Future

Steven Levy has an excellent piece on Neal Stephenson’s Anathem in the September Wired.  The article includes in depth back story on the Long Now related inspirations for the book.  If you are going to be in San Francisco on September 9th 02008, we will be hosting the launch event for the book with a reading and concert.  You can sign up here for updates. You can also see a reading and interview with Neal on Amazon. Stephenson says the story was inspired by the real-life Millennium Clock, a project thought up by inventor Danny Hillis and developed by the Long Now Foundation. The nub…

[Daniel Suarez, originally published as Leinad Zaurus, delivered a talk on the themes developed in his (originally self published) book Daemon.  The book is now scheduled to be released in hard cover in January 02009 by Dutton.  Here is Paul Saffo’s write up of the evening.] Forget about HAL-like robots enslaving humankind a few decades from now, the takeover is already underway. The agents of this unwelcome revolution aren’t strong AIs, but “bots”– autonomous programs that have insinuated themselves into the internet and thus into every corner of our lives. Apply for a…

Image: Screenshot from Web of Fate A startup site called Web of Fate, launched in July 02008, crowdsources a timeline of users’ predictions, goals and other ideas about the future: Web of Fate is a social experiment that harnesses the collective intelligence of the web to visualize and uncover hidden relationships among future and historical events. Maybe it’s the liberal use of bold type that makes this read like it belongs in the voice bubble of a comic-book’s mad scientist. Web of Fate is ambitiously eclectic. It runs on user submissions, with four options; “make a…

Most permanent things begin as a temporary fix. A footpath becomes a road becomes a highway. A quick hut becomes a house becomes a hotel. A doodle becomes a logo becomes a brand. A patch becomes an operating keystone. A camp becomes a city. Very few infrastructure details begin with the idea that they will last 1,000 years. Strange as it sounds it is very likely that some basic software running inside computers  today will be running in computers 500 years from now. We see that conservation in cells, where very primitive metabolic cycles present in archaic cells are still operating in…

The USS Pampanito and it’s Torpedo Data Computer are covered in the third installment of Boing Boing TV’s nifty series on Mechanicrawl. Boing Boing TV covers Mechanicrawl (part 1) Boing Boing TV covers Mechanicrawl (part 2)

Protip: clicking on the image takes you to the first three chapters of Jaynes’ book.

I’m having great trouble finding any citeable work that argues that artificial intelligence is completely impossible. People throw kiwis at AI theory in its current state, or the philosophy of functionalism, but every single argument I can find stops short of outright denunciation. For instance, Gerald Edelman, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Medicine and coiner of the term “Neural Darwinism”, argues that “AI” is impossible, expelling much hot air on the subject, but then it turns out that he believes, “It seems reasonably feasible that, in the future,…

One position I have difficulty wrapping my head around is the position held by those who believe that human-level AI is possible but that it would lack the capability to quickly change the world. The reasons for why AI would likely have that capability are frequently cited. To summarize just a few: 1) AI could quickly and easily be copied as many times as is computationally feasible. 2) Running on a flexible substrate, AI could “overclock” their cognitive functions, leading to enhanced intelligence and capability. 3) Though robotics today is still maturing, it will be more…

Researching the current state of “roboethics” (a lame term that marginalizes “AI ethics”, a more-relevant superset of roboethics), I find a bunch of references to a South Korean project to draft a Robot Ethics Charter. All these references occur in March 2007, and they promised the ethics charter would be released in April 2007 and subsequently adopted by the government. However, I can’t find it anywhere. Anyone have a clue about where it went? One article summarized the effort as follows: The prospect of intelligent robots serving the general public brings up an…

Some of you may have seen these papers already, as I mention them frequently, but they’ll important enough that I like to re-mention them regularly. They’re “Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk” by Eliezer Yudkowsky and “The Basic AI Drives” by Steve Omohundro. The papers are 42 and 11 pages, respectively. There’s no abstract for the first paper, but here’s the abstract for the second: “One might imagine that AI systems with harmless goals will be harmless. This paper instead shows that intelligent…

University of Virginia researchers have a plan to greatly increase algae oil yields by feeding the algae extra carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) and organic material like sewage, meaning the algae could simultaneously produce biofuel and clean up environmental problems. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news138338233.html)

Researchers at Image Metrics, which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films, have created facial animation that enables the minute details of facial expression to be captured and recreated. The company says "Emily" is considered to be one of the first animations to have bypassed the "uncanny valley" -- which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness. They started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down the facial movements into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a "control system." (Source:…

The debate over new unlicensed spectrum the FCC is considering opening up is heating up with Google's launch of a new site called FreetheAirWaves.com. Google and other technology companies such as Intel, Microsoft and Motorola have been lobbying the FCC to open up the "white space" spectrum (slivers of spectrum between TV channels) for unlicensed use after the digital TV transition early next year, to provide broadband wireless services. But broadcasters say using these channels will cause interference with their broadcast signals. (Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10019517-94.html)

Red slime mat made up of an extremophile bacteria in hot springs in Mono Lake, California use arsenic rather than water to carry energy during photosynthesis, U.S. Geological Survey researchers have found. By analyzing the genetic material of the microbe, the researchers have determined that this is a primitive process, going back at least three billion years. That could mean that arsenic-based photosynthesis predates the oxygen-producing variety that enables life as we know it. (Source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=using-a-poison-to-turn-sunlight-into-food)

Cocoa flavanols, the unique compounds found naturally in cocoa, may increase blood flow to the brain, according to research by Harvard medical scientists. Study participants who regularly drank a cocoa flavanol-rich beverage had an eight percent increase in brain blood flow after one week, and 10 percent increase after two weeks. When the flow of blood to the brain slows over time, the result may be structural damage and dementia. Scientists speculate that maintaining an increased blood flow to the brain could slow this cognitive decline. According to the researchers, the body of research…

SIAI Director of Research Dr. Ben Goertzel will run a weekly series of tutorial sessions on OpenCogPrime from September 2008 through January 2009. Each session will center on a chapter of the OpenCog Wiki book. This will enable OpenCog participants to better understand the OpenCogPrime design and provide feedback on the design and Wiki book.

