The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking presents Beth Noveck on “Transparent Government” Thursday March 4, 02010 at 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco Long Now Members can reserve 2 seats, join today! or you can purchase tickets for $10 each. About this Seminar: President Obama’s first executive action was the Open Government Memorandum calling for more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government. It is likely that one of the longest lasting effects of the current administration will be how much it changed the culture of…
Future
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The Long Now Blog
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Beth Noveck Ticket Info
8 Feb 2010 | 12:18 pm -
Rosetta and Long Now on Life After People
4 Feb 2010 | 2:15 pmRosetta Project Director Laura Welcher recently took part in a segment on The History Channel’s Life After People series. In an episode titled “Crypt of Civilization,” Laura discusses the Rosetta Disk and The 10,000 Year Clock. The central question of the series is “How long would it last?” The series explores various materials, systems and structures built by humans to determine their durability sans maintenance as well as natural systems and how they might flourish or decline without human intervention. “Crypt of Civilization” focuses on… -
Global Lives Project Opening Celebration
4 Feb 2010 | 12:35 pmDedicated to bringing together video documentation of the daily lives of disparate global citizens, the Global Lives Project celebrates the opening of its first installation on February 26th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. This installation is sponsored by the Long Now Foundation through a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Global Lives Project’s World Premiere installation will be on view at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from February 26 – June 20, 2010! The exhibit is part of an artist residency that will evolve over four… -
Artangel Longplayer 2009 Conversation Audio Available
27 Jan 2010 | 2:06 pmAs you may remember, Longplayer is a project by Jem Finer: a composition designed to last 1,000 years. Along with a live performance of portions of the composition last year, a Long Conversation was held that lasted for 12 hours: In parallel with a live performance in the Roundhouse’s Main Space, the Artangel Longplayer 2009 Conversation took place in the Studio Theatre. Writer Jeanette Winterson began and ended the 12-hour talking marathon of twenty leading writers, filmmakers, scientists, academics and technology activists, inspired by the philosophical implications of long time. -
Long Now Media Update
26 Jan 2010 | 11:24 amThere is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them. Watch the video of Wade Davis’ “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World”
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Accelerating Future
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SecondLife’s CEO Starts a New AGI Company
6 Feb 2010 | 4:02 pmFrom New World Notes, James Au’s standard blog on SL, comes news that Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab (the company behind SecondLife), is “working towards creating a sentient artificial intelligence which [exists] in a virtual world.” Um, OK. Here is a quote: That Philip plans to revolutionize AI technology — in effect, achieving singularity in a virtual world — isn’t that surprising, because he said as much when I talked with him for The Making of Second Life: Hey! Slow down. A Singularity in a virtual world could easily transcend its boundaries and… -
Wendell Wallach in New Honda Video About Robots
6 Feb 2010 | 1:11 pmCasually visiting CNN.com this morning, I was rather surprised to see a prominent ad including a picture of my friend Wendell Wallach, co-author of Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong and the Moral Machines blog. Here is the ad (click it to see it in context on CNN’s site): Amazing. CNN gets about five million daily visitors, and I’m sure Honda is advertising their short video in many other venues, including possibly television. Here is the video: I have mixed feelings about this pro-robot corporate messaging. My hope is that the need for Friendly AI will become more… -
New Staff Bios for Singularity Institute Website
5 Feb 2010 | 6:01 pmNew staff bios have been added to Singularity Institute’s team page: short bios for Research Fellows Anna Salamon and Steve Rayhawk, Media Director Michael Anissimov, and Chief Compliance Officer Amy Willey. Check them out, and feel free to ask if you’re interested in knowing more about what each staff member does. Here’s the lineup: Cross-posted from SIAI blog. -
Video: Cutting-Edge Robotic Exoskeleton Allows Wheelchair-Bound to Stand and Walk
5 Feb 2010 | 1:17 am -
Roko Mijic on “Strong moral realism, meta-ethics and pseudo-questions”
5 Feb 2010 | 12:29 amAt Less Wrong, Roko Mijic claims that despite survey results, most philosophers are not really “strong” moral realists, and in fact their “non-realist” moral stance is often anti-realist for all practical purposes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I totally agree.
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KURZWEILAI.NET ACCELERATING INTELLIGENCE
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Service providing AI-based real-time matching of content with individuals funded
8 Feb 2010 | 11:26 pmCognitive Match, which applies real-time AI, learning math, and semantic processing technologies to increase response rates for online businesses, has received a $2.5M investment. The service is targeted to companies that are marketing via websites and generate over $1M annually through their website, Cognitive Match CEO Alex Kelleher told KurzweilAI.net. "We work with 4 UK universities, and the professors at those universities who are leaders in the fields of AI, computational mathematics and natural language processing," he said. The matching engine makes decisions by using a large number… -
Researchers develop 'lab on a chip' that detects viruses
8 Feb 2010 | 11:06 pmBrigham Young University engineers and chemists have created an inexpensive silicon microchip that reliably detects viruses, even at low concentrations. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news184876976.html) -
Millimeter-scale, energy-harvesting sensor system developed
8 Feb 2010 | 11:03 pmA 9-cubic millimeter solar-powered sensor system developed at the University of Michigan could enable new biomedical implants, home-building and bridge-monitoring devices, and environmental sensor networks, with average power consumption less than 1 nanowatt. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news184873895.html) -
Professor: We have a 'moral obligation' to seed universe with life
8 Feb 2010 | 10:58 pmSeeding the universe with life is not just an option, it's our moral obligation, says Michael Mautner, Research Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University. The suggested strategy: deposit an array of primitive organisms on potentially fertile planets and protoplanets throughout the universe. Potential breeding grounds include extrasolar planets, accretion disks surrounding young stars that hold the gas and dust of future planets, and - at an even earlier stage - interstellar clouds that hold the materials to create stars. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news184915200.html) -
Google leaps language barrier with translator phone
8 Feb 2010 | 10:35 pmGoogle is developing software for the first phone capable of translating foreign languages almost instantly, using voice recognition and automatic translation. (Source: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article7017831.ece)
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The Singularity Institute Blog
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New Staff Bios Added to Team Page
5 Feb 2010 | 5:29 pmNew staff bios have been added to SIAI’s team page: short bios for Research Fellows Anna Salamon and Steve Rayhawk, Media Director Michael Anissimov, and Chief Compliance Officer Amy Willey. Check them out, and feel free to ask if you’re interested in knowing more about what each staff member does. -
Which Consequentialism? Machine Ethics and Moral Divergence
