"Why the Web will implode, search will be obsolete, and everything else you need to know about technology is in your brain."
'Breakpoints' are everywhere, but not seen. Everything has a 'breakpoint.'This is where and when a substance can no longer grow. This story 'Breakpoint' is by Jeff Stibel, it has 204 pages within 12 chapters. I read it from Thursday November 21, 2013 to Sunday February 23, 2014.
THE CASE OF THE CANNIBLISTIC REINDEER
There were 29 reindeer taken to an Island in 1963. The population jumped to 6000, however the reindeer ended up eating themselves as oppose to y starving to death. Reindeer usually migrate but couldn't because they were on an Island.
We are so obese because we get to much food and don't know what to do with it, so obese. Most of us can't stop eating until the food in front of us is finished. There is no common 'breakpoint' on the human diet. So you have to make one It is extremely hard to stop yourself from eating, so my friend and I have discovered a method that works for us. Instead of the common 'leftovers,' we make 'preovers.' These are done before we eat, so we don't overeat. This works very well for us. It may work for you.
"There is a point when too much knowledge is bad, "information overload." "Even the sturdiest shelf crumbles under the weight of too many books." If you learn a lot you become takes the fun out of learning. You could easily get confused. 'Information overload' makes you so busy with learning about life you don't have time to live your own.
"Growth is not a bad thing, unless it becomes the only thing." Growing is not a difficult thing, but it shouldn't be the only thing an organism is doing in the time it has. It actually cannot be, because none of us live in a bubble, so there are distractions everywhere you look. These distractions help you as much and some hurt.
ANTS
Deborah Gordon studies ants. There are 12,000 different types of ants. They are on every continent except Antarctica. They are even mentioned in The Old Testimant and The Koran.
The flying females leave the hive to start a new hive and mate with males and males die. After that they forage for food and maintain the nest. The queen is the one responsibility is to give birth. They normally live around fifteen to twenty years. When the queen is old it is replaced. Worker ants only live for 1 year. The females are sent off to create new colonies.
Ants are strong but not that intelligent. They have collective contiousness and memory. After mating the male dies and the female loses her wings.
They defend their territories. Forming complex structures they have to defend is a big job. They create meals. Air conditioning for nest pushes warm air out and pulls in fresh air. There are even slave ants. They know nothing else but how to be a slaves. There are more ants then mammals.There total weight exceeds the weight of humans. If they could organize themselves into a super colony they could be the stongest animal.
Despite ants size they are very good at communicating. Ants communicate through scent. Their bodies are covered with a greasy layer cuticular hydrocarbon-scent covered.
They touch antenna to tell the colony they belong. Through smell they can tell everything from the task they are doing to what they ate. Ants have the greatest sense of smell of any inscect.
They have 400 noses while honeybees only have 200 and fruit fly have 61. The amount of noses ants have probably contributes to social organization. Some inscects mimic sense of smell and invade colony's and eat larvae.
TECHNO-BRAIN
Our brains are pretty sophisticated, if not the most sophisticated network.
Brains are a mystery that was seen in the last 50 years with MRIs. Neurons communicate chemically like ants and through electrical currents. Human brain grows rapidly. Neurons individually are not intelligent like a single ant, but in groups they are. "As brains shrink as it grows wiser."
Technology is based off nature. We made eye glasses to improve our vision. We made planes copying how birds flew. Soon there are goning to be pumps for hearts. However we have not yet found a way to fix brains that suffered a loss of oxygen as of yet. There is a new way to preserve brain neurons though. We can not bring back memories yet, but through hypnotherapy more memories are being recovered.
No matter how good we think the internet is, it may seem like most technology that is rewriting our brain. Two technologies that are mostly used are the cell phone and computers. 2.4 billion people surfing the web over the per hour, and over 600 million sites visited. Netflix draws more users now then youtube. Now Facebook has more users than the entire internet had in 2004. Internet surfing grew 70 percent in 2004 as well. Mobile web grew 70 percent in 2012.
The way the internet can support all these users is by a program called tcp (Transmission Control Protocal.) It moniters speed. There are three phases of networks growth, breakpoint and equilibrium. Memories are the RAM of the brain. Websites are the internets memories.
Look at the internet. It started as a network of a few computers. It grew extremely slow, but grew nonetheless. Around 2000, the number of connections exploded to five billion in eight years.
Now more devices than people are connected to it. The network growth is hard to control. People don't know how networks got to the capacity they are until they exceeded it both in nature and technology. These are some networks I am talking about: speed limits, weights on elevators, everyone individualy has a breakpoint of getting drunk, the maximum oven temperature, and also the brain sheding neurons. The thing that is scary is if you undershoot you or the item could collapse as well.
