Replies to post #114144 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

we aren't gonna be the life form from this planet to go elsewhere and survive and thrive -- that life form will be our machines -- which will also replace us here -- sooner rather than later -- process already well under way

I'm afraid to ask you to illuminate/elucidate/illustrate on that subject..maybe in three months ..sigh.

[Alex G]

machines will replace lifeforms?

nahhh

have you taken the red pill? lol

as for sci-fi, when i was a youngster i loved reading Arthur C. Clarke

i think this one's my favorite

Childhood's End... written in 1953
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood%27s_End

http://www.amazon.com/Childhoods-End-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/0345347951
This review is from: Childhood's End (Mass Market Paperback)
It sounds like a story you've heard before: great alien masters descend on Earth and take control of the world, ushering in a golden age that may be cleverly disguised creative slavery. But Clarke's legendary novel (equal to _Rendezvous with Rama_ and _2001: A Space Odyssey_ in fame) isn't about a human rebellion against alien overlords, but the evolution of humanity into its next stage, and the ultimate dwarfing power of the unknowable order of the cosmos. The narrative glides between different characters and different eons, occasionally with a seeming clumsiness that turns out to be purposeful plotting devices. The pay-off is sublime science-fiction poetry that shows the genre's power to transcend human drama and fly into the infinite. The sheer scope of its conclusions leaves the reader wiser and sadder, the sign of a superb novel.

[DesertDrifter]

awww come on... don't be a pessimist. we could go there in suspended animation for a few years, protected by our frozen state, some lead, and a plasma cloud. And there is more than one universe, separated by the fabric of time and space. Connected by worm holes and pleats in the fabric.

Now if we could only find a way to fix the potholes in our roads and get dickmilde to pay his share of the taxes, and to join the same universe as the rest of us.... we could start the technology surge needed to do it.

[StephanieVanbryce]

Rise of the robots

Ezra Klein 11:41 AM ET, 02/17/2011

"Jeopardy!" master Ken Jennings got beat by IBM's trivia-playing computer Watson. Here's what he learned: [ http://www.slate.com/id/2284721/pagenum/all/#p2 ]

Playing against Watson turned out to be a lot like any other Jeopardy! game, though out of the corner of my eye I could see that the middle player had a plasma screen for a face. Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It's very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman. But unlike us, Watson cannot be intimidated. It never gets cocky or discouraged. It plays its game coldly, implacably, always offering a perfectly timed buzz when it's confident about an answer. Jeopardy! devotees know that buzzer skill is crucial—games between humans are more often won by the fastest thumb than the fastest brain. This advantage is only magnified when one of the "thumbs" is an electromagnetic solenoid trigged by a microsecond-precise jolt of current....

IBM has bragged to the media that Watson's question-answering skills are good for more than annoying Alex Trebek. The company sees a future in which fields like medical diagnosis, business analytics, and tech support are automated by question-answering software like Watson. Just as factory jobs were eliminated in the 20th century by new assembly-line robots, Brad and I were the first knowledge-industry workers put out of work by the new generation of "thinking" machines. "Quiz show contestant" may be the first job made redundant by Watson, but I'm sure it won't be the last.

The sentient computers of the future are going to think it pretty hilarious that a knowledge-based showdown between one of their own and a creature with a liver was ever considered a fair fight.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/rise_of_the_robots.html