Donate here to support “The Singularity” documentary Independent filmmaker Doug Wolens is producing a feature-length documentary, “The Singularity.” The film is 80% shot, with editing about to begin. To complete the documentary in time for this year’s winter film festivals, Doug needs $45,000. The Singularity Institute supports this documentary. We have made a sizable contribution toward final production and distribution costs. Now, we are collecting donations on Doug’s behalf to help get this vital work on screens around the world. Doug Wolens is an…

The Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence will be held March 6-9, 2009 in Arlington, Virginia. The conference website AGI-09.org will give full details on the conference in its scientific and practical aspects. Registration opens October 1, 2008. SIAI Director of Research Dr. Ben Goertzel is the Conference Chairman, and SIAI Director of Outreach Bruce Klein is on the Organizing Committee.

Earlier this year the OpenCog project was launched, with seed funding from SIAI and code and manpower donations from Novamente LLC. OpenCog is a free and open source software project aimed at providing a generic framework for the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) software. The first formal code release is planned for Fall 2008, but the project has already gained considerable momentum. Most notably, through the Google Summer of Code project, Google Inc. has supported 11 student interns to work this summer on OpenCog-related projects. Several of these student projects have…

Singularity Summit 2008 has been scheduled officially for Saturday October 25th (changed from the week before). It will be held at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose. Watch this blog for further details, coming soon.

Special Future of War edition: robots, lasers, brain weapons, and a little thing called "strategic thinking." • 174th Robot Wing: The 174th Fighter Wing of the US Air Force has flown its last mission, and has been replaced by an all-RPV (Remote Piloted Vehicle) squad. The MQ-9 "Reaper" is a real combat aircraft, carrying literally a ton of bombs; it also can stay in operation for over 14 hours straight, uses far less fuel and costs two-thirds less than the F16s it replaces. Put simply, It's cheaper, more effective, and safer (for pilots) to use Reapers (or similar aircraft) for a lot of…

Here's a very early version of an augmented reality system for the iPhone from ARToolworks. (Soundtrack Warning: The 1990s wants its rave music back.)

The Metaverse Roadmap Overview, an exploration of imminent 3D technologies, posited a number of different scenarios of what a future "metaverse" could look like. The four scenarios -- augmented reality, life-logging, virtual worlds, and mirror worlds -- each offered a different manifestation of an immersive 3D world. Of the four, I suspect that augmented reality is most likely to be widespread soon; moreover, when it hits, it's going to have a surprisingly big impact. Not just in terms of "making the invisible visible" -- showing us flows and information that we otherwise wouldn't recognize…

Last year, I mentioned obliquely that I had been asked to work on something very, very cool, but couldn't talk about it. Finally, I can: I joined with Adaptive Path to create a set of scenarios of the future of the Internet, used to build a model of what the future version of the web browser could look like. Adaptive Path and Mozilla have now announced that model, now dubbed Aurora, with a series of videos demonstrating its use. Today, Adaptive Path chief Jesse James Garrett put up the original scenarios, and described a bit of the thinking. Jamais called on a whole lot of smart people and…

First fun tidbit of the day: the SciFi Channel's new group blog, How You Can Save the World, just launched. Contributors include heavy-hitters like Richard Branson, Michio Kaku, former CIA chief John Deutch, Esther Dyson, Dean Kamen, among many others. I'm there, too, one of the token "who the hell is this guy?" guys -- emphasis on the guys. Only two of the 19 current contributors are female; put another way, only four of the 19 aren't middle-aged or older white guys (and yes, I'm counting myself among the middle-aged group). I'll see what I can do about helping them change that mix. My…

Technology Review discusses the work of Gerald Pao, a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, to perform a detailed genetic analysis of the axolotl salamander's DNA and the precise molecular processes of successful regeneration.Pao and his collaborators won one billion bases' worth of free sequencing from Roche Applied Science, based in Indianapolis. Now that the data is in, scientists can finally begin the hunt for the genetic program that endows the animal with its unique capabilities. Researchers hope that by uncovering these molecular tricks, they can…

Japan considering Using gene engineered seaweed to get million of tons of UraniumThe Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI) has recently recommended Japan mass-culture seaweed to collect natural resources such as bio-ethanol and uranium. In the “Apollo and Poseidon Initiative 2025,” MRI suggests that Japan cultures gulfweed, which can grow more than 2 metres high a year in the sea. The plants could also absorb carbon dioxide and purify the seawater, and can be used as non-food alternative energy sources for bio-ethanol. In April, MRI plans to inaugurate a consortium comprising public…

The last poll results are hereThe top results were:Improve humanity (safe singularity) 59 out of 284 (21%)Effective anti-aging treatment 56 out of 284 (20%)Stronger economy (triple growth or more) 55 out of 284 (19%)Peak Oil solutions 32 out of 284 (11%)Reduce CO2 from transportation and energy 20 out of 284 (7%)Cure disease (cancer, heart disease etc) 17 out of 284 (6%)Poverty reduction 17 out of 284 (6%)Other in comments 13 out of 284 (5%)Store CO2 in Cement or sequester 7 out of 284 (2%)Prevent nuclear weapon usage 3 out of 284 (1%)Starvation prevention 3 out of 284 (1%)Reduce nuclear…

This a follow up to prior article about re-inventing civil defense using simple and affordable defenses for residential buildings, such as better nails (hurriquake nails which you can buy from amazon.com.)This is not a plan to make buildings nuclear blast proof, but a lot more blast resistant. A direct hit would be too tough to build against and the result would be command bunker like. A direct hit has the fireball to deal with and a lot more localized destructive force. However, farther away there are destructive forces which can be relatively easy to resist with improved construction.The 5…

