The World Brain (in Off-topic)

So this has been on my mind a bit lately. In 1937, H.G. Wells wrote that there would soon be a World Brain, and said of it that:

"The time is close at hand when any student, in any part of the world, will be able to sit with his projector in his own study at his or her own convenience to examine any book, any document, in an exact replica."

The internet is the incarnation of what he predicted, though it is not freely available to the extent of his prediction, but I think it is eventually coming - torrenting and other means of piracy already bring it closer to this reality, though this is illegal and still nowhere near his prediction. Nonetheless, I can sit here with my "projector" and listen to pretty much any piece of music I would like, and can easily find most programs I would want to use and a large number of books. My Nook has probably thirty on it, in an even more convenient and portable form.

How long do you think, CB, before the World Brain is a reality and is no longer science fiction?

I do not believe in science fiction anymore. its more or less whats to come, by chance really.

By chance? or Collective Unconscious?

By self-fulfilling prophecy :)

It already happened in the past. Because the past is the future. Time moves in a circle.

Time doesn't move at all. Everything happens at once.

If H.G. Wells was alive today he would say that time has come.

He'd probably call you a homosexual slur with his non-FIRST post rage.

The human ability to gain knowledge will shortly begin to double regularly, eventually doubling rapidly. The results of this are guessed at often by folks with huge dreams. The singularity is one vision, a world where the ability to build a machine capable of building a better machine (which in my opinion we're already doing in some ways) gives birth to a mind blowing series of technological advances which alter life and it's path in time drastically.

The time is here, and now...

I've long thought this, and Time is nothing more than a concept we've created, in order to allow us to perceive events.

I'm not a physicist, but doesn't space-time kind of refute that?

/shrug

Who says space time is right?

Einstien fudged the cosmological constent, and I've never been able to get my head around the moving train with two lamps/candles example.

Content lobbyists are fighting against this kind of free access to information. Book publishers, movie studios, music labels, software publishers: They all want you to see their wares, but want their stuff monetized to hell and back. They want you to buy their content 30 different times on different formats. They want their cut and more.

what moving train and candles example?

http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/Einstein%27sTrain.html

GL the conclusions from that example are flawed. They are trying to disprove relativity by applying the postulate of the constancy of the speed of light for all inertial observers to a non-inert observer.

Simply put the speed of light will not change (ie it is constant) but the light in front WOULD reached her first because she would not be in the same position that she was when the light originated she would be closer to the front light source's origination point. The same would hold true for the beginning and ends of the train. The light from the front would reach the back of the train before the light from the back reached the front but only because the front & back are no longer in the same position. The time for either light to reach the point where the opposite end of the train was when the light started would be identical.

The guy at the station however is inert so he does see the light from both sources at the same time

It was just an exmaple of the thought exercise in question. ;)

There's pretty much nothing to say that universal laws must be permanent or completely consistent anyway. Everything's up for grabs! :D

This is why time does not exist to me and everything happens at once,

You will always be in the present.

I like trains. Choo choo...

Everyone.

I have two thoughts, one, why doesn't Enstien's theory make sense? it makes sense to me, and seems like a sound though.

two, and the only problem I see with one is the train would have to be going almost as fast as light but slow enough for it to catch up, right?

I just figure that a train will never travel fast enough to 'slow' down the speed of light at the back of the train, but If it were possible for the train to travel 10% SLOWER then the speed of light (meaning crazy crazy crazy fast train) would it not take the light 10% LONGER to catch up or get to the lady?