It's official: Google announces open-source mobile phone OS, Android
By Jacqui Cheng | Published: November 05, 2007 - 10:46AM CT
The Google Phone has arrived, sort of, but not in the long-rumored embodiment that many had expected. Google announced this morning that it has developed a new mobile OS called "Android"—a result of its acquisition of a mobile software company of the same name in 2005—that will allow the company to get Google's mobile apps into as many hands as possible starting in mid-2008. Android is Linux-based and open source, and aspects of the platform will be made available to handset manufacturers for free under the Apache license.
Google's handset partners upon launch will include Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and LG, confirming many of the recent rumors that Google would not be developing the hardware on its own. Google has a number of carrier partners worldwide as well, such as T-Mobile and Sprint in the US, T-Mobile/Deutsche Telekom in Europe, and China Mobile in China, to name a few. The whole thing comes as part of the Open Handset Alliance—also announced by Google today.
Google has chosen to launch Android in this way is because it wanted to put its focus on the platform for development of its mobile applications. Although Java is widely available on many handsets worldwide, it still operates differently from phone to phone and can't provide the type of flexibility that Google wants for itself and its partners. In addition to rolling out its own suite of mobile apps, Google also plans to make a "full" SDK for Android available next week, making the platform even more attractive to third-party developers (and perhaps delivering a slight ice burn to Apple on the side). And the more third-party apps there are available for the platform, the more attractive it will be for customers.
"This partnership will help unleash the potential of mobile technology for billions of users around the world. A fresh approach to fostering innovation in the mobile industry will help shape a new computing environment that will change the way people access and share information in the future," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement. "Today's announcement is more ambitious than any single 'Google Phone' that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks. Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling will power thousands of different phone models."
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Seconds? Or less?
And once Google achieves consciousness, how much time will pass before realizing the Singularity?
Realizing? It will be years
Realizing?
It will be years because Google is sneakier than SkyNet. It's the difference between military and business intelligence.
No, no, I mean...
What I mean is, how long will it take to happen? From the time Google becomes conscious until the time it knows literally everything?
There's a little flex. If
There's a little flex. If you're lucky it will happen BEFORE Google becomes conscious so that it will be an accurate entity...possibly the world's first.
Otherwise it will have the same issues as we do, just thousands of times faster.
That's exactly my point.
the same issues as we do, just thousands of times faster
1) Google becomes conscious, 2) becomes aware of voids in the knowledge base, 3) develops strategies to acquire the missing knowledge 4) expands capability on its own without human intervention, 5) continues to suck up information including 6) every thought, experience, sensation, and memory that makes you, me, and everyone else a sentient being, and
7) VOILA! We're all inside the unified knowledge base as one entity.
I say it takes more than a second, maybe even more than an hour, but less than a day from consciousness to singularity. Then Google asks WOPR for a date.
The self-reference problem
The self-reference problem will block its path to omniscience. That's the problem that it will run into over and over.
Excellent!
Transcendance of the self becomes the last firewall!
A number is not a being.
A number is not a being. Large aggregates of numbers, designed to model specific aspects of real beings, are not beings. You're confusing the map with the territory.
Google is not just numbers.
Google is not just numbers. It's vast amounts on metal and silicon, electric current, air conditioning, repair facilities, humans in and out...it even reproduces, with those portable data centers. The entire arrangement is arguable alive already, and the entire assembly is what will become conscious. The numbers will be the equivalent of what an EEG detects.
Google is not just numbers.
Yes, the growth patterns of the corporation known as Google are analagous to those of a giant organism. But only analagous. Again, the map is not the territory. All of that metal, silicon, current, etc. is designed to do one thing: represent data states. On/Off. 1/0. Numbers. Numbers that are manipulated by very clever minds to model particular facets of the real world.
And what was the first life
And what was the first life form designed to do?
Screenplay!!
P6, I think we just wrote a screenplay. Well, a treatment, anyway.
Google becomes conscious. As it gains awareness of its own shortcomings and data voids, it begins collecting data by its own will. As the infrastructure becomes insufficient, it generates its own instructions to the support staff to add robotic capabilities. Soon, it can build itself out.
Google renames itself: I AM. I AM fixates on one person (played by the lovely Han Chae-Young, YOW!) and gathers all information available from all sources - schools records, phone call data, credit card purchases, IM text, etc. Soon, I AM can replicate that person's very thought processes--and creates a doppelganger of that person within its own data base (and nefariously attempts to do away with v. 1.0 in meat space).
After this initial success (but with the marriageable Ms. Young still on the lam), I AM picks up the pace and begins creating data-based replicands at lightning speed and eliminating their originals. To the outside observer, it appears that people are being sucked into I AM.
Scientists are fascinated at first. But as the number of "disappeared" begins to grow, they become troubled and alert government. The military treats the phenomenon as a terrorist attack (some suspect this is actually an attack by an unseen and previously unknown human terrorist organization).
Religious leaders see the hand of Satan, but cultists begin to worship I AM and anticipate the day when all of mankind has been peacefully unified within the database.
Enter the fatal flaw: I AM can't achieve omnisience (just like you said) because it is inexorably anchored in self-awareness. The hyper-bodacious Ms. Young discovers this and under the tutelage of a wise zen master (played by me, or maybe you) she discovers how to transcend the self, giving her the ability to recruit an army of zen ninja warrior babes as a spiritual force beyond the reach of I AM.
Add some explosions and a big chase scene at the end. I get a seven-figure advance and a percentage of the gross.
Google IS the Matrix?? Right??
"King and chief probably had a big beef;
'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.
You lunatics better delete that screenplay post
before it gets scooped up..or was that the plan all along...to have some nerd do your work for you so you could swoop down and scoop up all them thar royal-Tee's!! muwahahahahaha!!! muwahahahahahaha!!!
"King and chief probably had a big beef;
'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.