2004-06-07 02:17
by Vasil Kolev(The day went well, we decided to do a big change in the project, to make it more simple. It was worth the few hours of talking).
I just read http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html(how had I missed that?), and some interesting thoughts came to me. I too don’t think that the current civilization has a lot more time, but I haven’t looked at the problem from that POV.
I can’t deny that I have a lot of thoughts like ‘killing 95% of the humanity would be good for it’ (even if I’m a part of those 95%). I think that a lot of the work that is done in the moment by human beings can be automated – there was one such idea in the books of A.E. van Vogt…
(I’m not going to talk about my opinion on that most of the people are idiots, etc – it’s not something that I can prove in a reasonable way)
Interesting, how many people would prefer the world without the current civilization? Or in some other way, in which people don’t do any routine work, but think and create… The current civilization, and the things that it has created restrict us (I’ve been wanting a mobile interface to the network directly into my brain, to be able to work while strolling in the park, for example). If in some way the things that we create, became really a part of us – like, to be able to grow a mobile phone, instead of carrying it, charging it, etc, and to find a quick and effective way to communicate (the talking doesn’t transport enough information in a lot of cases, and with one good brain-to-brain interface the conversations will probably be something incredible), the world will become a better place :)
(I’m out of valerianae, I’ll be out to find a pharmacy…)
So, after a nice walk, one midnight snack and some valerianae, I can easy finish. The thing that pushes me into this kinds of thoughts is probably that I’ve began to feel ineffective. I feel, that I can do a amount of work, but after trying to do so, at some point my organism just starts to break, and this to some degree is due to the instruments that I’m using. For example, my last lecture would be a lot better, if I had written in in pure hypertext, and every assertion there was linked to a explanation and bibliography, so you can read all of it with those notes. Not with the current interfaces (even with firefox and tabbed browsing this isn’t possible, if you have 10-15 notes on one page of text, and you have to read them all. This isn’t solvable with the current 2d interfaces) you can’t. If I had a way to organize the information in my head in some kind of structure, and to export it in some such way, the things that I’m doing, would be done faster, better, and with a lot less undersleeping. And of course, it will be a lot more comfortable to do it that way than using any kind of text editor.
Okay… but I’m a guy that likes to nest 2-3 levels of parenthesis in his written communication … )