Collaboration squared and an impending 'Singularity' -R

In 1984 I had hungrily devoured every word of William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' trilogy and contemplated what a "mass consensual hallucination" AKA cyberspace [he invented this word], would become to look like.

"The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games. … Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding."
William Gibson;'Nueromancer' and 'Burning Chrome.

I witnessed a real collaboration/communication driven paradigm shift in the 90's at a college I was working at back then. Email was made available to the entire staff base in one fell swoop. Over that next year as staff got used to the presence of it all one could see that the way of doing business [and friends and jokes] had changed irrevocably.

It was hard to think back then that in another 15 years or so we would be on the cusp of omnipresent ubiquitous computing. What was unforeseen I feel was the rate and pace of change, exponential.

So there are two themes I wish to talk about here, and mainly I must confess, to just marvel at human ingenuity. In broader therms though I see exploration of these topics as giving a more rounded approach to and understanding of hi-tech evolution.

The first being Collaboration and I feel Howard Rheingold [The rise and rise of collaboration], speaking at www.ted.com gives a really good presentation on how it's set to change our lives irrevocably, again. And its worth noting that as this blog goes to press 5/6/09 that Google Wave has just become public, leveraged collaboration notched up once again.



The second part of this blog:

[1] Science Fiction [though I prefer Speculative Fiction], and Science Fact. Both call up a future that may exist by attempting prescience based on their understanding of life, the universe and everything. So have a listen to the podcast, Janice McAdam and watch the vodcast, Ray Kurzweil and I hope you enjoy synthesizing these memes.

In the Red Corner is Ray Kurzweil, scientist, futurist and all round nice guy who provides a compelling case for fruition of his imagined event "Singularity", and man if it comes it will be a ripper. In the Blue Corner Janice McAdam from Sydney has degrees in physics and children's literature and calls herself a 'lapsed physicist'. Today she talks about the genre of science fiction as a prediction into the future.

Janice McAdam from ABC radio national podcast;


Ray Kurzweil sourced from ted.com


Download Janice McAdam; Can Science Fiction predict the future?
http://www.ourmedia.org/media/science-fiction-prediction-future-0
Download Ray Kurzweil

Download Howard Rheingold; The Rise and Rise of Collaboration.
http://ourmedia.org/node/185773
Or go and search directly at www.ted.com

Download Ray Kurzweil; How technology's accelerating power will transform us
http://ourmedia.org/node/204307