Ray Kurweil, in his seminal work “ the singularity is near” referred to this cumulative aggregation of development as convergence and he clearly recognized how advancement in multiple different fields would create a positive feedback loop that would drive other rapid advancements.

I am not a historian or a time traveler ( but I’d love to be a time traveler) but I’ve read a lot of old books. In those days they had very strong ideas about manners, about class status, and about personal honor. There were rules about how you addressed someone even in bitter disagreements. Insults were common but there were lines you could not cross. Not recognizing someone by their name and title was deliberately disrespectful and rude in a way that demanded “ satisfaction” …. In essence when someone crossed that line and insulted your honor the rules of civil society demanded you duel, and duels were deadly affairs.

Thanks for this. You have developed an excellent set of resources for studying this period

I use telemedicine regularly and it beats the hell out of sitting in a doctor office waiting room for an hour just to review test results and get recommendations. I can go to a testing lab for blood and urine work, to an imaging center for scans and then just meet remotely with the doc for a review. The in person exam is occasionally necessary but not for just a consultation

If it leads to greater efficiency, corporations will not hesitate to pay. As an example in my job as a project engineer I am preparing for a Site Acceptance Test on a multi million dollar upgrade to a pharmaceutical packaging and inspection line. That involves reams of documentation. User Requirements Specifications, Functional Design Specifications, Field Acceptance Testing, Site Acceptance Testing, Process SOPs, Technical and Users manuals and Validation requirements all linked together by a traceability matrix that shows how it all ties together. This is thousands of pages of documents that need to be summarized for different reports and departments at various stages of the process. There are templates and standards for each report they all require pulling information from different sources and referencing it all correctly. Having an AI that could automatically track all that information and populate documents according to the templates and standards, that would be huge. Most corporate document work involves interactions with other docs and drawings and spreadsheets. Automating even a small percentage of that is worth millions in labor savings ( and will involve layoffs across multiple industries)

That’s exactly the point. Computers have gotten faster but the way we use them hasn’t changed. We are just running prettier and more graphic detailed versions of the software we used in 2006. That is about to change

“Barring the most graphics-heavy computer games, a half-decade old computer today can easily handle most of the things it is required to do, whether at home or at work”

That is the essence of what is about to change. The desktop computer paradigm has been stagnant for a decade or more but that is about to change and it will require significantly more processing power. The current menu/icon driven approach we see in most desktop Office programs will be replaced by AI driven assistants that are generations ahead of the Siri model in use now. I predict the end of the “Office PC” is on the way sooner rather than later. The idea of embedded intelligence has been around for a while. I think we are seeing it emerge now

The Bessemer steel making process was developed in the mid 1800’s. Prior to that metal working was a specialized task suitable for individual weapons and armor but didn’t scale up to the volume needed to fortify a castle or other structure.

I’m the 70s or 80s they had a fad where people kept pet rocks. The bar is surprisingly low.

If you look at music recording, there was a time when it required a dedicated multimillion dollar multi-track studio with effects and a team including engineers and producers to make and distribute an album. Now individuals and bands can do that on their own. Yes, studios and record companies still exist and control the top selling artists but independents can and do get themselves out their using readily available and relatively low cost hardware and software. I suspect AI movie production will go the same way. There will an underground of independent movie makers writing and producing films without actors or sets. They will create the story and the script and then curate the AI to turn the story into a movie.