towards a global brain

Towards a Global BrainTim O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media

TEDxSVMay 14, 2011

Saturday, May 14, 2011

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”

-Edwin Schlossberg


The extraordinary convergence of computing and human potential


Towards a global brain


The advent of global consciousness?


A few key assertions

We are building a network-mediated global mind It is not skynet It is us, augmented


“global consciousness is that thing responsible for deciding that pots containing decaffeinated coffee should be orange”

– Danny Hillis (via Jeff Bezos)

– http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/03/16/etech_3.html


http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/03/16/etech_3.html

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/03/16/etech_3.html

Artificial Intelligence

“the science and engineering of making intelligent machines” -John McCarthy, 1956


Intelligence Augmentation“The human mind ... operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do.”– Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945


A device that knows where I am better than I do, a knowing assistant telling me where to go and how to get there.


Beyond information retrieval: real time connection with other people and what they know.


Man-Computer Symbiosis

“The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.”

– Licklider, J.C.R., "Man-Computer Symbiosis", IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, vol. HFE-1, 4-11, Mar 1960. Eprint


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.C.R._Licklider

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.C.R._Licklider

http://medg.lcs.mit.edu/people/psz/Licklider.html

http://medg.lcs.mit.edu/people/psz/Licklider.html

Harnessing Collective Intelligence


wikipedia


A device with eyes and ears, with a sense of place, and motion, and proximity, with memory of what it’s seen and where it’s been, a connection to the people we know and love.


The spread of sensors

sensor platform slide


The “intelligent” devices of the future are connected to data

“We don’t have better algorithms. We just have more data.” - Peter Norvig, Chief Scientist, Google


“Would you be willing to cross the street with information that

was five minutes old?” -Jeff Jonas


Resilience


The global brain is us, connected and augmented


Vannevar Bush’s Memex - 1945


“Your job as a parent is to prepare your child for the future.”


If the global brain is still a child, what should we be teaching it? How should we be rearing it?


Predictive analytics in information applications mirrors human learning


Our algorithms and the goals we set for them mirror human vices and virtues


We are all Khaled Said


“Access to all the world’s information”

“How can applications be better when they are social?”

“Changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators”


How can we make the emerging global consciousness not only more resilient,

but more moral?


“Virtue is knowing what you really want” -James O’Reilly


εὐδαιµονία


eudaimonia


We’ve got one world. We’d better get it right.


towards a global brain

Technology

global mind

human brain

global brainsaturday

emerging global consciousness

advent of global consciousness

human factors

human potentialsaturday

human learningsaturday