MYSPACE
MySpace grew out of control. It grew from 0-100 million users within 3 year. The average user had handful to 200 friends. Their pages became cluttered with wigits and ads, it became to congested. It grew to fast beyond its breakpoint.
INTERNET
It was created in the 1960s and at first was called called Advanced Reseach Project Agency (ARPA) and was a division of Department of Defence. It kept crashing after a few minutes. Its mission was to preserve our technological superiority. The ethernet was invented in 1973. It is basically a connected internet.
In 1990, the DOD moved its data to a different network gave ARPAnet to the NSF. It doubled in size in 7 months to 50000 networks in 4000 institutions. It was still controlled by the government, however in 1994 it gave up control to individual industry.
Companies created Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in Californua, New York, Chicogo and Washington DC. In 1995 it was decommissioned and the web was created. It grew to over six million users across all industries by 1995. It double the next year. In 5 years over 300 million people were using it. It broke 36 Grand
within ten years. At last count it had 2.4 billion users or 34 percent of worlds population. Thanks to fiber optic cables under ocean floor we can all communicate worldwide. In 2012 devices exceeded 9 billion over the Earths population and it's predicted to skyrocket to 50 billion or more by 2020.
GROWTH
Everything grows as much as the environments allows. If you put bacteria in a petri dish they will double every minute until the dish is full. In human brain the rapid neurons grow 100 billion per minute. A fetus neurons grow 250,000 billion per minute.
The world is competitive. The best way to make it was thought to consume all resoures before someone else does. Survival depends on it in most cases.
How big is it? It is monstrous and growing. Twenty homes today produce a technological footprint as much as the whole country in 2008. A single hour there is enough traffic that seven million DVD are capable of holding. In 2015 that number is predicted to increase by four times.
Bob Metcalf predicted a technology supernova in 1995. It kept growing because we find new supports for it. Skulls limit our brains growth. The brain consumes so much energy. The evolution creates food to offset limitation. Its efficiency trumps intelligence in wild animals, that's why their brain is so small.
Recent estimates of internet energy consumption is two percent of the national amount of energy. That may not seem to be a lot, but it is. The energy consumption of Google alone is enough to power 200,000 homes for one year. That is about 260 million watts or a quarter of the output of a large nuclear power plant. The internet is consuming 20 percent of the worlds power as much as a brain consumes of a body's power. If the internet continues to grow at this rate it will take down the energy grid in the near future. This can add to Global Warming, if it doesn’t take down the energy grid. On the good side people have made ways to maximize energy efficiency. People have grouped similar items together, the same as the brain has grouped our sight and smell together to save energy.
The Cerebral Cortex is in charge of reason, consciousness, judgement and decision making. We have a larger one then most other animals. Elephants have bigger brains but smaller cortical size. The neocortex is the newest part of the brain, being developed 200,000 years ago. This is in charge of our higher brain functions.
The World Wide Web was created in 1983. No websites were on it until 1993. There were twenty million in 2002. In 2012 there were sixty million. A person growing that much would be able to reach the moon at 10. The web has added new words to our vocabulary to describe size. Computers were first measured in megabytes and gigabytes, now petabytes and exabytes. Even those are too small. It will be a couple zettabytes 10 to the 23rd by 2013. It is not limited to space because its software. Its a network like a spiderweb subject to carrying capacity. We view an estimate 2600 pages a day, and 90 sites a month. Our internet addiction is getting worse. Surfing is the major cause. Internet addiction is now a serious problem. The Psychological Association classified it as a disorder. A girl drugged her parents with sleeping pills so she could use the web. It took the place of so many not only multimedia, school and actually communication with people.
"The web is just to big for any current organization scheme to handle." The web has exceeded its breakpoint and without search engines it would be worse. Apps are decreasing web usage.The web has to collapse to find its equilibrium.
Each website is connected to 60 others or more just like each neuron is connected to thousands of others
The co-founder of Myspace, Anderson, got in trouble with the FBI, for hacking into Chase Manhattan Bank and his computer was confiscated
The average Facebook user has 262 friends. In 2012, Facebook had fewer users on computer versions then mobile devices. It turns out with Facebook less stuff (hardware) equals more users. Instagram post to Facebook or use as social network on its own. A Canadian woman lost her Depression Disabilty claim when she posted pics of vacation on Facebook. Divorce lawyers, now, moniter Facebook to find dirt on opposing side. A mom lost custody of child because she was spending to much time playong Farmville on Facebook. Hashtag# and tweet were made up by people not twitter.
Marrisa Meyer simplified Googles homepage. She then went to Yahoo.
Everyone was leaving Yahoo. They were ready to sell to Microsoft.
