Skip to main content

The Technium: Increasing Specialization

Popularity Report

Total Popularity Score: 0
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...

Rank

Bookmark History

Saved by 2 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-05-20


Public Sticky notes

Over evolutionary time, there is a significant rise in the number of cell types in the most complex organism. In fact, these organisms are more complex in part because they contain more specialized parts. So specialization follows the arc of complexity. 

Highlighted by jrstoltz

Parasiticism is particularly specific and yet so common in life that some experts estimate up to 50% of living species are parasites.

Highlighted by jrstoltz

At the moment computers seem to be headed in the opposite direction. They seem to becoming evermore general purpose machines, as they swallow more and more functions. Entire occupations and their worker's tool have been subsumed by the contraptions of computation and networks.

Highlighted by jrstoltz

At the moment computers seem to be headed in the opposite direction. They seem to becoming evermore general purpose machines, as they swallow more and more functions.

Highlighted by eyalnow

The portals into computation, or the net, will specialize to a remarkable degree. The keyboard, for one, will loose its monopoly. Speech and gesture input will gain a major role. Spectacle and eyeball screens will supplement walls and flexible surfaces.

Highlighted by eyalnow

All the things we make with our mind, and the creations of artificial minds, will all tend over time to become more niche based. The "long-tail" is not merely a characteristic of media, but of technological evolution itself: the tail of niches gets longer and longer. We can imagine the future of almost any invention working today by imagining it evolving into dozens of narrow uses. Technology is born in generality and grows to specificity. Technology wants specialization.

Highlighted by eyalnow