4 Feb 2010 | 11:53 pmHere’s a extended abstract presented at the 2009 Asia-Pacific Conference on Computing and Philosophy by participants in SIAI’s 2009 Visiting Fellows Program that is making the rounds. The point of the paper, which was written by Carl Shulman, Nick Tarleton, and Henrik Jonsson, is that consequentialism as commonly discussed has a number of “free variables” where intuitions disagree about the right values of these variables. Therefore, machine ethics should draw on the emerging field of moral psychology to figure out how to fill in these free variables. This point is… -
SIAI Media Director Michael Anissimov on KUSP Radio in Santa Cruz
5 Jan 2010 | 9:10 pmOn Sunday, January 3rd, I did an interview on KUSP in Santa Cruz, California, a National Public Radio affiliate. I talked to Rick Kleffel for an hour about the Singularity, the Singularity Institute, what we do, anthropomorphism, Friendly AI, and the like. It was for his “Talk of the Bay” radio program. Here is the audio archive. -
Foresight 2010: the Synergy of Molecular Manufacturing and AGI
5 Jan 2010 | 12:35 pmThe Foresight Institute, an organization close to the Singularity Institute, is holding their 2010 conference at the Sheraton Palo Alto Hotel this January 16-17. Here is the blurb from the website of the conference: Join us in for an exciting conference focused on the Synergy of Molecular Manufacturing and general Artificial Intelligence and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of Foresight. Register online here. The two day conference rate is $175 with discounts for early registration! Several rapidly-developing technologies have the potential to undergo an exponential takeoff in… -
Announcing the 2010 Singularity Research Challenge
23 Dec 2009 | 4:52 pmOffering unusually good philanthropic returns — meaning greater odds of a positive Singularity and lesser odds of human extinction — the Singularity Institute has launched a new challenge campaign. The sponsors, Edwin Evans, Rolf Nelson, Henrik Jonsson, Jason Joachim, and Robert Lecnik, have generously put up $100,000 of matching funds, so that every donation you make until February 28th will be matched dollar for dollar. If the campaign is successful, it will raise a full $200,000 to fund SIAI’s 2010 activities. For almost a decade, the Singularity Institute has been asking…
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Open the Future
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"Inflection Points" Presentation
8 Feb 2010 | 2:47 pmFor those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible. My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind… -
Living On (and Hacking the) Earth
2 Feb 2010 | 9:35 amLast month, I was interviewed for the syndicated "Living on Earth" program (typically heard on NPR stations) on the subject of geoengineering. That interview was run this past weekend, and is now available -- with transcript -- at the Living on Earth website. (Direct link to the MP3.) YOUNG: What do you think is the likelihood that we might need a geo-engineering approach? CASCIO: I think it's more likely than not, unfortunately because... YOUNG: Now wait a minute, you spent all this time telling me how it's a disaster, now you're saying we might have to use it? CASCIO: Well, yes. It's… -
New Fast Company: iWorry
30 Jan 2010 | 12:16 pm(Well, "new" in the sense of it's the most recent; it actually went up earlier this week, I just didn't get around to linking to it here. Ahem.) "iWorry" is my foray into the iPad discussion, focusing less on the product and more on its support infrastructure: But the iPad isn't a phone; it is a general purpose computer. It does email and Web and documents and presentations and games and all of the other kinds of things we do with our "regular" computers. Yet it will suffer under the same restrictions as the iPhone--prohibition of any application that Apple doesn't like, for whatever reason. -
Doom & Gloom
30 Jan 2010 | 11:28 amIEET's Mike Treder interviewed me on Bloggingheads.TV this week, and the video is now available. It runs about 45 minutes. Egad, it's depressing. Sorry about that. First time I've done one of these, and something that leapt out at me was that I can't seem to sit still. So, question for the viewers -- should I try to make a point of keeping still during something like this, or is being more "animated" a good thing? -
New Fast Company: Vampire Loads, White Roofs, and the Quest for Efficiency
21 Jan 2010 | 4:40 pmLatest Fast Company is now up: Vampire Loads, White Roofs, and the Quest for Efficiency gives a shout-out to the newly-retired head of the California Energy Commission, Art Rosenfeld, and the benefits his policies have provided to California and, as other states adopt them and manufacturers adhere to them, the rest of the US. Rosenfeld was, until his retirement, the head of the California Energy Commission, a state organization that shapes the rules surrounding electricity production and use in California. During Rosenfeld's 30-year tenure at the CEC, he made energy efficiency the overriding…
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Next Big Future
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Enhancing GPS Accuracy
8 Feb 2010 | 11:28 pmEuropean Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) - better than 2 meter accuracy Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) - 1.0 metre laterally and 1.5 metres vertically Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS) - Japan - 1.5-2 metres horizontally and laterally GPS Correction - 1.5-2 meters Local Area Augmentation System - 0.5 meter accuracy when later phases deployed Europe's Galileo (2013) - a few centimeter accuracy The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is a satellite based augmentation system (SBAS) under development by the European Space Agency,… -
ISSCC - Silicon Could Scale to 7.9 nanometers, Graphene Favorite for Post-CMOS and Call to Increase Energy Efficiency 100 Times
8 Feb 2010 | 5:11 pmEETimes reports from International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) For processors, silicon could scale to the 7.9-nm node, which is slated for 2024. Reasons Graphene is the post-CMOS Favorite by James Meindl, director of the Joseph M. Pettit Microelectronics Research Center : 1. Graphene has a mechanical strength-to-weight ratio exceeding that of any known material. 2. Carrier mobility exceeds 200,000-cm2/Vs. 3. Carriers with zero effective mass that propagate as 'Dirac fermions' in a manner similar to photons with a velocity 300 times less than the speed of light without scattering… -
More Exaggerated Climate Change Claims Causing Backlash as More Are Debunked
8 Feb 2010 | 11:40 amThe Times UK online reports on more potential errors IPCC Synthesis Report to government leaders The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035. The Sunday Telegraph reveals new factual… -
Quantum Crypto Chip Bring Commercialization in Sight for 2013
8 Feb 2010 | 10:39 amCanberra-based QuintessenceLabs, a leader in quantum communications technology, has partnered with RMIT University to miniaturise its second-generation Quantum Key Distribution technology into a silicon photonic microchip. A commercial run of the quantum chip was about three years away. The technology uses one-time pad encryption in real-time, offering high-speed and untappable communications. Integration on to a silicon photonic chip would considerably reduce the size and cost of the cryptosystem. Based on 5 years of in-house R&D, QuintessenceLabs is the world leader in second generation… -
Moving to 100 Gbit/second Ethernet in 2011 and Trying for Terabit/second Ethernet in 2013
8 Feb 2010 | 10:13 amEEtimes reports engineers are gearing up to deliver in 2011 chips that can handle serial data streams running at 25 Gbits/second to drive next-generation 100 and 400 Gbit/second networks. But they say it's still a mystery how—or if—they can deliver follow-on components for the terabit networks today's Internet data centers are already demanding. Google and others have said they will need Terabit Ethernet products as early as 2013. That's because today's big Internet data centers use three or more tiers of networks to aggregate and link traffic from warehouses of standard PC servers.
