Stewart forwards this beautifully detailed rendering of the Rosetta Mission by artist Erik Viktor, showing the landing craft on the icy surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasiamenko and the sun beyond. The main spacecraft above is the orbiter, with 14 meter solar panels on each side. The orbiter has eleven groups of scientific instruments, intended to take readings from the lander, and relay them back to earth. The prototype Rosetta Disk is also on the orbiter, located on the exterior underneath thermal blankets. The orbiter is due to rendezvous with the comet in 02014.
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The Long Now Blog
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Rosetta Mission Landing - as seen through the Artist’s Eye
3 Jul 2009 | 12:28 pm -
Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak Ticket Info
1 Jul 2009 | 3:27 pmThe Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking presents Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak on “Organically Grown and Genetically Engineered: The Food of the Future” Tuesday July 28, 02009 at 7:30 pm at the Cowell Theater Long Now Members can reserve a seat HERE You can purchase tickets for $10 HERE We recommend purchasing or reserving your seats in advance as our Seminars can sell out. There is room for 100 walk-ups (60 seats) for the free simulcast in the Lobby; this is a separate line, so get there early! About this Seminar: She’s the head of a… -
Long Now Media Update
30 Jun 2009 | 11:40 amThe latest Seminars About Long-term Thinking are now available as audio downloads or podcasts and in hi-res video for Long Now members. *Paul Romer on “A Theory of History, with an Application” - audio and video now available -
Digital Rosetta Stone
29 Jun 2009 | 4:49 pmFrom TechOn!: “Japanese researchers prototyped a memory system that can store large volumes of data for more than a thousand years. The system, “Digital Rosetta Stone (DRS),” was announced June 16, 2009, by Keio University, Sharp Corp and Kyoto University at the 2009 Symposium on VLSI Circuits, which is taking place in Kyoto, Japan (lecture number: C3-3). They stacked wafers mounted with mask ROM and packaged it with SiO2. Power supply and signal communication are conducted by wireless.” Very, very cool… but there remains the issue of transparency. If someone… -
1,000 year story
20 Jun 2009 | 4:00 amFrom Wired: The printing process in question is a simple but, as usual with Keats, pretty clever idea. The cover is printed in a double layer of standard black ink, with an incrementally screened overlay masking the nine words. Exposed over time to ultraviolet light, the words will be appear at different rates, supposedly one per century. “The precise quantity of ink covering each word is different, so that the words will appear one at a time,” Keats said. “Provided that your copy of Opium is kept out in the open, and regularly exposed to sunlight over 1,000 years to be read…
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Accelerating Future
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R.U. Sirius Interview on Transhumanism at 10 Zen Monkeys
2 Jul 2009 | 8:16 pmIt’s here. Lots of interesting questions and answers. Nice look into the mind of R.U. By the way, he just started teaching an online class on transhumanism at the Evolver Academy. You can probably still join the course for $120, though I haven’t double-checked on that. -
Prizes at CyBeRev
2 Jul 2009 | 8:05 pmCyBeRev is offering cash and other prizes (like cool video recording sunglasses) for people whose mindfiles do the best at conversing like people. I’m not sure exactly how mindfiles converse, but if you figure that out, you can win. If you win, be sure to take pictures of yourself with your cool shades. -
Beyond Asimov’s Laws
30 Jun 2009 | 9:58 pmAround the world, thinkers in roboethics have realized the obvious — Asimov’s Laws are useless for creating friendly robots or AIs. A recent PhysOrg press release, “Living Safely with Robots, Beyond Asimov’s Laws”, describes the conclusions of a study published in International Journal of Social Robotics on roboethics. The study was a collaboration between Taiwanese and Japanese scientists. The points made in the press release are similar to those made by the Singularity Institute’s 2004 publicity project, Three Laws Unsafe, which was released in… -
Singularity University in the Chronicle of Higher Education
30 Jun 2009 | 9:48 pmSingularity University, which had its first day yesterday, got an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I am especially happy to see a mention of the risk of bioengineered viruses in that article, showing that Kurzweil really does care about some risks of technological progress and not just the benefits. I do concur with Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen however, when they claim in Moral Machines that Kurzweil underestimates the risk of Artificial General Intelligence. The article makes an error in that it says Kurzweil predicts a “singularity” in 2029 rather than 2045. -
Michael Jackson’s Brain Rots, Never to Be Preserved
29 Jun 2009 | 4:10 pmApparently Michael Jackson was interested in cryonics, but never signed up. This is sort of sad, because the structure of the brain holds one’s personality and a lifetime of memories. Even if you don’t believe in the potential of future revival, preserving the structure of the brain would still be incredibly interesting, because future analysis could allow us to read memories and other cognitive features. Already, neuroscientists can read basic thoughts via brain scanning.
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KURZWEILAI.NET ACCELERATING INTELLIGENCE
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'Toy Universe' Could Solve Life's Origins
3 Jul 2009 | 1:16 amEvogrid, a simulation of properties of the early oceans on Earth, is intended to model possible biochemical routes to the development of life, eventually using millions of volunteer computers in an interconnected grid. (Source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090702-am-evogrid-evolution.html) -
Sound imaging: clever acoustics help blind people see the world
3 Jul 2009 | 12:57 amUniversity of Bristol and University of Laguna researchers have developed a system using video from portable cameras that calculates the distance of obstacles, predicts the movements of people and cars, and generates three-dimensional acoustic maps, compensating for head positioning using a gyroscopic sensor. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news165759079.html) -
Laser light switch could leave transistors in the shade
3 Jul 2009 | 12:08 amAn optical transistor that uses one laser beam to control another could form the heart of a future generation of ultrafast photonic computers, overcoming the speed limits with wires, say Swiss researchers. Using a green beam to switch an orange output beam from weak to strong is analogous to the way a transistor's control electrode switches a current between "on" and "off" voltages, and hence the 0s and 1s of digital data. And doing it with a single molecule means billions could be packed into future photonic chips. (Source:… -
Discovery pinpoints new connection between cancer cells, stem cells
2 Jul 2009 | 1:21 amTelomerase, best known for enabling unlimited cell division of stem cells and cancer cells, has a surprising additional role in the expression of genes in an important stem cell regulatory pathway, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The unexpected finding may lead to new anticancer therapies and a greater understanding of how adult and embryonic stem cells divide and specialize. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news165674795.html) -
Sea level rise: It's worse than we thought
2 Jul 2009 | 1:10 amThe continued melting of glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica will add another 10 to 20 centimeters to sea level by 2100, according to one report. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.300-sea-level-rise-its-worse-than-we-thought.html?full=true)
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The Singularity Institute Blog
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AI Report on Forbes.com
24 Jun 2009 | 11:02 amSIAI President Michael Vassar, SIAI Director of Research Ben Goertzel, and SIAI Advisor Nick Bostrom all have excellent short articles up on Forbes’ AI Report. -
Interview with Michael Vassar at Future Blogger
11 Jun 2009 | 5:50 pmFuture Blogger has an interview up with SIAI President Michael Vassar. This is the second interview that Michael has given since joining SIAI. The first, from April, is at Accelerating Future. -
Sander Olson Interview with Ben Goertzel
9 Jun 2009 | 5:40 pmBrian Wang has posted a recent interview with SIAI Director of Research Ben Goertzel at his site, Next Big Future. -
Handing over to Michael Anissimov
31 May 2009 | 10:59 amOver the last year I have been updating this blog with news about the SIAI-related activities of the team. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to let current and potential supporters know what the organization is doing. I’m pleased to be able to hand over to Michael Anissimov, who recently signed on as SIAI Media Director. -
Videos from Global Catastrophic Risks Conference Available
27 May 2009 | 11:50 pmVideo is now available from the Global Catastrophic Risks Conference held at Oxford University, July 2008. Lecturers include SIAI Scientific Advisor Prof. Nick Bostrom and SIAI Research Fellow Eliezer Yudkowsky. Link
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Open the Future
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remaking tomorrow
25 Jun 2009 | 4:48 pmVideo of my talk at AMP in Sydney is now available. It runs about an hour: > There will be a prize (to be determined) for whomever comes up with the goofiest screencap of me from this video. My candidate is shown above, but I know you can do better. -
Your Brain Hates You
24 Jun 2009 | 10:43 pmThe "blue" and the "green" are identical colors (RGB 0/255/150). Discuss. Yes, they are. Grab this image and test the colors yourself. Here are more. From Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomy blogger, who says: The orange stripes go through the "green" spiral but not the "blue" one. So without us even knowing it, our brains compare that spiral to the orange stripes, forcing it to think the spiral is green. The magenta stripes make the other part of the spiral look blue, even though they are exactly the same color. [...] This is why I tell people over and over again: you cannot trust what you see… -
Sydneyside
23 Jun 2009 | 6:07 pmPresentation #1 done. They scheduled me for 7:30 in the morning, so the crowd was lighter than I expected. Fortunately, my body was still on California time, so 7:30 in the morning felt like early afternoon for me! A few meetings today, then a repeat of the talk tomorrow afternoon. There's an audio recording of the talk out there, but the quality is pretty bad -- wildly variable volume and bursts of static. Hopefully, there will be a cleaned-up version. Here's my slide deck at Slideshare. Many of the slides will be familiar -- as you know, I'm a great believer in recycling. (UPDATE: Okay,… -
Worry. Be Happy.
