mel-ted response to Dr. Ian Pearson

Dr Ian Pearson, Futurizon Futurologist, talks about the next 

 wave of convergence between the digital and human.

 

This is from TEDxWarwick and it looks exactly like a university lecture, which it is. I have been at a university for 37 years and trust me, they aren’t TED quality.  University lectures have poorly prepared PowerPoint, and this one does too. They are often distant and the lecturer talks down to his audience, from a position of higher authority. They are often bereft of personal resonance on the part of the lecturer.  Ian Pearson is a smart cookie, even if he doesn’t know that bacteria do not contain mitochondria (perhaps mitochondria were once bacteria, as a matter of fact).  I am not sure that androids/robohumans will exceed his intelligence any time soon, even if they can beat him easily in chess.  The point of his lecture is that computers will become smarter and smarter over the short term and we don’t. They are also sensorial, sensing what is going on all over the world (Facebook, Twitter and Google have been doing this for months). Evenutally, there will be moral issues involved in their mortality and ours. Will it be okay to kill (terminate?) an android with ‘feelings’.  Will our computer clones make us (actually only the younger people, us over-thirties will not live long enough) immortal on the web?  Will computers be able to mish our DNA and create virtual kids when we are ninety? These are all worthy thoughts, but I am watching his talk and thinking about William Shakespeare, who lived four hundred years ago and is immortal, and I wonder what Ian Pearson (or any of us) will be other than dust four hundred years from now.  But if there are still people around, some of them will still be quoting Hamlet.