What technology has surprised the most?

[Oiram]

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Fortune asked leading technology thinkers which technology has taken the most unexpected turn. Some of the answers may themselves surprise you.

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<p>While browsing the web on the Microsoft’s Xbox demise, I stubble across this: <a href=“Imeme speakers describe suprising technologies - Jul. 9, 2007”>Imeme speakers describe suprising technologies - Jul. 9, 2007. And what I found that was interesting, was the comments by the MIT Guy and the Harvard Guy:</p>

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Tomaso Poggio, Eugene McDermott Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; Co-director, Center for Biological and Computational Learning Massachusetts Institute of Technology I would say that personally I am very impressed by something which is outside the normal scientific publication network: it is the incredible performance achieved in predicting financial markets by a very small number of “quant” hedge funds. The best example is Renaissance, led by Jim Simon, a well-known mathematician. Medallion – the flagship fund of Renaissance – has an incredible track record since '89, with a god-like Sharpe ratio of 7 in the last couple of years.

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John Clippinger, Senior Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society Harvard Law School For someone of my generation, who was raised to believe in the power of the combustible engine – the power of carbon-based power systems – as well as the promise of nuclear energy too cheap to monitor, the rapidity and totality of the ecological adverse effects of these technologies on the survival of the planet was not only unexpected, but profoundly altered my belief in humankind’s ability to secure its own survival. As a species, we are capable of collectively acting in ways that could very easily lead to our extinction. As the complexity and scope of technologies increase, it seems less and less likely that Homo sapiens (what a misnomer) as we now know it is very likely to survive. There very likely will be some form of a technology singularity, perhaps not on the scale or time frame predicted by Ray Kurtzweil, but something of sufficient magnitude to aggressively select for a successor species.

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[thisoldman]

<p>Fire->Heat->Energy->GWB->?</p>