Networking in the Future

Starting in the school year 2010/2011, ISB students in grade six will each be assigned a laptop that they can use in school and also take home. Students will use these computers for in-class work and, more importantly, to connect to networks of other students, teachers and adults outside the ISB community. Other ISB students who don’t have an assigned laptop will still be able to connect to numerous networks. These ISB students will be a small part of the increasingly expanding system of networks all connected by the Internet. We might ask, “What will the extent of these networks be in the future, and what kind of importance will they have?”

We only have to look at FaceBook today with over 400 million users to understand how quickly networks connected by the Internet will proliferate and expand in terms of number of members and importance to those users. And yet, the FaceBook of today is just a tiny and almost insignificant beginning. For a real understanding of the future power of networks we need to look at some of the predictions of one of the premier inventors and futurists of our time: Ray Kurzweil.

Ray Kurzweil has written several books in which he makes predictions of what the future holds for all of us in terms of the explosion of artificial intelligence and how it will change our lives. His predictions:

· Sometime after 2020 a computer will pass the “Turing Test” which means that in a “blindfold” test a person will not be able to tell if she is talking to a computer or a human. (From “The Singularity is Near.”)

· Not long after 2020, a $1,000 personal computer will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain. (From “The Age of Spiritual Machines.”)

· In 2045 the “Technological Singularity” arrives: $1000 will buy a computer a billion times more intelligent than every human combined. The Technological Singularity means that artificial intelligence will have surpassed humans as the smartest life forms on the planet. (From “The Singularity is Near.”)

Of course we need to keep in mind that each of these computers, which is a billion times more intelligent than the intelligence of all humans together, will be connected to a network of hundreds of millions or even billions of similarly intelligent computers. It’s truly difficult to comprehend the power of the networks of the future. Kurzweil’s story gets even better as the next step is truly mind-boggling:

Kurzweil has written that when the limit to how small transistors can be shrunk is reached, the only way that computers can become more powerful is to increase in size. Sometime post 2045 Kurzweil predicts that, “Artificial Intelligences will convert more and more of the Earth's matter into engineered, computational substrate capable of supporting more A.I.s. until the whole Earth is one, gigantic computer.” (The Singularity is Near)

Waking Up the Universe

The final step in this process is almost unimaginable for us today:

“At this point, the only possible way to increase the intelligence of the machines any farther is to begin converting all of the matter in the universe into similar massive computers. A.I.s radiate out into space in all directions from the Earth, breaking down whole planets, moons and meteoroids and reassembling them into giant computers. This, in effect, "wakes up" the universe as all the inanimate "dumb" matter (rocks, dust, gases, etc.) is converted into structured matter capable of supporting life (albeit synthetic life).” (The Singularity is Near)

Our students today occupy a small position just at the beginning of this massive, powerful, and intelligent network. The artificial intelligence advances described above will arrive sooner than we might expect since we are used to thinking, as Kurzweil says, “in a linear fashion” and technology advances are speeding up at an exponential rate. It would behoove teachers to help students understand their position at this historical moment so that they can better contribute to and benefit from the AI network.