people who are fearless, not in proving their fears right – but fearless in pursuing their dreams instead of their fears.

I have a fear of loss of information.
I was in the library today and noticing how the reference materials were all dated 2006, 2009, 2002. These publishers stopped publishing paper books, putting the information exclusively online.

Now, I want to see *everything* online – a lot of stuff is trapped in books even today, so I’m grateful things are going online.. but…

here’s the problem:

DIgitized information is a fragile thing. I don’t want to go into the technical details of it, but suffice to say, it’s very fragile on far too many levels. It’s easy to wipe out the Internet as we know it. I could do it from my chair, right here. It’s not difficult and there are quite a number of ways.

Now, there’s nothing magical about books to me, but they have something the ‘net doesn’t have: object permanence. A library is on fire, some books are saved, some fragments remain.

But consider this:

Where will THIS MESSAGE be in 10 years?

The likelihood of Facebook still being here is pretty small. It *might* exist in 10 years but it’s more likely that it won’t be here. Or, if it is here, where will this message from way back in July 2015 be in 2025?

Good luck finding it.

This is a problem. Loss of history happening as we speak. These very words.

Now, I conveyed that fear in a few Vines but I considered it carefully. What’s an unintended consequence of this “fear of loss of information”?

Let’s say a 9 yr old kid sees it. It sinks in deeply for some reason I can’t fathom.

It leads to a compulsion. What kind of compulsion could it lead to? Saving data? Backing up? Remembering to remember what people say? Becoming a hoarder? OCD? Never throwing a scrap of anything away?

Worst case scenarios. All possible. Maybe even worse things are possible. But of what I considered, *more fear* being received than I “intend” – amplified by their own psychological nature won’t be in an area that I consider “a bad thing”.

But… notice how in just a couple of messages, I misinterpreted what you wrote: it went from “emergent tech being a threat” to “Hawking calls for ban on AI robots” and concluded, incorrectly, that AI research should be banned.

It’s not what you intended, but it’s what happened. That stuff happens all of the time. People make connections. We can’t always be AWARE of the connections people are going to make but it’s good to try.

It’s more than just one’s own reputation; I don’t care so much about my own reputation; but I *do* care about people treating each other well. I can’t see any better way to make a better future than to try to make nicer people who are then nicer to others,and people who are fearless, not in proving their fears right – but fearless in pursuing their dreams instead of their fears.

Anyway, that’s a load of babble from me but when you said, “responsibility for the future” , this is the train of thought I jumped on.

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