appendices of intelligence, that is – of brain intelligence. The “emotional intelligence” is just a part of the big, encompassing brain intelligence. And the best place to see this transferred into action is the AI field of development. One of the main points of Ray Kurzweil is that the final stable version of the AI will perfectly encompass the “most complex thing we do” as human beings, that is: “emotional intelligence, being funny, getting the joke, being sexy, being loving, understanding human emotion”.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Paulson: You’re talking about computer artificial intelligence that shows love and happiness and all of those very human emotions.
Kurzweil: That’s right, all that takes place in our brain. Our emotional intelligence is not something sort of stuck on the side as a sideshow, it’s actually the cutting edge of human intelligence. Being funny, being jealous, expressing a loving sentiment – these are very complex and sophisticated behaviors. It’s actually the most intelligent thing that we do. But we will ultimately understand that.”
http://www.ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-ray-kurzweil-our-cyborg-future
…The “Singularity” is the necessary end of the road for our materialist society. Each and every high principle by which the human spirit is to be defined is transformed into a mockery. The “Singularity” is nothing but human mimicry without humans.
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“By the time we get to the 2040s, we’ll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that’s singular in nature.
Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter. We’ll be online all the time. Search engines won’t wait to be asked.”
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2033076,00.html
…Right now, we can say with no exaggeration that everything is at stake on Earth, absolutely everything! We are literally one inch away of slipping through the lips of the great Abyss. And there can be no turning back. If we don’t start joining forces, minds and hearts right at this moment, it will be too late in just a matter of months.
Please, do not fall in the trap of thinking that you are to small for such a battle. You are not small! You are part of the great humanity. We literally are legions… And the biggest irony of all times is that there is no one else but us who’s giving the tech-giants the power to erase us as a species. Google and Facebook (to only speak about the leading ones) are, indeed, huge and very powerful giants. But never forget that their feet are feeble and made of clay. They are 100% depending on us! They need huge data and huge money to fulfill their nightmares. And we are speaking of data and money that come exclusively from us, with us allowing it!
By using their services, we are giving them the opportunity to sell ads to companies. Therefore, by using their services, we are literally funding their nightmare vision of the post-human era.
By using their services in such big numbers, we are giving them all the human data that their machines need in order to learn how to replace us. Therefore, by using their services, we are literally helping machines enslave and, ultimately, replace all human beings on Earth.
Of course, as we already know from our own experience how difficult it is to overcome an old and strong addiction (think of any kind of addiction that you have ever experienced, be it physical, mental or emotional), we can be sure about the fact that it will not at all be easy to suddenly stop using the services of the Singularitarians. Nevertheless, if this book helped us become (more) awake and if we feel responsible for what we and the young next generations are going to endure, then it is high time to overcome our tech and digital addictions. We have to stop feeding the Dragon and, at the same time, we should start developing a human science and a human technology. If we care at least a bit about our own humanness, then we need to do this now!
The very good thing about this book is that it doesn’t need to run into any speculations. Everything that is written and presented here is based on acts and facts. For instance, there is no need to speculate on the idea that Google wishes to shape a man-machine robotic era for all humankind. There is no need to make unrealistic assumptions regarding the reason why Google paid billions of dollars in just a few months for the acquisition of so many robotics companies.
After receiving this information, anyone who continues to use Google and Facebook services is one who assumes the Singularity, that is – the end of humanity!
After the publishing of this book, all human beings will have to make a choice. After the birth of this book, no one will have this excuse: “I was not aware…” We need to learn the high art of Consistency! And there is absolutely no consistency in feeding the Dragon, then saying that we are against the dungeon that the Dragon actually builds. We just can’t be users of Google and Facebook and – at the same time – say that we oppose the kind of world they are preparing for us.
The Dragon was set free. There was no other way. In order to grow and reach new heights of development, we had to encounter this great dilemma: human or machine?