Hyperion Power Generation's CEO, John R. 'Grizz" Deal has announced that the company has received its first Letter of Intent to purchase the Hyperion Power Module (HPM), a small, compact, transportable, nuclear power reactor. (H/T Energy from Thorium forum)The intention to purchase up to six units for various projects, at approximately $25 million each, was placed by TES Group, an investment company focusing on the energy sector in Central Eastern Europe. TES Group could potentially be in the market for up to 50 HPMs.Hyperion Power Generation, the developers of the uranium hydride reactor,…

The Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University is one of two centers funded by the National Science Foundation to study nanotechnology in society. One of their tools for studying the impact of nanotech upon society is the National Citizens’ Technology Forum (NCTF). They have recently published the results of their National Citizens’ Technology Forum: Public Deliberation about Nanotechnology for Human Enhancement. From their downloadable brochure: In March 2008, eighty-six people across six nationwide panels participated in the National Citizens’…

To form practical nanotech circuits from arrays of nanowires, it is necessary to integrate different types of nanowires into multifunctional circuits. Two different types of nanowires (cadmium selenide for light sensors and germanium core/silicon shell for field-effect transistors) have been integrated on a chip to detect and amplify optical signals. From Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (credit PhysOrg.com) “A First in Integrated Nanowire Sensor Circuitry“: Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of…

Nanotech methods offer a variety of ways to alter the properties of nanostructures to optimize drug delivery. A process that allows the fabrication of different shapes of particles varying in size from about 100 nm to several micrometers demonstrates that long particles are internalized by cancer cells more efficiently than are round particles. From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (credit PhysOrg.com) “UNC study: shape, not just size, impacts effectiveness of emerging nano-medicine therapies“: In the budding field of nanotechnology, scientists already know that…

Nanotech has fashioned from graphene a one atom-thick membrane impermeable even to helium gas. From “World’s Thinnest Balloon Developed: Just One Atom Thick“: Researchers in New York are reporting development of the world’s thinnest balloon, made of a single layer of graphite just one atom thick. This so-called graphene sealed microchamber is impermeable to even the tiniest airborne molecules, including helium. It has a range of applications in sensors, filters, and imaging of materials at the atomic level. Paul L. McEuen and colleagues note that membranes are…

Nanotech has taken a major step along the road to molecular electronics with the demonstration that one molecule of benzene can form a highly conductive junction between two platinum electrodes. From an article on nanotechweb.org, written by Belle Dumé (requires free registration) “Ballistic breakthrough could lead to molecular logic gates“: The first highly-conductive connection between a single organic molecule and a metal electrode has been made by an international team of physicists. This achievement could lead to the development of ‘molecular electronics’…

A major new initiative on the use of nanotechnology in medicine and healthcare has recently been launched by the UK government’s research councils; around £30 million (US$60 million) is expected to be available for large scale “Grand Challenge” style projects. The closing date for the first call has just gone by, so we will see in a few months how the research community has responded to this opportunity. What’s worth commenting on now, though, is the extent to which public engagement has been integrated into the process by which the call has been defined. As the…

A couple of pieces in the Financial Times today and yesterday offer some food for thought about the problems of commercialising scientific research. Yesterday’s piece - Drug research needs serendipity (free registration may be required) - concentrates on the pharmaceutical sector, but its observations are more widely applicable. Musing on the current problems of big pharma, with their dwindling pipelines of new drugs, David Shaywitz and Nassim Taleb (author of The Black Swan), identify the problem as a failure to deal with uncertainty; “academic researchers underestimated the…

The glamorous applications for carbon nanotube in electronics focus on the use of individual nanotubes for nanoscale electronics - for example, this single nanotube integrated circuit reported by IBM a couple of years ago. But more immediate applications may come from using thin layers of nanotubes on flexible substrates as conductors or semiconductors - these could be used for thin film transistor arrays in applications like electronic paper. A couple of recent papers report progress in this direction. From the group of John Rogers, at the University of Illinois, comes a Nature paper…

A disappearing dress from the Wonderland project. Photo by Alex McGuire at the London College of Fashion. I’m fascinated by the subtle science of polymers, and it’s a cause of regret to me that the most common manifestations of synthetic polymers are in the world of cheap, disposable plastics. The cheapness and ubiquity of plastics, and the problems caused when they’re carelessly thrown away, blind us to the utility and versatility of these marvellously mutable materials. But there’s something temporary about their cheapness; it’s a consequence of the fact that…

The news that the UK is to slow the adoption of biofuels, and that the European Parliament has called for a reduction in the EU’s targets for biofuel adoption, is a good point to mark one of the most rapid turnarounds we’ve seen in science policy. Only two years ago, biofuels were seen by many as a benign way for developed countries to increase their energy security and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions without threatening their citizens’ driving habits. Now, we’re seeing the biofuel boom being blamed for soaring food prices, and the environmental benefits are…

Our most recent C-R-Newsletter includes a guest essay by Jeffrey Treder, older brother of CRN executive director Mike Treder. Jeff, a retired English professor and published author, provides a compelling overview of past and future trends that could be relevant to the development and deployment of molecular manufacturing. Here is an excerpt: In October, 1991, two weather systems merged in the Atlantic off New England to produce a maelstrom that earned the title “the perfect storm.” Subsequently that evocative phrase has been applied metaphorically to any number of tumults. Now it seems…

Not Necessarily Relevant Quote of the Week:My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.— Vladimir Nabokov

The latest edition of the C-R-Newsletter has been posted on our main website.CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: Big Boost for Molecular Manufacturing CRN Goes to Oxford Looking Ahead CRN Goes to Washington Superstruct the Future Nanotech and the Big Picture CRN Going to SpainGuest Essay: The Perfect StormRead the whole newsletter here — and sign up for a free subscription here.

