Future

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    The Long Now Blog

  • Rick Prelinger Ticket Info

    Danielle Engelman
    5 Nov 2009 | 2:22 pm
    The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking presents Rick Prelinger’s “Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4” Friday December 4, 02009 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: Rick Prelinger, a guerrilla archivist who collects the uncollected and makes it accessible, presents the fourth of his annual Lost Landscapes of San Francisco screenings. You’ll see an eclectic montage of rediscovered and rarely-seen film clips showing…

  • Our daily bread

    Kirk Citron
    3 Nov 2009 | 12:22 pm
    The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now. There may be more than nine billion humans by 2050, which begs the question: how will they all get fed? Particularly when you consider that we’re having trouble feeding the six billion who are already here. Some recent news stories about food: 1. The scope of the problem: 1.02 billion people hungry: one sixth of humanity undernourished, more than ever before Climate change is worsening food insecurity, experts say 2. Food instability breeds other kinds of instability: Refugees protest food…

  • The Lava Project

    Alexander Rose
    31 Oct 2009 | 9:21 pm
    Audience members at Arthur Ganson’s Seminar on September 14, 02009 were among the first viewers of The Lava Project Documentary, which premiered in our new Long Shorts series – short videos that explore, explain, or exemplify long-term thinking and responsibility. The Lava Project Documentary was created by White Elephant DesignLab, a group of designers who explore natural phenomena and experiment with various materials and their external influences. Earlier this year, the group created a piece at the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii that was inspired by our promotion…

  • Long Now Media Update

    Danielle Engelman
    26 Oct 2009 | 5:20 pm
    There 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  Stewart Brand’s “Rethinking Green”

  • Millenniata now shipping

    Alexander Rose
    22 Oct 2009 | 11:51 am
    What seems to be the first real optical archival digital tech is now shipping. The Millenniata product is a type of DVD storage that uses a mechanical scratching process, instead of a thermal process, making the media vastly more stable.  The disks are in the current DVD standard and the company claims they are therefore backwards compatable to normal players.  To write your own disk however you will need the $1700 writer and one of the special blank disks that range from $16-$25ea depending on qty. If the companies claims on life-span of the media are true this is a major milestone in…
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    Accelerating Future

  • Hungry Optimizers with Low-Complexity Values

    Michael Anissimov
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:12 pm
    On Halloween, IEET Managing Director Mike Treder expressed his skepticism about fear from human-indifferent or unfriendly AI. Meanwhile, in London, long-time AI researcher and academic Shane Legg was describing the imminent danger. Treder’s basic argument is that the fear of UFAI (unfriendly AI) is analogous to other invented fears associated with past concern about technology, such as Frankenstein’s monster. Treder says, “Strangely, a small subculture of transhumanist thinkers have created a similar fear of dangerously diabolical inhuman products of advanced technology,…

  • Hamster in Tutu Shuts Down Large Hadron Collider

    Michael Anissimov
    6 Nov 2009 | 4:38 pm
    Over at Less Wrong, Eliezer is having some fun with the suspicious LHC shutdown meme.

  • Rohit Talwar’s “Top 10 Forecasts for Science and Technology in 2010″

    Michael Anissimov
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:41 pm
    Check out Rohit Talwar’s “Top 10 forecasts for science and technology in 2010″ over at Troy Media. More business futurists are getting hip to transhumanist and singularitarian ideas. Here are the 10 forecasts: 1. The Rise of Citizen Science 2. NBIC-convergence 3. Synthetic Biology 4. Personalized Medicine 5. Novel Energy Sources 6. Food Production Methods 7. 3D Printing / Personal Fabricators 8. Ambient Intelligence 9. Self Replicating Artificial Intelligence (AI) 10. The Singularity He is forecasting that people will start talking about these things more, not that they will…

  • Another LHC Shutdown

    Michael Anissimov
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:37 pm
    This time, a bird dropped a piece of bread into outdoor machinery which led to part of the accelerator circuit overheating. That’s 2 unrelated shutdown incidents. According to Anders Sandberg, we have to experience 30 unrelated technical failures before we can chalk up the failure of the LHC to anthropic selection. 2 down, 28 to go.