It was inevitable… First, we have been drowned into the deepest ocean of materialism. We do not see much beyond what our physical senses are showing us. Even if we hear the call of the spirit, daily life routine rarely finds our spirit at work. By means of materialistic education, sub-human entertainment and de-humanized business-professional environment, we are being kept astray from our own humanness.
It is crucial to understand that no word in this book is bearing condemnation. These are just facts. There is no room and no need for any speculation. The fact that Google and Facebook are rapidly transforming our lives and our planet according to their “vision” is not mere phantasy, but sheer fact! Also, we cannot read this lines, understand, feel what they transmit and then… just continue to feed Google and Facebook. Because, dear readers of this book, by the simple fact that you are using Google and Facebook, you are doing nothing else but funding with your money the sub-human, purely mechanical world they are so rapidly building!
Google is no longer the simple “Search Engine” of the end-nineties. Google is, now, an evil giant. The “Don’t be evil” turned into “Be The Evil!” Google and Facebook are tracking each and every inch of your online journeys. They do this to be able to feed the brains of their AI machines. They do this to show you more and more targeted ads. They do this to trigger more and more money. They do this to fund their big projects that intend to radically transform our lives, turning us into non-spiritual and even non-biological “beings”.
Our biological nature is 100% tied to our human nature. And one who wants to replace our biology with AI, VR, robots and nano(ro)bots is one who knows very well that, by doing so, we are actually detached from our spirits. We are already replacing our higher “I”-s with different kinds of “i”-s: the i-Phone, the i-Pad… The Transhumanist Era will be nothing but the Post-human Era.
Also, all companies that spend on Google and Facebook Ads are directly supporting the non-human, virtual Earth. But never forget that Google and Facebook are giants with feet of clay. If a considerable number of people choose not to support the Faceboogle Singularity, if many millions read this book and, being now aware of what Google and Facebook are and of what they do, decide to just stop feeding the Dragon, then – if they want to survive – they will have to adapt us. This is the right relationship between tech companies and “users” – tech companies should adapt to our human trends. We, humans, should not adapt to technology “trends”. Humanology stands first! Technology is just a tool, nothing more. We are just humiliating ourselves if we kneel down in front of the “Digital Messiah”.
We, humans, are much more than what Mr. Kurzweil wishes to “upgrade”. In fact, in the real world, we are totally out of the boundaries of the kurzweilian definition of “humanity”!
Technology in itself is not a demon, but the Singularity surely is.
There are many books and articles already on the fears and concerns related to the Singularity. But the essential thing is missing, in my opinion: we first need to understand that the Singularity does not grow out of nowhere! It grows with your money, with the money of all those who are using Google or Facebook services!
I have written this book because it would have otherwise been impossible to reach all of you. Now, that I managed to reach you, I will kindly ask you to get back to me. I have initiated a series of Human Projects so that we can have a starting point – all of us who envision a different future for humanity than that of the Singularity. It is not enough to get informed about all that the Singularitarians are doing, each and every day. This is a prerequisite, but is not enough. The simple fact that they are so arduously working for it, each and every second, putting so much money any resources into it makes it mandatory that we coagulate and begin right now to build the alternative – THE HUMAN ALTERNATIVE.
It is also very important to stress that we are by no way reactionary. Please remember that we are not just opposing the Singularity! We are here, first of all, to fulfill our true human destiny, we are here to build, each and every one of us, the brotherhood of humans. So, in truth, we are not opposing the Singularity, but the Singularity opposes our true, beautiful, great human destiny! We have not started to talk about the Solidarity just to invent an antonym for the Singularity. No, the reality is exactly the opposite: we, humans, have reached the evolutionary point when we have all the necessary prerequisites to build a truly united society out of the purely human Principle of Solidarity! And this will be the subject and the title of the second book of the “Human Trilogy”.
