As an aside, concerning the difficulty of predicting even the short term future of a complex system, it was suggested last week in class at USF that in the not too terribly distant future it may be possible to enhance one’s mental abilities by embedding an “electronic chip” of some sort in one’s body. For example, something to help one learn a new language much faster.
To my recollection, three authors of interest on this subject are:
Ray Kurzweil: http://www.kurzweilAI.net
Wil McCarthy: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail535.html
Hans Moravec: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/
On Amazon.com, Publishers Weekly is quoted as saying:
“If Kurzweil has it right, in the next few decades humans will download books directly into their brains, …”
In September 2005, watch for Dr. Kurzweil’s next book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Trancend Biology.