Apple has been fading. So they fired the CEO Steve Jobs and replaced with managers. Then Steve returned and brought the company back and turned it into the biggest company by returning to fundementals and blossomed
YAHOO
It was begun as Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web. Two Stanford PHDs
David Filo and Jerry Yang started this. It grew into dynamic, feature rich, one stop shop. Yahoo was first used for surfing and exploring the site. It wasn't search engine. It was like a tour guide of the web.
If you landed on a planet you wouldn't know what was out there. Without knowledge of what was out there you could not search for anything in particular. Search engines were vastly coming to surface when web grew: Lycos, Excite, Alta Vista, Magellan, Infoseek, Dogpile and Yahoo joined up with Google in 2000.
Search now means filter. Webmasters now create and choose which sites you will be linked to. Every page is linked and id endorced by the webmaster. Yahoo advertises on Google.Now Google has little competition: Blekko with no ads, Wolfrm Alpha- answers factual questions directly then provides links, Duckduckgo-features cute duck uses wickepedia.
Facebook may charge one cent above certain amount of friends to curtail friedships and communication. Three years after Facebook opened to the world and it took five years from its founding it to made money. Google revenue grew from $83-1.5 million in 5 years.
The search revoltion has three fronts..
They incorporate context to personalize results, they have human -machine interface and a perfected search box iliminated, as well as the searching is predicted to decline, turn to specialized application.
"Total personalization in this new world will require total transparency. That is going to be the price. If you want to have total personalization, you have to be totally transparent. "
EQUILIBRIUM
The biological networks fail only if there is a major environmental disaster. Networks grow in quality not quantity after an equilibrium breakpoint. When the size slows communication, intelligence and consciousness speed up. But this has an unidentified leadership. It is amazing that our differences as well as species could be from a neurological firing. We still don't know how many Neurons make a living thing intelligent. Is a network of ants collectively intelligent? Is collective intelligence the same as singular intelligence?
In the 1880s a group of scientist from all across the globe were brought together and asked what they thought New York City would look like in 100 years? They said it would be no more. There was a massive population boom 30,000 to a near 4 million doubling every ten years. Predicting the future is hard and people get ridiculed more then taken seriously. Most people just assume more of the same, discounting inventions that will play a definate role. A typical home in North America today generates over five percent of what the whole world did during all of 2008 in terms of Internet traffic. Beyond the breakpoint lies new ideas, new technologies, and new opportunities.
Easter Island had many natural resources and peaceful cooperative people. It had beautiful forest, a couple dozen tree species. The population flourished. Then it shrank due to an unknown cause. There is archeological evidence of caniblizm. The trees were slow growing. The populatuion may not have known that. Partly this is because boats couldn't be built or managed and the foodsource of fish couldn't be counted on. Erosion and nutrient depletion prevented farming that would sustain the population. Without forest the farms were unprotected.
The brain is an island itself, surrounded by the skull. It consumes 20 percent of the bodies energy. It is 2 percent of body weight. We have the biggest brain relative to our size.
CARS IN THE MODERN AGE
Cars are connected and transmit 200 megabytes. The cars bought recently have portals to view maintenance.
FARMING
Cows are connected and transmit 200 megabytes. Farms now have chips which send to farmers what nutrients or water is needed and where it is needed.
HOMES
InterRain is a internet based sprinkling system that doesn't water your yard when it rained recently. New refrigerators can tell you when your milk goes bad. Some people have devices that are connected to nano cams which relay information.
HOSPITAL PATIENTS
High risk patients wear sensors that take blood preasure, measure pulses, provide early signs of heart failure. Braingate is a microchip placed in the brain that allows people to communicate telepathically.
NEURONS
The neurons often misfire, but since there are so many it has no great impact. The internet is slow and ineffective compared to the brain because the brain uses both chemial and electrical support where the Internet only uses electrical sources of power.
Neurons are adaptable. They network and they do whatever needs to be done.
VOICE AND SEARCH
Evi and Siris are equivalent to Android although with Evi she agrees or disagrees, making her being almost human. Lexxe and Swingly non mobile vocal search engines. You can search for anything using a search engine now.
WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia is the biggest encyclopedia that has no author. It is in 285 languages, has twenty two million articles, by 77000 million authors.
Wikipedia was started in 2001. It is losing contributers however.It has 2 billion words while Britannica has 5.50 mill words.
Wikipedia entries come in two other languages. 77000 entries are in Thia and
11000 Yiddish. In 2010 last Britannica was printed after 244 years of being in print. Wikipedia is considered first online reference tool.
