MILLIONS NOW LIVING WILL NEVER DIE
You know, it’s hard to get blogging regularly again once the momentum’s been lost. I really don’t understand how people can churn out posts day after day. Maybe it would be easier if I had a “hook” or a mission statement of some kind. I guess my niche is in flippant, dismissive posts about academia and the scientific priesthood. For example:
Futurologist predicts that “realistically” we’ll be able to store our consciousness on a computer in the year 2050. It’s articles like these that make me wonder if futurology is really a scientific discipline at all. It seems a lot more like astrology to me, but instead of reading the motion of Jupiter and Saturn, furturologists read Wired Magazine.
Here are some choice quotes from Ian Pearson, futurologist of the future:
“The new PlayStation is 1 per cent as powerful as a human brain.” Okay.
“Consciousness is just another sense, effectively, and that’s what we’re trying to design in a computer.” Durrrr.
“It [the conscious computer of the future] would definitely have emotions – that’s one of the primary reasons for doing it. If I’m on an aeroplane I want the computer to be more terrified of crashing than I am.” I guess in the future the laws of physics will be fear-based.
And finally, “We can already use DNA, for example, to make electronic circuits so it’s possible to think of a smart yoghurt some time after 2020 or 2025, where the yoghurt has got a whole stack of electronics in every single bacterium. You could have a conversation with your strawberry yogurt before you eat it.” I have no idea what any of this means, but that’s probably because I haven’t been trained in the rigorous futurological methodology of “making shit up.”
So there you have it folks, some delicious Baboon Palace-brand mockery, fresh from the brain of me. Let’s see a strawberry yogurt top that!
Stay tuned for more exciting posts to come, including the depressing story of my recent near-death experience. Plus: a very special guest post coming soon! I hope!