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Artificial Omniscience

August 4th, 2008 • Comments »

Eventually, virtually everything will be available through Google. You will be able to get information on anything and everything you ever wanted to know. As technology increases, and more and more data is logged into computers, the amount of data indexed by Google will approach infinity.

In addition to all preexisting historical information, books, music, manuals, software, programs and everything else that people and machines have already produced, there is an exponentially increasing amount of new data being generated every single day. Millions of people around the planet are blogging their ideas and recording their lives in digital format. Thousands of different languages, millions of new documents produced every single day.

As time moves forward, technology will continue to make it easier and cheaper for people to digitally record and publish anything and everything. Individuals will become independent media broadcasters, sharing their lives virtually with anyone who is willing to pay attention. The incredible amount of data generated by millions of people living digitally will be available online and indexed, tracked, monitored, and used by Google to influence markets and make money.

In addition to all of this information, factor in the endless stream of automatically generated data. You know, the stuff cranked out by the machines that monitor user activity, traffic patterns, lab analyses, stock markets, weather systems, and so on. These “low-level” data are then analyzed, discussed, elaborated, and reported through various digital media. As this information is then received by other individuals, it becomes a part of their lives, and thus is written about, recorded, and made available to others. The same is true for data generated through television, movies, music, and any other form of digitally consumed media. On the blogosphere, this phenomenon is referred to as the “echo chamber”. This type of cumulative resonance decreases the signal to noise ratio and further inflates the amount of human-generated data.

So what do we have here? An unlimited and even redundant stream of data on everybody and everything. Information about everything you have ever done, every place you have ever been, everything you are doing currently, even everything you intend on doing in the future. Every person you have ever known, every purchase you have ever made, every rule you have ever broken. Mechanical processes, computer processes, natural processes. Earth, moon, space, and beyond. Everything happening around the globe in every home, factory, industry, market, and government. Everything on television, everything on the radio, internet. Every speech, verdict, sentence, birth and death. Everything.

Given that, return to Google for a moment. Google no doubt will be connected to every digit of this infinite collection of data. At any given time, any authorized person will have access to virtually unlimited knowledge about anyone or anything. Likewise, but on a greater scale, software will provide cumulative analyses of aggregate collections of data. Now, in addition to focusing in on a single person, event, or process, authorized users will in effect be able to “zoom out” and access information about entire groups of people. For example, imagine software that will track and deliver reports on entire populations of individuals, generating comprehensive statistical information on every recordable aspect of their existence — blogs, activities, families, entertainment, health, politics, religion, shopping — presented in such a way as to enable the end user to zoom in or out on any aspect or series of aspects to any degree desired.

Still with me? Now imagine an integrated collection of such aggregate analysis programs, each designed to harvest and process data for hundreds of thousands of different analytical dimensions. Statistical aggregations of perpetual data generated in real-time and integrated with every other aggregate program. For example, there will be software to integrate the weather data from thousands of stations and satellites around the globe. This data stream is then processed and made available to other aggregate systems, such as those used for flight, travel, and traffic analyses. These “meta-analytical” systems retain their granular integrity while serving a cumulative purpose by contributing to the “big picture.” Such meta systems continue up the pyramid structure — merging natural and mechanical processes, government and military events, biological and inorganic data — becoming further integrated at each level until, ultimately, the most comprehensive meta-systems converge into a single, “all knowing” source of information. With such a system, the earth’s data is accessible at any desired level, from any desired perspective, and with any level of granularity. Certainly not true omniscience, but as close to it as humans will ever get.

What will be the implications of this so-called “artificial omniscience”? It depends on who controls it. If you honestly think that those in power will be letting Joe Blow from Nowhere, Anytown, have access to this kind of power, you need to put down the crack pipe and check yourself. In case you hadn’t noticed by now, the ruling elite operate autonomously, using their money and power to influence governments and corporations to do their bidding. Thus, it is quite obvious that artificial omniscience will belong to the forces that rule the earth at the time of its manifestation. As the world plods along toward the inevitable “brave new” one-world governmental system, the stage is being set for the one who will sit, briefly, at the top of it all. Rest assured that the one who wants all of the power will also want all of the knowledge. On earth, during that time, this person will be artificially omnipotent, artificially omnipresent, and now, as we have seen here, artificially omniscient. Note the key word here: “artificially.”

