Future shock

Language and communication are the primary primate skill still...some medicine but Mostly the ability to speak to our devices it seems....

The past:

"… that by the 2010s, virtual solutions would be able to do real-time language translation in which words spoken in a foreign language would be translated into text that would appear as subtitles to a user wearing the glasses. Well, Microsoft (via Skype Translate), Google (Translate), and others have done this and beyond. One app called Word Lens actually uses your camera to find and translate text imagery in real time."

The near future:

"By the late 2010s, glasses will beam images directly onto the retina. Ten terabytes of computing power (roughly the same as the human brain) will cost about $1,000.

By the 2020s, most diseases will go away as nanobots become smarter than current medical technology. Normal human eating can be replaced by nanosystems. The Turing test begins to be passable. Self-driving cars begin to take over the roads, and people won’t be allowed to drive on highways.

By the 2030s, virtual reality will begin to feel 100% real. We will be able to upload our mind/consciousness by the end of the decade.

By the 2040s, non-biological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than biological intelligence (a.k.a. us). Nanotech foglets will be able to make food out of thin air and create any object in physical world at a whim.

By 2045, we will multiply our intelligence a billionfold by linking wirelessly from our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud.

I want to make an important point.

It’s not about the predictions.

It’s about what the predictions represent...

http://singularityhub.com/2015/01/26/ray-kurzweils-mind-boggling-predictions-for-the-next-25-years/

And I, the humble Gen-X writer of these scattered thoughts want to make an important point (by quoting another story):

TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS: A fault in our design
Colin Dickey | AEON
"Robots and autopilots might correct for human error, but they cannot compensate for their own designers. Perhaps a brighter technological future lies less in the latest gadgets, and rather in learning to understand ourselves better, particularly our capacity to forget what we’ve already learned."

OUR CAPACITY TO FORGET WHAT WE've already learned... Such a negative view of the magnificence of mystery that is the human brain.

I font know that I agree but I don't write code either. I'd rather know all the Latin names for plants than create a robot....