Research in diamond mechanosynthesis -- building diamond nanostructures atom by atom using scanning probe microscopy -- just received a major boost with a $3 million grant from the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, awarded to Professor Philip Moriarty at the University of Nottingham for a "Digital Matter" project. This is big news. It's the first time we've seen such significant government funding of research directly connected to molecular manufacturing. We get more in the following press release from our colleagues at the Nanofactory Collaboration:…

The Metaverse Roadmap Overview, an exploration of imminent 3D technologies, posited a number of different scenarios of what a future “metaverse” could look like. The four scenarios—augmented reality, life-logging, virtual worlds, and mirror worlds—each offered a different manifestation of an immersive 3D world. Of the four, I suspect that augmented reality is most likely to be widespread soon; moreover, when it hits, it’s going to have a surprisingly big impact. Not just in terms of “making the invisible visible”—showing us flows and information…

Watching Michael Phelps swim you quickly realize that he’s not like the others. He’s clearly in a league of his own.

Dr. Phineas Waldolf Steel is a mentally twisted but awe-inspiring figure whose interests span the production of propaganda, the construction of chronically malfunctioning robots, puppet shows, and an ongoing attempt to become World Emperor for the purpose of turning this planet into a Utopian Playland. 

Dr. J. and Dr. Anne Hiskes discuss the utility of the idea of “human dignity.” Dr. Hiskes is in the Philosophy Dept of the University of Connecticut and is Director of the Program on Science and Human Rights and Director of Research Ethics and Education for Stem Cell Research. The show concludes with “Cthulu is My Co-Pilot” by Smart Bomb Radio, and Tom Smith’s “Oh Yog-Sothoth” from the Podsafe Music Network.  (MP3) For further reading Ruth Macklin. Dignity is a Useless Concept, British Medical Journal, Dec 20, 2003. Nick Bostrom. “In…

On Changesurfer Radio, a bit of an essay by Julian Savulescu on the need to enhance morality, and then an episode of Buddhist Geeks podcast that interviews Dr. J. about the Cyborg Buddha project. (MP3)

In the universe of the free ("free" as in beer), getting ripped off is the norm. Yes, many products and services are deliberately priced at zero these days, but a significant portion of consumers will gravitate to illegitimate free versions of not-free stuff. Free versions of pricey digital products are not hard to find on underground file trading sites, or in bits and pieces on above ground aggregators like YouTube. Most high-priced wares like expensive commercial software can be had for literally nothing. But very cheap things are widely pirated for free as well.  Why do people pirate…

Computers have mastered chess and checkers, beating the best human players. Nowadays cheap computerized or even online players can beat most ordinary humans. The ancient game of Go, however, has long resisted the efforts by engineers to construct a Go-computer than can beat a human Go master. Some Go fans believed computers would never be able to beat a Go master. The vast combinatorial sums of possible moves are much greater in Go than chess, and there is there more of an emphasis on pattern recognition in Go rather than the brute force exhaustive search used in chess. Winning Go seemed a…

The web is pretty big. Researchers at Google won't say how many pages Google indexes, but they recently said that their inspection of the web reveals that it has more than one trillion unique urls. It's difficult to know what to count as a unique page, because as they explain, some sites such as a web calendar page can generate an infinite number of pages if you click on the "next day" link. The very first public web page was created in August, 1991. So we've (the collective YOU) have created 1 trillion pages of content in 6,200 days. I can assure you that 6,000 days ago, way back in 1991 --…

This post is yet another response in the debate over reading on the web. In addition to the forum bubbling on the Edge and Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times chimed in with a long piece on what it means to read online. I find this question to be a good canary for the many other questions about new technology: is this stuff really new, and if it is, in what way is it different? In that light the following is my response to Sven Birkerts, who was responding to me responding to him, and so on. This post may not make sense by itself.  Following my reply below is a message from a…

[Translations: Dutch] Yes, everything will be free, but in my experience people want to pay. They really do! People, mobs of them, will grab stuff that is free. They will try stuff for free that they would never touch if they had to pay. They will always gravitate, on average, to the lowest price, and what is lower than free? But, but, if people have resources they prefer to pay the creators of products and services they like. Payment is 1) A way of connecting. 2) A sign of approval. 3) A vote. 4) It indicates an allegiance with the maker. 5) It feels good to the payer, to support. People buy…

The Hourglass II (August 2008) Biogerontology Blog Carnival is up at Ouroboros - Research in the biology of aging as of today. Visit the links from Ouroboros to read all about such fascinating topics as the role of the endocrine system in aging, specifically-targeted cancer therapies reconfigured to attack sensecent cells, the relevance of cancer treatment developments to longevity medicine prospects, and cognitive training metrics. My own entry on goldfish care and longevity is also included, as I actually managed to get my submission in on time this month. :PAnyway, for those readers…

Nigel joined my household on Christmas 2005. At that point in time he was only about an inch and a half long, and probably no more than a month old. My parents had given him to me thinking I might like to keep a fish at work on my desk, however, I decided to keep him home since I would not be able to feed him on weekends if I left him at work (and I doubted fish tanks would be allowed in the office to begin with). Nigel - 3 months oldTwo and a half years later, Nigel is still with us. He spends his days swimming merrily about in the tank, coming up with new and exciting ways to tear up the…

Jamais Cascio at Open the Future recently posted (along with his own commentary) a link to an essay by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Brad Templeton: The Implications of Robot Cars and Taxis.As one of the seemingly few non-driving Americans out there, and as someone who finds robotics in general pretty fascinating, I'm tremendously interested in the promises, prospects, and particulars of robotic vehicles. Though perhaps not as high on the list of "things I'd like to see in my lifetime" as, say, drastic improvements in social justice, effective longevity medicine, and widespread…

Marla is a blogger, artist, homeschooler, and mother of Maizie (a really cool autistic kid). We've commented back and forth on each other's blogs a number of times, and recently she asked if she could do a written interview with me on some aspects of autism, terminology, education, etc. Originally she was going to post my responses on her blog, however, after actually writing out my responses (and noting how lengthy they were) I determined that I would prefer to post them here myself. This isn't the kind of thing I normally post, and is definitely more personal in nature than I usually get…

Back to Part IPart II5. How was making friends for you as a child? How is it now? What advice can you give parents for supporting their child’s friendships?Making friends was extremely difficult for me. My troubles relating to peers were evident from a very early age, and were one of the reasons I ended up in special ed for preschool (as by that time I had had “no positive play experiences” according to one of my evaluations). Based on what I can piece together from memories and old records, I was apparently somewhat afraid of other kids, occasionally aggressive, and not all that…

Watching Michael Phelps swim you quickly realize that he's not like the others. He's clearly in a league of his own.Or more accurately, he's swimming in a genetic pool of his own.Phelps has a number of fortuitous physical endowments that have enabled him to dominate like no other. Simply put, he is the perfect swimmer.Here's what Phelps has going for him: Most people have a wingspan that matches their height. Not Phelps. He may be 6'4" tall, but his arms extend outward to a total of 6'7".The average shoe size for a person the size of Phelps is 12; he wears a size 14 which gives him a 10%…

Great ad.Read more about Speedo's LZR Racer swim suit.Q: What is the qualitative difference between this sort of technological enhancement and pharmacologically endowed enhancement?

Undoubtedly.With billions of people distracted by the Olympics it was a perfect opportunity for the Russians to instigate one of the most significant geopolitical events seen thus far in the 21st century.And I'm not the only one who thinks so.It's obvious that the Russians don't want to let Georgia slip away. It's an extremely important conduit for the transportation of oil and gas to parts west of Russia. It's also critical to U.S. and NATO interests; 9/11 enhanced the importance of both the South Caucasus and Central Asia to American security. Flying rights through the Caucasus to Central…

Communism is a monopolistic system, economically and politically. The system suppresses individual initiative, and the 21st century is all about individualism and freedom. The development of technology supported these directions. When I was fighting communism, there was rapid development of satellite television and cell phones, and communism, to survive, would have to block all these information devices. To control the free flow of information, the Communists would have to increase the secret police by a factor of four. It would be a huge effort for police to control the channels you get on…

Peter Singer says that, as Spain takes one great step forward for animal rights and liberty, activists elsewhere are persecuted:If we regard human rights as something possessed by all human beings, no matter how limited their intellectual or emotional capacities may be, how can we deny similar rights to great apes? To do so would be to display a prejudice against other beings merely because they are not members of our species - a prejudice we call speciesism, to highlight its resemblance to racism. The Spanish resolution marks the first official acceptance of that view. The use of the term…

Future technologies sound so impactful and fabulous that it is easy to jump to incorrect conclusions about what things would be like with their advent.Fallacy #1: Molecular assemblers will have a worldwide overnight rolloutThe conventional assumption is that once humans are able to make one molecular assembler, it will be able to self-replicate, and therefore within twenty-four hours everyone worldwide will have one. It is far more likely that a molecular assembler would follow the usual s-curve adoption pattern of any other newtech; early versions are expensive and clunky with minimal…

Human augmentation of physical and mental capabilities by bringing electronics on board seems a likely future. The early stages have already been realized, 10% of Americans are cyborgs today in the sense of having synthetic items permanently implanted: hearing aids, teeth, pacemakers, hip and knee replacements, RFID chips etc. Cochlear implants interfacing with hearing cognition for deaf children are routine. Neuroengineering research has been progressing in the implementation of electroencephalography-based computer controllers. Brain cap video game headsets may become the norm.There are at…

The VC life extension investment opportunity could happen in at least three areas: first and most importantly, translational medicine, second, health social networks and third, distantly, standardized longevity treatments and delivery systems.Translational medicineThe biggest and most obvious longevity play for VCs is in translational medicine, shepherding and commercializing science findings from basic research to patient therapies. The vast majority, perhaps even 90% or more, of basic research findings never go beyond the lab or journal publication. A particularly high profile example of an…

Life extension is a growing market and could be the next significant industry targeted by Venture Capitalists and private investment as alternative energy and clean tech eventually wane. The opportunity is made obvious by continuous soaring costs in the world’s largest industry, healthcare, unfunded Medicare type liabilities in every industrialized country, and the demographic aging of populations and below replacement fertility rates together with massive demand and willingness to spend on longevity remedies.What is the Life Extension Market?The life extension market is the…

Are location-based services (LBS) quickly becoming the next FaceBook? Loopt would be one prominent example. As the number of Internet-enabled and GPS-enabled mobile phones proliferates with the spread of the iPhone and the two-year upgrade cycle for mobile devices, about 45% of mobile devices in the U.S. now have wireless broadband access. Local search and other mobile applications can finally be realized.Location-based services, also called location-aware services, are about finding out what is nearby and who is nearby.The what is fairly straightforward. This is more granular and possibly…

Just in time for the OS opening: Synen på dopning behöver förnyas (Göteborgs-Posten, Waldemar Ingdahl and Julian Savulescu) and Lika bra att nu tillåta dopning i elitidrotten (Dagens Nyheter, Torbjörn Tännsjö and Claudio Tamburrini). Two simultaneous doping harm reduction articles...

Nicotine Water is giving me a headache. Not directly, since I have never tried it, but because of the sheer amount of rule-bending going on around it. My general standpoint is that adult people should be allowed to consume whatever...

symmetry breaking » Rapping the LHC - another global catastrophic risk from the LHC, scientific rap! Actually, it is not that terrible compared to much that is out there. And the science is right and illustrated with infographics. What really...

The Monkey Buddha: Introducing the "iThink" is a small concept sketch for "the interface of the future". Nothing unusual, just a neural interface with a linked quantum processor, a few hundred yottabytes of information and of course a global iThink...

The game Pandemic 2 seems to be sweeping the Internet. Very fitting that a game about infectious disease is a viral success. As a player one "controls" a disease, trying to wipe out all of humanity. As more people succumb...

This is a brief addendum to a post I made a while back where I gave a casual but mathematical discussion of will and reflective awareness in terms of self-referential structures ("hypersets").There, the following recursive definitions are given:"S is conscious of X" is defined as: The declarative content that {"S is conscious of X" correlates with "X is a pattern in S"}"S wills X" is defined as: The declarative content that {"S wills X" causally implies "S does X"}Funky, huh? Chew on that for a while!My point here is to posit a similar definition for that strange beast called the "phenomenal…

I just returned from 2.5 weeks in the Orient ... a week in Japan, doing biz meetings, going to a virtual worlds conference, seeing an awesome guitarist at a weird bar called BarTube, visiting an old friend, and hanging out w/ my son who is staying there for a month studying Japanese and playing Go ... a day or so in Seoul (visiting a humanoid robotics research group and a virtual pets company) ... a few days in Hong Kong giving a talk at WCCI's Human-Level AI session (on how to make a human-level NLP system by partly cheating, see the paper at http://novamente.net/papers) ... and a week in…

Eureeka!! -- The Underlying Logic Unifying Quantum Theory and General Relativity, Revealed Over a Plate of Sour Fish Consumed Over South China; Plus Long Digressions on Mark Twain, the Pathetic Woes of Middle Age and the Good Old Mongolian Skin-Peeler[I wrote this post 2 weeks ago, but didn't get around to posting it due to being in China, with a slow Net connection..]En route from Seoul to Hong Kong, exhausted from a 5 hour night's sleep following a 4 hour night's sleep, over-jazzed by too much strong coffee (which I rarely drink), stomach-sickened by ordering and consuming random dishes in…

I’ve been reading up on the iCub open-source humanoid robot lately, and I think it’s pretty exciting. Given what open source has done for Web browsers, bioinformatics tools and other sorts of software, the possibility of harnessing the same development methodology for robot hardware and software development seems almost irresistably exciting.I’m no roboticist, but I do know something about the AI software that robots need to understand the world and act in it – and I’ve been doing a lot of work lately on the use of AI to control simulated agents in virtual worlds. In this vein, this…

Every now and then, someone suggests to me that, alongside the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence, we should also be pursuing "Artificial Wisdom."I always figured the "artificial wisdom" idea was probably just a bunch of useless English-language wordplay -- but one night last week, while watching Idiocracy with the kids for the second time (great movie exploring a non-Singularity-based future by the way ... highly recommend it!), I spent a while surfing the Web on my laptop refreshing my memory on how others have construed the "wisdom" concept and musing on what it might mean for…

global warming (pdf) any plausible economic measures taken against global warming

Infinite length music (pdf) The Exponentialist Scientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix Polymath list archives The future of evolution, in pictures

Judgment misguided: Intuition and error in public decision making Amusing sea level blooper Conspiracy theories, where they come from, and how to undermine them ASDF Deadweight Loss of Christmas (pdf)

How much faith can we have in the multiverse? Some good old-fashioned atheist apologetics An unethical means of intelligence enhancement Hans-Georg Michna on the Singularity When Robot Lawyers Attack If nobody complains I’m going to be doing these regularly.

Julian Baggini asks whether an iPod is part of your mind, in the context of Extended Mind thinking in philosophy. I doubt such questions need an unambiguous answer. Is my upper neck part of my head? Is a tree part of planet Earth? Is Gibraltar part of Great Britain? Meh. In a way, the hippies are right: you can see the universe as one big mind. But it’s made of billions of unconnected pieces. The world has a case of Massively Parallel Multiple Personality Disorder. This is more than just a joke. If two minds each experiencing one thing are really the same as one mind experiencing two…

I admit it: I hadn’t heard of South Ossetia before the events of the 7th August. Like so many things I was previously ignorant of as soon as it makes the front pages suddenly everyone has an opinion. I am curious though: is anyone in the right here? Is it an act of foolish aggression, as the Foreign Secretary is saying, or is it the result of a strategic mistake on the part of Georgia? Any ideas? The War Nerd is as callously insensitive as ever, but suggests that Georgia started it: There are three basic facts to keep in mind about the smokin’ little war in Ossetia: 1. The Georgians…

Did you know that the International Olympic Committee threatens non-sponsor advertisers just for mentioning the Olympics? Lucky for us that Futurismic’s too small to show up on their radar, then… but that’s not all. The IOC’s latest move in Beijing is to cover up the brand names of anything that isn’t an official Olympic sponsor - things like bathroom furnishings, or the headphones of press reporters… or entire non-sponsor hotels. And there we were questioning the ethics of the Olympics taking place in totalitarian China. Looks like a perfect match after…

The ladies of io9 kicked off a neatly polarised debate over the weekend with two opposing articles about YA or “young adult” science fiction. Charlie Jane Anders says that YA is science fiction’s salvation: “While the “real” science fiction publishers are chasing a shrinking — and graying — readership, tweens and teens are discovering SF for themselves, thanks to books from a diverse range of writers. Best of all, YA science fiction isn’t aimed at a subculture, but at everybody of a particular age.” Meanwhile Annalee Newitz begs us to stop…

Computer hardware can be a real bitch to recycle, as attested by massive landfills in developing nations and closer to home. Someone in an organisation called EPCglobal has evidently been paying attention to Bruce Sterling, because their plan to tag all new-built computer components with unique RFID chips containing data about how, where and when they were made sounds pretty similar to Sterling’s “spimes”. [image by southernpixel] Now, if we could just give them GPS devices so they could navigate themselves back to their point of manufacture… Project Wonderful - Your…

Does Not Equal is a webcomic by Sarah Ennals - check out the archives. Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00 Tags: Does Not Equal • food • grilled • humour • lasers • Sarah Ennals • tofu • webcomic Related posts Tortoises All The Way Down (1) Static (0) Slash Goggles (1) Hi-Def (0) Pub Chat (0)

In March 2008, eighty-six people across six nationwide panels participated in the National Citizens’ Technology Forum on “Human Enhancement Through Nanotechnology.”[link]

I wanted to let you know about a new website called singularity hub that I launched last month. The site still needs a lot of work, but the blog portion of the site already has some great posts that I think you will enjoy.[link]

honestly, to anyone out there that still has any doubts that extra movie data may be useful to predict user ratings, I say that you have to have faith in the machine. It's just smarter than we are.[link]

