Witchcraft, Lunatics, and Radicals
Originally published to Life, by John on February 18, 2015.
I am a fan of the work of Alan Turing, a British Mathematician and Cryptologist. Creation of non-linear thought power and intelligent machines began under his genius (and the collected genius of many other mathematicians and inventors) during WW2, and eventually became what we know as 'computers'. There's an exceptional film about this on the market right now, called 'The Imitation Game,' which tells his life story.
I liked the film enough to make a facebook cover image paying homage to him. The image is of the 'Turing Machine,' while the quote is original, inspired by Turing’s story.
Also on my facebook, a discussion about tools, multipliers, and how things will continue to accelerate in terms of technological and social advancement.
"It's a simple miracle of multiplied human effort that multiple gallons of gas requires an hours worth of labor, in dollars. Same as it did 25 years ago. (Thanks capitalism! If I had to go get that gasoline myself with manual labor, instead of currency, it would take far more than an hour) But now you can fit a calculator, camcorder, a supercomputer, dictation machine, walkman, GPS navigation system, atlas (those two were separate products in our lifetimes, remember?), an entire library of every book published before 1900, every arcade on the planet, a radio, a walky-talky, a television, calendars, 5,000 photo albums, free encyclopedias- you name it- and all on a credit card sized piece of glass that fits in your pocket. It's so cheap that if it breaks, you don't hire a technician, you throw it away and buy a new one. Technology begets technology as well, and implementation of new technologies is increasingly rapid. Technology offering more features at a lower price, means more people using technology. And more technology in the hands of more people, means more dollars flowing through technology, and more information as well, making that technology EVEN MORE valuable.
Most Americans for 20 bucks can have a breakfast that a king could not have purchased at the turn of the 20th century. And their kids own technology representing knowledge and capabilities that presidents, princes, and billionaires could not have purchased 25 years ago. This is wealth of power, not of dollars. A month's worth of labor now purchases access to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of informational wealth, and billions of dollars worth of 1990s technological wealth. In my lifetime, gas went from 1.20 to 4 dollars. Technology went from countless millions to a few hundred bucks.
This wealth was created and developed by teams working together within corporations. Somebody complains because this year a CEO makes 350 million dollars as head of some technology group. But a CEO making 350 million dollars 25 years ago would have given every cent of it to have your used iPhone 4. A king in Europe 100 years ago would have given his kingdom to own what every American can acquire on a minimum wage job.
Wealth is compounding at unimaginable rates."