There’s a business cliche that managers are trained to say, usually right before they cut your salary or move your unit into a basement cubicle farm, they say: “Embrace change.”
In our recent election we talked a lot about change and the resulting change will be overwhelmingly positive. Change is coming. Change we can believe in. America is changing. Ch-Ch-Changes.
There is no doubt that we–as in, humanity, in general–are going to face major changes. On George Dvorsky’s Sentient Development blog, you can see some of the answers to a question Edge.org asked: “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”
The answers, as Mr. Dvorsky points out in his blog, are overwhelmingly in tune with Singularity thinking and are, for the most part, positive. But, for any of you out there who found that “embracing change” meant being pushed to the curb, or swept under the rug, or let out to pasture, you might be skeptical.
And, it’s true, exponential growth and exotic change can bring risks. We talked about this before. For instance, what if someone uses home brew genetic change to create a powerful pathogen. What if the government uses quantum computing to spy on us? Will nanoparticles turn into some type of grey goo?
The question then is not how you must embrace change, but how we can prepare to minimize risks and overcome bad change.
There are people who are way ahead of that curve. Consider Lifeboat.com. You can read their mission statement here. Essentially, Lifeboat recognized that change is, indeed, coming and that some of that change might not necessarily be good. It’s forming a group to take preemptive actions to minimize the risks of bad change. They’re looking into methods to combat viruses and investigate the creation of space colonies, among other threats.
I had this stray thought while writing this… In previous changes between epochs, only islands of people resisted change. The Amish are a good example, but for the most part, people changed or died out. But this change may be different. The Singularity offers considerable change, but also allows people more power through intense customization.
In fact, this technological singularity may be so powerful that humans can pick and choose the types of change they want.
I’ll consider this is later posts.
Accelerating Technology, Dreams Come True, Online Investing AI
change, exponential, Lifeboat, risk, risk management
is one of my favorite financial books of all time. It's an allegory about a guy who has a terrible job, and how he overcomes challenges to achieve his dreams.