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NANODOT NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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Nautral Language Understanding
9 Feb 2010 | 12:55 am“It was a true solar-plexus blow, and completely knocked out, Perkins staggered back against the instrument-board. His outflung arm pushed the power-lever out to its last notch, throwing full current through the bar, which was pointed straight up as it had been when they made their landing.” My current research in AI, such as it is, is an attempt to build a system that’s capable of understanding the above quote. It’s from the middle of a book, and it is much much harder to understand, fully, than you might think. What I intend to do here is to unravel the process by which… -
Graphene transistor roundup
8 Feb 2010 | 8:18 amPhaedon Avouris, winner of the Feynman Prize in 1999, is head of the nanoscale science and technology group At IBM, which has recently reported significant advances in synthesizing transistors from graphene using conventional lithography methods. IBM Demonstrates Graphene Transistor Twice as Fast as Silicon Graphene transistors promise 100GHz speeds Graphene Transistors that Can Work at Blistering Speeds Big Blue demos 100GHz chip Nanoclast interviews Avouris and the Science paper, 100-GHz Transistors from Wafer-Scale Epitaxial Graphene What does this all mean? Basically, they have overcome… -
The first AI blog
5 Feb 2010 | 5:32 amThe first AI blog was written by a major, highly respected figure in the field. It consisted, as a blog should, of a series of short essays on various subjects relating to the central topic. It appeared in the mid-80s, just as the ARPAnet was transforming over into the internet. The only little thing I forgot to mention was that it didn’t actually appear in blog form, which of course hadn’t been invented. The WWW didn’t appear until the next decade. It appeared in book form, albeit a somewhat unusual one since it was, as mentioned, a series of short essays, one to a page. It… -
Analogical Quadrature
4 Feb 2010 | 8:58 amSo far, in making my case that AI is (a) possible and (b) likely in the next decade or two, I’ve focused on techniques which are or easily could be part of a generally intelligent system, and which will clearly be enhanced by the two orders of magnitude increase in processing power we expect from Moore’s Law by 2020. (Note — we certainly don’t have to wait till 2020 to find out. Existing hardware is well into the usable range, probably for less than $1M. But you don’t get too many researchers, and no hobbyists, doing their research on machines like that… -
Associative memories
3 Feb 2010 | 6:25 amAI researchers in the 80s ran into a problem: the more their systems knew, the slower they ran. Whereas we know that people who learn more tend to get faster (and better in other ways) at whatever it is they’re doing. The solution, of course, is: Duh. the brain doesn’t work like a von Neumann model with an active processor and passive memory. It has, in a simplified sense, a processor per fact, one per memory. If I hold up an object and ask you what it is, you don’t calculate some canonicalization of it as a key into an indexed database. You compare it simultaneously…
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Responsible Nanotechnology
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Molecular Manufacturing vs. Self-Assembly
27 Jan 2010 | 12:47 pmWhy was I so excited about the FNANO10 conference on self-assembly, given that self-assembly is not molecular manufacturing? Self-assembly is a way of making large structures out of small pieces, by designing the pieces so that random ("Brownian") motion will jiggle them into place. DNA self-assembles very nicely into quite large structures - as big as 100 nanometers, almost bacteria-sized - almost big enough to see with an ordinary microscope. A problem with self-assembly is that the pieces have to use their own structure or other properties to template their assembly. That limits… -
Basic Survival Package
26 Jan 2010 | 10:25 amA few days ago, Tom Craver asked what, other than food, would I put on a list of basic life needs.Here's my initial list of manufactured things I'd like to see everyone on earth have access to: Clean water Weatherproof and burglar-resistant housing Light at night The Web and voice communication Mosquito nets with long-lasting insecticide Optional birth control Clean cookstoves and/or solar cookers Vaccines Many of these things are available today, at a cost where the world could afford to supply them to everyone... if we all got together and really tried. Some of these things are… -
Nanostructures Conference - Don't Miss
25 Jan 2010 | 12:47 pmAs molecular manufacturing advances, it's conferences like this that pull it all together:Foundations of Nanoscience FNANO10: Self-Assembled Architectures and DevicesTopics that were theoretical or even science fiction a decade ago are now conference tracks: Viral Self-Assembly Nanoplasmonics & Nanophotovoltaics Self-Assembly Across Scales Top-down Meets Bottom-up Principles and Theory of Self-Assembly Plus fullerene nanostructures, protein self-assembly, synthetic biology, molecular motors, and several others.The conference is April 27-30 near Salt Lake City, with an NSF workshop on… -
Paperless Office and Easy Manufacturing
24 Jan 2010 | 8:37 pmA decade or two ago, the phrase "paperless office" was often heard, meaning that everything on paper could be delivered on your computer screen, so there'd be no need to create, read, and store flattened inky dead trees anymore.It didn't quite work that way. Instead, according to Wikipedia, the amount of paper in offices doubled from 1980 to 2000. Computers made it easier to create and print documents, and it turned out that people just like paper.When we can "print" 3D objects as easily as we can print documents, will the amount of stuff we own double? Will we…
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Ethical Technology
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J. Hughes Problems of Transhumanism: Moral Universalism vs. Relativism
8 Feb 2010 | 9:01 amThe Enlightenment thinkers proposed that all men should be accorded the Rights of Man. Eventually this assertion of moral universalism would spread to spark campaigns for the legal equality for women, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, and the disabled. Some transhumanists have similarly asserted that a transhuman democracy can ensure the legal equality of ur-human and posthuman citizens, and promote the rights of all persons regardless of species. But respect for diversity and self-determination, an awareness that ethical views are historically situated and not absolute, and the belief… -
Cruise Reservations Now Open
8 Feb 2010 | 7:51 amWe are now taking reservations for our exclusive 8-day conference cruise to the Bahamas, where you can bask in sun, fun, and luxury while learning all about “The Future of Medicine.” -
Kyle Munkittrick A.I. Special Pleading
7 Feb 2010 | 10:41 amSpecial pleading, along with feigned neutrality, is one of the most infuriating symptoms of faulty rhetoric one can utilize in an argument. Special pleading comes in multiple forms, but the most common is that of claiming a superior framework which is proven to be superior by its own internal criterion. Vulgar Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis both resort to this tactic by using lines like, “that you would argue against the Revolution is proof you are bourgeoisie and do not understand” or “your denial is proof of your repressed desires.” The point is that any… -
Reclaiming the Enlightenment pt. 1
7 Feb 2010 | 8:48 amDr. J. chats with Dr. Stephen Eric Bronner, professor of political science at Rutgers University and author of Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement. Part 1 of 2. -
Ben Goertzel Causality (A Convenient Construct)
7 Feb 2010 | 5:19 amWe humans like to think in terms of causality ... but causality seems not to be an intrinsic aspect of the universe. Rather, causality is something we impose on the universe so as to model it for various practical purposes. We do this both consciously and unconsciously. Causality is Not ScientificNo currently accepted scientific theory makes use of the notion of causality. Scientists may interpret some math equations involved in a scientific theory to denote causality—but unlike, say, “force” or “attraction”, causality is not really part of the formal language of…
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The Technium
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Tending the Garden of Technology
12 Jan 2010 | 11:48 amMany months ago science writer Andrew Lawler made the long trek to Pacifica and conducted an interview about my book in progress. An edited version of that conversation has just appeared in the magazine Orion. Lawler gets to the... -
The 2-Billion-Eyed Intermedia
11 Jan 2010 | 1:43 pmEvery year the literary agent John Brockman (who represents me) hosts a virtual salon focused on a single question. This year the question was "How has the internet changed the way you think?" My answer was only one of... -
Loved Avatar's World-Making
18 Dec 2009 | 9:33 pmI just saw Cameron's movie Avatar. I went for the spectacle, the total immersion. As a way to visit another planet it was fantastic. Don't be distracted by the lame plot (a galatic Dancing With Wolves). The joy is... -
1,000 Years of Forgetting
15 Dec 2009 | 4:49 pmOne thousand years from now, much of what we know will be forgotten. That's been true in the past. We have only a fragmentary cultural memory of what happened 1,000 years ago. And what we think we know about... -
The Web is Large
9 Dec 2009 | 10:38 amA perfectly silly mashup of pundits like me pontificating about the web. This mix was brilliantly sampled from outtakes from a massive BBC series about the Internet, not yet broadcast. Only the dailies have been posted so far. In...
