From: Charles D Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Jun 02 2006 - 20:34:10 MDT
pdugan wrote:
> I think the release of a serious simulation or commercial game of adequete
> craft and marketing could cause 2 or 3 to happen, respectively. What better
> way to get people to grok the singularity than have them interact with a
> computer that simulates and/or represents the core ideas?
>
> Patrick Dugan
>
>
>> ===== Original Message From Joshua Fox <joshua@joshuafox.com> =====
>> Anyone want to venture a guess on the public awareness of the
>> Singularity in, say, 2010 or 2015?
>>
>> I'm wondering if the Singularity will
>> (1) remain the province of a few hundred or a few thousand
>> super-technologically-aware types (like, e.g., hints of possibilities
>> for faster-than-light spaceflight today);
>> (2) or spread into the awareness of hundreds of thousands or millions of
>> educated people (like, e.g. private space travel or nanotech today);
>> (3) or become a major social issue followed by tens or hundreds of
>> millions (like, e.g., genetically engineered food or nuclear power today).
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>>
>> Joshua
One way to acquire sufficient computational resources would be to
publish an on-line game (or community? 2nd Life?) in which much of the
computation was done by what is essentially voluntary participants in a
bot-net. This would be even better if the game could be so structured
that portions of the game score depended on solving challenges that were
those needed by the program's operation. (Since these would be "high
level" challenges, they should have high rewards attached to them.
There would, after all, be a large probability of failure.)
Is this feasible? ?? Is 2nd Life involved in such a scenario? ?? (I
tend to think not.) But do note that a lot of the time in these games
the computer is essentially waiting for the user to react. This time
represents available CPU cycles that don't need to be merely discarded.
(Of course, with a lot of designs the OS already uses them for
background processing.)
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