21 Jun 2009 | 6:08 pmOn Wednesday morning, I'll be presenting at AMPLIFY 09 in Sydney, Australia. The topic of my talk? "What if we really COULD change the future for the better?" It's at once a bit unsettling and a bit of a relief to be speaking about this subject again. I've spent so much time, of late, writing about and talking about Big Hairy Crises and Our Failure to Confront Them (tm), that I almost forgot what I should be doing. In a way, it's good that the Atlantic article was delayed so long; it ended up being a nice reminder that not all of my work has to be so dire. Pictures, etc., to follow as usual. -
#cleanse
18 Jun 2009 | 10:28 amMy new Fast Company article went live this morning, "The Dark Side of Twittering a Revolution." It looks at some of the less-savory implications of the heroic use of Twitter in Iran. Consider, for a moment, what we're seeing happening in Iran: mass-action coordinated, at least in part, through Twitter; traditional media in Iran having lost any legitimacy for the angry populace, alternative media--like Twitter--increasingly becoming the sole source of information; and a growing sense of persecution and crisis, abetted by the limited streams of rumor-heavy news. Let me again emphasize that I…
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Next Big Future
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Carbon Nanotube Quantum Dot Terahertz Detectors and On-Chip High Resolution near-field terahertz detector
3 Jul 2009 | 8:13 amTwo types of emerging terahertz detectors are based on novel nanoelectronic technologies. Future work to combine the two will enable a real time terahertz video camera.1. A highly sensitive and frequency tunable terahertz detector based on a carbon nanotube (CNT) quantum dot (QD).Observations have been made of electron tunneling via terahertz-photon detection, called photon-assisted tunneling. This result means that the CNT-QD structure can be utilized as a frequency tunable terahertz detector. CNT-QD detector functions properly up to approximately 7 K. Higher-temperature operation of the… -
DARPA Funds Phase 2 of Nano UAV Development - 10 gram Fake Hummingbirds
3 Jul 2009 | 7:24 amDARPA is providing following up funding to develop 10 gram UAVs (Nano Unmanned Aerial Vehicles- NAV) (4 page pdf) Phase 2 will end in the summer of 2010.The U.S. Air Force is also funding a number of research projects in universities across the country. An Air Force Research Laboratory report, obtained by the Air Force Times and described in a recent article, suggests just where the Air Force wants to go with this research: The Air Force wants so-call Micro-Air Vehicles, or MAVs, about the size of a sparrow, ready to fly by 2015 and even smaller, dragonfly-sized drones ready to fly in swarms… -
New Nanomedicine Writing from Robert Freitas
2 Jul 2009 | 3:41 pmRobert Freitas published a major new theory paper on aspects of medical nanorobot control, providing an early glimpse of future discussions of this topic that are planned to appear in Chapter 12 (Nanorobot Control) of Nanomedicine, Vol. IIB: Systems and Operations, the third volume of the Nanomedicine book series (still in preparation).The paper is part of an edited book collection on bio-inspired nanoscale computing that was published about a week ago by Wiley. Robert Freitas contributed the 15th chapter:Robert A. Freitas Jr., “Chapter 15. Computational Tasks in Medical Nanorobotics,” in… -
China's Nuclear Energy Target for 2020 is 86 Gigawatts and Wind Energy Targt of 150 GW
2 Jul 2009 | 8:40 amChina Daily reports: China is planning for an installed nuclear power capacity of 86 gigawatts (gW) by 2020, up nearly 10-fold from the 9 gW capacity it had by the end of last year, two people familiar with the matter said. the new target is higher than targets earlier this year of 70-75 GW and higher than two-three years ago when the target was 40 GW.The goal, which is part of an alternative energy development roadmap covering 2009-20, seeks to have at least 12 gW of installed nuclear power capacity by 2011.The plan "will call for the government to accelerate nuclear power development in… -
Progress in Understanding Regeneration in Salamanders
1 Jul 2009 | 6:19 pmShwann cells are shown here in a salamander limb. When the limb regrew after being amputated, only these cells wrapped around nerve fibers; other cell types did not turn into Shwann cells. Credit: D. Knapp/E. Tanaka The salamander is a superhero of regeneration, able to replace lost limbs, damaged lungs, sliced spinal cord — even bits of lopped-off brain. In a paper set to appear Thursday in the journal Nature, a team of seven researchers, including a University of Florida zoologist debunk the source of the salamander regeneration as “pluripotent” cells.The researchers show that cells…
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NANODOT NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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Nanotech and climate change
3 Jul 2009 | 12:13 amEric Drexler is apparently at the Renaissance Weekend with the intent to speak to the assembled interesting people about how “advanced nanotechnology can address the climate change problem providing low-cost solar energy and by removing accumluated CO2 from the atmosphere.” In the same spirit, for the rest of us, here’s how I think we should go about using advanced nanotechnology to address the problem of climate change: Develop advanced nanotechnology already! In particular, develop a self-replicating machine technology at the molecular scale. This could be done… -
Medical nanorobot control
2 Jul 2009 | 1:00 amRobert A. Freitas Jr., author of the Nanomedicine series of books, has just published a major new theory paper on aspects of medical nanorobot control, providing an early glimpse of future discussions of this topic that are planned to appear in Chapter 12 (Nanorobot Control) of Nanomedicine, Vol. IIB: Systems and Operations, the third volume of the series (still in preparation). The paper is part of an edited book collection, available for purchase from Amazon, on bio-inspired nanoscale computing that was published about a week ago by Wiley. Freitas’ contribution to the book is the… -
Robo-ethics paper and Open-Texture Risk
1 Jul 2009 | 3:47 amThere’s a paper on roboethics by Yueh-Hsuan Weng of Taiwan’s Conscription Agency in the International Journal of Social Robotics that has gotten a write-up on Physorg (h/t to Accelerating Future). Here’s the abstract: Technocrats from many developed countries, especially Japan and South Korea, are preparing for the human-robot co-existence society that they believe will emerge by 2030. Regulators are assuming that within the next two decades, robots will be capable of adapting to complex, unstructured environments and interacting with humans to assist with the performance of… -
Super-dense magnetic memory
30 Jun 2009 | 1:00 amThere’s a post on Technology Review’s blog about a paper on arXiv about a theoretical result in magnetic memories. Current-day magnetic memory is already “nanotechnology” under the loose definition, involving 5-nanometer particles of cobalt (having about 50,000 atoms). The authors have shown that a single molecule consisting of a cobalt dimer sitting on top of a benzene ring would have a high enough magnetic anisotropy to store a bit magnetically. (surprisingly enough, the cobalts prefer to stack up rather than so lie down flat on the carbon ring.) Don’t expect… -
Feynman Prize nominations: last chance
29 Jun 2009 | 4:48 amThe nominations for Foresight’s 2009 Feynman Prize will be closing soon, so if you know someone who has done outstanding work to advance the goal of molecular nanotechnology, please visit the Instructions Page to nominate them. Research areas considered relevant to MNT (e.g., productive nanosystems and molecular machine systems) include but are not limited to: artificial molecular machines atomically-precise construction biomolecular machinery computational chemistry and molecular modeling mechanosynthesis nanomechanical engineering nanomanipulation natural molecular machines scanning…
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Soft Machines
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Food nanotechnology - their Lordships deliberate
30 Jun 2009 | 6:46 amToday I found myself once again in Westminster, giving evidence to a House of Lords Select Committee, which is currently carrying out an inquiry into the use of nanotechnology in food. Readers not familiar with the intricacies of the British constitution need to know that the House of Lords is one of the branches of Parliament, the UK legislature, with powers to revise and scrutinise legislation, and through its select committees, hold the executive to account. Originally its membership was drawn from the hereditary peerage, with a few bishops thrown in; recently as part of a slightly… -
Environmentally beneficial nanotechnology
25 Jun 2009 | 10:17 amToday I’ve been at Parliament in London, at an event sponsored by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology to launch the second phase of the Environmental Nanoscience Initiative. This is a joint UK-USA research program led by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Agency and the USA’s Environmental Protection Agency. This is a very welcome initiative to give some more focus to existing efforts to quantify possible detrimental effects of engineered nanoparticles on the environment. It’s important to put more effort into filling gaps in our knowledge about what… -
Moving on
29 May 2009 | 1:33 pmFor the last two years, I’ve been the Senior Strategic Advisor for Nanotechnology for the UK’s Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), the government agency that has the lead responsibility for funding nanotechnology in the UK. I’m now stepping down from this position to return to a new, full-time role at the University of Sheffield; EPSRC is currently in the process of appointing my successor. In these two years, a substantial part of a new strategy for nanotechnology in the UK has been implemented. We’ve seen new, Grand Challenge programmes… -
Accelerating evolution in real and virtual worlds
22 May 2009 | 8:08 amEarlier this week I was in Trondheim, Norway, for the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computing. Evolutionary computing, as its name suggests, refers to a group of approaches to computer programming that draws inspiration from the natural processes of Darwinian evolution, hoping to capitalise on the enormous power of evolution to find good solutions to complex problems from a very large range of possibilities. How, for example, might one program a robot to carry out a variety of tasks in a changing and unpredictable environment? Rather than an attempting to anticipate all the possible scenarios… -
How to engineer a system that fights back
10 May 2009 | 2:08 pmLast week saw the release of a report on synthetic biology from the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering. The headline call, as reflected in the coverage in the Financial Times, is for the government to develop a strategy for synthetic biology so that the country doesn’t “lose out in the next industrial revolution”. The report certainly plays up the likelihood of high impact applications in the short term - within five to ten years, we’re told, we’ll see synbio based biofuels, “artificial leaf technology” to fix atmospheric carbon dioxide,…
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UltraFuture
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Press Release: Micro Imaging Technology
16 Jun 2009 | 7:41 amMIT 1000 LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN TO OBTAIN STRATEGIC DISTRIBUTION AND MANUFACTURING PARTNERS San Clemente, CA. June 16, 2009….Micro Imaging Technology, Inc. (OTC:BB “MMTC”) announced that it has launched a campaign to obtain strategic partners for both distribution and manufacturing of its MIT 1000 Rapid Microbial Identification (ID) System. By recently obtaining Performance Test Method (PTM) Certification for the ID of Listeria from the AOAC Research Institute (RI), the first step in MIT’s commercialization strategy has been accomplished, allowing the Company to initiate sales into the… -
VMware Unveils its Cloud OS
7 Jun 2009 | 8:59 pmVMware Unveils its Cloud OS (from DMXZone.com) “VMware is attempting to bridge virtualized data centers-now known as “private clouds”-and growing cloud computing services from the likes of Amazon.com and others.” VMware announced its cloud operating system-dubbed vSphere 4-with plans for general availability in the second quarter. VMware is attempting to bridge virtualized data centers-now known as “private clouds”-and growing cloud computing services from the likes of Amazon.com and others. However, this bridging process is a work in progress due to the… -
Brian Dettmer: Adaptations
12 May 2009 | 5:16 pmBrian Dettmer: Adaptations from Coolhunter.com Artist Brian Dettmer dissects books to expose the beauty of their anatomy. Using an X-acto knife and tweezers, Dettmer pulls away carefully selected layers of books, revealing a complex view of their internal organization. In this time when the book is no longer the most efficient way to store and transmit data, Dettmer’s transformations are at once nostalgic and forward-thinking. His process is a wonderful example of how a destructive act can create something beautiful and new. Adaptations Through 9 May 2009 Packer Schopf Gallery 942 West… -
Microchip detects Malaria in minutes
26 Apr 2009 | 2:20 amScientists from Glasgow University claim they have created a device which can detect malaria within minutes. Doctors have welcomed the development as more travellers go abroad without taking proper precautions against the disease. The flu-like symptoms can be missed until the patient is critically ill. Scientists at the university have announced an electronic microchip that can detect the type of malaria infecting a patient and find out whether the malaria is resistant to first line drugs. Blood samples are placed in the microchip, which is designed to detect the strain of disease. This means… -
Welcome to the Human Future Website !
19 Apr 2009 | 4:34 pmHuman Future has a website which provides a database of ideas examining the future of humanity. Visit the site and check out the specific topics below to explore how science, technology and evolution may shape our common future. http://www.humansfuture.org/ From Human Future Website: Predicting the future is by no means an easy task, it requires considerable erudition, creativity, imagination and wisdom. In this site there is a vast database of ideas pertaining to human future which include genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, emerging technologies, life extension, human…
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Responsible Nanotechnology
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Graphene Ribbons Now Available
1 Jul 2009 | 9:10 amPrecise graphene ribbons can be made by chemically unzipping carbon nanotubes.This adds one more large molecule to the nanoscale construction toolbox. The ribbons may be useful in electronics, since a film of them should be even more conductive than a film of buckytubes. So they will likely be researched.The article didn't say so, but I also speculate that these ribbons may be useful as reinforcements in composite materials (like a better kind of carbon fiber), since they seem to be water-soluble (which helps with processing) and might be easier to attach other molecules to than nanotubes… -
Solid-State Quantum Computer
29 Jun 2009 | 2:05 pmIt's not nanotech, except in the sense that anything small and interesting enough counts as nanotech. But it's a significant milestone toward a game-changing technology.An electronic quantum processor with two qubits, each made of about a billion aluminum atoms, has been created at Yale university. They can get the qubits to maintain their state for about a microsecond. And they have a "quantum bus" that can pass information between the bits.I don't understand all the cool things you can do with a quantum computer, but apparently it can be useful for simulating quantum… -
Today's Tech: Affordable Carbon Capture
25 Jun 2009 | 11:26 amMolecular manufacturing will give us the ability to do planet-scale engineering. We may need it.Polar ice is melting faster than expected, and permafrost is releasing methane. Science tells us that large-scale reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide may be necessary to avoid major, destructive, near-irreversible climate shifts. According to a recent CNN news story on carbon capture technology, it may be possible to remove carbon dioxide economically with today's technology. A machine that costs as much as a car could remove the carbon emitted by 20 cars. The power required to remove and…
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Ethical Technology
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Life Inc. video dispatches and audiobook available
3 Jul 2009 | 10:29 amIEET Fellow Doug Rushkoff is posting brief videos and MP3s encapsulating key concepts from his Life Inc for de-corporatizing our lives, abandoning the speculative economy, and rebuilding both commerce and community from the bottom up. -
Blackford and Schuklenk interviewed about 50 Voices
3 Jul 2009 | 9:39 amThe Examiner conducted a very nice interview with IEET Fellow Russell Blackford, and his co-editor Udo Schuklenk, about their new volume 50 Voices of Disbelief -
Edward Miller How to Redesign our Communities for the Internet Age
3 Jul 2009 | 8:34 am(IEET intern Edward Miller is guest blogging at Sentient Developments this month.) There is a long list of crises that we need to face and I won’t waste time boring you by listing them. As our brightest minds admit they were wrong, I hope that I can say, without qualification, that big changes in our thinking are required. Unfortunately, we haven’t made that “Change” even though we now have some new faces in power, and a bunch of old faces out of business or in prison. There is still an unquestioned belief in the need for major public transportation projects, global… -
Randall Mayes Don’t become a Cyborg by Accident (literally) - It can be Fatal
2 Jul 2009 | 4:08 pmImagine these hypothetical situations; you are injured and lying on the battlefield or are involved in a serious automobile accident and require a blood transfusion. What are the medical treatment options in these scenarios? In the past, the standard procedure is for trauma units to use saline solution to restore blood volume and increase the likelihood of survival after traumatic injury. If organs do not receive enough oxygen, organ damage or death usually occurs. Unfortunately, a quick blood transfusion is impossible. Blood transfusions are not readily available on the battlefield or… -
Marcelo Rinesi From Space, Watts, Bits, and Dreams
2 Jul 2009 | 4:04 pmSpace travel is very cheap. There’s no friction in the vacuum of space, so once you get something to move, it just keeps moving without spending any energy. The problem lies in getting things away from the gravity well of a planet. It takes a lot of energy to put something in orbit around Earth, and even more energy to get it free and moving toward another planet. This in an unavoidable consequence of physics as we understand them, and means that moving massive amounts of material from one planet to another, like millions of people migrating out of Earth, or the large-scale mining of…
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The Technium
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The Choice of Cities
2 Jul 2009 | 6:22 pmCities are technological artifacts, the largest technology we make. Their impact is out of proportion to the number of humans living in them. As the chart above shows, the percentage of humans living in cities averaged about one or two percent for most of recorded history. (The chart's Y axis is a logarithmic scale of percentage.) Yet almost everything that we think of when we say "culture" arose within cities. After all, the terms "city" and "civilization" share the same root. But the massive citification, or urbanization, that characterizes the technium today is a very recent development. -
Why Technology Can't Fulfill
26 Jun 2009 | 3:22 pmAt the beginning of this summer an Amish guy I met online rode his bicycle out to our home along the foggy Pacifica coast. Online, is of course, the last place you'd ever expect to meet an Amishman. But he contacted me via my blog, and then a few months later he appeared at our door hot, sweaty and out of breath from the long uphill climb to our house under the redwoods. Parked a few feet away was his ingenious Dohan foldup bike, which he rode from the train station. Like most Amish he did not fly, so he had stored his bike on the 3-day cross-country train ride from Pennsylvania. This was not… -
Triumph of the Default
23 Jun 2009 | 12:47 amOne of the greatest unappreciated inventions of modern life is the default. "Default" is a technical concept first used in computer science in the 1960s to indicate a preset standard. Default, for instance, as in: the default of this program assumes that dates are given in two digit years not four. Today the notion of a default has spread beyond computer science to the culture at large. It seems such a small thing, but the idea of the default is fundamental to the technium. It's hard to remember a time when defaults were not part of life. But defaults only arose as computing… -
Future Fossil of the Technium
18 Jun 2009 | 10:54 amLast year I posted an ode to the Anthropocene -- the period in Earth's long history when humans are the dominant geological force. That would be the last 20,000 years or so. One anthropocenic question brought up by Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist from the University of Leicester, is, as he puts it, "What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?." He speculates that we'll leave fossil cities as the debris of our civilization is pressed into rock. Reader Brett Lovgren was reminded on this on a walk along Wassenaar Beach in the Netherlands a few weeks ago. He tells me: "We were on a field… -
The Fifth and Sixth Discontinuity
15 Jun 2009 | 10:04 pmPhilosopher Bruce Mazlish claims that the eyes of science have overthrown humanity's view of itself in a series of revelations. At each unveiling, we descend one notch. In the first removal, Copernicus dethroned our common-sense assumption that our world stood at the center of the universe. Astronomy eventually revealed, with a shock, that we were a minor tribe huddled on a small speck circling a nondescript star at the outer edge of an immense average galaxy floating among a trillion others in one small corner of the universe. The noble distinction between us and the rest of the…
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Existence is Wonderful
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Seeking Writer's App for iPod Touch
30 Jun 2009 | 7:46 pmRecently I acquired an iPod Touch. I've had a portable dedicated MP3/music player for several years now (an indispensible item when one works in Cubicle Country) and initially couldn't see how the Touch differed from something like that, but after playing a bit with one back in May, I found myself tremendously intrigued.To make a long story short, I have one now (a second-generation 8 GB model) and I love it. Love love love. I find iTunes to be somewhat obnoxious and I am definitely not one of those who valorizes Apple or thinks they can do no wrong (I've never even owned an Apple desktop or… -
On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 3
29 Jun 2009 | 11:29 pmSo, say you've managed to figure out that a certain "weird" sensation in your head most likely means you are either hungry, thirsty, or both -- or that (on the less optimistic side of things) you've once again found yourself practically falling over at your desk because somehow nine or more hours have managed to pass since that energy bar you had for breakfast. At this point, figuring out why whatever unpleasant thing is happening to you is happening is only one part of the equation -- the other is determining how to do something about it.Three major components may come into play at this… -
I prefer to read it as a threat...
28 Jun 2009 | 12:01 amWomen are soft and gentle, but they hit things.Originally uploaded by malcontentdiaryCame across this in a "vintage ads" photo pool, and spent several seconds blinking and sputtering, so figured it was worth a post.Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things, eh? Wow.I mean, not that I have a drivers' license myself, but still... -
Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership In Research and Education (AASPIRE) Announces Gateway Project Launch
27 Jun 2009 | 10:26 amA while back I got involved with the nascent AASPIRE Project, which (quoting from the web site):...brings together the academic community and the autistic community to develop and perform research projects relevant to the needs of autistic adults. Our partnership will adhere to the principles of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), whereby researchers and community members serve as equal partners throughout the research process.Now, of course no research project, online or otherwise, is going to be able to take into account the views of literally everyone in a given demographic. Not… -
On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 2
26 Jun 2009 | 10:44 pm2. "Feeling Hungry" (or not) - Body Awareness and EatingI.The phrase "body awareness" is used here not in any strict scientific sense or in any flaky New Agey sense, but rather informally as something along the lines of: the capacity or tendency to specifically notice and identify that one is feeling a particular internal sensation.Hence, body awareness (as I am using this phrase in this context) is going to be relevant to a person's eating habits, as if you don't "feel hungry" very intensely (or if you just have difficulty in general sorting out what you are feeling), your need for nutritive…
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Sentient Developments
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Link dump: 2009.07.05
3 Jul 2009 | 2:14 pmFrom the four corners of the web:New Scientist: Brain could adapt well to cyborg enhancements: The brain maintains a physical map of the body, with different areas in charge of different body parts. Researchers have suggested that when we use tools, our brains incorporate them into this map.IEET: The Difficult Questions of 'Personhood': Every human is a person, right? And anyone we call a person must be a human, correct? Well, no, not necessarily. Re-Public special issue on TranshumanismForbes: The AI Report NYT: Building a Better Biosphere: Human influence on the atmosphere takes many forms,… -
Magnetic liquid [video]
2 Jul 2009 | 5:46 pmThis is unbelievably beautiful at times. -
How to Redesign our Communities for the Internet Age
2 Jul 2009 | 2:42 pmEdward Miller is guest blogging this month.There is a long list of crises that we need to face and I wont waste time boring you by listing them. As our brightest minds admit they were wrong, I hope that I can say, without qualification, that big changes in our thinking are required. Unfortunately, we haven't made that "Change" even though we now have some new faces in power, and a bunch of old faces out of business or in prison.There is still an unquestioned belief in the need for major public transportation projects, global supply chains, large scale social programs, and economies of scale. -
Yesterday's tomorrow: Hospital of the future
1 Jul 2009 | 5:01 pmIt's got tubes!! And sliding baby drawers! -
The art of Fernando Vincente Anatomias
1 Jul 2009 | 4:47 pmMore about Fernando Vincente Anatomias here.Via Grinding via imgfave.com.
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Broader Perspective
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Mindfile deletion
28 Jun 2009 | 6:02 amHow do you know that your mindfile will not be deleted, either on purpose or by accident? What would you do if your mindfile is stored in memory and not allowed to run? How would you know that you are not being run? Is not running the equivalent of being dead? How will you know that you are getting the processing power and bandwidth in your contract when reality is simulated and hardware test results could be simulated too?There are at least two levels of challenges to address, akin to current physical world needs, first, survival needs and second, needs and rights when interacting with… -
Health Literacy Toolkit
21 Jun 2009 | 9:08 amWith one key life sciences focus shifting to health as opposed to healthcare (as HealthCamp founder Mark Scrimshire exhorts) and to preventive, predictive health management as opposed to therapy and treatment, there should be the concept of a health literacy toolkit that would be a component of standardized knowledge, such as how to write, drive or get a job.Definition of health literacySurprising but emblematic of the traditional health mentality (e.g.; treat illness) is the prevailing definition of health literacy…”a patient’s ability to acquire and understand information about a… -
Genomics: highest-impact near-term advance
14 Jun 2009 | 9:47 amGenomics is making faster progress than any other technology in recent history. Usually the vista from any point on an exponential curve looks flat to the experiencer but not so with consumer genomics, the field is exponentiating from any vantage point. Genomics scientific research and commercialization issues were discussed with excitement at the first-ever consumer genomics conference in Boston, June 9-11, 2009. (A PDF of this blogpost is available here.)SummaryAdvent of the whole human genome: Automatic whole human genome sequencing of all individuals could likely be a reality in the next… -
Aging is solvable
7 Jun 2009 | 5:18 amThat aging is understandable and solvable, not necessarily immediately but ultimately, was one topic not seeing a lot of opposition at the American Aging Association (AGE) conference in Phoenix AZ May 29 – June 1, 2009. Key research highlights are below.Aging is a key contemporary concern, on the order of climate change, as all countries worldwide have populations increasingly stratified towards aging. Aging is not just a medical condition but a key challenge to be resolved for advanced societies to be successful in the long-term. Productivity, healthcare costs and happiness and comfort… -
The future of computing – rotaxanes?
31 May 2009 | 10:09 pmOne of the great human endeavors at the moment is being able to work at the molecular scale (e.g.; 1-100 nm), using organic and inorganic materials for a variety of purposes ranging from basic materials to computing to electronics to life sciences therapeutics to energy. This includes the designed direction of existing molecular processes (e.g.; biology) and the synthesis of novel materials, structures and dynamic behavior.Three of the most interesting advances in working at the molecular scale and examples of bio-infotech convergence are described below…1) Hybrid organic-inorganic…
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Andart
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My top 10 Frightening Scientific Papers
30 Jun 2009 | 2:28 pmHere is my top 10 list of scientific papers that have frightened me. Some give unsettling insights in just how bad humans can be, others suggest that reason is helpless or that the world is dangerous in hard-to-fix ways. Perhaps... -
Human Enhancement
30 Jun 2009 | 12:53 pmNow the ETAG (European Technology Assessment Group) report on Human Enhancement is out. Well worth reading, and has some useful policy ideas. Too tired myself after having run an enhancement workshop, one enhancement symposium and lectured at a conference about... -
Swine flu, black swans, and Geneva-eating dragons
22 Jun 2009 | 2:39 amThis saturday I talked at ExtroBritannia about risk, or in particular, what statistics can tell us to worry/not worry about. As promised, here are the slides as PDF (6.5M) In particular, the micromort measures I talked about come from this... -
Who was that masked blogger?
18 Jun 2009 | 11:12 amPractical Ethics: Sometimes justice wears a mask: blogging, anonymity and the open society - I blog about the Night Jack case, where a UK court allowed the Times to expose the identity of a police blogger, which led to him... -
Smarter, and hence safer?
16 Jun 2009 | 12:25 pmLess Wrong: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation - Roko brings up the question of whether intelligence enhancement might improve our resiliency against existential risk....
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Black Belt Bayesian
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Non-Unique Universe
2 Jul 2009 | 1:46 pmThose of you who are into multiverse esoterica will enjoy this by Gordon McCabe. -
Rapture versus MechaRapture
29 May 2009 | 1:16 pmInterestingly enough, RaptureReady.com has a piece up claiming: transhumanist anticipation of the singularity is comparable to Christian anticipation of the second coming of Jesus Christ To those of you who dismiss the singularity as the “Rapture of the Nerds”: are you sure you want to agree with RaptureReady.com? Ha! Read the whole thing, but only if you’re looking for entertainment: A movement which views its ultimate purpose as bringing enlightenment to the universe sets itself up in direct opposition to God’s own purpose … their ambition — like… -
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Termination
22 May 2009 | 6:49 pmMichael Anissimov has a website up featuring some people’s essays on Friendly AI and the new Terminator movie at Terminator Salvation: Preventing Skynet. The thing about all these sci-fi movies is they take place after (modulo time travel) the real, irredeemable mistakes are made, then pretend there’s still some sort of contest. Anyway, in case you haven’t seen the site already, take a look. -
No-One Has a Head
4 Mar 2009 | 10:41 amIn a 2007 paper, Charles Lineweaver develops Rare Head Theory: We can use Fig. 4 to identify trends in the evolution of life, or convergences on some specific feature, whether it be E.Q., N.Q., olfactory lobe size or eyeballs. First we randomly select a few of the ~60 branches shown. Then we determine if two or more of them have independently evolved the feature of interest. For example, human-like intelligence probably depends on the existence of heads. Thus, we want to know if the tree of life shows any convergence towards heads. If heads were a convergent feature of evolution one would… -
Creature Or Technology
20 Feb 2009 | 10:09 amWhen people think about artificial intelligence — not things like chess computers, but the full-blown human-equivalent kind that doesn’t currently exist — they often think of each AI design as an individual creature. A more enlightening way to see things is to consider each AI design as a technology, a way to arrange matter to produce some desired result. Just like the technology called “the wheel” is a way to turn a thing that just sits there into a thing that rolls, an AI design is a way to turn any sufficiently powerful computer into a thing competent at…
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the Foresight Institute
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Nanotech and climate change
Eric Drexler is apparently at the Renaissance Weekend with the intent to speak to the assembled interesting people about how "advanced nanotechnology can address the climate change problem providing low-cost solar energy and by removing accumluated CO2 from the atmosphere." In the same spirit, for the rest of us, here's ... -
Medical nanorobot control
Robert A. Freitas Jr., author of the Nanomedicine series of books, has just published a major new theory paper on aspects of medical nanorobot control, providing an early glimpse of future discussions of this topic that are planned to appear in Chapter 12 (Nanorobot Control) of Nanomedicine, Vol. IIB: Systems ... -
Robo-ethics paper and Open-Texture Risk
There's a paper on roboethics by Yueh-Hsuan Weng of Taiwan's Conscription Agency in the International Journal of Social Robotics that has gotten a write-up on Physorg (h/t to Accelerating Future). Here's the abstract: Technocrats from many developed countries, especially Japan and South Korea, are preparing for the human-robot co-existence society that they ... -
Super-dense magnetic memory
There's a post on Technology Review's blog about a paper on arXiv about a theoretical result in magnetic memories. Current-day magnetic memory is already "nanotechnology" under the loose definition, involving 5-nanometer particles of cobalt (having about 50,000 atoms). The authors have shown that a single molecule consisting of a cobalt ... -
Feynman Prize nominations: last chance
The nominations for Foresight's 2009 Feynman Prize will be closing soon, so if you know someone who has done outstanding work to advance the goal of molecular nanotechnology, please visit the Instructions Page to nominate them. Research areas considered relevant to MNT (e.g., productive nanosystems and molecular machine systems) include but ...