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13 Responses to “Artificial Omniscience”

#1 • Donace • August 21, 2008 at 3:57 am

Knowledge is power.

ofc from the onset of writing man has tried to acumulate knowledge to help/better future generations. ranging from the first cave paintings, to papyrus scriblings, to the first book and vast libaries.

the next logical step is to accumlate and analyse as much raw data as possible so to help further studies.

This artifical omnience is an enevitabilty BUT waaaay in the future. even now not all information found in books for example can not be found on the net.

eventually there wil be vast online libraries and live data accumlation nearing us to the one state. though only in information not rule. but that is for another post altogather I assume. is a one world govt. possible.

#2 • TheMystical • August 30, 2008 at 1:20 pm

While reading your post for some reason I felt like the word God among with the word Google were bouncing back and forth in my head.

All this endless amount of information and who has access to it makes the whole thing scary, the way this world is spinning scares the digested organic matter out of me, I’m sure somehow we’re gonna screw up the entire system, eventually.

#3 • Jeff_ • September 1, 2008 at 11:21 am

@Donace: I think the reality of artificial omniscience will happen sooner than you think. If you consider the exponential rate at which technology is evolving, I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like this happen within our lifetime. It may not encompass literally every piece of knowledge ever known to man, but will easily include all existing data and everything else that currently is being generated and recorded. I think as the reality and potential of artificial omniscience takes hold, people will be inspired to get there and subsequently there will be a massive worldwide effort to digitize everything and make it happen. We are already well on the way towards a one-world government, and as it continues to come together, the need for universal knowledge (and power) will become absolutely necessary.

#4 • Jeff_ • September 1, 2008 at 11:30 am

@TheMystical: I have made similar observations, only not with the word “God”, but rather with the word “Beast”, as in the governmental sense. Once the government begins to regulate the Internet, it is only a matter of time before resources, technology, and power is consolidated into the hands of a select few. With control over the world’s information, the universal government will in effect maintain control over everything and everyone. This idea alone should scare the bytes out of anyone; and that’s not even getting into the potential dangers of worldwide system collapse due to technological failures.

#5 • Donace • September 2, 2008 at 3:49 am

the age old saying ‘knowledge is power’ springs to mind, but the true power that will become if this occurs is control of the knowledge, choosing what to share and what not to, choosing what to hide.

#6 • joshB • November 22, 2008 at 1:50 pm

1 What is power?
Knowlege isn’t power. Power is the ability to control and influence. Only God is omnicient, and he does not choose to exercise this power to anything like it’s full extent (assuming you believe in God, because if you don’t then no one is omnicient, making an even stronger case for my argument). We can control and influence very little of the world around us, especialy the people who inhabit it - they have free will, therefore we cannot be omnipotent, artificialy or not.

2 What is this “information that will be universaly acessible?
I doubt that the level of information will rise significantly. As Donace said, we have tried to record information since we existed, but the main flaw is that we can’t record All the information created in a set period in that period. If we can’t record all the information, then we will never reach this so called “artificial” omnicience. We can’t access much of this information, which is often the most important - not what happened, but how people feel about it. I also don’t understand how this system will know the future.

3 With more information comes more junk.
Who will record this info? who will record your daily life. Will there be cameras around your house? No, you will have to record the info yourself. You will be able to self-edit, purging the info of private details that you don’t want to be public. Also, people will use the chance to broadcast other information to which is wanted — this is junk. Junk is information not related to the matter at hand, like finding a page of the russian phone book as a blog post on this site. I would suggest that to you that to know what relates to what perfectly, the programs would already have to be omnicient, a paradox.

