So you think after good ol' Alex developed the telephone, even people from that time would have been happy with just that for the rest of however long, and not wanted to improve on his invention? Personally, I disagree with that line of thought; after all, what are we humans if not forward thinkers after a fashion? We're always looking for ways to better ourselves, protect our families better, protect our beliefs better, protect our nations better, make things easier/more convenient/less complex for ourselves. This goes as much for the people of Mr. Bell's day as it does the people of today. In fact, the moment we STOP thinking this way is the moment we start dying as a species.

I think they would have explored the telephone paradigm as far as it could go, even making telephone-based devices we don't have, then sort of stopped. And it is because of this that I am precisely worried they would die out.

Remember, on average, most people are their most creative and most inventive between the ages of approximately 25 and 40. Past 40, your number of inventors and creators drops off precipitously. People just don't seem to invest themselves in creative behaviors as much past 65. I don't know why this is, but it's a statistical fact. We NEED those young people coming in and pushing forward the boundaries of our thinking.

     Maybe people's ... creativity (for lack of a better term) goes down after 40 'cos they're getting ready to die. If they have the chance to live twice as long, then it wouldn't be like that. They could stay creative longer. And I still don't get why there wouldn't be just as many (if not more) young people to give that fresh perspective.

Perhaps, and that window has risen slightly over the years (but not significantly). It does not seem to be tracking with the rise in average lifespan, which is suggestive that it may be psychological as well as health-based.

I'm not concerned about a drop in young population, but young people raised surrounded almost completely by old people are going to be young people caught in an old person's paradigm. Imagine if you were raised in a retirement home and weren't introduced to the Internet until you were 14. Would you be as into it as you are now? Would you care, when you've already been taught letters and telephone are all you really need to hang with your friends (your friends mostly being 80 years old with their own party lines)? Would you like punk rock when you were raised exclusively with classical music?

*** Well, I wasn't really introduced to it 'til I was ... 22? 23? So I think I might be okay there.


*** No, becos presumably I'd still have better taste than that.

On the first count, how much do you use the internet for now? Twitter? File-sharing? Hulu? Do you youtube?

As for the second, I'm not sure what your particular taste is, but to a degree, you're proving my point. You don't like the new types of music (alright, i admit, punk rock is a bit dated even now) because you're used to something else. When my mom was young, she was not allowed to listen to anything but classical music. Now she has little appreciation for anything else. My dad was given more freedom and at least enjoys most modern pop, but could never get into punk or goth music.

*** RPOL, mostly <grin>. Also for work stuff and a few other games. I use wikipedia a lot, and amazon. I download some stuff, and watch some stuff online. I don't know what twitter is, and I haven't used Hulu. I watch youtube ... not sure if that's what you mean or not.


*** No, I just think lyrics are the most important part of a song, and most punk songs have indecipherable lyrics. This to me is an intelligence issue, not an age one.

And you aren't alone. I know what twitter is because I work in a technical field. But in general, a lot of stuff like the facebook and twitter are only getting real traction with the younger generation. Older people tend to be willing to adopt tools to do what they already do; look at maps, watch TV, shop, but not to do stuff they don't normally do; chat with online-only friends, generate or distribute videos, mod video games, etc. My son is still a little young to be outpacing me, but he will in another four years, just because I'm getting old and he's still young and new. I think that my son will be more "hip" and "with it" by virtue of being exposed to lots of other young people. People in urban centers, where there are more people within any given age group, are more likely to pick up new technologies than people in urban areas, where young people are far fewer and cultural diffusion is slower.

(BTW, Hulu.com is a site that shows mostly shows new and old television shows and movies. I watch things like Fringe only on Hulu, because otherwise I might actually have to pay attention to what time it is and turn on my TV for something other than cartoons. Worth your time. Check out the Sing-Along Blog of Dr. Horrible, great show, but also noteworthy in that it's a professionally produced show that did not go through any production company and was released only on the internet - but is making a profit. A sign of things to come?)

But my concern is that insufficient young people, relatively speaking, with insufficient contact with other young people will reduce the cultural diffusion necessary for substantial ongoing discovery.


*** No, I just think lyrics are the most important part of a song, and most punk songs have indecipherable lyrics. This to me is an intelligence issue, not an age one.
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To come back to that argument, I also wasn't really that much onto the net until I was older... 19-20, to be exact. So yes, yes I would be as into it. And while I had been taught the stuff about letters and the telephone, long-distance bills are expensive (although not so much anymore as long as your calls are domestic) and there's a reason it's called snail mail. ^_^ Regarding music, I was raised mostly on (real) country, but I now listen to most anything I can get my hands on, whether it be classical, pop, metal, rock... you name the genre, I can probably name a few favorite songs of mine.

