Ask A Genius 152 – Bodice-Rippers and the Future
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/18
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Or it takes place in the 18th century. They call historic romance novels “bodice-rippers.” A bodice is the top that a woman wore. A bodice-ripper is the rugged man who is overcome by his lust and just tears her shirt off and takes her, and only later turns out to be a good guy. You can go online. If you Google “bodice-ripper,” I’m sure you can find the cover of dozens of romance novels with the woman’s shirt semi-off and the guy’s shirt is fully off.
Let’s talk about the future. Probably the best known predictor of the future in any kind of detail is Ray Kurzweil, who is the guy who took up the banner of the Singularity. That by the 2040s we’re looking at a potential utopia because AI is going to—we’re going to build AI and AI is going to further AI until it is smarter and smarter until all solutions to human problems including aging have been figured out by the 2040s.
He’s written probably half of a dozen books. In some, he’s put out long year-by-year predictions about what will happen. His track record is not horrible. So we can look at his predictions and look how well he’s done and then look at the future predictions and see how he’ll do. For instance, he wrote a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines, which is about AI in 1999. Then he made a bunch of predictions for 10 years hence.
You, Scott, can go on Wikipedia and look up predictions made by Ray Kurzweil. He’s got a list of about 18 predictions. 2009, as predicted from 1999, majority of reading is done on displays rather than paper. He got that one. I’d say most people. Most texts would be made by speech recognition technology. He missed on that one. Intelligent roads and driverless cars will be in use. He missed that one. That’s more a 2019, 2020-something thing.
People use personal computers the size of rings, pins, credit cards, and books. Semi-got that one. Fit bits are somewhat the size of that and tablets are the size of books. Most portable computers don’t have moving parts or keyboards. He got that one. You press your screen, but it doesn’t really have a punchable keyboard. Desktop PCs are still common. Individuals still use portable devices. True.
I don’t know if it true for 2009, but 8 years later it is true. Personal computers worn provide monitoring, pretty close, but halfway. Devices provide high-speed access via wireless, got that one. Digital products such as games, books, and software typically acquired a files via wireless network and have no physical network associated with them. People can talk to their computer to give commands. Got that one.
[End of recorded material]
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 