The future of Hi-Fi - Singularity?

[lindsayt]

Thomsonuxb, cool, so management styles in the future will have regressed to the point where the captains of industry are totally incapable of delegating.

And sexual equality will have regressed to the point where women only get to have secretarial, telephonist, nursing, love interest type roles?

And there will be a device that instantly kills you and creates an exact clone of you, with your memories, in another location a few seconds later.

And there will be space vessels of varying sizes that produce a 1g gravitational pull towards the floor regardless of whether they are coasting or accelerating at over 100g in a direction perpindicular to the floor.

 

[The_Lhc]

What would be the point of that? By the time storage gets that small mobile data connections will be on 6 or 7g, an always available, always on, ultra-high speed (500Mb/s or greater) connection that will render local storage absolutely irrelevant. The phone as we know it will be a thing of the past, a tiny, wearable device with wirelessly linked earphones and virtual display, gesture and voice control, it won't need storage as everything will be online (bit like a Chromebook but not crap).

But will it though??

We all imagine the future, and dream of what will be, but there will come a time when technology will hit a virtual brick wall. Many debate the benefit of higher bit rates. And if we can't even improve upon the humble loudspeaker, how much better can sound quality get? 

I'm referring to data connection bit rates, where bigger is most definitely better), not audio bit rates.

 

[The_Lhc]

Lol....it never ceases to amaze me how some boffinistic blowhards gain credibility.

The Star Trek, the original series mind, not the next generation references are about right for what the future holds.

Gene Roddenberry was genuinely a visionary.

Thing is none of the artificial 'enhancements' to date have benefited mankind.

Artificial organs internal and external will give another 10yrs or so.

Plastic surgery, viagra, silicon implants all short term fixes the deteriorate or just #@?! you up eventually.

Considering the last 50years not much has changed.

WiFi, Bluetooth really just q better use of radio.

Television - really no improvement bad weather or a tree can mess up your viewing.

This guy Kurzwell reads like a wannabe Steven Hawkins who's not much cop either....
I won't even say imo.

Singularity....prrrrft!

Yeah, everything was better50 years ago wasn't it? Does it hurt when you walk into the walls all the time?

 

[Thompsonuxb]

Thomsonuxb, cool, so management styles in the future will have regressed to the point where the captains of industry are totally incapable of delegating.

And sexual equality will have regressed to the point where women only get to have secretarial, telephonist, nursing, love interest type roles?

And there will be a device that instantly kills you and creates an exact clone of you, with your memories, in another location a few seconds later.

And there will be space vessels of varying sizes that produce a 1g gravitational pull towards the floor regardless of whether they are coasting or accelerating at over 100g in a direction perpindicular to the floor.

????

You need to watch more objectively.

The program is of its time - in this context we are not talking about the social politics but of the technology.

The teleportation thing is an interesting one though.

Not sure about your last bit .....

 

[matthewpiano]

Kurzwell's vision reads more like a dystopian vision than a utopian one to me.

Technology has already taken over too much. Every morning at the train station I see so many people walking through like zombies, heads down focusing on their phones rather than properly interacting with the physical world around them. So many friendship and human relationships exist only in the virtual worlds of Facebook and the like, and where once we may have made more effort to talk on the phone or meet up in person, many of us have fallen into the habit of taking the lazy, easy route of updating each other through online profiles. The way in which technology is progressing also places increasing amounts of power and control in the hands of massive corporations, and this will be further cemented if the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is agreed. That can never be a good thing.

Like David, I wish to have as much of a guarantee as possible that the music I love will remain accessible to me, and certainly not that this accessibility will be left to the whims of corporations.

The future of hi-fi for me is going to be very much as it is now. The only sources in my main system are CD and vinyl, and both sound stunning. I only ever use Spotify on my computer in order to give new releases a try before buying, and I have no desire to make any of these services central to my listening. I certainly have no interest in technology being implanted into me or in the physical and virtual worlds becoming indistinguishable from each other.

 

[Thompsonuxb]

Lol....it never ceases to amaze me how some boffinistic blowhards gain credibility.

The Star Trek, the original series mind, not the next generation references are about right for what the future holds.

Gene Roddenberry was genuinely a visionary.

Thing is none of the artificial 'enhancements' to date have benefited mankind.

Artificial organs internal and external will give another 10yrs or so.