#7 • Information Superpower | The Nexus • December 3, 2008 at 9:24 am

[…] data just improve their adsnese conversion and aggregating data to help the planet as mooted by Jeff in Artifical […]

#8 • Update - Links - Love | The Nexus • December 7, 2008 at 12:29 pm

[…] premis. If google has so much data on all of us know what will it know later? Will it result in Artificial Omniscience as mooted by Jeff ? Or will it result in a knowledge base that could be exploited by corpration or […]

#9 • Czymra • July 7, 2009 at 3:51 pm

As alluded to above, information is empty. It’s a set of data which, as long as it has no function or vector is useless.
Networking this information may be power, and yet it stays information, which is a set of words or codes, not understanding of a thing.
I fear no omniscient machine for it is man that creates meaning.

#10 • Jeff Starr • July 7, 2009 at 5:42 pm

Good points, Czymra, although I think I would fear an “omniscient machine” that had been programmed to revoke my ability to buy, sell, obtain employment, or otherwise participate in society based on whether or not certain personal statistics qualified me to do so.

Human understanding is not required for software to make decisions and perform functions based on raw data. Omniscient control over the world’s activities would enable many automated processes to function outside the realm of human contemplation.

#11 • Sylvia • February 26, 2010 at 10:49 am

And what are you all doing about it, if you think it’s so nefarious, why not do something and make it cease…or just become it’s sheep, is that what you’re saying…ultimately? And this Donace person, writes like a product of the google educated masses. The people who’ve grown up learning to communicate for the ‘online world’…the meaningless and inappropriate acronyms, that one needs a new dictionary to understand…giving more power to Goddle, who is now confusing our languages, so we again can’t communicate to build our own towers.

#12 • Sylvia • February 26, 2010 at 10:59 am

Also, everyone thinks that this is so that some group of people can gather money from others. How silly and narrow-minded…or maybe flawed, cliched and induced logic. It seems downright transparent that corporations have been given the task of gathering information on all of us, to gather it, albeit ostensibly to sell a few more ‘things’, but ultimately there’s only so much that can be sold. So, let’s, as thinking people, not stop at the cliches of greed and power. Because these corps are already rich beyond your imaginations. And the power that they wield is quite absolute already. I mean, I absolutely look at no ads each day and have no ads coming to my email address. So, they are certainly not selling to me. But they are tracking my every online movement. Why? Why would it be important to them? Why does every software phone home, or try to? To update? Bogus. To make sure I’m not stealing it? They absolutely don’t care if it’s stolen. Look at Gates’ position on piracy. He does not care. They want you to have the software, so they can track you. They are rich, they are powerful. Their kids are already going to get braces and go to whichever prestigious university they choose. That was already true years ago.

#13 • Jeff Starr • February 28, 2010 at 12:15 am

Hi Sylvia, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. I think you may have misunderstood the point of the article, which is more geared at suggesting a possible scenario based on current trends and then following through to a possible conclusion. There is perhaps an implicit assumption concerning its inevitability, but that shouldn’t be taken as advice to “just become sheep.” I think it’s up to each of us to do their own thinking and decide what’s best in terms of possible solutions or ways of responding.

As for communicating in the “online world,” I think it’s important to keep in mind that language is a dynamic tool, perpetually changing to suit the needs of its users. There are many languages in the world that may sound strange to the nonnative ear, but you can rest assured that they are quite meaningful to their users. This is true for all types of languages: spoken, written, programmatic, and so on.

And for the commercial aspect, again I think you missed the focus of the article, which examines the continuing consolidation of data into increasingly powerful information systems. I may have touched on the financial/commercial aspect of such a scenario, but the main thrust emphasizes potential power abuse in the hands an elite few or perhaps even a single person.

It is interesting, however, to consider your points about “greed and power.” Those at the top of the pile are rich indeed, but they only wield the power which is given to them, which for any one person is certainly finite. Also not sure that anyone is actually “tracking” your every “online movement,” although these days it’s becoming more of a possibility even if you surf anonymously.

Again, interesting comments, and I do agree with your final point, that there have always been rich and powerful people dwelling amongst us. These are the folks that will be scrambling and warring for control over artificial omniscience once it arrives.

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