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Existence is Wonderful
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On Job Seeking and Disability Acknowledgment
4 Feb 2010 | 11:18 pmRecently, I made the acquaintance of someone who works with [Non-Profit Organization Meant to Help Job-Seekers With Disabilities Find Work]*. I was referred to this person, in turn, by another person via [Generalized Job-Search Assistance Firm]*, which my former employer set things up with to assist laid-off workers. So far that firm has actually been surprisingly helpful -- I mean no, I haven't found a new job yet, but I've definitely got my resume in much better shape and I've got a decent idea of where to start. But anyway, I'll get to the point of this entry: during a recent meeting with… -
Movie Review: Ink
3 Feb 2010 | 2:41 pmSPOILER LEVEL: Mild to Moderate - includes discussion of themes, but does not reveal the ending or other major plot points.So, recently I signed up for a trial of one of those online DVD-rental services, figuring it might be a reasonably economical way to get to see some interesting films I might not otherwise encounter. After filling out a little introductory questionnaire about my tastes I was presented with a list of "recommended titles", the first of which was a movie I'd never heard of called Ink. Curious to see how well the service had pegged my preferences, I placed Ink at the front of… -
Catur-Monday Photopost
1 Feb 2010 | 1:38 pmAs I am currently finishing up another movie review post and working on a few others, here are some more cat pictures (taken mostly last week / this past weekend). The kittens are now nearly six months old! And Nikki, the most recent addition to our feline family (who is eight years old) is definitely settling in, though she and Coraline are still having swat-and-hiss fights every now and then, as they are both very territorial ladies. Still, I figure so long as nobody is actually shredding anyone else, we're doing quite well. I was all asquee to see all four of them napping on the couch (as… -
Dirty Sock Crisis Thwarted By The Unassailable MacGyver Tendency!
22 Jan 2010 | 9:55 pmOne thing I still don't have set up yet at my house is a washing machine (or dryer, for that matter, but I'm not opposed to line-drying if I need to do it). The previous owners had had the washing machine in the kitchen -- apparently this was a bit of a fad during the 1950s, when I guess it was considered wonderful for "the housewife" to be able to stay in the kitchen all day, no matter if she were cooking or doing laundry (yay?).But I digress. The bottom line is that while eventually I'd like the washing machine hooked up in the garage, at present we don't have one hooked up anywhere -- and… -
On Haiti
18 Jan 2010 | 10:29 pm...or rather, on the subject of the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on and its indescribably awful aftermath.I don't know much about Haiti or anyone who actually lives there, or who died there, so I can't say much of substance. But I do acknowledge the disaster. These things happen in the world, and having a blog called "Existence is Wonderful" doesn't render me ignorant to this. I wish they didn't happen, or rather, that when they did happen, we were better prepared for them. But I am by no means sure what to do in the way of preparation, in my own life or on behalf of others (and no, I…
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Sentient Developments
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Is geoengineering an existential risk?
27 Jan 2010 | 7:27 pmWell, Milan M. Ćirković and Richard B. Cathcart think it's a distinct possibility. In fact, it may even (partly) explain the Great Silence. Check out the abstract to their article, "Geo-engineering Gone Awry: A New Partial Solution of Fermi's Paradox":Technological civilizations arising on such planets will be, at some point of their histories or another, tempted to embark upon massive geo-engineering projects. If, for some reasons only very recently understood, large-scale geo-engineering is in fact much more dangerous than previously thought, the scenario in which at least some of the… -
Followup on Haiti, Science, Brinstuff and the Enlightenment!
