What the abacus predicts for AI

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0600

While this post can stand alone, it builds on Part 1.

When our faces get too hot, we can vainly wave our hands to push air at them. It’s convenient when a fan replaces human-powered cooling; it’s even better when spinning fans advance beyond human ability. But it is transformative when a fan is strong and fast enough to be a helicopter.

Abilities that lie beyond some barrier of velocity are Speed-Locked Enablements.

Why AI is the biggest deal since the wheel

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0600

In the Hypothetical Museum of Human Activity is a display for every artifact of humanity - every work of art, every object of worship, every toy and tool. Hypothetical archeologists and anthropologists have united to painstakingly unearth, restore, and classify pieces of pottery, carved idols, cave paintings, etc.

Within the Hall of Farming is the Evolution of Plows exhibit, a branching timeline of simple sharpened sticks and stones, progressing, several vaguely parallel inventions at a time, to the John Deere 2730 Combination Ripper. Down the hall stands the entrance to the Palace of Containers, home to an even more complex family tree of mud pots and pyrex dishes. The Museum’s East Wing hosts the Chamber of Computing. Tools here are far younger; a mere 5,000-year-old abacus rests atop a pillar, beside its cousins. These abaci are the Sharpened Sticks of Computing, the First Enhancers of human calculation. They are followed, with enormous lulls in the timeline, by a mess of mechanical labors of love and, eventually, a variety of metal and silicon cuboids of decreasing size. This display has been a recent hotspot for imaginary visitors, but today it is empty.

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What the abacus predicts for AI

Why AI is the biggest deal since the wheel