In 2088, our branch on the tree of life will come crashing down, ending a very modest (if critically acclaimed) run on planet earth. The culprit? Not global warming. Not atomic war. Not flesh-eating bacteria. Not even too much television. The culprit is the integrated circuit … By 2090, the computer will be twice as smart and twice as insightful as any human being. It will never lose a game of chess, never forget a face, never forget the lessons of history. By 2100, the gap will grow to the point at which homo sapiens, relatively speaking, might make a good pet. Then again, the computers of 2088 might not give us a second thought.
Predictor: Blonder, Greg
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 essay for Wired magazine, Greg Blonder, a scientist in the communications industry, writes: ”In 2088, our branch on the tree of life will come crashing down, ending a very modest (if critically acclaimed) run on planet earth. The culprit? Not global warming. Not atomic war. Not flesh-eating bacteria. Not even too much television. The culprit is the integrated circuit – aided by the surprising power of exponential growth. We will be driven to extinction by a smarter and more adaptable species – the computer. And our only hope is to try and accelerate human evolution with the aid of genetic engineering …The cost and intelligence of computers follows an exponential curve, having improved by a factor of two every 30 months over the last century. That’s a factor of 1 trillion every 100 years, and there is no sign the pace will slow appreciably for another century. Processors that once filled entire floors – directing the manufacture of automobile engines – now sit inside V-8s, adjusting valve timing. And by 2088, that box of silicon, wires, and plastic will place humans on the endangered species list. Why 2088? Well, by 2088, the next factor of a trillion enables computers to match human beings in skills and intelligence. In some respects, they already have. The ‘operating system’ for a person is his or her genetic code. DNA instructs each cell in a body how to grow, how to deal with infection, and how to wire neurons in the brain to think. The program is about 3 billion bits long. Sure, 3 billion bits sounds impressive, but the genetic code is small enough to fit comfortably on a CD-ROM. Like DOS, each new version consists of modules incorporating the baggage of previous generations – the history of evolution is written in our genes. But unlike DOS, even some minor code rewrites are worth the price of an upgrade. For example, out of the 3,000,000,000 odd bits of DNA, human beings and chimpanzees have 2,999,400,000 in common … By 2088, enough code will exist to fill the silicon brain. Like our own DNA, the computer’s genetic code will betray its heritage after millions of experiments. The scary thing isn’t that computers will match our intelligence by 2088; the scary thing is that this exponential curve keeps on going, and going, and going. By 2090, the computer will be twice as smart and twice as insightful as any human being. It will never lose a game of chess, never forget a face, never forget the lessons of history. By 2100, the gap will grow to the point at which homo sapiens, relatively speaking, might make a good pet. Then again, the computers of 2088 might not give us a second thought. What’s a poor human to do? We might fight back, smashing integrated-circuit fab lines, but society couldn’t function without its silicon codependents.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Faded Genes
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.03/blonder.if_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney