Singularity links.
Sorry, but I have to laugh at Ray Kurzweil talking about the next evolutionary leap when he can't even design a workable website. I was reading Vernor Vinge's article and I realized that 50% of the space was taken up with the name "Kurzweil" and some black-hole-type graphics; the scroll space was so pathetically small it recalled those old typewriters that would only hold a few lines of memory. I noticed every tenth word was hypertext, so I clicked on "computer science," just to see where it went; only then did I realize that it was the word "science," not "computer science" that was linked, and I had been transferred to a page with slow-loading flash graphics that was in turn linked to a bunch of articles about "science." I didn't care about any of those, but there was no link back to Vinge's article. I hit the back button and then half the "science" page disappeared, leaving me sitting there picking my nose. And the Singularity's coming when?
Yeah, I hate those tiny text boxes. I see them on lots of sites where I think someone was sold a bill of goods by some webshop. Only thing worse is having to scroll left/right. Groovy graphics are great, but as Jim knows, what people want is intuitive functionality.
I've got a hunch the singularity will be a multiplicity.
"sold a bill of goods by some webshop..."
Yeah, that sounds about right. Having too big of a budget (or just a budget at all) seems like a fairly negative thing for making a good site. It's very hard to learn the lesson that less is more, and I guess it's just about impossible if someone else is giving you money to do more instead of less (I'm assuming the Kurzweil site is funded by his publishers in the hopes of hawking more books, but I could be wrong.) Anyway, I don't care about all that, I'm just interested in the increasing use of 'singularity' in popular culture. If I'm any judge, this was a very arcane scientific concept when I first ran into it five or six years ago through the Terrence stuff. Now it seems like I hear it every day. And not just in fringe science publications. Probably this doesn't mean anything (and certainly it doesn't mean that a singularity is therefore approaching) but nonetheless I can't help but be interested. In my opinion it is the interesting thing. Then again, maybe people have always been speculating about this, and it's just the more I look the more I see what I'm looking for phenomenon.
If less is more is nothing everything?
I guess it asymptotes, if that's the word.
Kurzweil must be the Kenny G of AI.
Gresham's law, at least my reading of it,
seems to apply to cultural products almost
as smoothly as coin.
LOL. Now if Moore's Law just applied to my finances...
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- jim 5-21-2001 5:26 pm
Sorry, but I have to laugh at Ray Kurzweil talking about the next evolutionary leap when he can't even design a workable website. I was reading Vernor Vinge's article and I realized that 50% of the space was taken up with the name "Kurzweil" and some black-hole-type graphics; the scroll space was so pathetically small it recalled those old typewriters that would only hold a few lines of memory. I noticed every tenth word was hypertext, so I clicked on "computer science," just to see where it went; only then did I realize that it was the word "science," not "computer science" that was linked, and I had been transferred to a page with slow-loading flash graphics that was in turn linked to a bunch of articles about "science." I didn't care about any of those, but there was no link back to Vinge's article. I hit the back button and then half the "science" page disappeared, leaving me sitting there picking my nose. And the Singularity's coming when?
- tom moody 5-22-2001 4:08 am
Yeah, I hate those tiny text boxes. I see them on lots of sites where I think someone was sold a bill of goods by some webshop. Only thing worse is having to scroll left/right. Groovy graphics are great, but as Jim knows, what people want is intuitive functionality.
I've got a hunch the singularity will be a multiplicity.
- alex 5-22-2001 6:16 pm
"sold a bill of goods by some webshop..."
Yeah, that sounds about right. Having too big of a budget (or just a budget at all) seems like a fairly negative thing for making a good site. It's very hard to learn the lesson that less is more, and I guess it's just about impossible if someone else is giving you money to do more instead of less (I'm assuming the Kurzweil site is funded by his publishers in the hopes of hawking more books, but I could be wrong.) Anyway, I don't care about all that, I'm just interested in the increasing use of 'singularity' in popular culture. If I'm any judge, this was a very arcane scientific concept when I first ran into it five or six years ago through the Terrence stuff. Now it seems like I hear it every day. And not just in fringe science publications. Probably this doesn't mean anything (and certainly it doesn't mean that a singularity is therefore approaching) but nonetheless I can't help but be interested. In my opinion it is the interesting thing. Then again, maybe people have always been speculating about this, and it's just the more I look the more I see what I'm looking for phenomenon.
- jim 5-22-2001 7:11 pm
If less is more is nothing everything?
I guess it asymptotes, if that's the word.
Kurzweil must be the Kenny G of AI.
Gresham's law, at least my reading of it,
seems to apply to cultural products almost
as smoothly as coin.
- frank 6-26-2001 9:45 pm
LOL. Now if Moore's Law just applied to my finances...
- alex 6-27-2001 12:14 am