Plastic surgery, viagra, silicon implants all short term fixes the deteriorate or just #@?! you up eventually.

Considering the last 50years not much has changed.

WiFi, Bluetooth really just q better use of radio.

Television - really no improvement bad weather or a tree can mess up your viewing.

This guy Kurzwell reads like a wannabe Steven Hawkins who's not much cop either....
I won't even say imo.

Singularity....prrrrft!

Yeah, everything was better50 years ago wasn't it? Does it hurt when you walk into the walls all the time?

Lol..... I don't know.

Expand on your statement pls.....

 

[The_Lhc]

Lol....it never ceases to amaze me how some boffinistic blowhards gain credibility.

The Star Trek, the original series mind, not the next generation references are about right for what the future holds.

Gene Roddenberry was genuinely a visionary.

Thing is none of the artificial 'enhancements' to date have benefited mankind.

Artificial organs internal and external will give another 10yrs or so.

Plastic surgery, viagra, silicon implants all short term fixes the deteriorate or just #@?! you up eventually.

Considering the last 50years not much has changed.

WiFi, Bluetooth really just q better use of radio.

Television - really no improvement bad weather or a tree can mess up your viewing.

This guy Kurzwell reads like a wannabe Steven Hawkins who's not much cop either....
I won't even say imo.

Singularity....prrrrft!

Yeah, everything was better50 years ago wasn't it? Does it hurt when you walk into the walls all the time?

Lol..... I don't know.

Expand on your statement pls.....

Come on it pretty obvious, I'm asking how awkward it is being so blind. Apologies to blind people obvs...

 

[The_Lhc]

The future of hi-fi for me is going to be very much as it is now.

*sigh* why are so many people so limited in their vision that they can only answer a question like this as it directly refers to them? This is a "Big Question", looking for a general overview of where the *world* is headed, not what your individual preferences are, chances are by the time this comes to pass you and me will be dead, so what we listen to is irrelevant. Think bigger man!

Just on the "people don't talk to each other anymore" bit, I now have a number of friends in Australia that I would never be able to talk to if it weren't for the internet and I talk to them more than I do a number of my "real" friends as you would probably consider them. There are upsides to technology as well as downsides, something people won't admit to, even when they're using that technology daily!

 

[Thompsonuxb]

Lol....it never ceases to amaze me how some boffinistic blowhards gain credibility.

The Star Trek, the original series mind, not the next generation references are about right for what the future holds.

Gene Roddenberry was genuinely a visionary.

Thing is none of the artificial 'enhancements' to date have benefited mankind.

Artificial organs internal and external will give another 10yrs or so.

Plastic surgery, viagra, silicon implants all short term fixes the deteriorate or just #@?! you up eventually.

Considering the last 50years not much has changed.

WiFi, Bluetooth really just q better use of radio.

Television - really no improvement bad weather or a tree can mess up your viewing.

This guy Kurzwell reads like a wannabe Steven Hawkins who's not much cop either....
I won't even say imo.

Singularity....prrrrft!

Yeah, everything was better50 years ago wasn't it? Does it hurt when you walk into the walls all the time?

Lol..... I don't know.

Expand on your statement pls.....

Come on it pretty obvious, I'm asking how awkward it is being so blind. Apologies to blind people obvs...

No, c'mon expand. Explain the blindness....pls

Looking at the past 100yrs.....

 

[Covenanter]

When I first went to work for a major UK bank in 1974 the mainframe computers they had (Burroughs) had 100MB of hard disk, each the size of a washing machine (and 50KB of main memory) and they cost ££££££.

Something like this big boy.

There was a brick repair the size of a small car on the wall of the Burroughs headquarters in Ruislip. The story was that a hard disk bearing broke and it took a walk down the road going straight through the wall. I don't know if that was true but the energy contained in a fast spinning disk drive of that era was tremendous.

Chris

 

[Covenanter]

Read something recently about Moore`s law hitting a snag and tapering off. The ability to increase computer processing power is a function of building smaller and smaller transistors. Trouble is, once you get down to the level of transistors only a handful of atoms across (can`t remember the actual number) uncertainty begins to take over and it is difficult to measure where the electron is.

Some people are looking at stacks of processors as a temporary solution but the fundamental problem persists. Quantum computing looks promising but is still in its infancy.

