Emotional Machines
By ai-depot | May 18, 2003
The Future
Classic Critics and Traditional School of Thoughts share an unshakable belief in the "survival of the fittest". Their dominant ideology, a business version of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is that the strong and large will endure - the small and weak will perish! Big fish will always devour little fish. Over the years however, individual genius in close concert with technology has often upset this primordial balance. Some little fish not only survive! They excel!!
More to the point, their chances increase exponentially when their environment gives them an advantage. In this fish pond of information technology that we call WWW, the World Wide Web, little fish have the environment as their strongest ally! In fact the big fish are in real danger, of going the way of dinosaur if they DO NOT learn to adapt!
As they flew above the grassy slopes of Kitty Hawk, in their first awkward looking airplane, the Wright brothers had a little comprehension about the real magnitude of their invention. In fact the skeptics were in abundance, proclaiming, flight to be the foolish past time of dreamers, and carnival performers, with no practical value, and certainly NO commercial importance. The atmosphere above our planet was a realm for childish! And they were told NOT TO by experienced people. Their seniors like ours, believed that "old traditional ways" were the "BEST"
The Wright Brothers were forced to use vision and genius, without the comfort of any empirical data to rely upon they had no professional that their flying machine would even work, and even if they flew, they had no reason to think anyone would care, let alone, actually purchase their product. The same can be said about Edison, Graham Bell, Marconi and yes even Bill Gates. No one thought that their individual brilliance, that their intellectual offspring would change the world. They were also little fish with a technological advantage and their impact continues unabated to this day.
At their inception, the airplanes, the electric light, telephone, radio and even windows operating system were considered gimmicks, fads and foolishness. They were considered interesting, even exciting for a moment, but with no lasting significance or impacts, the big company executives. fat and says in the palatial offices, saw these new comers as mere annoyances, momentary interruptions in the "lasting dominance" of they Mercedes cars, buggy whips, candles and manual calculators. It was a classic example of myopia created by size and complacency and it was catastrophic miscalculation.
To a much lesser degree that we enjoy today our predecessor’s environment was on their side as well technology was expanding, although not with the microchip speed of today. Internet is epicenter of a commercial shockwave that is destined to change everything we think, we know about working and behavior. The group of entrepreneurial visionaries of the Artificial Intelligence will be the ultimate beneficiaries.
This is just my opinion, of course… Other knowledgeable people may disagree! God bless.
Written by Nitin Mendiratta.
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Category: essay |
