Newham Online News -5

Computing 2048

Ian Pearson, one of BT's leading futurists, caused something of a stir in the UK Futures group with the following article written to celebrate the 50 anniversary of the "birth" of the computer in which Ian sets out his view of the next 50 years. What do you think?

The first stored computer program was run 50 years ago on the 21 June 1948 at Manchester University on a computer called Baby. Today, binary is the world's most used language, with the vast bulk of conversations taking place between computers. It is therefore interesting to consider what life may be like as a result in 50 years time, 2048 - that is, assuming we have survived the millennium bug.

By 2015, computers will catch up in overall intelligence with humans, and will be designing their offspring. These will arrive faster and be even smarter than would be possible with human designers, and these offspring will design the next generation faster and better still. The impact of this positive feedback loop is hard to overstated. By 2020, machine knowledge will greatly exceed human knowledge, and even the smartest people won't be capable of understanding some of it. By 2048 computers will be approaching the limits imposed by physics. We don't know what these limits are yet, but at least 1000 million times the capability of the human brain is possible in a single device. When we further consider that the devices are all networked via a global superhighway, the combined capability is far beyond human imagination.

Such development is undoubtedly risky and requires very careful control, as Asimov emphasised many years ago. Terminator is technologically feasible and only good sense will avoid such nightmares. But the future looks very bright indeed. If we can manage the development so that they stay our friends, in just a few years we will see progress in every area of life that makes the preceding millennia look like we've all been asleep. It will be the equivalent of ETs landing and giving us all their ultra-advanced technologies. Disease could become a thing of the past. Hunger could be eliminated. We could get old without the annoyance of the physical ageing process. We will have complete mastery of genetics, changing from Darwinian to Lamarckian evolution. If time travel and warp drive are possible, we may be well on the way to their achievement. But however astounding these developments will be, they will be dwarfed by the benefits that come from one vitally important development, expected around 2030, direct computer-brain connection.

It would be dangerous to create machines that are much smarter than us without staying in control in some way. However well thought out Asimov's laws of robotics were, they could be dismissed by conscious machines. Only by directly linking to this superior intelligence can we prevent it from getting ahead. By 2015 we should be able to routinely make links to the peripheral nervous system, enhancing virtual reality and enabling 'Total Recall' style entertainment. By 2030 this will have evolved to the point of a direct link between our minds and the intelligence in the

machine. The computer will effectively be an extension to our brain. From this point on we are relatively safe from domination, since we have access to the same levels of intelligence as the machine world and are no longer at a disadvantage. By 2048, most of our knowledge, experiences and thoughts will be in cyberspace. Medicine may be able to cure diseases but we may still be accidentally killed, but no matter, we have a backup on the network. Simply download the backup into an android and carry on. Similarly, we could travel around the world at the speed of

light, a tenth of a second to Australia, and pickup a hire android to wander round. Even space colonisation could be begun. Our minds could be contained in a container less than a millimetre across and sent with some terraforming nanorobot through a synthetic wormhole. This Homo Machinus would have converged with the machine, immortal and with access to all human and machine knowledge. We would be in a shared consciousness with all other members of the species, all connected telepathically together via the network, just like the Borg on Star Trek. We could be the first species ever to accept voluntary biological extinction as we all switch to cyberspace.

Altogether, I'm sure you'll agree this is a pretty significant impact for a machine that started life with just 256 bytes of storage just 100 years earlier.

Best wishes for the next 50 years

Ian

contact details
e-mail: ian.pearson@bt-sys.bt.co.uk
internet site: http://www.labs.bt.com/people/pearsonid/
phone: +44 1473 642900
fax: +44 1473 649421
atoms: Admin 2, Post Point 6, BT Labs, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, IP5 3RE, UK

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