  • Stephen Wolfram at Singularity Summit 2009

    Michael Anissimov
    5 Nov 2009 | 11:39 pm
    Stephen Wolfram at Singularity Summit 2009 — A Conversation on the Singularity from Michael Anissimov on Vimeo. He doesn’t talk too much about the Singularity in this “conversation on the Singularity”, but he does touch on a LOT of interesting issues, including AI, science, the complexity of nature, his ideas about cellular automata, simple programs, etc. A good introduction to some of Stephen’s ideas for those who haven’t slogged through A New Kind of Science yet. If his ideas are right, they’re damn important, with implications for computer science,…
 
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    KURZWEILAI.NET ACCELERATING INTELLIGENCE

  • Ray Kurzweil proposes entrepreneurial peace fund and renewable-energy initiatives to Israeli leaders

    5 Nov 2009 | 11:35 pm
    Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres at the recent Israeli Presidential Conference: Facing Tomorrow 2009, Ray Kurzweil proposed several innovations for dealing with the coming energy shortages and bolstering Israel's growing economy. He also proposed an "Entrepreneurial Peace Fund" -- a collaborative technology incubator between Israel and Palestine. The proposal was widely met with enthusiasm and support in both public and private sessions. In a speech to the conference, Netanyahu credited Kurzweil with the insight and inspiration for the…

  • Humanity+ Summit and Biopolitics of Popular Culture Seminar

    5 Nov 2009 | 10:55 pm
    The feasibility of redesigning the human condition (such as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet Earth) will be the focus at Humanity + Summit, Dec. 5-6 in Irvine, California at EON Reality's new state-of-the-art, 18,500-square-foot facility, built to showcase 3D visual content management and virtual reality applications. Is Hollywood reflecting a transhuman turn in popular culture, helping us imagine a day when magical and muggle can live together in a peaceful Star Trek federation? Will…

  • Elevator to the Top: Space Elevators Climbing Towards Reality

    5 Nov 2009 | 10:21 pm
    The group LaserMotive successfully ran a climber up 1 kilometer of test cable at an average rate of just over 2 meters per second, qualifying for the 2nd place prize of $900,000 in The Space Elevator Games competition. The craft is powered by a stationary laser beaming the power to operate to the climber. (NASA MSFC, Artist Pat Rawling) (Source: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/11/elevator-to-the-top-space-elevators-climbing-towards-reality/)

  • Analysis: Google's Dashboard Tackles Transparency

    5 Nov 2009 | 10:16 pm
    A new Google product called Dashboard aggregates users' personal information from more than 20 Google services into a single, password-protected page. (Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355490,00.asp)

  • Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber

    5 Nov 2009 | 9:27 pm
    A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), causing significant overheating in the system's supercooled magnetic doughnut. Obligatory "this is not an Onion story" statement - Ed. See also: The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate (Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/05/lhc_bread_bomb_dump_incident/)
 
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    Open the Future

  • Lights, Camera, Talk!

    Jamais Cascio
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:25 am
    Consider this something of an aside to the "basic futurism" series over at Fast Company. As video becomes an increasingly important part of how organizations construct their internal and external narratives, those of us who work in the broad field of consulting will frequently find ourselves plopped down in front of a camera. One-on-one interviews have aspects of both formal presentations and casual conversations, but a few twisty elements all their own. Much to my surprise, I've done quite a few on-camera, one-on-one interviews over the past few years. It's not something I sought out, but is…

  • Resilience Fail (updated)

    Jamais Cascio
    2 Nov 2009 | 2:40 pm
    Quick question: where does this URL go to? http://tinyurl.com/ya8p9vg How about this one? http://bit.ly/DkXOW Would you have guessed that the first goes to a Computerworld article about business-appropriate avatars, and the second goes to the previous post on Open the Future? The use of URL-shortening services is a classic example of short-term need trumping long-term resilience. Shortened URLs: are not human-readable, and even the versions with user-generated mnemonics are little better than crude tags; they don't provide contextual clues, which would offer a way to find the information…

  • Carbon Footprint T-Shirts (& Stuff)

    Jamais Cascio
    1 Nov 2009 | 3:44 pm
    Warren Ellis' new "t-shirt a week" project, using Cafe Press, reminded me that, waaaay back in the early days of Open the Future, I tried out a Cafe Press shop just to get a couple of items of OtF stuff for myself. That stuff is all gone -- it used the logo from two iterations ago -- but the shop remained. It only needed new content. By far the most popular item I've ever done here is the Carbon Footprint of a Cheeseburger, and I still get requests to use the graphic that I made to accompany the piece -- a mockup of a "carbon facts" chart mirroring the common "nutrition facts" found on nearly…

  • New Fast Company: 350

    Jamais Cascio
    30 Oct 2009 | 12:33 pm
    My latest Fast Company piece is up. 350 takes a look at the global movement to limit CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. If this sounds like I think the 350 movement is a bad idea... I don't. I rather like the simplicity of the meme, and the target is--if difficult--smart. It's not saying "let's keep things from getting too much worse," it's saying "let's make things better." That's the kind of goal I like. But getting back to 350ppm requires more than a rapid cessation of anthropogenic sources of atmospheric carbon. It requires an acceleration of the processes that…

  • Well, You Can Tell By the Way I Use My Walk...