As a result, whilst Moores law has been a powerful observation tool, its applicability to future scenarios appears to have been lessened.

There has already been a slowing down but human ingenuity is capable of the most amazing things. I'll be dead before it stops!

Chris

 

[matthewpiano]

The future of hi-fi for me is going to be very much as it is now.

*sigh* why are so many people so limited in their vision that they can only answer a question like this as it directly refers to them? This is a "Big Question", looking for a general overview of where the *world* is headed, not what your individual preferences are, chances are by the time this comes to pass you and me will be dead, so what we listen to is irrelevant. Think bigger man!

Just on the "people don't talk to each other anymore" bit, I now have a number of friends in Australia that I would never be able to talk to if it weren't for the internet and I talk to them more than I do a number of my "real" friends as you would probably consider them. There are upsides to technology as well as downsides, something people won't admit to, even when they're using that technology daily!

All any of us can do is share our own perspective on these matters, largely based on our thoughts about life and on our life experiences.

I agree that technology has plenty of positives as well as negatives, but the key is how the technology is exploited. I'm not at all happy with the idea of a world full of what would effectively be humanoids.

 

[The_Lhc]

Lol....it never ceases to amaze me how some boffinistic blowhards gain credibility.

The Star Trek, the original series mind, not the next generation references are about right for what the future holds.

Gene Roddenberry was genuinely a visionary.

Thing is none of the artificial 'enhancements' to date have benefited mankind.

Artificial organs internal and external will give another 10yrs or so.

Plastic surgery, viagra, silicon implants all short term fixes the deteriorate or just #@?! you up eventually.

Considering the last 50years not much has changed.

WiFi, Bluetooth really just q better use of radio.

Television - really no improvement bad weather or a tree can mess up your viewing.

This guy Kurzwell reads like a wannabe Steven Hawkins who's not much cop either....
I won't even say imo.

Singularity....prrrrft!

Yeah, everything was better50 years ago wasn't it? Does it hurt when you walk into the walls all the time?

Lol..... I don't know.

Expand on your statement pls.....

Come on it pretty obvious, I'm asking how awkward it is being so blind. Apologies to blind people obvs...

No, c'mon expand. Explain the blindness....pls

Looking at the past 100yrs.....

I find your lack of vision disturbing.

 

[Electro]

How will our hobby look like in 30 years? Will it exist still if Ray Kurzweil's Singularity happens? Will KEF produce nanobots and neuroimplants that play music perfectly inside our brain?

a future period during which the pace of technological advance will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed... The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual.

Ponder, ponder...

It all depends , the human race is at the junction of two possible paths right now !

Decisions made within the next five years will determine whether we survive as the dominant species on earth or if we are decimated to the point of extinction within 100 years .

If we choose the right path*smile* then a HiFi system will consist of Graphene panels that contain drive units and all electronics including all control hardware and software . They will also be able to project 3d holographic images that are totally interactive .

Control will be built into the fabric of the users clothing and will be touch , voice and eventually thought activated via electrical signals from the skin to Graphene receptors built into the clothing using a Hydrogen ( *smile* ) etching process .

The panels will be almost invisible until activated and the whole room can be covered with them to create an emersive holodeck type environment or as simple a small portable panels that can be move from place to place .

The graphene infused clothing will also be a constant medical monitor warning the wearer of any health problems before they happen , the wearer will be completely connected to any interactive services they wish to subscribe to .

This will be powered by tiny Hydrogen fuel cells supplied with Hydrogen from moisture and heat from the body , the Graphene infused clothing will also be a solar panel supplying power to hydrolyze moisture from the air and sweat from the body , the Hydrogen made will be stored in tiny Graphene pockets within the clothing .

I could go on but ......*smile*

 

[Vladimir]

I find your lack of vision disturbing.

I find your disturbance lacking. *blum3*

I like Electro's take on this. Advanced augmenting tools instead of mutating transhumanism. This is frequently proposed in sci-fi lit and films by portraying aliens as fragile organisms embedded inside engineered robust multipurpose environmental shells.

The goal isn't to create AI on par or superior to humans. IMO the goal has and always will be eternal life for humans and eternal slavery for AI robots. Humans will keep improving their environmental resilience and adaptibility (aka evolution) through genetics and engineered tools, and aspire for replacing human physical and non-creative mental labor with machine one. In such framework music will be more improtant than ever before. Hi-Fi will be amazing, in whatever form. Does it matter?