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Futurismic
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Stephen Hawking on transhumanism
3 Jul 2009 | 3:21 pmPhysicist Stephen Hawking has commented on transhumanism and the future direction of humanity: Hawking says that we have entered a new phase of evolution. “At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information.” But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred. “I think it… -
‘Microvolunteering’: Doing good through social media
3 Jul 2009 | 10:39 amNobody expected Twitter to be as useful as it’s turned out to be. Maybe this will work, too. National Public Radio has a story about The Extraordinaires, which is not a 60s British spy show but a social-media enterprise that encourages brief bursts of volunteerism. Through The Extraordinaries, you might be able to use your smart phone — while waiting in the dentist’s office or standing in the Dept. of Motor Vehicles line — to: • translate a foreign-language document into English • add identifying tags to photos and videos for a museum • give advice to a college applicant… -
DARPA
3 Jul 2009 | 8:00 amChalk yet another one up to Frank Herbert; the DARPA people have just awarded a Phase II contract extension (whatever that means) to a company called AeroVironment so that they can continue developing their ‘Mercury’ Nano Air Vehicle ornithopter prototype. [via Hack-A-Day] Ornithopters – which feature heavily in the Dune series – are aircraft that are propelled by flapping their wings like a bird rather than using rotors, propellors or jets. Check out the Mercury prototype in action: Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00 Tags: aircraft •… -
Crowdsourced insurgency 101: monetizing the local network
3 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amIt’s not been mentioned much on this side of the pond, but I imagine Stateside readers will have already heard about the US soldier allegedly “sold” to a militant Afghani clan by local-level insurgents. Here’s hoping he gets hauled out of there sooner rather than later. [image by Soldier's Media Centre] John Robb points out the marked difference in military networking that this sort of action represents; the Haqqanis are leveraging an entrepreneurial instinct in their local supporters, a sort of monetized and crowdsourced insurgency that relies less on having a… -
“Rodent” is definitely the fashionable robot body-form for 2009
3 Jul 2009 | 3:55 am… because here’s another one of ‘em. SCRATCHbot is designed with a highly sensitive set of whiskers for feeling its way through rubble, perhaps to rescue people from collapsed buildings or natural disasters. I reckon there’s probably some mileage in a Saturday morning kid’s cartoon called Robot Rescue Rodents. No sign of robot capybaras yet, though… Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00 Tags: rescue • robot • rodents • technology Related posts Six-story tall giant robot? Yes, please (2) Your transhuman future: 24/7…
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On Singularity
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Fighting The Last War: Should Government Fund Health Care or Health Cure
There’s an old military adage. Generals always fight the the last war. Creating technologies that cure and that inexpensively treat medical conditions is far more cost-effective than building large government-run medical insurance bureaucracies or re-configuring private medical insurance concerns.[link] -
The Future of Human Evolution
Scientific and speculative articles about the future of human evolution regarding to artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, transhumanism, nanotechnology, space colonization, time travel, life extension and human enhancement[link] -
Singularity University To Launch June 29 - Exclusive Interview With Executive Director Salim Ismail
With the official launch of the inaugural summer session of Singularity University just days away, the Hub sat down with the University’s Executive Director Salim Ismail to get an inside look at this exciting event (see video interview at the end of this post). For those who are a little behind on the story, 40 students from across the world have been chosen from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants to participate in the first ever 9 week summer session of Singularity University. The University will bring together some of the top names in genetics, aging, computing, and several other… -
The AI Report at Forbes.com
Forbes has published over 20 articles on artificial intelligence, comprising "The AI Report". "AI might be just around the corner, or it might be centuries away."[link] -
The Transhumanist Wiki
The wiki about transhumanism that anyone can edit. This Wiki is meant to be an open wiki for transhumanists or anyone who is interested.[link]
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Overcoming Bias
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Improved Cores Unwanted
3 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amThe most interesting thing I learned at the Symposium last weekend was this two year old paper on a survey about enhancement. Its main result was that the more people considered a feature to be a key part of their identity, the less they wanted to improve it. Few folks want to improve their empathy, self-confidence, or self-control, while more folks want to enhance their rote memory, math ability, and wakefulness. I suspect something similar holds for beliefs: the more important a belief is to our identity, the less eager we are to improve that belief via evidence or analysis. … -
Signaling Beats Race-IQ For Controversy
2 Jul 2009 | 4:30 amOn Sunday I gave a talk, “Mind Enhancing Behaviors Today” (slides, audio) at an Oxford FHI Cognitive Enhancement Symposium. To suggest how society might treat future mind enhancements, I reviewed how we today treat mental enhancements in six different areas of life: grunt-work, sport, medicine, nutrition, school, and story. I discussed signaling explanations our behavior in these areas and in passing mentioned the low marginal health value of medicine. Also speaking were Linda Gottfredson, on how IQ matters lots for everything, how surprisingly stupid are the mid IQ, and how… -
I’m on MSNBC 9am EST
1 Jul 2009 | 3:45 amI’m supposed to be on Dyland Ratigan’s MSNBC show at 9am EST this morning, talking about medical reform. While I think I have a solid grasp of the long-term basics, I feel very conscious of all the things I don’t know about who exactly has just said what about which proposals that may or may not have what features depending on who makes what deals. I suspect the fear of looking stupid on all those ephemeral details detracts most pundits from taking the time to really understand the fundamentals. Added: Here is one video. I was on twice before then, but can’t find… -
War Is Brotherly
30 Jun 2009 | 7:30 pmFrom a new NBER working paper: We examine the empirical relationship between the occurrence of interstate conflicts and the degree of relatedness between countries, showing that populations that are genetically closer are more prone to go to war with each other, even after controlling for a wide set of measures of geographic distance and other factors that affect conflict, including measures of trade and democracy. So instead of war being conflict between natural genetic alliances, war is sibling rivalry writ large? Perhaps this won’t hold up to further scrutiny, but it sure is… -
Why Not Home College?
