Topic: Events that changed the world... - page 2. (Read 4822 times)

The discovery of vulcanization and man made plastics. 

October 29th, 1969 - Charley Kline at UCLA and Bill Duvall at SRI in Northern California were the first to send data between two computer nodes. Good morning computer networking, hello internet.

Too big to fail is more of a recent concept.

What happened in the 20's is that people did not understand the risks they were taking.

i never cooked but i saw this video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhkWQnHpaIk&feature=kp


the sugar be something like caramel...also if you boil water and sugar it will be something like that..only the colour change.....still is not good and not to talk about diet coke wich has aspartane ,that gives you cancer......

now it's something that drives people to get medical help

I once cooked coca cola
try it yourself, after the water vapors out

something really gross, oil-like is left, looks like something left from a dinosaur

Coca-Cola was originally used as a nerve and brain tonic and a medical elixir. Coca-Cola was named by Frank Robinson, one of Pemberton's close friends, he also penned the famous Coca-Cola logo in unique script .
But now ,Coca Cola  is no longer seen as an medical elixir ….

Well, actually I do think that Black Tuesday was a very significant event that changed the world as it made us realize how fragile our economic institutions are and how irresponsible and unscrupulous business tactics will eventually destroy the system.

Before 1929, the public perception of the economy and the stock market was that they are 'too big to fail'. So business people also began cheating the system left and right thinking that their little shenanigans are nothing more than a small ant on an elephant. But little did they know, those little ants piled up and eventually took down the elephant as public ignorance and paranoia about how stock markets really worked led to a collapse in the stock market.

It made people realize that the economy is not an invincible and all powerful entity that they thought it was and it is very much affected by human behavior, leading to more laws passed to regulate the stock market.

What about Coca Cola?Everyone drinks it all over the world.....in Atlanta in the 1880s, Pemberton sold a syrup made of wine and coca extract he called "Pemberton's French Wine Coca," which was touted at a cure for headaches and nervous disorders....also called “brain tonic”..............

Albert Hofmann, a chemist. He was researching lysergic acid derivatives in a laboratory in Basel, Switzerland in 1938. Hofmann unintentionally swallowed a small amount of LSD while researching its properties. He subsequently had the first acid trip in history, marking the entry of a drug that would become a theme of undercurrent culture, most signified the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

I don't think crash in stock market can be treated as a natural event... It is something man-made, something which is indirectly related to our actions.. And moreover, these things happen very frequently these days.. Few days back, there was excessive movement in the commodity market.. and the reason behind it was NSEL failed to clear a payment..

Invention of LSD.

Personally, I really hope it's both possible with current/not-far-off technology and going to happen within that time frame; but you have to understand that people have been saying that computers are on the verge of becoming as intelligent as humans since the 60's.

As for the singularity and letting computers do everything for us, be careful with what you wish for. I think Ray Kurzweil's view is too anthropocentric; an artificial intelligence doesn't necessarily have to solve a problem the same way a human would, any more than an alien would have to. You can try to inculcate human values/ways/emotions into it, but in the end there might not be a way to ensure that an AI shares those values. And it doesn't even have to be hostile, as often depicted in movies, to potentially pose a problem: for example http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer. Of course there is always the route of humans further enhancing themselves as Ray Kurzweil mentions (which reminds me of Ghost in the Shell ), but that doesn't really avoid the issue; if it is possible, someone will do it sooner or later, and it might go wrong. Still, I hope someone does it.

Oil and free market changed the world for the best

Solipsism at its best. 

The day I am born and the day I vanish into nothingness.

As everything that exists before me and after me serve no purpose.

Watson is nowhere near reaching human intelligence; current AI methods are very far from that. So much so in fact, that only fairly recently has the search for a strong AI (real, human level AI) resumed after the initial hype. For the last few decades the field has mostly shifted to machine learning; that is, searching for solutions for the "simpler" problems like computer vision and so on. Now, it's true that a computer can currently store and organize a lot of information into categories and derive some meaningful information from it; but that is still very far from what a human can do.

As for the second part I emphasized, a lot of human tasks require far more than this. But you're right, a lot of jobs would be rendered obsolete if we decided to automate what we could tomorrow, even without a strong AI.



You're right, most jobs nowadays are in the service sector, and depending on what metrics you use, they do provide better working conditions. But I believe you're wrong in assuming automation won't be disruptive to most people's livelihood.

I mean, let's take your example of the supermarket: I don't know where you live, but near me I have several supermarkets that have a few "self-service" check out counters; there is no reason why this can't eliminate everyone working at that station. Information areas? A couple of computers can do the trick for most things, and they can contact someone as a last resort (and probably remotely). A lot of the shelves can be redesigned to be filled in automatically; I believe I saw an article with an example some months ago (actually it might have been in a restaurant, I'm not sure). Supplying the goods to the supermarket itself could potentially be done with self-driving vehicles, with only a few people at the supermarket to offload stuff. What did I miss? Cleaning duties? I'd say close to half of the workers could be laid off in a very short amount of time if we really pressed this.

Now, considering the amount of people that are currently employed in the service sector, and considering that many of the jobs could be automated tomorrow, how do you expect to easily retrain large amounts of people into new jobs? And even then, what do you expect them to do? Post in a forum for a living? Humans can adapt only so quickly. And not everyone is going to be able to start a new company; in fact, most of the jobs that could be easily replaced don't pay a lot to begin with, so we're talking about people that probably already live day to day with less than comfortable disposable income.

they will likely be.. especially with technological singularity possibly being around the corner. that watson AI is now at least very close to matching human intelligence.

also, google has now made safe self-driving cars.. AI/robots are gaining some steam in the development department. btw, do you know how many taxi cab driver jobs would be eliminated if google drive offered a taxi service?

anyways, i'm not even talking about self-consciousness (in response to the for real part). i'm just talking about having AI actually connect 2 ideas together, and be able to perform tasks that humans could.

This is where I disagree with you. As long as robots are not enabled with Artificial intelligence, they won't be able to do the tasks which are done by store assistants. And artificial intelligence is never going to happen for real. 

Everyone wants a desk job now. There are skilled trade jobs that companies simply can't fill because people don't want to do manual labor. You can still make a nice living in the US as a welder, electrician, or an hvac technician among other things.