Will high oil/energy prices save the stock market and the internet?

From: Extropian Agro Forestry Ventures Inc. (megao@sk.sympatico.ca)
Date: Tue May 01 2001 - 22:01:16 MDT


When energy prices began to rise a year or so ago , almost
similtaneously with the bursting of the tech bubble I began to pose the
query.... Could a severe increase of energy costs be a deliberate ploy
to drive the masses to use electronic devices in favor of physical
transport and transaction modalities. Accompanying this would be the
creation of a cash pool to stabilize the loss of investor liquidity
underlying the market weakness. This same pool of cash could then drive
the investor base which would buy into the companies which would merge
with or otherwise acquire the "value corrected" internet businesses.
The resulting world scale internet commerce
enabled conglomerates would drive business to their door by offering the
benefits of
net integration to compete with more energy consuming and thus cost
ineffective conventional cohorts??
I know that if I was a global scale strategic planner who wanted to make
the internet sucessful I would want to create this scenario. Global
planners want to find a way to access and analyse every human action.
Bill gates/Microsoft has created the platform for this "world domination
enabling knowledge pool" by offering to supply the master data
warehouse/repository system.
The good side is that the ineffiencies of the chaos that results from
unmonitored
human actions in every area of life from medicine to business to
education might be elimenated or at least extremely reduced.
What we are moving towards is a borg-like electronic infrastructure.
What those who want personal space and individual human thought must do
is determine just where pervasiveness of computing should end and
individual private domains begin.
There are those who would argue that privacy creates chaos and
inefficiency and thus should be disallowed.

On another subject, I listened to a couple of the "extropian
recommended"
songs. My impression of "wild Child" is that it describes the process
that might lead to the first self aware AI. A very special virus with
the "spark of life" creates a global singularity "event horizon" as
every electronic linked system is infected with "self awareness". In
effect the global electronic net would begin to act like a brain and
think. So maybe the key to creating the first AI lies in creating a
very special virus.

I personally think that the computational complexity which comprises the

living program called a living human being will be recognized by any AI
in short order to be useful and worthy of preservation. Wishful
thinking?



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