"What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that" computing and information processing started out as tactical and then strategic components of military, intelligence, and industry. The central computing infrastructure ("the Cloud") and attendant closed/dumb psuedo-terminals (closed systems, walled gardens) is precisely the vision outlined in the 60s if not the 50s.
Two unexpected events in information processing technology threw monkey wrenches in the industrial and geopolitical policies of the strategic thinkers dreaming in DARPA, SRI, and elsewhere:
1 - Personal Computing was an unexpected event. It has taken all of 4 decades to put that genie back in the bottle. The topic of this thread.
2 - AI. This mainly threw a big wrench in the planned integration of Communist China into the Western system. AI enabled CCP to maintain control of the Chinese society, which was completely unexpected.
Having advanced general purpose, user programmable, computing machines networked globally in the hands of peasants is simply unacceptable to the folks who gifted humanity with these tools.
> 2 - AI. This mainly threw a big wrench in the planned integration of Communist China into the Western system. AI enabled CCP to maintain control of the Chinese society, which was completely unexpected.
Could you expand on this or better yet, point to some reading on the subject? This sounds like a very interesting topic.
Pure speculation on my part, trying to understand the nature of the relationship between Communist Party of China and Western power centers.
Back in the early 70s, when the deal that Kissinger and Mao shook hands on was made, there were no PCs, or pervasive networking and mobile communication and computing. It was always my speculation that the risky gambit of fast forwarding China's development and economy and freely transfering crown jewels of technology was made with the conviction that the process of integrating with the West would naturally create a power base in Chinese society that would push aside the Communist Party. Tiananmen ("June Fourth Incident") was a manifestation of this correct original prognosis of the planners of the deal, that it would cause political headaches for the CCP. A cultural instead of a kinetic overcoming by the West.
I think the consensus now in the West is that CCP armed with AI, pervasive networking, and the emergence of a digital society in the true sense, can stifle any possible organic formation of alternative poles of power in Chinese society. The only remining challenge to CCP were the Tech Mandarins (like the Senior Self Crowned Bozo in the West, a certain Bill Gates) and just this week Jack Ma was reminded as to who is in charge in New China.
And of course, Eric Schmidt et al. are now salivating at the "Chinese Model" and we're gonna get the same, regardless of what little you and little me thinks about it.
Two unexpected events in information processing technology threw monkey wrenches in the industrial and geopolitical policies of the strategic thinkers dreaming in DARPA, SRI, and elsewhere:
1 - Personal Computing was an unexpected event. It has taken all of 4 decades to put that genie back in the bottle. The topic of this thread.
2 - AI. This mainly threw a big wrench in the planned integration of Communist China into the Western system. AI enabled CCP to maintain control of the Chinese society, which was completely unexpected.
Having advanced general purpose, user programmable, computing machines networked globally in the hands of peasants is simply unacceptable to the folks who gifted humanity with these tools.