Redjule\’s ChangeLog

I am a computer freak. I tweak, mod, and tinker with the software and hardware constantly. Anyone else sitting down at my machine is usually confused for a moment or two. There are no desktop icons, no toolbar, no start. Just my wallpaper of Lain, unobstructed by clutter. Strange that my computer is so well-organized (recently added a second hard drive just for games), while everything else in my life isn’t. Perhaps I’m getting too attached to my computer.

About two months ago I decided to upgrade my computer. My old 750Mhz Athlon could no longer handle the games I was throwing at it. So I went to Fry’s and bought a new motherboard, new ram and a new processor. Life was good. Once I got the machine running it wouldn’t run at the right speed. My 1.7 MHz chip was underclocked to 1.3 Mhz. Every time I rebooted I had to clear the CMOS. I took the board back. Same model problems. I took that one back. Got a different board (An Asus KT333, which I love). Won’t start at all. Turns out that my old case was shorting out the motherboard. Once this was resolved I ran into memory dumps and driver conflicts. And eventually discovered that the brand new memory I bought at the start of this ordeal was faulty. But now my computer is fixed. But really, it’s not really the same computer at all. All I kept were the drives. I ditched the original OS, so I was able to get rid of the support CDs and crap software from Compaq. And I finally have documentation on what’s in my system. I also needed a bigger power supply to run the board.

The entire time I was having computer troubles I was miserable. I had strange back pains and I slept like crap. The only thing that made it bearable was playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on my PS2 (which is just a specialized computer). I spend hours on my computer. Sure I was out of the house most of the day yesterday, but I was right back online when I got in the door.

I remember the height of cyberpunk influence. Cyberpunk was a big deal because it told stories where technology was integrated into almost every part of society. Cyberpunk is no longer relevant because we as a society have reached that point. Like me, American society can not cope without its computers. Traffic lights, ATMs, TV stations, air traffic control, power plants, communications; without computers, our entire life style comes to a halt. Many people (maybe most people) don’t realize the very important decisions we have to make about technology in the near future.
The Singulary is coming. What do I mean? Here’s a qoute from Kurzweilai.net, the website of computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil:

"The Singularity" is a phrase borrowed from the astrophysics of black holes. The phrase has varied meanings; as used by Vernor Vinge and Raymond Kurzweil, it refers to the idea that accelerating technology will lead to superhuman machine intelligence that will soon exceed human intelligence, probably by the year 2030.

People don’t talk about the Singularity much. It frightens people. But with the exponential growth of technology it seems very likely that we will have to deal with this in our lifetimes. Computerized entities could be our friends, our co-workers, even our loved ones. (How big a step is it from having an online relationship to having a virtual one? Not as far as we think.) Maybe it sounds like I’ve read too much science fiction, but remember cloning used to be just for mad scientists in secret underground lairs. We already have robot vacuums and virtual personalities. What is Mickey Mouse, if he isn’t a virtual personality?

Our growing reliance on computers and our increasing attachment to them is another step in human evolution (scary!). I’m sure I sound like a complete nut, but we already live alongside our computers, and sometime fairly soon we will live with them. There are a lot of important desicions that need to be made soon, and I’m not so certain our leaders are up to it. So what’s an appropriate response? Terror? Panic? Get chipped? Become a Luddite? Well I suggest we embrace it. Great change is coming. We can kick and scream, or we can hold our heads high and get ready for things we can hardly imagine. I choose to be excited. The future we were promised might be on it’s way. I’ll take my jet pack now.