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Scientific progress: Difference between revisions
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{{Template:Seven Visions Analysis}} | {{Template:Seven Visions Analysis}} | ||
==Scientific progress== | ==Scientific progress== | ||
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| The fourth vision showed the great advances in science that would come after the second world war. It was headed up in the vision of a plastic bubble-topped car that was running down beautiful highways under remote control so that people appeared seated in this car without a steering wheel and they were playing some sort of a game to amuse themselves. | | The fourth vision showed the great advances in science that would come after the second world war. It was headed up in the vision of a plastic bubble-topped car that was running down beautiful highways under remote control so that people appeared seated in this car without a steering wheel and they were playing some sort of a game to amuse themselves. | ||
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This vision depicted the great advances in science after 1945. The phrase ëit was headed upí implies that there were more examples of | This vision depicted the great advances in science after 1945. The phrase ëit was headed upí implies that there were more examples of ëgreat advancesí in the vision (but they are not described and one would have to wonder, ëwhy notí) but that the leading example was the bubble topped driverless car | ||
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The vision was first cited in a sermon in 1953 and hence may have been post fact depending on when the driverless car was supposed to have been developed. | The vision was first cited in a sermon in 1953 and hence may have been post fact depending on when the driverless car was supposed to have been developed. | ||
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::*Summit super computer ñ 122.3 thousand million million (1015) floating-point operations per second, 2019 | ::*Summit super computer ñ 122.3 thousand million million (1015) floating-point operations per second, 2019 | ||
The invention of computers has changed the way the world works. Computing has enabled most major technical development of the last 50 years - the Internet, smart phones and space travel. Computers underpin our industry and financial systems. It is the basis of Artificial Intelligence which itself is set to transform the world yet again. Computers reside not only in our pockets and on our desks but are increasingly embedded in the | The invention of computers has changed the way the world works. Computing has enabled most major technical development of the last 50 years - the Internet, smart phones and space travel. Computers underpin our industry and financial systems. It is the basis of Artificial Intelligence which itself is set to transform the world yet again. Computers reside not only in our pockets and on our desks but are increasingly embedded in the artefacts that we purchase. It would be difficult to name an area of human endeavour that is not reliant, today, on computing. | ||
:*'''Communications''' | :*'''Communications''' | ||
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::*The World Wide Web (WWW) 1990 | ::*The World Wide Web (WWW) 1990 | ||
Communications is the glue and the plumbing which allows the interconnection of people, business, information and the Internet of things. Communications includes the hardware that provides the infrastructure and software which provides the logic for the seamless transmission of video, text, speech and hyperlinked information to everyone and everything on the planet. Communications | Communications is the glue and the plumbing which allows the interconnection of people, business, information and the Internet of things. Communications includes the hardware that provides the infrastructure and software which provides the logic for the seamless transmission of video, text, speech and hyperlinked information to everyone and everything on the planet. Communications underpins the seemingly miraculous ability for thousands of people in a city to be browsing the web, playing games, watching movies, sending messages and talking to their friends a continent away all at the same time (and things not getting mixed up!). | ||
:*'''The Space Program''' | :*'''The Space Program''' | ||
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The sensors: radar, camera and sonar, collect | The sensors: radar, camera and sonar, collect images of the environment around the car. The software and AI components synthesise this information and create a map of the situation at an instant in time (similar to the ëmapí that the brain generates when you open your eyes). This ëmapí includes estimates of the speed and direction of other moving objects, captures static signs any safety cautions and incorporates the carís own trajectory. Then the software models the passage of time and assesses what the new ëmapí would look like in half a second, 1 second, 5, 10 etc and makes decisions based on its goals. | ||
This system is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is emulating the functions of the driverís brain. It has nothing to do with magnets and it certainly wasnít available in the 1960s. These specifications and capabilities are nothing like William Branhamís ideas of how self-driving cars would work but if he was really prophesying, they could have been! | This system is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is emulating the functions of the driverís brain. It has nothing to do with magnets and it certainly wasnít available in the 1960s. These specifications and capabilities are nothing like William Branhamís ideas of how self-driving cars would work but if he was really prophesying, they could have been! | ||
William | William Branham's vision was of a self-driving plastic bubble-topped car running down a beautiful highway could have been something like this: | ||
[[Image:1957 driverless cars paleo-future big.jpg|thumb|250px|Newsweek Magazine – Dec. 17, 1956 (click on picture to zoom in)]] | |||
This picture appeared in Newsweek Magazine 17th December 1956. But in fact, the vision as stated in the sermons from 1953 right up to 1958 did not include self-driving at all. They talked of cars becoming more and more egg shaped. In 1958 we find the first mention of a ëremote controlí car and over the next few years we find more references and a fuller description of the car. This vision is more about the egg shape of cars than it is about the driving technology. (in this picture the dotted lines overlay the controllers that keep the cars going straight!) | This picture appeared in Newsweek Magazine 17th December 1956. But in fact, the vision as stated in the sermons from 1953 right up to 1958 did not include self-driving at all. They talked of cars becoming more and more egg shaped. In 1958 we find the first mention of a ëremote controlí car and over the next few years we find more references and a fuller description of the car. This vision is more about the egg shape of cars than it is about the driving technology. (in this picture the dotted lines overlay the controllers that keep the cars going straight!) | ||
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He had no right to say these things and no right to mislead people about the fulfilment of one of the visions. | He had no right to say these things and no right to mislead people about the fulfilment of one of the visions. | ||
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