From: den Otter (neosapient@geocities.com)
Date: Tue Nov 03 1998 - 06:50:23 MST
----------
> From: Jeff Davis <jdavis@socketscience.com>
> In his Re: Automated Workforce post of 12 July to the Extropians list Danny
<CALYK@aol.com>, wrote:
>
> >Theres also an article in an issue of Discovery which talks about self
> >replicating robots in the Sahara desert, which create an endless amount of
> >solar panels out of the elements in the sand, including chips, metal railings,
> >factories, furnaces etc...
>> A manufacturing base which could produce thousand square
mile quantities of photovoltaic cells, if converted to the production
of computing resources, could be expected to crank out some
serious -flops worth of computing power. Mayhaps enough
bring about the nativity of the first generation, somewhat clunky,
pre-nano superintelligence? Just a thought. <<
Yes, and even if no real (super) intelligence were forthcoming, it
would still be the most powerful (centralized) computer on the
planet, that's always useful.
> I, too, strongly believe that a powerful opportunity is staring us
in the face.
> I can't shake the irksome feeling that shortly, someone with
the vision and indomitable drive of a Bill Gates will seize this opportunity
and make it into a reality, and I will be left thinking, "That could have been
me."<<
I think there are lots more of these great opportunities that are staring us
in the face (like the mind stimulator -- hey Eliezer, how about building one
of those? ;-) It's really too bad that there isn't some kind of focussed
transhuman effort to do produce and market some of our more feasible
ideas. If you set up a company, everyone could buy a couple of shares
to start it up. If it fails, personal losses are small, if it turns out to be
the next Microsoft then everybody's a big winner. Makes sense? Surely,
if all those bright minds on this list alone worked together on a single
product there should be some good results fairly soon.
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