…There could have been many final statements regarding the subject addressed by this book. But I prefer to end it abruptly by asking you a simple question:
If you knew for sure that your money is used to build a world devoid of humanness, a world where social proximity is replaced by virtual reality, a world that envisions the highest ideal of humankind in the merging of man and machine, would you continue or stop spending your money this way?
P.S. Just before publishing this book, among other zillions of news regarding “latest technology”, a very significant one caught my attention. I think this would not only be the proper way of ending this book, but also the best proof that there is no exaggeration in saying that we are living literally on the edge of Humanity’s destiny:
RELEVANT QUOTE:
“Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future is full of artificial intelligence, telepathy, and virtual reality:Mark Zuckerberg made some mind-bending predictions about the future at a Q&A he hosted on his Facebook page on Tuesday. They may seem far-fetched now but some of the Facebook CEO’s ideas are shared by futurists and scientists alike.
Scientists at Facebook and elsewhere are working toward a future where artificial intelligence (AI), telepathy, and virtual reality are commonplace. In fact, some of that technology is already here.
In the future, Zuckerberg hopes we’ll be able to:
Send your thoughts to another person
Almost all the technology being built today focuses on creating rich communication experiences, Zuckerberg said. As that technology improves, he foresees us bypassing smartphones and computers altogether, and speaking to each other using the power of our minds:
“One day, I believe we’ll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology,” he said. “You’ll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you’d like. This would be the ultimate communication technology.”
Zuckerberg isn’t alone in asserting that telepathy will soon be commonplace. Ray Kurzweil, computer scientist and futurist who’s made some outrageous predictions of his own, believes that we’ll soon be able to connect our minds to the cloud, and communicate with the internet and others through the use of tiny DNA robots.
Today, scientists are working on technology that sends simple yes and no messages using skull caps that have external sensors and receivers. A person wearing one cap can nod their head or blink, which would be translated to a yes or no question, and sent via a magnetic coil affixed to the second person’s head.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-predictions-about-the-future-2015-7
…Once again, this would be no real telepathy between free human beings, but a technological enhancement of a cyborg “civilization”!
After reading and watching the content of this website, you will most probably feel the need to continue searching the web for yourself. You will be simply overwhelmed… There are hundreds of new multi-media articles that are added each and every week! In order to help you, we are continuously posting the most recent news on subjects as: Artificial Intelligence, Robots and Nanorobots, Virtual/Augmented Reality, the Internet of Things (IoT).
Join the Team of Humans
Big companies like Google and Facebook are assiduously working for dehumanizing humanity. Getting to know this is a sine-qua-non condition. But if we limit ourselves to only knowing, nothing will ever be changed. They will continue their work unhindered. Also, if we find it sufficient to feel the urge of doing something, again nothing will be changed. What we need is to actually start working together…
This book might have managed to reach the depths of your human-being. The other two books of the Human Trilogy – in case you will read them when they are published – might also embrace your innermost human core. But a right understanding of the message that flows through all the three books would also generate a strong feeling of urgency. It is already very late and the Singularitarians are just a few miles away from reaching their sinister goal. If you really think that what you have just read in this book is outrageous, if you really feel that we should work together to change the human world, if you really want to be an active part of the Solidarity Movement, then I am inviting you right now – even before publishing the “Solidarity” book – to join minds and hearts and hands and start building the alternative. I do believe that together we have the power to change the world for the better. I do believe that we owe this to the children of the Earth, as well as we owe it to ourselves. The Big Change can really start here and now…
We should not repudiate science and technology. We only have to pour humanity and humanness into their cups! Therefore, as we also need ACTION, this book is published on the same day when the “Human Network” is launched. Our response to the “Singularity University” is the “Humans University”, as well as our response to the “Singularity” is the “Solidarity”. I invite you to join the Team of Humans and become one of the History Changers!
Thank you for your time and please also read the Universal Declaration of the Free Human Beings. Your signature will help us develop the human-healthy alternatives.
Liviu Plesoianu