IT'S like the real-life version of popular video game Sim Earth, in which players build and manage their own planet.
This week, the world's leading techno-socio-economic guru Dirk Helbing outlined his vision of the Earth's future, or rather, the means to acquire it.
At a cost of $1.5bn, the Living Earth Simulator will gather as much data about humanity as possible, mining every available source to produce a picture of where we're at and where we're heading.
Like Google Earth with a mind-numbing amount of extra detail added - namely, everything.
It will be built in Switzerland, home of that other enormously ambitious project to map just about everything, the Large Hadron Collider, and it's not too big a stretch to suggest it may be able to predict the future.
Finances, pandemics, emissions, weather patterns, transport, wars - if humanity indulges in it, affects it or is afflicted by it, it goes into the simulator.
And ideally, what comes out the other end is a sharper vision of where we're all headed.
Whether we actually want to see that is another question, because it could well be like having your own genome sequenced and finding out you'll be dead by the end of the year.
Helbing hopes his simulator - he's coined the term "knowledge accelerator" - will be up and running by 2022, which is, perhaps not coincidentally, exactly 42 years after Douglas Adams published the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.
Helbing believes it could be used by global leaders to view and manage current and future crises in "situation rooms".
"With our knowledge of the universe, we have sent men to the moon," Helbing writes in a paper on the project released online.
"Humankind is now facing serious crises for which we must develop new ways to tackle the global challenges of humanity in the 21st century.
"We know microscopic details of objects around us and within us. And yet we know relatively little about how our society works and how it reacts to changes brought upon it."
The main concerns are not for how the Living Earth Simulator will be used, but for how it could be misused.
For global financial companies, it could be a goldmine.
In the hands of terrorist organisations, it's ability to map consequences on a global scale could prove devastating.
The start up cost will be somewhere around $1.5 billion and it's so far wholly funded by the European Union, which shows it is taking the project and its possibilities very, very seriously.
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Jesus Christ. :wtf:
leph555
I think we are going to end up drowning in the pool with no ladders
/sims
idoru
:stongue:
Lews
quote:
Originally posted by leph555
I think we are going to end up drowning in the pool with no ladders
This kind of thing has always seemed possible to me.
MGT
On a somewhat related note:
c0r version: human beings are created out of mutated DNA from apes by advanced aliens to serve as slaves.
Sunsnail
I think it's silly
Theresa
I have absolutely no idea how this thing would work, but I would imagine that it would take the data and evaluate the odds for certain things to happen, while also taking into consideration patterns from previous situations. With that being said, I would argue that things are too random and unpredictable that it wouldn't really be useful. Sure, it might be able to foresee a pandemic, but what if the cure is found before it gets out of control? I would imagine it is doubtful that this machine could predict that. Or what if a freak natural disaster happens, or a bomb goes off? Again, I don't believe this thing will be able to "predict the future" as the article suggests, but may be able to tell with relatively decent accuracy where trends are leading, or how things could potentially go with finances etc.
Not sure if I think it is worth the money being put into it to be honest, but again.... wtf do I know?
Lilith
quote:
Originally posted by leph555
I think we are going to end up drowning in the pool with no ladders
/sims
The drowning only happens after the character wets themselves for the 3rd time, loses their job, can't make any friends and the lights go off because they haven't paid the bill.
denys envy
quote:
will be up and running by 2022, which is, perhaps not coincidentally, exactly 42 years after Douglas Adams published the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.
...exactly in what way is this coincidental, at all?
that's like me saying "Coincidentally, I was born exactly 39 years after World War II"...
ziptnf
I think our obsession with predicting the destruction of humanity (see Y2K, 2012, WWIII, etc) will either:
1) cause massive riots thus leading to destruction
or
2) not do jack .
Pjotr G
quote:
Originally posted by denys envy
...exactly in what way is this coincidental, at all?
that's like me saying "Coincidentally, I was born exactly 39 years after World War II"...
do you know the answer to the universe, life, and everything?