27 Jan 2010 | 4:18 pmDavid Brin is a Sentient Developments guest blogger.Salon Magazine asked to publish as a main article an updated version of my essay about reconstruction in Haiti, wherein I suggest the establishment of clear corridors for every kind of right-of-way, across the capital city—mass transit, sewer, water, electricity, fiber-optics, even WiFi can go in cheap, if all pathway issues are settled at once—so that the skeleton and sinew and bloodstream of a vibrant city can arise... leaving all the subsequent details to Haitians. Drop in and give the essay traffic! Comment if you like.And hold on… -
Drake: Use the Sun as a 'magnifying glass' to find ET
27 Jan 2010 | 2:55 pmSETI founder Frank Drake wants to take the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to the next level by implementing a process called gravitational microlensing.Microlensing is based on the gravitational lens effect: massive objects can bend the light of a bright background object. This can generate multiple distorted, magnified, and brightened images of the background source. More specifically, when a distant star or quasar gets sufficiently aligned with a massive compact foreground object, the bending of light due to its gravitational field leads to two distorted unresolved images… -
How Markets Fail [book]
27 Jan 2010 | 2:38 pmIt looks like John Cassidy's latest book, How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities, is worth checking out. According to Cassidy, it was blind faith in the markets that caused the recent financial meltdown. He argues that we can avert future calamities via 'reality-based economics'—grappling with market failures, disaster myopia, speculative frenzies, and other economic complexities. In this sense Cassidy can be called a Keynesian; it was John Maynard Keynes, after all, who fathered economic-crisis management.A quote from the Business Week review:Cassidy agrees with free-market… -
Rebooting Haiti: Eliminating poverty to reduce the impacts of disasters
25 Jan 2010 | 6:38 pmWith the search and rescue efforts officially called off in Haiti, the time has come for reconstruction. But with nearly 200,000 dead and one in nine Haitians currently homeless, it's easy to get caught up in the numbers and lose sight of the primary lesson learned from the catastrophe.That poverty kills. And it kills big time.Stop for a moment and imagine an earthquake of similar magnitude in San Fransisco. It's highly unlikely that we'd see a similar death count -- not with San Fran's first-world infrastructure and emergency response network, not to mention the support from surrounding…
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Broader Perspective
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Integrating life and technology with body-area networks
7 Feb 2010 | 10:35 amLong before brain computer interfaces (BCIs) and brain co-processors are available, acceptable, and appropriate for general enhancement use, body-area networks (BANs) could be a key means of integrating life and technology. Processing and communications could be brought on-board the person for medical, consumer electronics, entertainment, and other applications. At present, BANs consist of one or a few wearable or implanted biosensors gathering basic biological data and transmitting it wirelessly to a computer. The IEEE’s BAN communication standards protocol is 802.15.6.Medical BANsToumaz:… -
Personal genome citizen science
31 Jan 2010 | 9:55 pmEnough people are in possession of SNP genotype data from direct-to-consumer genomic services (e.g., 23andme, deCODEme, Navigenics) that collaborative citizen science genomics is starting to make sense. Participants could contribute genotype data for individual SNPs or their genotype data file (600,000 – 1 million SNPs) to secure peer collaboration platforms, with different levels of permissioning to different groups of ‘gene friends.’Personal genome citizen science could be carried out in a number of domains ranging from ancestry to health to athletic performance. Research could both… -
Individuals to drive personalized medicine era
24 Jan 2010 | 11:35 amThe Personalized Medicine World Congress held January 19-20, 2010 in Mountain View, CA was one of the first business conferences devoted to personalized medicine. There is a lot of excitement about personalized medicine and genomics given some recent announcements regarding whole human genome sequencing. First, Complete Genomics reported the costs of consumables (required chemical reagents), dropping to $4,400, and even $1,500 (Supporting Online Material page 27) per genome. Illumina similarly announced dramatic price drops, an estimated all-in cost of $10,000 per whole human genome with the… -
How Daemon/Freedom is starting to happen
17 Jan 2010 | 8:56 amThe books by Daniel Suarez, Daemon and Freedom, portray a possible extension of the world of today. Some elements contemplated in the books are obviously already in place such as worldwide gaming communities like World of Warcraft (11 million subscribers as of December 2008) and other MMORPGs. Botnetting of government and corporate computers is another existing feature of the contemporary world. High-magnitude financial crises (e.g., 2008) and dissatisfaction with the way they are handled is another obvious parallel, with grassroots responses such as the Move your Money movement to use local… -
Aging research: systems biology, genomics and new tools
10 Jan 2010 | 7:08 amThree important themes emerged from the Buck Institute’s Systems Biology Symposium of Aging held November 10-13, 2009. The themes were progress in the overall understanding of aging as a systems biology problem, the role of genomics in aging, and new tools development for aging research. Happily, some immediately applicable tidbits were discussed: the findings of the protective response of endurance exercise, and the use of resistance exercise as a countermeasure to sarcopenia. (Mark Tarnopolsky)Theme 1: Aging is a systems biology problemInflammationIncreasingly, aging is being understood…
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Andart
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The unique chess decade
23 Jan 2010 | 11:43 amGary Kasparov has an interesting essay on the effects of widespread beyond-grandmaster chess software on the chess community. Here is a quote that caught my eye: It was my luck (perhaps my bad luck) to be the world chess champion... -
Bark in the bread moves the percolation threshold
18 Jan 2010 | 10:47 amHow resilient is a society to disruptions? Here is one simple model with some interesting dynamics. The society is modelled as a network of nodes, where each node gets inputs (information, energy, money, goods etc.) from other nodes. It needs... -
An IgNobel prize contender?
18 Jan 2010 | 10:11 amHere is a lovely little paper titled [0912.3967] Road planning with slime mould: If Physarum built motorways it would route M6/M74 through Newcastle. The authors use slime moulds to find optimal road networks: We consider the ten most populated urban... -
The Coalition of the End-of-the-World Unwilling
12 Jan 2010 | 10:15 am[0912.5480] The Black Hole Case: The Injunction Against the End of the World by Eric E. Johnson is a paper on the legal problems of handling existential risk and radical uncertainty. I like it because it cites our paper -... -
They probably just watched the YouTube clip
12 Jan 2010 | 6:34 amThe UK Home Office clearly lacks any knowledge of history: why to use ID cards (flash). Wow... this is a monumental self-goal. This is exactly why anonymity is sometimes important. I don't mind having an ID number and ID card...
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the Foresight Institute
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Nautral Language Understanding
“It was a true solar-plexus blow, and completely knocked out, Perkins staggered back against the instrument-board. His outflung arm pushed the power-lever out to its last notch, throwing full current through the bar, which was pointed straight up as it had been when they made their landing.” My current research in AI, such as it is, [...] -
Graphene transistor roundup
Phaedon Avouris, winner of the Feynman Prize in 1999, is head of the nanoscale science and technology group At IBM, which has recently reported significant advances in synthesizing transistors from graphene using conventional lithography methods. IBM Demonstrates Graphene Transistor Twice as Fast as Silicon Graphene transistors promise 100GHz speeds Graphene Transistors that Can Work at Blistering Speeds Big Blue [...] -
The first AI blog
The first AI blog was written by a major, highly respected figure in the field. It consisted, as a blog should, of a series of short essays on various subjects relating to the central topic. It appeared in the mid-80s, just as the ARPAnet was transforming over into the internet. The only little thing [...] -
Analogical Quadrature
So far, in making my case that AI is (a) possible and (b) likely in the next decade or two, I’ve focused on techniques which are or easily could be part of a generally intelligent system, and which will clearly be enhanced by the two orders of magnitude increase in processing power we expect from [...] -
Associative memories
AI researchers in the 80s ran into a problem: the more their systems knew, the slower they ran. Whereas we know that people who learn more tend to get faster (and better in other ways) at whatever it is they’re doing. The solution, of course, is: Duh. the brain doesn’t work like a von Neumann model [...]
