TruXta
tired
Music is a bad example - high-end digital recording will give you far greater fidelity than any analogue recording.
Singularity watch - the future is already here
- Thread starter Fez909
- Start date
Ibn Khaldoun
the present is dead, long live the future . . .
Wrong. Vinyl is a perfect copy of the signal being recorded to it! Digital media has to encode in binary so you 'lose' information. Your ears have to fill in the tiny gaps in sound. Same goes with images. No matter how high quality it is it's not quite as perfect as an actual photograph. Just keep zooming in on computer images and you'll see what I mean . . . actually you can do the same with digital audio and 'zoom in' on the waves using software, you see all the little 'bits' that make up the sound.
Cid
Proper break this time
Is this based on your argument that advances in the mid-late 20th century aren't as profound as those of the 19th?
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
It really isn't at all. See recent thread on the topic.
Ibn Khaldoun
the present is dead, long live the future . . .
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
or alternatively not at all in any way and in fact inferior
Fez909
toilet expert
The advances in the industrial revolution are different from those proposed to occur in the singularity. The former was of power and materials: We were able to do more than a human was capable of previously due to mechanical prowess and to build things we couldn't build before due to material sciences, etc.
The singularity is about intelligence. It's about besting the human mind in thinking.
The two aren't comparable, IMO.
The singularity is about intelligence. It's about besting the human mind in thinking.
The two aren't comparable, IMO.
TruXta
tired
Try zooming in on a photograph and see what you get after a while. Even high-end film has nowhere near the resolution of state of the art digital photography. #awaitstheireofprofessionalphotographers
Yes.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
That's not true either. Good film stores an absurd amount of information.
Ibn Khaldoun
the present is dead, long live the future . . .
I'm right. Even the dynamic range is higher
TruXta
tired
How so?
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
In the sense of it not being the case? I don't know how I can elaborate really.
TruXta
tired
There are giga-pixel photographs being made, in my understanding film tops out at less than a giga-pixel. I know pixel's aren't the end of the story of course.
So yeah, why's it not the case?
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
You could take multiple giga-pixel photographs on film, if you use enough film. Why do you say film "tops out"? It doesn't.
TruXta
tired
Forget it, massive brainfart on my end
TruXta
tired
Let me quote this:
Shalizi (above), like me, would hardly argue that the 20th century hasn't seen incredible advances. But imagine you're born in 1850 and die in 1930. You've seen the birth of the Bessemer process - steel manufacturing on an industrial scale. The (re)invention of concrete. Plastics. Electricity. Cars. Human flight. The discovery of radioactivity. Radio. Cinema. Poison gas and tanks. Submarines. Taylorism. Wood pulp paper, without which no true mass production of printed materials. The petroleum industry. The assembly line. And on and on and on.
chemn
shmemn
What are you on about? Go and spout your nonsense in the audiophile thread!
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
Our brains already fill in far bigger holes constantly and with ease - like in our eyes.
I've always thought the singularity as the phrase coined by Verna Vinge IIRC, refers to specifically computing developments. It's not just any game changing technology. The singularity posits once machines are at a level of safistication and power, to design other machines with out explicit human intervention in the programming, predicting the nature of those machines and their effect on humanity is impossible. Anyway it's a bit of a passe idea. Moore's law is reaching the limits of what can be done with traditional chips. Hence more cores, developments in paralele computing. A general quantum computer is a very long way off.
Good thread.
And yeah, the thing about digital sound, dynamic range, alleged lack their of, is rubbish. Google Nyquist's thearum.
Good thread.
And yeah, the thing about digital sound, dynamic range, alleged lack their of, is rubbish. Google Nyquist's thearum.
Cid
Proper break this time
Yeah, and in my relatively short lifetime I've seen fundamental changes in the nature of communication, of information sharing and accessibility... I've seen the human genome sequenced, the Higgs (probably) detected. I can draw something and have a finished solid object in my hand in days. I don't really have to use shops anymore... I don't even have to read books on paper, although that still has its advantages. I carry a computer in my pocket that can show me a map of pretty much anywhere in the world, can play me music, can access more information than a thousand Encyclopedia Britannicas in seconds, even makes phone calls. I've seen both industrial collapse and massive industrial expansion, I've seen new materials stronger and lighter than anything a Victorian industrialist could have conceived of. Among many, many other things.
20-30 years... Much of it the last 15. Took more than that for people to actually work out what to do with a telephone.
TruXta
tired
What in that is genuinely new? Arguably only computers and microprocessor technology. People played chess over the phone a hundred years ago. They could send someone to the shops for them, or order stuff sent over. Sequencing the genome hasn't done much, yet. Maybe it will, maybe it won't really become a game-changer. And those new materials, have any had the impact that steel and concrete had? As for detecting the Higgs, I'd rate the theories of special and general relativity a bit higher in terms of fundamental changemaking. Atomic theory for that matter. Hell, early quantum theory was being developed before the great war. The terms and problems set back then still govern much of today's theoretical debates.
As for maps, if I had to choose I'd go with a paper map over a mobile any day - drop it in water and it will still do its job.
Apropos of nothing - have you read Vannevar Bush's essay As We May Think? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/?single_page=true Classic piece that poses questions we still grapple with wrt the information revolution.
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
That's the silliest graph I have ever seen - most things are inventions.
Facebook and then twitter would be interesting data points to add.
Cid
Proper break this time
'Genuinely new' is a concept that doesn't really exist - inventions are always part of continuous process of development. The idea that concrete was just rediscovered is nonsense for example. Various types of cement continued to be used, with progressive development through the middle ages... I can point you to any number of technologies that are 'new' on that level. The industrial inventions of the 19th century are certainly dramatic, but in many ways they're also extremely dishonest. It's the era of the loan inventor, and what that usually means is one person fucking over everyone who came before or helped him (almost invariably 'him') so that he can secure the patent. The phone, the TV, film, steam engines, electric transmission etc. I'm not for a second denying that the 19th century saw massive change, just saying the 20th century has too - and in many ways that change is far more profound. You talked yourself about there being an imbalance with advances, and that's certainly true of the 19th century - creation of the industrial working class etc. Those who saw tangible benefits from these inventions formed a tiny percentage of the population.
The 20th century sees the spread of access to information, through continuous developments in communication. It sees the spread of access to new technologies, with deep implications for everything from movement of people to the role of women in the home. This would be impossible without rapidly advancing technologies... These may be based on older technologies, but - as I said - this doesn't really mean anything.
Most, however, did not (or could not).
It was sequenced 12 years ago... It took longer than that to go from the discovery of penicillin to properly manufacturing it. HGP suffers from having been leaped on by every politician of the time... Advances aren't going to be immediate, and I don't think anyone involved really thought they would be. As it happens its been useful in diagnostics already, and certainly in medical research.
Steel and concrete weren't new to the 19th century, as I've said... the techniques used in their production enabled their widespread use. But er... new techniques in their production still do the same thing. Alongside things like use of aluminium, materials used in circuits etc.
Yes... So do the terms and problems of Newtonian physics. Even Euclidean geometry. A massive advance does not stop future advances from being massive. You can't come up with some kind of scientific rating system that stacks the importance of discoveries.
Which is fine if you happen to live somewhere which has a good history of surveying... Otherwise your map is still relying on Satellite data.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
how come they're such cunts they keep having to surface and spout off all the time then
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