    Jamais Cascio
    26 Oct 2009 | 2:02 pm
    ...I've got robot legs, but no mouth to talk. And again! With the shoving! Boston Dynamics really likes to abuse its robots. (For the whippersnappers in the audience who don't get the title reference, here. Yes, the usage is ironic. And get offa my lawn.)
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    Next Big Future

  • Technology Roundup: Booming EReaders in 2010, Ionic Batteries, Batteryless Neural Sensing Chip

    noreply@blogger.com (bw)
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:30 pm
    1. MIT Technology Review reports on the work of Arizona based Fluidic Energy who are working toward development of a metal-air battery that relies on ionic liquids, instead of an aqueous solution, as its electrolyte.The company aims to build a Metal-Air Ionic Liquid battery that has up to 11 times the energy density of the top lithium-ion technologies for less than one-third the cost. Cody Friesen, a professor of materials science at Arizona State and founder of Fluidic Energy, says the use of ionic liquids overcomes many of the problems that have held back metal-air batteries in the past.The…

  • Electric Solar Wind Sail Could Have Five Times Higher Thrust

    noreply@blogger.com (bw)
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:41 pm
    An electric solar wind sail is a recently introduced propellantless space propulsion method whose technical development has also started. The electric sail consists of a set of long, thin, centrifugally stretched and conducting tethers which are charged positively and kept in a high positive potential of order 20 kV by an onboard electron gun. The positively charged tethers deflect solar wind protons, thus tapping momentum from the solar wind stream and producing thrust. The amount of obtained propulsive thrust depends on how many electrons are trapped by the potential structures of the…

  • Acceleration of Neutral Atoms with Lasers With Acceleration Up to 100 trillion Gs

    noreply@blogger.com (bw)
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:53 pm
    Researchers observed previously unconsidered strong kinematic forces on neutral atoms in short-pulse laser fields. The ponderomotive force on electrons is the driving mechanism, producing ultra-strong acceleration of neutral atoms greater that Earth's gravitational acceleration by 14 orders of magnitude. A force of such strength may lead to new applications in both fundamental and applied physics. On the cover, a record of the deflection of neutral helium atoms after interaction with a focused laser beam.Acceleration of neutral atoms in strong short-pulse laser fieldsA charged particle…

  • Second Day Results from the Space Elevator Games and the Third and Final Day

    noreply@blogger.com (bw)
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:43 pm
    Day 3 also appears to be done with no change in the standings or prizes won. Lasermotive has won the level 1 prize of $900,000. No other prizes were won and no other team qualified for a prize.LaserMotive retained their lead, and inched closer to the 5 m/s benchmark – they removed some payload, and thus ran a bit faster – the official times were 3:49 and 3:48 – 13 seconds faster, in fact, for a speed of 3.9 m/s. The payload was about 200 grams lighter – 0.4 kg (unofficial), for an unofficial score of 3.9 * 0.4 / 4.8 = 0.325.Kansas City still failed short of reaching the top, though it…

  • Nanocapsules for Artificial Photosynthesis and Improved Nanoparticles for Gene Therapy

    noreply@blogger.com (bw)
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:39 pm
    1. Chemists from the University of Würzburg have made progress to achieving artificial photosynthesis Nanocapsules have been loaded with reactive molecules which convert UV light to visible light which varies based on the pH of the environment. The chemical conversion to light could lead to artificial photosynthesis and separately be used for tiny sensors for pH.Unique material for the capsule shellThe Würzburg nanocapsules are comprised of a unique material. This was developed in Frank Würthner's working group on the basis of so-called amphiphilic perylene bisimides. If the base material,…
 
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    NANODOT NEWS AND DISCUSSION

  • Brain mapping and the connectome

    J. Storrs Hall
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:57 am
    I’m at the AAAI Fall Symposium session on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, and there was a really interesting talk by Walter Schneider of Pitt about progress in mapping the nerve bundles that are the “information superhighways” between the various parts of the brain.  You’ll find his slides from last year’s talk on his home page, and there has apparently been progress amounting to a breakthrough in the interim. This and fMRI together are giving us an understanding of what’s going on in the brain that’s advancing faster than anybody…

  • Is Robo Habilis a gateway to Intelligence?

