From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Sat Dec 07 2002 - 19:24:55 MST
--> Adrian Tymes
> Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > And people disagreeing with us on the fundamental
> > values of transformation can easily turn the hype into scaremongering.
.
> Thus, they dismiss the value of improving themselves, which leaves
> openings for anti-transformative memes to invade. If we could find and
> promote methods of self-transformation using stuff that is not five or
> fifty years out, but which is available *today*, our beliefs would
> immediately become a lot more central to the thinking of the masses.
> Consider, for instance, the immediate popularity of essentially
> self-service applications like Napster (et al) and the Web. What of,
> say, memory or ettiquite aids, which could record what was said for
> later viewing (first version just gets the raw text, later on add an
> option to distill it into the concepts and specific facts the person
> needs to remember), and/or prompt with responses when someone is not
> sure what to say in commonly encountered situations (especially affairs
> of the heart, or in cases where a lot of money is on the line)?
I think that this sort of stuff is a given in the short term.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56734,00.html
One can quite easily extrapolate from a dozen separate product lines that
deal with memory augmentation or knowledge delivery now into something like
the above.
One of my business-plans-in-waiting would involve a mobile device that can
usefully tap into a Google/Ask Jeeves type of thing in a way that can be
done fast and unintrusively during conversation. As anyone who has ever used
Google rapidly with one hand with being in IM in the other, it's a great
benefit to always be able to call up info on anything unfamiliar. Instead of
taking .5 seconds to type "?" in IM, you take 10 seconds to go to Google and
scan a synopsis.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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