Machines have gone farther and seen more … As they become smarter over the coming decades, space will be theirs. Organizations of robots of ever-increasing intelligence and sensory and motor ability will expand and transform what they occupy.
Predictor: Moravec, Hans
Prediction, in context:In his speech “Pigs in Cyberspace,” carried in the publication of presentations made at the 1992 Library and Information Technology Association conference in Chicago, Hans Moravec writes: ”Exploration and colonization of the universe awaits, but earth-adapted biological humans are ill-equipped to respond to the challenge. Machines have gone farther and seen more … As they become smarter over the coming decades, space will be theirs. Organizations of robots of ever-increasing intelligence and sensory and motor ability will expand and transform what they occupy … The final frontier will be urbanized, ultimately, into an arena where every bit of activity is meaningful computation: the inhabited portion of the universe will be transformed into a cyberspace. Because it will use resources more efficiently, a mature cyberspace of the distant future will be effectively much bigger than the present physical universe. While only an infinitesimal fraction of existing matter and space is doing interesting work, in a well developed cyberspace every bit will be part of a relevant computation or will be storing a useful datum. Over time, more compact and faster ways of using space and matter will be invented and used to restructure the cyberspace, effectively increasing the amount of computational spacetime per unit of physical spacetime.”
Biography:Hans Moravec was a professor at Carnegie Mellon university’s Robotics Institute who caused a lot of consternation with the book “Mind Children: The Future of the Robot and Human Intelligence,” in which he predicted the rise of machines and extinction of humans. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1992
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Thinking Robots, An Aware Internet, and Cyberpunk Librarians
Title, headline, chapter name: Pigs in Cyberspace
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 15
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garrison, Betty