Arthur C Clarke in 1964: "[We] will no longer commute. [We] will communicate."

We're inching close to Asimov's Solaria[0] world, where private armies of robots do all the work, the scant humans never meet, preferring to use video calls that set up holographic environments which seamlessly blend the backgrounds of all participants into a cohesive virtual space.

0 :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_universe#Solaria

Re: Arthur C Clarke in 1964: "[We] will no longer commute. [We] will communicate."

#8

Post by wkat4242 » Thu, May 30, 2024, 12:12 PM UTC

He didn't foresee the forced return to office, clearly :(

Re: Arthur C Clarke in 1964: "[We] will no longer commute. [We] will communicate."

#9

Post by wkat4242 » Thu, May 30, 2024, 12:15 PM UTC

bfeist wrote: post #5

Yes, but he failed to predict the lameness that is MS Teams.

True, it is pretty terrible. Like everything Microsoft. It seems like that they always aim for "just not bad enough to make you invest in something third party". Because their stuff all comes as one package that's a very low bar. It's very hard to justify paying for something you're already paying for.

And they don't seem to be interested in building real top quality UX or performance. Why would they, we buy it anyway. Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.

Re: Arthur C Clarke in 1964: "[We] will no longer commute. [We] will communicate."

#10

Post by hughesjj » Thu, May 30, 2024, 4:33 PM UTC

I think comparing us to Neanderthals didn't do it justice. Imo it's more like going from single cellular organelle-less life to a full blown human.

That said, today the "machine brains" we're building are closer to the single cell side of the scale than the human side.

I like this analogy better because cells never went away -- they just self organized into something greater than their whole, and I'd imagine the same will be (is?) True with 'thinking machines' as well