I took a trip in a time machine and saw a talk from the 2023 TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference today. (In case you are wondering the time machine was designed on an iPad 3 which is being announced next week). The speech was clichéd but nevertheless it was well done.
I found the speech by (the character) Peter Weyland, an inventor of humanistic robots, interesting because I recently gave a speech myself about how future borg will look more like humans than robots. The technology will be advanced enough to provide its capabilities and be almost invisible because the interface will adapt itself to humans instead of the other way around.
This vision of the future although not explicitly shown in the 2023 TEDtalk will be disturbing/frightening to a lot of people because it suggest that humans will lose control and the robots will take over. The related Prometheus movie trailer (Movie to be released June 8 2012) is even more of a horror story of what could be our end.
Of course it doesn’t have to be this way.
Just recently a new book called Abundance has been released that also presents a picture of the outstanding changes that are accelerating us towards our future and should provide some reasons to be optimistic about solving some of humankind’s most difficult problems. Another Peter, Peter Diamandis has given a TEDtalk in 2012 called Abundance is Our Future. In this scenario technology slays scarcity of resources and the population explosion is seen as a boon rather than a disaster.
It is beyond dispute that massive change will be experienced as time goes on and there will be winners and losers.
The question is – are you seeing the upcoming changes as a source of opportunity or of doom?
Are you going to be driven by fear due to the amygdala (lizard) portion of the brain?
The even bigger question is what are we going to do to create the type of future we want to live in so that time machine can be given a tuneup?