Focus

[gfish]

More wonderfully scary reality-imitating-fiction, this time a New York Times article on something very much like Vinge's Focus. I heard rumors about this at a con last year, but this is by far the most authoritative account I've seen. I actually believe it exists now. And I want one of these devices. I'd never take it off, I'd just be constantly twiddling with the settings, trying to optimize my brain usage for the current situation. Singularity, here we come!

Comments

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I agree in theory, but I believe we're at the point where the only way out is in. Meaning we can't put the various genies back in their bottles, so we'd better just keep innovating and looking for better technologies to replace our current bad ones.

I have no idea if this approach will work, of course. I'm just hoping that our abilities go vertical before any kind of collapse scenario. (Or that we can at least get eggs into other baskets first.) The only other option is to give up large section of modern technology -- and a few billion people whose lives are dependant on it. Neither part sounds all that great to me.

More importantly that isn't even a decision that can be made, any more than an ecosystem can decide to have scavengers but no predators. In the short run, anyway, technology gives its user an unbeatable advantage in just about any field. Without the exact kind of global tyranny we'd like to avoid, how can you prevent proliferation of technology like Focus? We can't even stop proliferation of nuclear weapons, and those aren't even all that useful in a practical sense.