From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Jul 31 2002 - 11:28:22 MDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23395-2002Jul30.html
While not directly Singularity material, I found this article
sufficiently reminiscent of "Vinge in real life" to deserve an SL4 post.
I've never swarmed myself, but I did recently give up on the
now-obsolete "land line" concept and go with just a cellphone. Which
means that I can now always contact anyone else who has a cellphone, all
day, every day. It's a good feeling, though I'm sure it will become
*much* more addictive once cellphones accept voice input for Google queries.
I expect that the next development in global community will be when the
earpieces and mouthpieces are small and comfortable enough that you can
leave them on *all* the time, the cellphones are always on, and there
are continuous ongoing conversations. And the next development in local
community will be when everyone's cellphone has a list of keywords, and
gives a little beep whenever you walk within 30 feet of someone with the
"transhumanist" or "science fiction" keyword.
In both cases there's probably a nice startup here for anyone who wants
to develop the software in advance and have it fine-tuned, debugged,
featureful, and ready to roll out the door and grab the entire market
the instant that cellphone technology makes it possible. Assuming no
one is doing it already.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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