From: ct (tilley@att.net)
Date: Sun Jan 14 2001 - 15:02:30 MST
> ... the prospects, and likely impact for their project, of an impending
> technological singularity?
> Damien Broderick
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/990102/clock.html
The Magic Clock
It's difficult to know where you want to go with this. Perhaps in part due
to the blurred nature of the motivations driving the construction of the
Clock? Hillis and Brand via the Long Now Foundation erect a Millennium Clock
high atop a 3,000m peak in Nevada..."as big as a good-sized building." Built
to survive The Spike and function happily thereafter. Let's see, 2001...2035
translates to 02001...02035, scaling down the impending/impinging doom?
Sounds like the reappearance of the "Monolith" in Seattle on 010101 was just
a preview. Does the Clock portend the demise of humanity proffering this
portentous marker (or tombstone --- if you will)? Or is it just Brand's
sign-off?
And what puzzles me is the change in the vernacular. Exponential curves
leading to Singularity/Spike and now the walled buttress of the Asymptote?
Hard to discern the proper course of action here. Pay the monthly bills? Get
an Alcor insurance policy? Get off the grid and buy "The Junior Woodchuck's
Guide?"
Some of us will just wander off to eternally ride the mobius rollercoaster
in an Escher while the rest of you figure it all out for us.
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