Weblog van Spruit
Goal in life: Create order, think lateral.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The BrainPod
This log relates to Psychological revolution? where the next expected age, the psychological or conceptual age, is described.
In such an age, of course, the iPod, iPhone, PDA and the like will be an archaic thing of the past. A curious device of our ancestors. We may learn about it in school. That is, if we choose to take the class ancient wireless computing.
We will marvel at the primitiveness of such a society where no one had a BrainPod yet. How hard that must have been to do all the reasoning and decision taking yourself! How did they make a week schedule for babysitting their kids? Were they really figuring that out themselves? You would not think of it every time, but that will be so much easier in the conceptual age.
You take your BrainPod and simply ask it: What is the optimal schedule for baby sitting my kid which is to be born next year? The BrainPod, knowing all your preferences, because you have had it all your life and have also been using it, will figure it out. It will know that for your type of work Friday is the best day to babysit. After linking to your wife's BrainPod, it will also know that for her Monday and Tuesday are good babysitting days. After linking to your mum's BrainPod it will know that for her Tuesday and Wednesday are good babysitting days. Since it also knows that your wife and you prefer your wife babysitting over your mum. It will appoint the Wednesday to your mum. Then it still has the Thursday to cover, but no one is available then. So it goes on the Internet and finds the day care you like best, The Wooden Shoes. It appoints the Thursday to The Wooden Shoes, making sure everything is also entered in the schedules of yourself, The Wooden Shoes, your mum and your wife. And then it will report to you: Done, schedule completed and agenda's updated.
And it will do all the other decision taking and reasoning as well! Holiday planning, choosing a new car, planning travel, choosing a new job, choosing a life partner?!
What will we be doing then? Well, in any case very little decision taking and reasoning. Maybe we need to review a decision sometimes, but we will have a lot of time left to do creative and conceptual stuff. Making music, painting, creating a new application architecture, cooking, playing with your kid, filosophizing, gardening, religion, research.
I am just beginning to think what this will imply for our society. Will we still have war when the reasoning is done by our BrainPod? Will the president of the US have one? What if it is hacked? Is he allowed to have one? What if you lose it?Labels: BrainPod, conceptual age
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Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Psychological revolution?
If you are friend, co-worker or family of me, there is a good chance you heard me muttering something about a psychological revolution I was expecting in the next 100 years. My idea was simple: we had an agricultural revolution, an industrial revolution, an information revolution...there must be another one heading our way!
After having machines do our physical work and having computers do our mental work the next logical area for man to engage in was, in my eyes, human psyche. I expect 'man' to develop very strong in this area over the next decades, to make big new discoveries about human psyche and how to utilize them in our advantage.
In Dan Pink I found someone likeminded. In his book 'A whole new mind' he shows he has given it much deeper thought than I have and I totally agree with him.
One thing that I hadn´t realized is that we do not need to wait until computers can take over all our mental tasks. A lot of it can be outsourced to countries like India! We are already entering the new era, called the conceptual era by Pink.
Only thing left for us to do is to start developing our right brain halves, because that is the area in which we can still add significant economic value. That is where the creative and empathic stuff is going on which cannot be fulfilled by Asia, Automation and Abundance, as Pink calls the three main thrusters for the conceptual era.
Now lets try not to forget all the left brain stuff we learned! Like my dad mentioned happened in a science fiction novel he read: computers did the thinking and someone had found a revolutionary new skill, head calculus...
And what about the Mayans in Guatemala? From the city ruins and art work I have seen they were pretty well right-brain-half-developed. I wonder whatever skills have been lost since that society died away?Labels: conceptual age, psychological revolution
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