29 Jun 2009 | 3:00 amAfter a few decades of advocacy, US home-schoolers now get respect. Kids who learned high school material at home, under learning plans managed by their parents, can now apply to college on a nearly level playing field with kids who went to ordinary schools. But imagine a home-schooled college student applying for a job or grad school - he’d be treated almost as if he had spent those years on a job or goofing off. What is the difference? The difference I think is parental control. Because high school kids are legally under the control of their parents, their home schooling is…
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The Speculist
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Hungry Household Robots
2 Jul 2009 | 10:56 pmThey're here to help. You know, dust, pick up after you, that sort of thing. Oh, and they can also eliminate vermin...by eating the pests. The video says it all: I'm not usually one for robots-gone-mad scenarios, but doesn't the idea of a robot designed to seek out and eat living things in your house sound like a recipe for disaster? (h/t: Mike Dougherty) -
FastForward Radio: The Age of Indefinite Lifespan
30 Jun 2009 | 7:05 amThe World Transformed, Part 2 "How long have I got, Doc?" "Oh, about 1000 years..." Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon welcome visionary aging researchers and best-selling authors Aubrey de Grey (Ending Aging) and Terry Grossman (The Baby-Boomer's Guide to Living Forever, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever) to explain how indefinite healthy extension of human lifespan is not only possible, but may well soon be within our grasp. Towards the end of part 1 of the show, we ask Dr. Grossman if there are three things that people can do right now to start "living forever," what would they… -
Mainstreaming of the Singularity Continues
28 Jun 2009 | 10:43 pmUPDATE: Thanks to the anonymous commenter who pointed out that Justin Rattner is the CTO, not the CEO of Intel. Granted, a CTO saying these things is not as big a deal as a CEO, but I maintain that having the CTO of Intel say these things is still a fairly big deal. A couple of months ago, we did a show exploring whether the technological singularity and associated accelerating change ideas are becoming mainstream, and what steps might be taken to move such ideas further along in that direction. I have not been shy about stating (and reiterating) that if humanity's near -- or even long-term… -
It's a Time Machine
27 Jun 2009 | 4:49 pmAn optical time machine. And this one is going to take us all the way back to the beginning. Of course, visiting the early history of the universe is interesting, but what many of us want to do is visit this planet's past. As the linked article points out: If we want to finally work out who really killed Kennedy, all we need to do is nip over (assuming instantaneous matter transportation) to a planet some 46 light years from here and we should be able to inspect the grassy knoll (with an Extremely Large Telescope) at our leisure. Similarly, the Battle of Waterloo, the birth of Christ or the… -
Language Lesson for the Day
26 Jun 2009 | 5:42 pmIn Bahasa Melayu, the official language of Malaysia, the word "orang" means "man" or "human." So the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, who have co-existed on the Malaysian peninsula with the Malays for many centuries, are called the "Orang Asli," which means the "original people." Or to give another example, I might be described as an "orang putih." A white man. Of course, the word "orang" made it into the English langauge as part of "orangutan." That's two Malay words mashed together. In Malay, "orang utan" means simply the "man of the forest" or the "people of the forest." The Malays saw…
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PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories
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Japanese imperial army maps to go online
3 Jul 2009 | 5:40 pmOld Asia-Pacific maps from Japanese Imperial Army archives are going online for modern use, such as studying changes in forest cover or the growth of cities, a Japanese researcher said Friday. -
Volkswagen plans electric car in 2013: head
3 Jul 2009 | 3:31 pmGerman auto maker Volkswagen hopes to turn out its first all-electric car in 2013, VW head Martin Winterkorn said Friday. -
Global warming tactic cools climate but won`t help corals, say researchers
3 Jul 2009 | 11:47 am(PhysOrg.com) -- `Geoengineering` experiments proposed to reduce global warming by blocking sunlight with atmosphere-injected particles may cool the world but still leave carbon dioxide levels dangerously high, Stanford scientists say. -
The Vision Revolution: Eyes Are the Source of Human 'Superpowers'
3 Jul 2009 | 11:45 amFor Mark Changizi, it`s all in the eyes. -
Early detection sought for aquatic invasive weed Eurasian Watermilfoil
3 Jul 2009 | 11:42 am(PhysOrg.com) -- Battling invasive plants is nothing new to Montanans, but a newcomer on the scene dwells in the water. This aquatic invader is called Eurasian watermilfoil. Fortunately, Montanans can take preventive action against this waterborne species, as its distribution across the state is very limited.
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Pink Tentacle
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Japan fears massive jellyfish invasion this year
1 Jul 2009 | 4:45 amJapanese researchers monitoring the activity of giant jellyfish in Chinese waters are warning of a potentially historic and catastrophic invasion this year. Marine surveys conducted in late June have revealed alarming numbers of Nomura’s jellyfish — massive creatures that grow up to 2 meters (6 ft 7 in) in diameter and weigh as much as to 220 kilograms (about 450 lbs) — lurking in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea. The researchers warn that ocean currents may bring swarms of the monster jellies to Japan, which has been plagued by similar invasions in recent years. -
Video: Fiat Cinque Tank
30 Jun 2009 | 12:59 am+ Video The Fiat Cinque Tank, a dream bulldozer custom-built by ironsmith Kogoro Kurata, consists of an old Fiat 500 body mounted on the caterpillar tracks of a cheap secondhand tractor. The farm machine can only reach a speed of 3 kilometers per hour, turning a trip to the nearest convenience store into a 2-hour adventure, according to Kurata. But the classic look of the cabin no doubt impresses the neighbors, and the working power shovel comes in handy when obstacles block the way. See Kurata’s site for photos documenting the construction process: 1, 2, 3, 4. [Link: Monkey Farm] -
Manga-style illustrations by Shohei Otomo
29 Jun 2009 | 2:01 amBallpoint pen artist Shohei Otomo mashes up old and new in bold illustrations spiked with heavy doses of manga-style gore and perversion. Sunglassed Geisha Boss Batter Onsen Ping Pong Geisha Gurgling Heart Extermination of Giant Carp Portrait of a Far East Hoodlum - #1 Okiku Doll SM Geisha See Shohei Otomo’s website for much more. (Many images NSFW.) [Via: Bouncing Red Ball] -
Deco-Gundam
24 Jun 2009 | 8:34 pmJust in time for the 30th anniversary festivities comes this girlie Gundam, a jewel-encrusted RX-78-2 (apparently created by a Taiwanese fan) looking pretty in pink and lace. [Via Gigazine] -
‘Mosquito’ teen repeller fails to stop vandals
24 Jun 2009 | 1:41 amA vandalized toilet at Kitashikahama Park in Tokyo’s Adachi ward is raising questions about the effectiveness of the park’s controversial new “Mosquito” alarm — a device designed to repel teenagers by emitting an obnoxious high-frequency tone that only they can hear. The Mosquito, which was installed at the park on May 21 to discourage teens from hanging out there after hours, now operates every night from 11:00 PM to 4:00 AM. The device produces a high-pitched tone of around 17 kHz, which is unbearable to teen ears. The sound has no effect on older people, as…
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vetta project
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Reinforcement learning in the brain
21 Jun 2009 | 3:10 pmModel-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms are computationally cheap as each state-action pair keeps a cached estimate of its value that can easily be looked up in order to make a decision. Their weakness is that they are not easy to update when the agent’s goals, or the state of the world, changes in some critical way. Model-based RL, on the other hand, is better in this respect as it can use reasoning or search on a model in order to find paths leading to the fulfilment of the agent’s current goals. The downside, of course, is much greater computational cost. So what does… -
The unreasonable effectiveness of data
20 Jun 2009 | 9:11 amWe recently had a visitor to the Gatsby Unit talk about his work in reinforcement learning, in particular the use of planning and forward models to speed up the learning of difficult tasks. The substance of his talk was good, but that’s not what I want to talk about: it was the motivation he gave in his introduction that bothered me. Basically he said that humans learn much faster than reinforcement learning algorithms, and thus we should try to figure out how to make our algorithms learn faster. Really? It takes babies half a year or more to learn to control their limbs in fairly… -
Prospect theory investors
17 Jun 2009 | 8:54 amI recently completed a finance paper on the implications of prospect theory for portfolio choice and asset pricing. I worked on this with Prof. Enrico De Giorgi during my post doc at the Swiss Finance Institute. This post is meant as an introduction to this work; the full paper can be downloaded here. Finance models, like all mathematical models, suffer from the following problem: if you don’t make the initial assumptions simple and easy to work with the theoretical analysis that follows is too difficult to manage. In finance this usually translates into assuming that investors are… -
Swine flu statistics
16 Jun 2009 | 12:23 pmAs some of your might know, I’ve been sick at home for the last week with the flu. Naturally, this has got me thinking and reading a bit about the current swine flu pandemic and so I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts (besides the fact that being stuck at home is getting a bit boring). First of all, the general trend over the last month is very clear: this thing is exponential. Any graph that shows total human suffering increasing exponentially is something to be rather concerned about. Indeed, if anything the graphs are probably far far below the true number of cases. … -
Most surprising thing since 1999?