Some example of Cloud Labor Companies are: Elance, oDesk, Guru, Cloud Crowd amd Amazon Mechical Turk. Cloud Labor. They use the Internet for communication. Four common types of crowdfunding. Donation based funding is when President Obama uses this allows people to directly contribute to person or group, connect with others. The second most common type of Cloud based labor is reward based which is commonly used by independent artists and writers. The third type that is most common is lending based where loans and small buisness loaning in developing countries. The fourth most common cloud based labor is equity based. An example of this is the most controversial type however Obama signed it in law.
Seasquirts search for housing according to location, location, location. It filters water for its life time, eating the plankton from the water it filters. It requires little brainpower. It eats his brain after he finds a home, reducing energy demands. You would think it wouldn't work, however it worked for around 500 million years. Survival is the animals ultimate goal.
Humans are almost oppisite. Superior knowledge is our tool. We have lost body mass for our brainpower. Turtles lost spikes to go into shells. Sharks lost bone structure and got more cartilage. Survival is the only goal of the biology.
Now businesses have been making money as well. These two are often at odds. Most networks die in the growth phase
Free apps are 100 times more used then paid apps. How often do you buy an app. First and second phone were useless took 100-200 phones to produce network made it useful and it grew from then.
Now the greatest human barrier is money. Being free during growth definitely increases demand. Free apps are 100 times more likely to be downloaded. Cities are networks, highways usually don't grow because of traffic volume.
However nothing has relieved traffic during rush hour. Stockholm had started charging a tax when driving on severely congested roads-which worked. This removed 20 percent of all traffic.
Money is disrupting growth by maniputing volumes sold. Airlines constantly adjust ticket prices in order to prevent breakpoint of airplane travelers. Small businesses focus on small markets and dominate. The benifit of a stable market is worth the wait.
The government forced AT&T to split into Verizon and AT&T to prevent any further breakpoint. As well as AT&T having a monopoly on phones.
Wordnet, created by George Miller, can put words you type in the search in some kind of context. Miller called words with multiple meanings synsets, synonyms. The program is spreading activation, which acts like neurons, closely connected words wire and fire.
Wordnet approximately forming context within languages
In 1991, Giscomo Rizzollati, found that neurons acted unpredictability when he was giving a monkey nuts ammd a student walked into the lab with an ice cream cone the mo key changed its focus. These are called mirror neurons.
They can make predictions. Mirror Neurons cause us to want what we see, if you see someone eating Ice Cream, you want ice cream. Mir.ror Neurons give us the ability to predict.
Netflix created Cinamatch to help consumers find media. When it was first introduced it only recommended new releases. Netflix offered a 25000 dollar reward for those who could fix it. They never used the proposed idea. For when the prize was given Netflix realized a logical approach would not work. "Logical information fails to provide perfect recommendation for imperfect humans." The recommendations are a result of both you and others wants and needs. This new technology was so successful YouTube is using it now.
People are divided by language as other factors. The internet has broke down many of these barriers. The web is capable of translating languages as well as ideas 8512 computer languages, 6500 human languages. Linguistic have become Indiana Jones's of brain science-the great explorers of the unknown."Language is the foundation of civilization." Speaking in words is uniquely human. After a language is learned the neurons that learned the language are recycled.
Language is still a problem on the Internet. It doesn't recognize all languages, accents or slang. It is extremely difficult to keep up with slang term, because of its seemingly often growth.
Thr Human brain has been shrinking for the last 20000 years. It is physically smaller. If you don't use it, you lose it. It is not that dissimilar from any other muscle in the body. Technology has and0 will allow us to evolve. The more we read the stronger our brains will stay, and the shrinking will not be as much. Books and ebooks, as well as writing keep our ideas flowing. All of the following will soon, if not already be possible: telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, and ESP.
BCI-brain computer interface come from Braingate. The BCI enables disabled people to regain control of their lives. It also connects our minds to computers and Web. Smartcap designed for truckers. When they are to tired an alarm sounds. Emoriv wearable helmet online gaming. IntraXon raised a couple hundred thousand for these products. Beer tap turns on and off with thoughts.
A Zeo is a wearable EEG that measures brain waves when you aren't asleep through monitoring brain waves. The only uneasy part of this is you can only where it for twelve hours. It's a pioneer in measuring sleep and Rapid Eye Movement sleep. However it was taken off the market. It was founded by three students from Brown University.
We better be carful or the internet could replace the human brain. It now can calulate faster then us. Communicate better although humans are directly behind that now. Software now can make predictions. It is very scary to think that some systems on the internet will reach our consciousness level.
The web has grown to 30% of what we can do. A program in Spain is 94% accurate in image recognition to human group with 98%.
As you can see many items have reached their breakpoint and survived and many have died, through various method. I found this book very interesting. Humanity has survived a large amount of breakpoints. It has survived Y2K and 2012 to name the most recent all with backups and luck.