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Futurismic
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Iceland as free speech haven-state
9 Feb 2010 | 8:00 amStill riffing on the shifting sands of geopolitics, here’s another interesting nugget: the people behind the controversial (and short-of-funds) Wikileaks site have been lobbying Iceland to introduce a suite of journalism shield laws and become a sort of free-speech sanctuary or safe harbour for controversial data [via @qwghlm]. The new laws would be modeled on the kind of shady tax laws that tax havens offer the rich. Under the WikiLeaks’ proposal, Iceland would offer sources and journalists a strong package of legal protections thereby establishing itself as a sanctuary for free… -
Neomedievalism
9 Feb 2010 | 6:00 amWhile I’m on the subject of Bruce Sterling, here’s a brief piece he flagged up at Foreign Policy – a bleak prediction that the world is reverting to a kind of technology-mediated econo-political feudalism. Call it Neomedievalism: The state isn’t a universally representative phenomenon today, if it ever was. Already, billions of people live in imperial conglomerates such as the European Union, the Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the emerging North American Union, where state capitalism has become the norm. But at least half the United Nations’ membership,… -
Bruce Sterling on atemporality
9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amI’d be remiss in my fanboy duties if I didn’t repost this video of a keynote speech from Bruce Sterling at last week’s Transmediale Futurity Now! conference in Berlin. Appropriately enough for a conference in Berlin, a city where history lays heavily in layers of physical and psychological flotsam and jetsam, Chairman Bruce is talking about atemporality – that curious and disorientating sense that modern media gives us of all times being somehow equal. Atemporality is “a calm, pragmatic [and] serene skepticism about the historical narrative”; it’s… -
Blue-sky bioengineering on the DARPA drawing-board
8 Feb 2010 | 8:00 amIf you’re looking for the sort of bat-shit Faustian gambles that form the back-bone of much military science fiction, following the news from the Pentagon’s science and tech division is like supergluing your lips to a firehose… and Wired’s DangerRoom blog is one of the better consumer-level sources to start with (if you don’t mind a bit of snark on the side). Here’s DangerRoom’s Katie Drummond on DARPA’s latest wheeze: immortal synthetic organisms with a built-in molecular kill-switch. SRSLY. As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa… -
Angry Robot’s acrostic story competition
8 Feb 2010 | 6:00 amJust a quick heads-up for those writers among you who, like myself, find themselves better motivated to write when faced with a deadline, a stylistic restriction and a small potential reward: new UK genre press Angry Robot have just announced their latest just-for-fun short story competition. The rules are simple, so I’ll quote ‘em in full: Write a short story about any subject you like. The only rules are: It has to be 13 sentences long The first word of the first sentence must begin with T, the first word of the second sentence must begin with H, the first word of the third…
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On Singularity
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How to Steal a Botnet
A group of researchers at UCSB recently managed to take control over a part of Torpig botnet for 10 days. During this time, they observed 180 thousand infections and recorded almost 70GB of data that bots collected. This data included submitted form information from all the websites the infected person had visited, smtp, ftp, pop3, windows, passwords, credit card numbers and passwords from various password managers.[link] -
Tablet Explosion
This year is going to see a revolution. Its impact will be profound. But nobody really expected it. The sudden feasibility of "e-readers" and tablets, and their expanded applications, are set to have a largely unexplored impact. Previously expensive and not as usable as real books, they have finally come of age, giving us cheap technology that is as readable as a piece of paper.[link] -
Brain-cell grid gives references for mental maps
[link]
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Overcoming Bias
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Distinguishing Defense
9 Feb 2010 | 5:35 amMany folks are not that comfortable with the idea of working in or for the military. Yes, at some level we all support armies via paying taxes, selling them food, teaching their kids, etc., but the more direct their support the more uncomfortable many folks get. For example, actually stabbing enemy soldiers on the front line is more direct than most of us prefer. No doubt this discomfort at directness deprives armies of the support of many talented folks. Some military folks I know emphasize that their efforts are primarily defensive; they help resist enemy attack and protect civilians… -
Dreamtime Drama
8 Feb 2010 | 5:00 pmAfter a record two feet of snow this weekend, my area (DC) has another 5-9 inches coming tomorrow. My street hasn’t been plowed, and likely won’t be until next week. So this might seem one of those “stories to tell your grandkids.” Except, well, we have water, power, heat, tv, internet, plenty of food, and no more than the usual work to do. Not exactly a disaster story for the ages. This is of course one of the prices we pay for being dreamtime richies – stories about our suffering just aren’t going to elicit much sympathy from our distant… -
Tax Bank Collapse Risk?
8 Feb 2010 | 5:50 amA week ago I said: The main general approaches I know [to avoid total collapse] are refuges, to directly protect against the worst case, and the robustness rewards above, which counter-act known problems that distort our world economy toward fragility. I suggested fixing current biases in intellectual property, empire bias, crisis metrics, and missing standards. Here is a finance regulation proposal in the same spirit: The Obama proposal for bank taxation has simple flat rates on uninsured bank liabilities. This is a better target than total liabilities since deposits were already insured,… -
The Future of Sex
7 Feb 2010 | 10:40 amOur descendants will be different from us. In a competitive world, they’ll have to be; our design is hardly optimized for their world. But since they will evolve incrementally from us, they won’t be completely different. For example, many features of the ways we talk between minds, and within minds, may lock in as interface standards. Also, our descendants will prefer to reuse and modify complex workable modules rather than reinventing such things from scratch. Which brings us to everyone’s favorite topic: sex. Our minds have been evolved in great detail to handle human… -
Capital In Conflict
6 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pmUntil a few centuries ago economic growth rates were well below feasible population growth rates. This gave a “Malthusian” state, as in most animal species, where population was near its max sustainable level. To learn more about our distant future, which will probably be in such a state, let us learn more about our Malthusian past. In particular, consider two important clues: Slack – As measured either by kids per mom or hours of work a day, most recent pre-industrial societies were ~30-70% below their simple Malthusian limit. Interest – Even after correcting…
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The Speculist
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FastForward Radio -- The Essentials Revisited
9 Feb 2010 | 4:54 amWhat is it that throws the Speculist Switch? Phil and Stephen review and update the Speculist Essentials -- key influences towards developing a FastForward-friendly view of the universe, including: Movie or TV show Fiction book Nonfiction book Website Event Person If you listen live you can contribute to the show by joining the text chat. Our chat host Sally Morem will be on hand to lead the discussion. Get all the details on listening live at our audio host, Blog Talk Radio. The show starts at: 10:00 Eastern/9:00 Central/8:00 Mountain/7:00 Pacific. -
How I Love a Good Headline
8 Feb 2010 | 5:48 amThis is one of the best I've seen in a while: World's Biggest Snake Ate New Prehistoric Croc Species Whats not to like? You've got the world's biggest snake, a prehistoric croc -- and not just one of those tired old prehistoric crocs, but apparently a new one! A good headline, to be sure, but probably not among the all-time greats. -
Why Did Pluto Change Color?