16 Jun 2009 | 6:48 amI just read this article on the scale of time by Mike Treder. Part the way through it has an interesting question: What would surprise a person from the year 2000 most about the year 2010? As I don’t know what will happen in the next year, I prefer the 1999 vs. 2009 question: If I got on the phone with 1999 me, what would be the most surprising news? Let’s start with what was going on in 1999: I had my first cell phone. Black and white LCD screen. No text messaging. I started working for Intelligenesis (later called Webmind, founded by Ben Goertzel). The machines we had were 500…
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Everyone's Blog Posts - Transhumanist Network
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Postgenderism Sneak peak (Coming - Soon)
TransAlchemy's 3rd video installment-posgenderism release Mark your calendars -
TransAlchemy Interviews STELARC
Ear on Arm Photographer- Nina Sellars STELARC Stelarc is a performance artist who has visually probed and acoustically amplified his body. He has made 3 films of the inside of his body. Between 1976-1988 he completed 25 body suspension performances with hooks into the skin. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems, the Internet and biotechnology to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a VIRTUAL ARM, a STOMACH SCULPTURE and EXOSKELETON, a 6-legged walking robot. His FRACTAL FLESH, PING… -
Transhumanism: The Ultimate Nanny state!
Originally posted @ TransAlchemy.com Written by Particleion Til now, we would like to think that we contain the social freedom to think what we wish to think. Even in the most suppressed societies, where many aspects of our physical lives are regulated, our freedom to think is still present. China's sociological restriction on birth control can never suppress the actual act of conceiving more than one child through policy alone. While having more than one child may be against the law, it would not be against your biological means. This is just a single example of the physical control that is… -
Do Humans Maintain a Consequential Stance Within the Context of the Universe?
It’s almost interesting that humans have evolved this masturbatory tendency for self-aggrandizement. Believing our existence is significant, is a complete misunderstanding of what significance is. Ideas such as meaning or significance are applied by the human animal out of instinct, or habit (as opposed to free will). In other words, we get attached to things, people, places, & most especially, to our ideas. It’s ok, we all do it, including those who claim to be making a sincere effort to let go of their attachments. These people also grossly misunderstand what attachment (in most… -
Direct Human Brain - AI - Interface System technologies
© by Gina Rydland published: 29.11.08 Lack of factual information creates a naive conception of the development process of technologies sanctioned as safe to use, clouding the public debate and undermining sufficient grounds for government decision making. Securing human rights and safety when testing and implementing safe-to-use technologies demands access to more specialized and accurate knowledge than today's global political, military and industrial climate permits. Rigorous monitoring by government ministries and committees, human rights organizations, and the public is an essential…
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Institute For The Future
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Industry Compass 2.0: Health Artifacts from the Future
30 Jun 2009 | 10:35 amWhat will tomorrow bring? Health Horizons read more -
Local Hearder in Tana River Delta
25 Jun 2009 | 2:48 pmhttp://www.birdlife.org/images/raw/tana_river_delta_herdsmen.jpg -
Disputed Claims
25 Jun 2009 | 9:36 am -
brain lit up
24 Jun 2009 | 5:17 pm -
brain lit up
24 Jun 2009 | 7:25 am
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MediaFuturist
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The price of freedom: Reinventing the online economy (RSA Journal July 2009)
3 Jul 2009 | 8:57 amI was delighted to be invited to make a contribution to the RSA Journal's July 2009 edition, the printed version of which was just send out I believe, and the online edition that just went up on their website. The complete title of my piece is: "The price of freedom - reinventing the online economy: Gerd Leonhard explains why ‘free’ content can still pay in the long term" and I really enjoyed writing this for them. Following my last presentation at the RSA, in April 2009, on 'The Future of Content and Creativity' I have had many good conversations about this topic. The audio track from… -
Music 2.0 - the future of the music industry - in 18 minutes (narrated slideshow)
2 Jul 2009 | 5:05 amAlright then... you don't think "Music 2.0 in 90 seconds" is enough. You don't think 3 minutes really do it, either. You liked the PDF but you want the talk. I heard you. So here is the full 18 minutes of Music 2.0, in 2 parts, thanks to the ingenious Youtube limitations (but hey... it's HD now so why am I complaining?). Here is a link to the MP4 file (410MB) if you want to watch on while biking in the woods;) Plus: remember that you can get it all for your iPods and iPhones by subscribing to my GerdTube.net / Blip TV iTunes feed (except for this one, though - for… -
A quick reminder: post your questions about the future, now - next WiiG show is Thurs 6pm CET
1 Jul 2009 | 3:25 pmTwitter / Gerd Leonhard: Next WhereIsItGoing sessio ... via kwout -
Kwout: a nice tool for sharing web content, and quoting
1 Jul 2009 | 1:33 amLorraine at Rostant Advertising in Trinidad send me the link to an interesting Web 2.0 tool called Kwout. They provide tools that allow you to take a snapshot of any piece on any webpage - mostly for quoting purposes I would think -, make a widget out of it, and re-use the quote, intact will all links etc, on your own page - pretty cool, even though the image quality could be better. Talk about Sharism! Below is a snippet from one of my favorite essays called 'Better than Free' by Kevin Kelly, and from a blog post by me that is based on the same concepts... check it… -
Audio version of my speech at MPJC 2009 "The Future of Media"
30 Jun 2009 | 8:26 amJust received this file via MPJC podcast site; it's the audio version of my 30-minute speech on The Future of Media, get more details via my previous post on MPJC 2009. Note: the introduction (90 secs) is in Dutch but my speech is in English.Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io
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Diary Of A Madman
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Social Media Networks & Communication Services: When do you engage and How?
3 Jul 2009 | 4:29 amAt what point do retailers embrace the social shopping sphere? From reviews, comments, payments, marketing and brand voice, where and how do they begin? There are so many social networks and sites here today gone tomorrow that retailers and brands are concerned that there either too late, too early or will waste their money on something that could potentially damage their brand and reputation! Equally they feel that they are missing out on this new ‘Social Shopping’ (Look at Dell who have attributed $2million in sales thanks to Twitter) and would like to get their brand and company… -
Losing your Individualism and Personal Expression – or just Learn, Play & Perform?
15 Apr 2009 | 3:46 amAfter listening to a member of London Symphony Orchestra on BBC Radio 3 last week about the stress and pressure that the musicians were under as part of the LSO, it got me thinking about how as a musician, and specifically either a session musician or member of an orchestra (which in essence is a glorified session musician - however being part of the LSO or SFSO is always seen as a more prestige gig rather than being session musician for George Michael, Roger Waters or Rob Thomas) would feel the pressure and strain of what is in fact reciting and replaying someone else's music? As well as the… -
Let’s be careful out there – The world is watching…Social Media Etiquette
26 Mar 2009 | 4:57 amI’ve been concerned about this for a while – and recently I guess certain elements and the stars aligning made me realise that in fact we all must be careful about what we do in the fast moving social media space. We’ve all read and heard stories of potential employers checking out peoples Facebook to see what they get up to in their private life is not only a violation and invasion of privacy – but what does it matter what they get up to in their own time. However lest address that last point “violation and invasion of privacy “ in actual fact – it probably isn't – if someone… -
Amazon: from e-tailer to the worlds first e-shopping mall?
13 Mar 2009 | 1:28 pmI’ve been talking about the state of the high street for my last few posts and of course will continue to discuss and debate the future and where there could be some light at the end of the tunnel (looking specifically at the launch of Wellworths - a great well done to Claire Robertson and her team or re-invigorated and re-invented retail takes a step close to the high streets rebirth in local towns up and down the country. With Simon Douglas also trying to re-invigorate a handful of his ex-Zavvi stores this is a small retail revolution...However amidst all this and looking at online -… -
Digital Britain: Built on Rules & Regulation?
11 Mar 2009 | 8:04 amMy continuing blog posts about the Governments Digital Britain will continue up to the point that the final document is completed by Lord Carter. Probably go on beyond that – but some news and initiatives trickling out last night – really got my back up (as some of you would have seen!) and its here that futurists and strategic thinkers that look beyond the here and now and delve further into the future into a landscape that is very different to the one that we see today – so the indication that the Government will set up a “rights agency” for the web really started to make my blood…
