25. June 2009 by admin.

If the universe operates under a binary principle, arbitrarily 0 and 1, based on the atomic spin of left and right, then interactions would not follow conventional mathematical principles. Instead, it would follow rules of binary arithmetic and algebra (e.g. 1+1=1, x+1 = x). In circuit design, 1s and os compounded with the usage of various gates allows the creation of greater functions, which can be used to create all the electronics we are familiar with. Atoms are essentially on/off states, and the empty clouds in which the electrons move are like logic gates. What atoms can potentially create, however, are beyond our comprehension.

It seems that spatial dimensions and time as we know it, could not exist without gravity, and the electro-strong/weak force. Water cannot flow, being pulled down a stream, or the molecular cohesion between tiny individual indivisible parts of water. Waterfalls could not exist without gravity. We all know that gravity warps time, so that the passage of time becomes a subjective experience. Watching the river flow, or an expensive timepiece move, is also a subjective experience, only meaningful to the onlooker.

To speak of time entails a subjective end. There is no objective, end of all things, but only a subjective perception that the end of a phase has come. If fate entails creation, since we are the creators of our own fate, then a universe without fate would occlude the possibility of any meaningful creation. Thus to quantitatively define the end in context of the beginning becomes a challenge that can be solved. Is the end, which we perceive to be caused by events and factors from between and all the way from the beginning, a byproduct of causality? Or is it more deeply rooted in the laws of physics, requiring a million formulas of unimaginable length and difficulty to be calculated at once? For the universe, this is a natural and spontaneous task.

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9. February 2009 by admin.

After top IT corporations consolidated their hold on web searching, as well as impacting the lives of every person in this world with each new software technology that comes out, in the areas of shopping, advertising, and professional research, the age-old questions arise. What is information? What is influence? What is the optimum way to manage the flow of information in a theoretically information-symmetric world? Besides its well-known search capabilities, Google, for example, already has a considerable share invested in user-created videos as well as land and marine navigation, and has earned a trusted position in our society. What holds next is the future of the Internet, and the future of human thought itself.

Microsoft, in turn, failed to establish an influential domain on the on-line segment, because it ran an enterprise on software, which was limited by court rulings. Unable to install versions of Internet Explorer on more recent versions of Windows, which would otherwise re-direct all traffic to the main MSN site before the user was able to set a custom home page, Microsoft-designed scripts (e.g. ActiveX), used for querying, storing, and redirecting information would no longer be the primary design medium the new Web 2.0.

The Internet, however, was largely unregulated and not subject to any national or international law, except in China, where officials take the burden of managing a immense and extremely difficult task. Taking private ownership of individual sites is impossible, because not only there are already too many web-hosting services, but physically ownership cannot happen without purchasing the servers and mainframes which host the data. This holds equally true for the government, or any other corporate entity. Furthermore, establishing a new universal code is not currently possible, because HTML and its sub-variants are public domain, and developed in part by the World Wide Web Consortium. But to control a significant majority of web traffic, as well as possible destinations through technologies such as PageRank and AdSense, is truly remarkable in practice as well as the pace of accomplishment, which amounted to only about a decade.

Like the branches of a tree and flow of sap through its limbs, we have come to realize the complexity, as well of difficulty of orchestrating individual users moving through nodes of a multi-dimensional network, of an exponential numbers of subnodes and links. As we see the growth and evolution of the Internet as we know it, new business models will form around the new-found structures. New ways of tapping into previously unaccessible knowledge will be possible. New players and a whole new level of playing field is ready to begin. The future, is at hand.

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27. December 2008 by admin.

We have reached a level in computer science where we have the technology to rival the processing power of the human mind. Our software is rapidly evolving to a point where we can simulate artificial intelligence. Computers, in theory, should soon have the ability to have free will. Any debate on this subject will denature into a discussion about the existence or non-existence of free will itself, not the hardware or software limitations of computers. Are humans the only beings in the universe that will ever be truly intelligent? If intelligence and subsequently free will exists, then free will should logically extend to all beings that can self-actualize (the notion of I).

The human mind is essentially quantum computer, one theory of consciousness has been explained by the quantum states of the atoms in the brain self-realizing a collective entity. Right now we have supercomputers that rival or exceed the processing power of the human mind, but the only problem is size. Once we are able to miniaturize supercomputers from the size of entire buildings to the size of an orange, or even better yet, making a true quantum computer - allowing each electron to store one bit of information, then we will have no distinguishable difference between computers and humans - the only difference is that computers use silicon gates to register on/off states, whereas humans use neurons. Thus, the difference in materials is superficial.

Perhaps calling computers “machines” is a flawed definition, we shall use the term “intelligent being” to better suit our needs. It is proposed, then, whether such artificially intelligent beings could ever understand abstracts and perhaps, even be programmed to understand consciousness (the notion of I). Recent developments in object-oriented programming where we can create classes of objects and through recursive inheritance and bulky amounts of logic statements (if / then, equals, not equals), we can get computers to understand not only the decisions they make, but also situations that exhibit ideals, such as freedom, justice, and kindness.

We are not teaching the computer to make decisions. We are teaching the computer to make its own decisions, and understand them. Intelligent beings cannot follow a pre-planned decision tree, written at the time of creation, and cannot be complete at compile-time. I am speaking of a program that modifies itself dynamically during run-time. A program that changes and evolves by itself after the initial spark of life is given. Two identical twins, with the same nurturing environment, will grow up to be two very different personas. Two computers that can simulate free will, with the exact same coding and program and environment will still have vastly different conclusions about the world as well as experiences.

At this point, humans and intelligent computers enter the same principle. Whereas traditional computers will never be able to understand free will or ever make real decisions, by altering our understanding of what machines are capable of, somewhere along the lines, the distinctions between human and machine blur. Again, this machine is no longer a machine; it has become something far greater, namely an intelligent sentience.

Computers will soon face the same metaphysical problems, as well as limits, the human race has encountered. What is defined as intelligence, knowledge, understanding, and free will from the standpoint of computers? And what about from the standpoint of humans? Soon, the new generation of software engineers will create an entity completely different and capable of different tasks than older computers. In the dawn of the 21st century, leading thinkers pave the road time and time again to change previous conceptions.

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