7 Feb 2010 | 10:24 amAll the ink and pixels spent in recent years on the question of whether Pluto ought or ought not be considered a planet missed the most interesting development in the story of this distant rock (or whatever it is.) Astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology puts it this way: “You’re looking at the surface in the solar system where there are the biggest changes we’ve ever seen,” Brown said. The color of the surface of Pluto changed so markedly, particularly between 2000 and 2002, that Buie has spent years checking and rechecking his work, just to make sure the… -
Friday Videos -- The Amazing Pickle Platter
7 Feb 2010 | 8:55 amSpeaking of Harvey's contributions to the culinary world, we were talking in the chat room after last week's podcast and everyone agreed that he has summed up the coming economy very well with the technology he has been predicting: the sandwich printer. -
Closing in on Quantum Computing
6 Feb 2010 | 4:11 pmQuantum Computing Leap Forward: Altering a Lone Electron Without Disturbing Its Neighbors This is huge because the qbits that drive this particular design of quantum computer are electrons. Isolating individual electrons gets us much closer to finding out if it will work.
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PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories
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Scientist explore future of high-energy physics
9 Feb 2010 | 8:20 amIn a 1954 speech to the American Physical Society, the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi fancifully envisioned a particle accelerator that encircled the globe. Such would be the ultimate theoretical outcome, Fermi surmised, of the quest for the ever-more powerful accelerators needed to discover new laws of physics. -
People out and about make cities secure
9 Feb 2010 | 8:10 amYoung people who have experienced threats and violence feel more insecure than others in urban public spaces, especially when alone. This is one conclusion from researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. -
Built-in amps: How subtle head motions, quiet sounds are reported to the brain
9 Feb 2010 | 7:57 amSubtle head motions are amplified by inner-ear hair cells before the signal is reported to the brain, report Marine Biological Laboratory scientists and colleagues. In both the auditory and the vestibular systems, hair cell response is nonlinear: the lower the strength of the stimulus, the more the hair cell amplifies the signal. -
New magnetic tuning method enhances data storage
9 Feb 2010 | 7:54 amResearchers in Chicago and London have developed a method for controlling the properties of magnets that could be used to improve the storage capacity of next-generation computer hard drives. -
Has the mystery of the Portrait of Maud Abrantes been solved?
9 Feb 2010 | 7:45 amA century after Amedeo Modigliani painted the Portrait of Maud Abrantes, the mystery behind the painting might be solved. Ofra Rimon, Director and Curator of the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa, discovered that hidden in the painting is the portrait of another woman. "Modigliani was probably not happy with that painting and decided to paint over it in favor of a portrait of Maud," she claims.
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Pink Tentacle
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Snow sculptures at Sapporo Snow Festival 2010
8 Feb 2010 | 1:43 amThis year’s Sapporo Snow Festival kicked off last weekend, bringing hundreds of massive snow sculptures into the streets of Japan’s northern capital. Here’s a look at some of the works on display at the event, which runs until February 11. + Video Hatsune Miku [Photo by kamemaruk] Michael Jackson [Photo by tmaeda_japan] Frauenkirche (The Church of Our Lady) [Photo by North☆Star] Northern Zoos [Photo via Sapporo Snow Festival website] Northern Zoos [Photo by 悪さー] Northern Zoos [Photo by 悪さー] The Place Where Dreams Come True [Photo by minkara] The Place Where… -
Monster illustrations from ‘Yokai Jiten’
4 Feb 2010 | 10:06 pmHere’s a peek at a few creatures profiled in Yōkai Jiten (“Yōkai Encyclopedia”), an informative guide to 100 of Japan’s traditional monsters, written and illustrated by manga artist Shigeru Mizuki in 1981. Suiko [+] The suiko (lit. “water tiger”) is a king-sized variety of kappa living in and around the Chikugo River (Kyushu), Lake Biwa (Shiga prefecture), and other bodies of water across Japan. In addition to prowling around at night and making mischief, the suiko has the power to possess people. Those possessed by a suiko descend into a temporary state… -
Video: Star Wars disco sea chicken
3 Feb 2010 | 6:48 amHagoromo canned tuna (a.k.a. “sea chicken”) commercial, circa 1978. + Video [Via MetaFilter] -
Now hiring part-time cadaver cleaners
2 Feb 2010 | 7:17 pmWant to earn 50,000 yen ($550) a day? If you have a strong stomach, you might consider a part-time job washing cadavers in Japan. Strapped for cash? Rumors about the existence of lucrative cadaver-washing jobs have circulated on Japanese college campuses for over 50 years. For the most part, these stories are regarded as urban legends, and most evidence suggests that no such job opportunities actually exist. If they do exist, they are difficult to find because they are not publicly advertised and can only be heard about through word-of-mouth. According to the word on the street, though, these… -
‘Bad Apple!!’ stop-motion animation
28 Jan 2010 | 6:46 am“Bad Apple!!” is a magical piece of stop-motion animation made from 6,566 still photos of printed bitmaps. + Video The creator, Nico Nico Douga user “shige-ruuu,” says he made the video without using photo-editing software. The images were captured with a webcam, and the effects were achieved by changing the camera position and adjusting the focus, brightness, zoom, exposure and gain. The original stills and music come from this video for the song “Bad Apple!!” (arranged by Masayoshi Minoshima, featuring vocals by nomico) from the Touhou Project game…
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Everyone's Blog Posts - Transhumanist Network
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Life Extension through Virtual Reality Dreaming
"Dream as you will live forever, live as you'll die today" James Dean There's never enough hours in the day. Life has a funny way of taking so long and going by so fast. Yet some feel that our near century life span is not enough, and wish to seek life extension. The time we do have is currently largely dominated by sleep, so muchs so that based any statistical information you subscribe to it is without a doubt that a high percentage of our lives are spent sleeping. All this time spent on sleeping some may argue is a waste of productivity. Assuming you live to be 100 years old nearly 40% of… -
Digital Evolution
In the future, the success of life within a programmed reality will rely on coherent and flexible streams of code duplicating and mutating in much the same way that our DNA does now. Whether the mechanics of these mutations are driven by our own consciousness or by the will of machines that we will have given prior instruction remains to be seen... Read more -
The Twitterverse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA1YeAUQl_A TransAlchemy production The Twitterverse Hivemind Edit Individual human identity is becoming INSUFFICIENT. The global hive mind, forming all around us, provides easier and greater ways for one to transcend individualism into metavidualism. The transhuman merge of man and machine also concerns the perfection of a collective hive mind. It requires many minds to build and maintain our advanced society. Technology drives this trend further with the advent of such tools as twitter skype google wave wikipedia etc... Anyone wishing to add to the collective… -
Astral Projection
When we start to fully immerse ourselves in self-engineered virtual realities, the initial shock of having access to an entirely different set of programmable parameters may be too much for many... Read more -
FreeMarket's Colony Program is Go for Launch!
