This is Somewhat Disturbing...(nothing graphic or obscene)

[Widowmaker2k]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWTLA8WecI

-and -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_Singularity

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

So what's the disturbing part?

 

[Bricklayer]

The first, while true and pointing toward the superpower rivals of the 21st century, noentheless shows a considerable ignorance of the desirability and consequences of those numbers -- the very thing holding back those countries is an immense, unsupportable population with titanic uneducated underclasses.

The second...will come one day. It would still take human stupididity to allow such a thing to become a danger though. If you had a superinteligence in a jar, what harm could it cause? Or in the case of a computer, a superintelligence in a box without access to the outside world? Its one of a myriad of threats we pose to our own existence in the next few hundred years, but far from a sure thing.

 

[Widowmaker2k]

The second...will come one day. It would still take human stupididity to allow such a thing to become a danger though. If you had a superinteligence in a jar, what harm could it cause? Or in the case of a computer, a superintelligence in a box without access to the outside world? Its one of a myriad of threats we pose to our own existence in the next few hundred years, but far from a sure thing.

Personally, I'm less concerned with the typical Sci-Fi (see: The Matrix) doomsday of purely artificial life-forms taking over the planet, and more concerned with people integrating computers into themselves. It's already being worked on, and could have some scary results. If one could fully connect themselves to a laptop computer, and posess all of it's computational power and easy data recall, I would be concerned. Imagine only being as smart as the fastest computer you can afford. Or, for example, imagine a basketball player being able to fully compute tragectories on the fly and communicate that data to his body to make the perfect shot...every time.

I can't find some of the original articles on this neural interface technology, but this is pretty close: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainGate

 

[vj9999]

The only scary thing is that if there are more honor students in China and India.......why does the customer service still suck when I call Comcast or my phone company!

 

[Spike]

The only scary thing is that if there are more honor students in China and India.......why does the customer service still suck when I call Comcast or my phone company!

Jobs are shipped overseas because the companies can pay less...not because the people are better at handling the job.

 

[vj9999]

Jobs are shipped overseas because the companies can pay less...not because the people are better at handling the job.

I guess sarcasm didn't translate too well.