Archive

Humans as Software Extensions

What is this con­di­tion? I would sum­ma­rize it as peo­ple extend­ing com­pu­ta­tion­al sys­tems by offer­ing their bod­ies, their sens­es, and their cog­ni­tion. And specif­i­cal­ly, bod­ies and minds that can be eas­i­ly plugged in and lat­er eas­i­ly be dis­card­ed. So bod­ies and minds algo­rith­mi­cal­ly man­aged and under the per­ma­nent pres­sure of con­stant avail­abil­i­ty, effi­cien­cy, and per­pet­u­al self-optimization. 

What Our Algorithms Will Know in 2100

A lot of the sci­ence fic­tion I love the most is not about these big ques­tions. You read a book like The Diamond Age and the most inter­est­ing thing in The Diamond Age is the medi­a­tron­ic chop­sticks, the small detail that Stephenson says okay, well if you have nan­otech­nol­o­gy, peo­ple are going to use this tech­nol­o­gy in the most pedes­tri­an, kind of ordi­nary ways.