 

[Thompsonuxb]

Lol....it never ceases to amaze me how some boffinistic blowhards gain credibility.

The Star Trek, the original series mind, not the next generation references are about right for what the future holds.

Gene Roddenberry was genuinely a visionary.

Thing is none of the artificial 'enhancements' to date have benefited mankind.

Artificial organs internal and external will give another 10yrs or so.

Plastic surgery, viagra, silicon implants all short term fixes the deteriorate or just #@?! you up eventually.

Considering the last 50years not much has changed.

WiFi, Bluetooth really just q better use of radio.

Television - really no improvement bad weather or a tree can mess up your viewing.

This guy Kurzwell reads like a wannabe Steven Hawkins who's not much cop either....
I won't even say imo.

Singularity....prrrrft!

Yeah, everything was better50 years ago wasn't it? Does it hurt when you walk into the walls all the time?

Lol..... I don't know.

Expand on your statement pls.....

Come on it pretty obvious, I'm asking how awkward it is being so blind. Apologies to blind people obvs...

No, c'mon expand. Explain the blindness....pls

Looking at the past 100yrs.....

I find your lack of vision disturbing.

Odd.......

 

[Thompsonuxb]

I find your lack of vision disturbing.

I find your disturbance lacking. *blum3*

I like Electro's take on this. Advanced augmenting tools instead of mutating transhumanism. This is frequently proposed in sci-fi lit and films by portraying aliens as fragile organisms embedded inside engineered robust multipurpose environmental shells.?

The goal isn't to create AI on par or superior to humans. IMO the goal has and always will be eternal life for humans and eternal slavery for AI robots. Humans will keep improving their environmental resilience and adaptibility (aka evolution) through genetics and engineered tools, and aspire for replacing human physical and non-creative mental labor with machine one. In such framework music will be more improtant than ever before. Hi-Fi will be amazing, in whatever form. Does it matter?

The Matrix.....right?

 

[Vladimir]

The Matrix.....right?

I don't see how it relates to the Matrix at all.

 

[Vladimir]

Anyone seen this new shopping gadged by Amazon?

One step towards more integrated consumerism and instant gratification into post-modern society.

 

[chebby]

What happens when - unkown to you - your kids press the button 50 times as part of some game?

 

[Vladimir]

What happens when - unkown to you - your kids press the button 50 times as part of some game?

There is some protection for that, so the kid doesn't order 50 bags of detergent by violently clicking it. But one will certanly go through the order processing.

 

[manicm]

If the future of hifi was streaming then the future is bleak, simply because there's no real progress on the backbone i.e. the wireless network. If you're streaming hires from a network then ethernet is the only real game in town. It's astonishing that Linn, Naim et al who pride themselves as 'engineering companies' are comfy with the status quo. Linn boasted their state-of-the-art streaming 8 years ago, but the network is still from hell.

Hands up on who still wants ethernet spaghetti around their home?

And corporate greed is also hampering progress. Why can't I go to a store, online or physical, and download a movie or music in the best available quality, anywhere in the world, onto my USB stick and go home with it? Instead we have complete and comprehensive idiocy and lunacy like the Ultraviolet scheme for movies.

You'll never really see progress unless the corporates are cut down. But that won't happen because Universal is virtually the only big label left. Think they're gonna give you what you want? NO, they'll give you only what their shareholders want.

Good night and good luck. You're out of it right now.

 

[The_Lhc]

Ffs, stop being so short-termist! No work being done in wireless networking? Is your name Jon Snow? Laughably short-sighted.

 

[manicm]

Ffs, stop being so short-termist! No work being done in wireless networking? Is your name Jon Snow? Laughably short-sighted.

Oh really? Well name one system that will RELIABLY stream hires audio??

Yes Jon Snow is indeed dead. No need to state the blatantly obvious.

 

[MajorFubar]

Oh really? Well name one system that will RELIABLY stream hires audio??

You'll first have to clarify your definition of unreliable. I only have a bog standard BT Homehub 5 but my Mac Mini under the telly in the living room is more than happy to stream 720p and 1080p video content from my NAS upstairs, as well my few hi-res albums via iTunes. My family's tablets and phones are also similarly unperturbed doing the same. All over WiFi.