After two years in development, FreeMarket has launched its colony program. Users can register at projectdonut.com and download a beta version of FreeMarket’s system documents, ephemera and other material necessary to engage in the experience. Colonists will also have priority status for pre-ordering the final release of FreeMarket: a limited edition set signed and numbered by designers Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen, and a reproduction of the original CHOIRS mission patch. As space on the outgoing lifeboat transports is limited, FreeMarket can only accept the first 1,000 registrations. Luke…
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FUTUREdition
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Volume 13, Number 2
2 Feb 2010 | 11:08 amVolume 13, Number 2 - 1/30/10 FUTURE FACTS - FROM THINK LINKS DID YOU KNOW THAT… Rogue genetic elements previously dismissed as “junk” DNA may play a role in the development of some cancers, or at least act as a marker of the disease’s progression. Satellite imagery of the deforestation of the Amazon basin has revealed the vast remains [...] -
Volume 13, Number 1
22 Jan 2010 | 10:58 amVolume 13, Number 1 - 1/15/10 FUTURE FACTS - FROM THINK LINKS DID YOU KNOW THAT… A not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a free, high quality education to anyone, anywhere has placed over 1000 videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance. Looking at the top ten [...] -
Volume 12, Number 10
5 Jan 2010 | 12:27 pmVolume 12, Number 10 - 12/30/09 FUTURE FACTS - FROM THINK LINKS DID YOU KNOW THAT… Underwater footage reveals the first example of tool use in octopuses. The galactic tide is strong enough to influence Oort Cloud comets, which means it may also have helped shape our planet. Crowdsourcing, solving a task by appealing to a large undefined group of [...]
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Institute For The Future
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Jane McGonigal live at TED 2010
8 Feb 2010 | 2:00 pmteaser: At the TED 2010 conference this week Jane will be talking about how to work out real world problems in gaming spaces and how gaming can change the world. Promote to what's new on front page: Promote to what's new on front page "Reality is broken," says IFTF's Jane McGonigal. "And we all need to tap into a collective sense of urgent optimism—as well as the ability and capacity to act now—to make the future." At the TED 2010 conference this week Jane will be talking about how to work out real world problems in gaming spaces and how gaming can change the… -
When Everything is Programmable: Technology Horizons 2009 Fall Conference Material
2 Feb 2010 | 10:15 amSR: 1265 attachment: A Map for the Programmable World.pdf_5.34MB attachment: Customizable Map.pdf_232.8KB attachment: Perspective: Synthetic Biology.pdf_1.84MB attachment: Perspective: Quantified Self.pdf_1.82MB attachment: Perspective: Mind of Morphology.pdf_1.81MB attachment: Perspective: Neuroprogramming.pdf_1.83MB attachment: Perspective: Smart Cities and Spaces.pdf_1.83MB attachment: Perspective: Designer Social Networks.pdf_1.86MB attachment: Perspective: New Taylorism at Work.pdf_1.83MB attachment: Perspective: Embedded… -
Executive Director Marina Gorbis to speak at TEDxSoMa
22 Jan 2010 | 10:43 amteaser: In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED recently began TEDx, a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. TEDxSoMa will be held January 22 at the PariSoMa Innovation Loft with IFTF's own Executive Director, Marina Gorbis speaking. Promote to what's new on front page: Promote to what's new on front page In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) a U.S. private nonprofit foundation devoted to bringing people together to share these ideas, began TEDx, a program of local,… -
The Future of Real-Time Video Communication report released
19 Jan 2010 | 6:39 pmattachment: SR-1278_Skype_FutureofVideoCommunication.pdf teaser: What is the future of real-time video communication and what will it feel like to live and work in a world where real-time video is ubiquitous? Skype commissioned IFTF to research and start a conversation about this question and much more in this newly-released report. Promote to what's new on front page: Promote to what's new on front page What is the future of real-time video communication and what will it feel like to live and work in a world where real-time video is ubiquitous? Skype commissioned IFTF… -
Jamais Cascio joins circle of IFTF Research Fellows
22 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pmteaser: We are pleased to announce the appointment of Jamais Cascio as Research Fellow at IFTF. This honorary title is reserved for a few select individuals who have shaped IFTF research in significant ways. Promote to what's new on front page: Promote to what's new on front page We are pleased to announce the appointment of Jamais Cascio as Research Fellow at IFTF. This honorary title is reserved for a few select individuals who have shaped IFTF research in significant ways. image: JamaisCascio_New.jpg IFTF Staff Posts read more
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MediaFuturist
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From Hardbacks to Hot Bytes: the Future of Books & Publishing (March 19 event in London)
9 Feb 2010 | 7:20 amToday, I am delighted to announce a very special event on "The Future of Books & Publishing in a connected World", on March 19th, in London. I have teamed up with Clive Rich (Rich Futures / Olswang) and Dominic Pride (the SoundHorizon) to jointly present a powerful, conclusive and inspiring program (8.30 am to 12 noon), geared towards Senior Executives, strategists and decision makers from all sectors of the book publishing industry, including the creatives, i.e. the authors / writers and their agents and representatives. The Future of Books will present C-Level publishing executives with… -
Check out the new Futerati: feed aggregator / reader with my favorite tweeps
8 Feb 2010 | 6:40 amAs previewed a few weeks ago, the new beta version of my crowd-sourced tweeple aggregator and tweet-reader "Futerati" is now online and open to all. Futerati is basically a curated site that displays my favorite Twitter people, presented in 20+ categories such as Futurists, Authors, Thought-Leaders, Bloggers, Visionaries etc. You can review all the latest tweets on one page, including the images and videos (much like the Power-Twitter plug-in for Firefox), and you can follow all of them with just a few clicks. I quite like it - in fact, I am reading a lot of my Twitter… -
Content 2.0: sell what is scarce!
8 Feb 2010 | 6:20 am -
Meet me at the Guardian Changing Media Summit in London (March 18)
8 Feb 2010 | 5:21 amI am delighted to have been asked to contribute to this year's Guardian Changing Media Summit in London, on March 18, 2010. I will be chiming in twice: a) a panel discussion on "What does the future sound like? Understanding and reacting to the creative and commercial transformation of the music industry" (12.10 pm) and b) the closing keynote roundtable on The Future of Media. This should be fun;) Download the program: PDF Programme CMS 2010-january "From the most dynamic and prescient futurologists and the hardest of hard-nosed commercial suits, to the… -
Join me in Sao Paulo Feb 24: NBS seminar on The Future of Communication and Social Media
5 Feb 2010 | 12:16 amI am collaborating with the nice people from the NBS agency on February 24th, in Sao Paulo / Brazil, see the details below. If you want to attend please contact me for more details - but hurry;) **update: you can also meet me at the Mobile Monday Sao Paulo event on February 22nd.Related articles by ZemantaWe are shifting to an Open Operating System (and not just in media) (mediafuturist.com) My presentation on "Content 2.0 - Monetization Examples" at MidemNet 2010 (mediafuturist.com)