Same question; twitter, facebook, hulu, MMORPGs? Do you make your own youtube videos or share Guitar Hero riffs?

What I'm trying to push here is there are a few ways to look at the internet;
1) It makes things you already do faster. Most people who do these old things can adapt to the new method.
2) It allows you to do things you could never do before. This seems to be more of a generation thing. People who were already adults when this stuff became available seem significantly less likely to pick them up (and oftentimes those people who do enjoy the new gadgets and services are called "kids at heart" ;).) It's a shift in paradigm, and the older the person is, the less able or willing he seems to be to adapt.

I don't like social networking, and MMO's are a waste of money. I mostly use the internet to research the object of my most current fancy (right now it's steampunk... go figure) which would be nigh unto impossible without the internet. Also, without the internet, where would I order my anime fix? ^_^

   Ashlayne, I'm curious, what age group are you in? I ask, becos I agree with you, both about social networking and MMOs, and I wondered if it's becos we're the same bracket (as Katisara seems to be suggesting). For myself, I'm 35.

25 here, so a little difference, but not too much.

I'm 28 (as of today) and start using computers when I was 12 (although no internet until I was 18). I'm also in a technical profession. I don't use twitter because I'm not very social, but we basically never use snail mail or the telephone, nor our television (we only have one because we found it on the side of the road). I'm in contact basically 24/7 with my family via gmail, which is always on, and I met my wife MUDding.  So I feel like I've got a foot in each, although I realize the serious social networking I'm not taking advantage of.

My wife started on the internet even earlier and not only does she do the social networking stuff, but she runs an entire business, market research, design, production, shipping and marketing, all via computer (she does art).

My dad is 50 and gets the gmail, but doesn't seem able to move too much farther (although he's always impressed by anything new and cool that comes up). My mom is a few steps beyond that.  My grandparents seem to think they have to attach postage to e-mails and have sort of fallen out of our social network because they keep depending on that telegramaphone thing.

Some interesting ideas here, but nothing seems to have come of them.

I'm 36 and I've done all of that stuff except the sharing of Guitar Hero data.

My father has a hard time operating a mouse, but my mother (5 years younger) has been programming for the past 30 years (mostly managing now) and more than aware of these things.

I still tend to hang out with geeks who know this stuff and use it. I don't think that technological use or innovation is bound to age. It may have something to do with the culture that you grow up in.

Bill Gates' kids may be sheltered from the rest of the world and still have a pretty good grasp on technology. Same for Linus Torvald.

**Bumped for Zephydel**

Thanks.

I do not know if you guys will agree with me but I think that the next step in human evolution is leaving the flesh and becoming pure data.

Para-Psychologists and those who hunt the paranormal always start looking for the spirits of people by looking for strange electromagnetic signals. During my studies in psychology I have read that the human nervous system (brain, spine and nerves) also generates electromagnetic signals.

People are becoming more and more mental and less physical as technology progresses. Our knowledge is evolving faster than our physical bodies and the results of our knowledge is becoming more than what the planet can actually handle. If that is not enough, the diseases that ravage us are also evolving faster than ever before.

If mankind's destiny is indeed space travel, the flesh will not be enough. The flesh may even be a weakness. Being stored as data and acting through robots might be the next best thing for us. By evolving as pure data and energy, we might even be able to use some form of telekinesis to move around.

Individuality should still be there. Without physical bodies, we become clusters of data. We are like files containing data. We may have the same kind of data but this redundancy is only there for preserving data. Mating is still possible. Instead of physical mating, individuals will mate through communication. The exchange of information will lead to the creation of new information and new copies of old information - the creation of a new individual.

In reply to Zephydel (msg #76):

The shift from flesh to data is a common trope for transhumanist sci-fi stories (along with attendante re-sleeving/downloading/etc back into flesh).

While I can get on board with the possibility, and I can agree that it may be one option for future space-travel, I am not certain that it will be the only option nor the first one we hit.

Unlike some, I don't think we'll hit a singularity and make a sudden jump. Though it may seem that way in hind-sight or history books, I think that those of us who live through it will instead see it as a series of revolutionary breakthroughs that build upon one another.



As a side note, I'm also not entirely sold on the idea that the leap to data-forms is precisely what paranormal investigators are finding. Rather I think that many of those instances are time-loops or disjointed instances of time. But that's another thread, no?

I don't think I'd give up tactile stimulation, personally.

Biological singularity would be good enough; genetically engineer a smarter human that can in turn genetically engineer smarter humans, until children are able to understand quantum mechanics at the age when we understood how to speak (our minds barely comprehend the quantum world now), that's what I'm hoping for.  You can apply it to anything, really; where our medical advances in longevity progress fast enough so as to make us virtually immortal.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:33, Tue 15 June 2010.