The National Institutes for Health seem to think regenerating human muscle and bone using a person's own adult stem cells is nearly ready for prime time. Last week, the NIH announced to its staff that it's creating a bone marrow-stem cell transplant center within the National Institute for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.[link]

“The take-home message is that aging can be slowed and managed by manipulating signaling circuits within cells,” said Marc Tatar, PhD, a professor of biology and medicine at Brown University who was not involved in the research. “This is a new and potentially powerful circuit that has just been discovered for doing that.”[link]

Followup to:  Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, Löb's Theorem Peano Arithmetic seems pretty trustworthy.  We've never found a case where Peano Arithmetic proves a theorem T, and yet T is false in the natural numbers.  That is, we know of no case where []T ("T is provable in PA") and yet ~T ("not T"). We also know of no case where first order logic is invalid:  We know of no case where first-order logic produces false conclusions from true premises. (Whenever first-order statements H are true of a model, and we can syntactically deduce C from…

Bryan Caplan: I often disagree with people who know more about a given topic than I do. ... I reason, if I did immerse myself in the modern literature, it's a lot more likely that I would arrive at a sophisticated version of my current view than that I would radically change my mind. ... When I argue with people who are better-informed than I am ... [I ask] "If I saw and read everything that you've seen and read, what would I conclude?" ... Even though the disputants are not on a level playing field, that isn't the real reason why they hold different views. ... I suspect that Robin…

So I just traveled to Portsmouth, VA for an experimental conference - in the sense that I don't expect conferences of this type to prove productive, but maybe I should try at least once - in the unlikely event that there are any local Overcoming Bias readers who want to drive out to Portsmouth for a meeting on say the evening of the 20th, email me - anyway, I am struck, for the Nth time, how uncooperative people are in getting off planes. Most people, as soon as they have a chance to make for the exit, do so - even if they need to take down luggage first.  At any given time after the…

It bothers me that my commitment to overcoming bias is contracted daily by these dishonesties: I am tragically uncertain about how I should divide my time between work and play, among various possible work projects, and with who I should ally and spend my time.  These are terribly important decisions about which I have only very weak clues.  But I usually act as if I know what I'm doing. I actually care a lot what other people think of me, and in most conversations the major topic for most everyone is who praises or blames who else how much.  But this strong subtext is usually…

Lo!  A cartoon proof of Löb's Theorem! Löb's Theorem shows that a mathematical system cannot assert its own soundness without becoming inconsistent.  Marcello and I wanted to be able to see the truth of Löb's Theorem at a glance, so we doodled it out in the form of a cartoon.  (An inability to trust assertions made by a proof system isomorphic to yourself, may be an issue for self-modifying AIs.) It was while learning mathematical logic that I first learned to rigorously distinguish between X, the truth of X, the quotation of X, a proof of X, and a proof that X's quotation…

As notable for what it's missing as what it includes. The comments are pretty interesting.

Long Shot Futures, Part 1 Sunday night Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon talked about long shots... No, not who has a shot of hooking up with whom. They talked about future developments that aren't likely, but that they're pulling for anyway. Ric Ocasek is just a reminder that sometimes long shots pay off. Stream our latest shows: Or: Or download MP3's for all the archived shows at: Click "Continue Reading" for the show notes:

While I was in San Antonio, Texas I spent a lot of time on the River Walk. The San Antonio River Walk (also known as Paseo del Rio) is a network of walkways along the banks of the San Antonio River, one story beneath downtown San Antonio, Texas. Lined by bars, shops and restaurants, the River Walk is an important part of the city's urban fabric and a tourist attraction in its own right. Today, the River Walk is an enormously successful special-case pedestrian street, one level down from the automobile street. Back in the 1920's there was talk about paving over the San Antonio River. The…

Via GeekPress, quantum weirdness just keeps on getting weirder: In the latest issue of Nature News, Postdoctoral Fellow Nadav Katz explains how his team [took] a "weak" measurement of a quantum particle, which triggered a partial collapse. Katz then "undid the damage we'd done," altering certain properties of the particle and performing the same weak measurement again. The particle was returned to its original quantum state just as if no measurement had ever been taken. Because theorists had believed since 1926 that a measurement of a quantum particle inevitably forced a collapse, it was said…

An inspirational song to kick off the weekend. This one really takes me back. Plus here's a neat video -- related to our discussion of open societies on the most recent FFR -- on the subject of growing career options for women in (at least some parts of) the Arab world, compliments of Harvey's friend the Queen of Jordan:

(PhysOrg.com) -- When a group of University of Oklahoma researchers began studying the environmental fate of spilt petroleum, a problem that has plagued the energy industry for decades, they did not expect to eventually isolate a community of microorganisms capable of converting hydrocarbons into natural gas.

In a large clinical trial involving patients with coronary artery disease, use of B vitamins was not effective for preventing death or cardiovascular events, according to a study published in the August 20 issue of JAMA.

A French cosmetic surgeon who went on the run after being tried for mutilating and endangering the lives of dozens of men and women has been arrested in Spain, police sources said Tuesday.

Japan is planning to label consumer goods to show their carbon footprints in a bid to raise public awareness about global warming, an official said Tuesday.

(AP) -- A space-age version of the rusty springs under old pickup trucks will help NASA fix the most pressing technical problem with its high-tech new rocket to send astronauts back to the moon.

