Johann   tag: progress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect

So completely out of left field, I stumble across this sentence that I suspect will now haunt me forever:

the sustained behavior of a species or group can shape the evolution of that species

update : https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/03/21/2256217/satellite-navigation-switches-off-parts-of-brain-used-for-navigation-study-finds

Keep it turned off, and there you go. Augmented reality anyone? Let's gamify the shit out of people, until they themselves are nothing but a thin client, a derpy blob without any inner or outer structure.

Not every change constitutes progress just because it occurs later chronologically. If chronology is your only measure of something, that means you have no measure; and if it's not, why even bring it up?

The idea of progress as a straight line is nonsense anyway. If anything, it's like a tree that goes into all sorts of directions from any given starting point. Sure, we made progress along a certain route of branches, but that's pretty much all we know. We have no idea where other branches would have taken us, or wether we might be going in circles in some way.

We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type. I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.

Eric Schmidt

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/08/eric-schmidt-on-future-of-search.html

You know how in ancient times people who figured out how to predict an eclipse went on to play big boy with their oh so advanced, magic knowledge, and had that go to their head? We still live in those times.

Why do websites seem to be evolving not like sneakers or buildings or toothbrushes (= usable, recognizable, but wildly varying in design), but more like an AK-47? Because "cheap and fast to produce, high rate of conversions" is all there is to making a website? Then why not skip to injecting ad-bots that assemble themselves out of waste directly in the brain?

How did the web invented by universities to exchange information and used by people to communicate turn this hellhole of pamphlets and parrots, and so fast?

Did you know that 100000 years of progress can be undone in just a few generations, by people not teaching and/or learning (even just one generation if, they're really good about not passing anything on)? I didn't, until that occured to me yesterday. Now I'm nervous.