Today, cutting edge collaboration in the enterprise is all about enabling the employee through the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies. In the ‘wiki workplace’ the goal is to change the culture of the firm. Create an open and transparent environment where employees, partners and customers can to share information and collaborate on a global scale. Today, the wiki workplace is a scary depiction of the future for most organizations.
So I would expect most CEOs to have a heart attack at the latest predictions from Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil predicts that by 2029 “hardware and software will achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence”. He goes on to state that we will have “intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons”.
He makes the point that “We’re already a human machine civilization, we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that”. Fair enough, ABS brakes and traction control can enhance driving ability and prevent you from crashing your car. (granted this is still a ways off from a nanobot in your brain)
If Kurzweil is right this means in 20 years voluntary human to human collaboration could be a thing of the past. Rather than relying on employees to adopt new tools and ways of working after a merger you will simply insert an ‘upgraded nanobot’ and move on. If you want to get the latest customer feedback why not have the nanobot in your product solicit the consumers opinion from his hybrid brain. In this future workplace the focus would no longer be on collaboration among employees, but rather compatibility between nanobots.
While all of this sounds intriguing, for the time being I think I will stick with Web 2.0
[...] religion. While a plausible case may be made, I’ll remind you of a quote from Brendan’s recent post - a prediction that intelligent nanobots go into our brains through capillaries and interact [...]
I’m all for nano technology. There’s a lot of stuff in my daily life that I can do, or think better. I’m more than happy to let a nano bot do it for me.
E.g. nano bot may have a complete control of my brain from the time I wake up to when I’m sitting in office finished removing spam mails. They’ll make me drive better and go to gym more regularly. Of course I’ll be half replicator but it is so cool I’ll volunteer for it.
(I watch too much stargate atlantis)
The story from Ray K is really about a gradual transcendence from our biology, not from our human selves. Just imagine two things. First, an ability to have a thought and being able to look it up on Wikipedia and to search it on Google just by thinking it instead of typing it in or dictating it to your iPhone. Second, imagine being able to truly process multiple streams of information at once. Today a person can’t even read an email and talk on the phone without losing a good deal of either stream.
Inhabiting the Web 2.0 world (forget 2029 for a second) without the constraints of our current biological I/O modalities would lead to a fundamentally different world than that which we experience today. Scary, sure, but also very tantalizing.
“Radical Evoluation” by Joel Garreau is a short(er) overview of the pro’s and con’s of Ray K’s predictions in tome “The Singularity is Near”. However, the scenario I describe above doesn’t even need human-level AI or carbon nanobots, just some predictable progress down the paths of current brain research, computational neuroscience, and wet (ie, biological) nanoscience.
This would be very useful for the conversation economy that seems to be proliferating the web right now. Companies are investing in what’s now called “conversational marketing” and what has always been marketing with better tools. I wonder if the lack of human interaction and emotion would ever be a good thing?
[...] Peat, do blog Wikinomics recentemente chamou a atenção para uma evolução tecnológica que pode mudar os rumos dos estudos das redes sociais baseadas em [...]