The streets may not be ready for Shokotan’s “cicada shell” look, but that doesn’t stop the multi-talented entertainer from decking herself out on occasion. (Photos from the Shokotan Blog) Shokotan, who talked about her fascination with cicada molts and showed off part of her collection in a television appearance last year, showed up at a recent concert wearing the insect shells on her head. According to this article on Excite News, the crowd went wild at the end of her performance when she tossed the crispy shells into the front row. [Link: Shokotan Blog]

Over the next two months, a team of Japanese explorers hopes to obtain indisputable video evidence confirming the existence of the legendary yeti, the mysterious apelike creature long believed to inhabit the Himalayas of Nepal and Tibet. A 7-member crew of experienced climbers, led by veteran yeti hunter and mountaineer Yoshiteru Takahashi, will depart Japan on August 16. At their destination in the Dhaulagiri mountains in central Nepal, they will establish base camp at an elevation of 4,300 meters (14,000 ft) and set up an array of automated infrared cameras along a ridge. For six weeks, the…

In a technological advance that opens up new possibilities in the fields of robotics and wearable computing, researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a stretchable, rubbery material that conducts electricity and can be incorporated into electronic devices. The researchers — led by assistant professor Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo — were able to create elastic electronic circuits that could be stretched up to 1.7 times their original size without affecting performance, thanks to conductive wires made from a new carbon nanotube-polymer composite they…

Near Tappi Saki, Aomori (Photo: Mr_M_Montgomery) Hit the beach anywhere in Japan, and you are likely to see endless piles of tetrapods — enormous four-legged concrete structures intended to prevent coastal erosion. By some estimates, more than 50% of Japan’s 35,000-kilometer (22,000-mi) coastline has been altered with tetrapods and other forms of concrete. Critics, who blame the tetrapod invasion on decades of excessive government spending designed to bolster the construction industry, argue that in addition to posing a danger to swimmers, surfers and boaters, tetrapods actually…

Styrofoam dome houses at Aso Farm Land (Photo by: Erika Snyder) While styrofoam may be most commonly associated with disposable coffee cups, meat trays and packaging, prefab home manufacturer Japan Dome House Co., Ltd. uses it to construct easy-to-assemble modular kit homes. Dubbed the “habitat for the 21st century,” the Dome House is an igloo-shaped structure built from snap-together wall sections made of 100% expanded polystyrene foam (styrofoam). It might seem like an odd choice of material for a house, but the company lists a number of advantages that styrofoam has over…

Imagine the world: all the countries, all the towns, all the cities, all the mega cities, and all the 6 billion people living in them.  Think about all the places you’ve been too, and all the places you haven’t been to, and just try to get a sense of the vastness of this for a moment…ok? Now, try to imagine 20 times this scale.  A street with 100 people on it now has 2,000 people.  Regular two story family homes are now 40 story apartment blocks.  Big skyscrapers now have 2,000 floors and are 10 km high, taller than Mt. Everest.  Or if you prefer to go out, rather than…

Yudkowsky has been posting a lot on Overcoming Bias recently about his theory of metaethics.  Today he posted a summary of sorts.  Essentially he seems to be saying that morality is a big complex function computed by our brain that doesn’t derive from any single unifying principle.  Rather, this function is a mishmash of things and even we don’t really know what our own function is, in the sense that we are unable to write down an exact and complete formulation.  It’s just something that we intuitively use. I’m not convinced that ethics can’t be derived from…

Remember when I was raving about nVidia’s new GTX 280 graphics card that crunches 1 Tera FLOPS? Yeah, well, that was 3 weeks ago. Today, Radeon’s new HD 4870 X2 graphics card has 1600 stream processors that crunch 2.4 Tera FLOPS.

While The Register isn’t the most reliable source, the time frame and specs look about right so I figure this article probably isn’t too far off. Name: IBM Blue Waters Peak performance: 1016 FLOPS RAM: 620 TB Location: University of Illinois Delivery: 2011 For every synapse in an adult human brain this machine will have around 6 bytes of RAM and 100 floating point calculations per second.

So you’ve finished writing your thesis, your pièce de résistance, your magnum opus. Next step, get it printed as a book for the world to admire. Of course, being the misunderstood genius that you are, no professional publisher will want to touch your great achievement.  Never fear, the internet age is here! So you gather up your LaTeX  files and head off to lulu.com, only to find that lulu has no idea about LaTeX. A search of the lulu help system literal returns no results.  Google returns fragmented and in many cases possibly out of date suggestions. If this sounds like you, read…

I made for my new science fiction story some illustrations. I'll post a few of them here. The programs that I've used are: photoshop and Bryce.

The Difference Between Virtual Reality and Real Life The scrum around the stands at virtual reality exhibitions is regularly five deep. Even though ways of immersing people in simulated environments were introduced more than three decades ago, it was only last year that computer technology became cheap enough to encourage developers of VR systems to display their wares in public. Wild claims for this new form of mass entertainment quickly followed. It would, among other things, make sex both safe and satisfying. Now the researchers are working hard to cool our overheated expectations, and…

Crossposted from Super Concepts. Page 9, somewhere in between another problem with public services and the latest celebrity gossip, is usually where I’ll find today’s horrific murder story. A teenager is brutally beaten and then “accidentally” killed when his attackers take it too far. They get a few months inside for man-slaughter; his family gets a lifetime of heartache. Consequently, the world balance between peaceful, loving, value creators and destructive, sadistic losers is shifted yet a little further in favour of idiocy. Yet, taking another sip of coffee, we turn the page. We…

In the future, we may decide that a virtual existence, a life inside a fully immersive computer game where our every desire is fulfilled, is a more appealing option than the real world we currently inhabit. Many people have presented the idea that we are already in such a virtual reality, but I don’t believe this is possible. This is because virtual worlds provide us with many possibilities that the real world does not, so why have they not been “programmed” into the real world we know? Since the early 21st century, the residents of the virtual world Second Life have been working hard…

addthis_pub = 'kmadski21'; PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT A Vision for 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change by John L. Petersen John Petersen wrote his newest book “to provide a framework for the next administration – or any organization, for that matter – for thinking about how to deal with the great change that appears to be on the horizon”.  [...]

addthis_pub = 'kmadski21'; FUTURE FACTS - FROM THIS ISSUE Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth’s liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet’s surface. The Large Hadron Collider in a tunnel below the French-Swiss border is fast becoming one of the coolest places in the Universe. Artificial wombs [...]

addthis_pub = 'kmadski21'; FUTURE FACTS - FROM THINK LINKS The Farmer’s Almanac has been supplanted by satellite images, digital soil maps and lots of algorithms. 171 forest species in Western Europe have been shifting upward in elevation by 95 feet per decade over the last 30 years. Recounting the oral history of the Internet, at fifty years [...]