I would tend to agree. I don't feel comfortable with the use of the word 'step' - that implies a discrete, easily defineable change.

What we're seeing right now is a gradual increase of the incorporation of technology into our bodies - now through medical implants (to restore functionality) and genetic manipulation of our food, soon through genetic manipulation of ourselves and medical enhancements. I expect my children will be dealing with the psychological ramifications of significant body alteration (and those ramifications won't be as severe as cyberpunk would have you think, just like the ramifications of our not hunting our food did not cause a sudden, deep psychological trauma).

But I think in the next few generations we're more likely to see Sterlings 'Holy Fire' than Eclipse Phase - you have a bunch of old people who live, more or less, like humans, but not resleeving into new bodies or launching off to Titan or anything. At least, not without some serious AI interference ;P

In reply to katisara (msg #79):

Incidently, there was a doctor sometime in the past ten years - I'd really need to dig up the articles about him again - who basically posited the idea that in our brains there's a 'map' of the body.

Sudden abrupt traumatic changes to the body do not immediately effect the map, thus resulting in one of the causes of phantom limb syndrome. I.e., the brain map of the body still records that limb as being there, when in fact it is not. As the brain tries to interpret incoming data, it ascribes nerve impulses to the part of the 'map' where that limb was, and thus the person 'feels' things coming from a limb that is missing. He theorized that this map, of course, adapts over time. As we age and grow we compensate for our limbs growing and so forth. However, he suspected that should gradual changes to the body be introduced that the brain would compensate and adjust.
Now, in some respects he was talking radical change. Things like cosmetic alteration of the body in major ways - altering facial structure, altering ear-shape or limb-length, even the addition of 'limbs' and 'wings.' It must be noted, however, that he did not fully expect these grown and slowly built limbs/wings to be functional - no paying several million dollars to have wings added and then fly around town. Instead, these things would be purely cosmetic. BUT, as the brain grew used to their presence of the alterations and the body accepted them, they would grow to be a part of the person.

Bah, I'm not doing a good job of explaining it. It's been 10 years, after all.

In any case, obviously not much came of it - you don't see any big fashion models with wings or some Hollywood machoman with an extra arm. But the concept of our brain's plasticity to grow and adapt and accept a dramatic physical change was interesting.

I'll have to see if I can track it down.

edit: Found him. Plastic surgeon Joseph Rosen. Google searches bring up a variety of things on him. Can't find the specific article I read yet, however.

edit 2: links!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/soci...health.lifeandhealth - general article, found quoted in part or in tota in other places. Not sure if this is the original but it's close to what I recall.
Quote:
"This is possible because our brains adapt to create neural maps for new body parts. When we have a limb amputated, our neural map of that limb gradually fades away; and if we gain a body part, our neural map expands accordingly."

http://www3.hi.is/~lobbi/ut1/a_a/DR.%20DAEDALUS.pdf
a pdf file/article about Joe Rosen, a little less on the sensational journalism side and a bit better on the reporting end.
Quote:
"Plastic surgery is the intersection' of art and science. It's the
intersection of the surgeon's imagination with human flesh. And
human flesh," Rosen says, "is infinitely malleable. People say
cosmetic surgery is frivolous--boobs and noses. But it's so much
more than that! The body is a conduit for the soul, at least
historically speaking. When you change what you look like, you
change who you are."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:31, Tue 15 June 2010.

I do recall an expiriment in which people were blindfolded for a week with a video camera strapped to tehir head and outpus 'pixilated' across tehir back as tactile sensation, and by teh end of teh week they were 'seeing' through the camera. They have also demonstrated that a monkey with a wire placed into it's motor cortex connected to teh controls for a cybernetic arm will wind up controling that arm even over great distances. The brain is a very adaptable organ.
As to being 'reduced' to data I don't think that's going to happen for a very long time- we would need to be able to map activity in the brain, the physical structure of teh brain (which varries person to person and changes over time, *and* store the DNA code of the indiviual, and that still wouldn't replicate hormonal effects. we're still looking at the better part of a century at best before that becomes a practical idea.

It just intrigues me that the electromagnetic signals that the paranormal investigators are finding may be the same ones found in the brain. It makes you wonder if the soul is nothing more than electromagnetic signals or thoughts without a brain.

A magentic brain recording of one moment in time that could then be 'read' by another brain under certain circumstances would hardly require that it be the definition of a soul. If I take a picture of an attractive naked woman and then become arroused looking at that picture that does not mean the woman is nothing more than her visual image, it simply means that a visual recording is sufficient to evoke certain emotional reactions in me. Similary is electromagnetic or chemical 9phermone) 'residue' in an area evokes certain thoughts or feelings that does not mean that is the entirety of the person who'se feeling were 'recorded' by the situation. I can write a book without *being* a book, it merely records some of my thoughts.