    J. Storrs Hall
    5 Nov 2009 | 12:31 am
    In response to my Robo Habilis post, Tim Tyler replied: An intelligence challenge should not involve building mechanical robot controllers – IMO. That’s a bit of a different problem – and a rather difficult one – because of the long build-test cycle involved in such projects. There are plenty of purer tests of intelligence that use more abstract ideas – games, puzzles, and other classical intelligence test fodder. If you want to measure the abilities of mechanical robots, then fine, but let’s not pretend that it’s the same thing as measuring intelligence. This is a fairly widely…

  • Nanotechnology devices: Molecular machines shift into gear

    J. Storrs Hall
    4 Nov 2009 | 2:22 pm
    Nanotechnology devices: Molecular machines shift into gear. An atomically precise gear, rotated by pushing the teeth one at a time with a STM tip.

  • More on the AI takeover

    J. Storrs Hall
    4 Nov 2009 | 12:45 am
    There are at least 4 stages of intelligence levels that AI will have to get through to get to the take-over-the-world level. In Beyond AI I refered to them as hypohuman, diahuman, epihuman, and hyperhuman; but just for fun let’s use fake species names: Robo insectis: rote, mechanical gadgets (or thinkers) with hand-coded skills, such as Roomba or industrial robots or automated call-center systems or dictation programs. Robo habilis: Rosie the housemaid robot level intelligence, able to handle service level jobs in the real world but not a rocket scientist. Robo sapiens: up to and…

  • Rice scientists point out that nanotubes are polymers

    J. Storrs Hall
    3 Nov 2009 | 12:08 am
    (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSxihhBzCjk) From NanoWerk: Rice scientists argue nanotubes can be treated like polymers Wade Adams, Matteo Pasquali, Micah Green and Natnael Behabtu at Rice pick up that thread in their discussion of what we know — or think we know — about carbon nanotubes. Their review in the journal Polymer (“Nanotubes as polymers”) makes the argument that single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are polymers and should be treated as such. The point is to remind the nano community that decades of research into polymers can be applied to their work and…
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    Responsible Nanotechnology

  • CAD Robots For the Masses

    Chris Phoenix
    5 Nov 2009 | 11:42 am
    Not so many years ago, computer-aided design was an arcane skill, requiring programs costing thousands of dollars. Today, CAD is used widely, and the programs have gotten cheaper and easier to use.How cheap? How about free. And how easy? How about a CAD program designed for children?Hat tip to Tom Craver for pointing me at this website. It is a free CAD program that will let anyone design an object, see it in 3D, and calculate what needs to be purchased to build the object. Once purchased, the components are easily assembled. A wide range of robots can be built, and the robot-programming…

  • Molecular Manufacturing and the Origin of Life

    Chris Phoenix
    1 Nov 2009 | 11:40 pm
    Molecular manufacturing designs have traditionally looked a lot more like machines than like life's biochemistry, and molecular manufacturing has even been criticized for not taking more inspiration from life's techniques. But there is a fundamental connection between them. The digital nature of chemistry (to be specific, molecule-forming chemistry) is what will allow molecular manufacturing systems to build duplicate systems, driving down the cost of manufacturing and enabling high throughput and large products. It's easy to think of life as squishy and analog, or complex and…

  • China's Prolific Nano Researchers

    Chris Phoenix
    31 Oct 2009 | 1:14 am
    Over at Metamodern, Eric Drexler just posted a rather impressive table of the top nanotech researchers of 2005, in terms of numbers of papers published. The top four nanotech publishers are Chinese. China also grabbed slots 6-9, 11-13, and 15. Slots 5, 10, 14, 16, and 17 are filled by researchers from Italy, England, Germany, Taiwan, and Germany, in that order. Slots 18-23 are tied between Japan, the U.S., China (twice), and the Netherlands (twice). Drexler comments that this table "has a degree of relevance" to an essay of his, “Asia and the elements of innovation”"Of…
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    Ethical Technology

  • Avatar Trailer

    6 Nov 2009 | 1:13 pm
    James Cameron’s first feature film in 12 years…

  • IEET Statistics Trending Strong

    6 Nov 2009 | 7:40 am
    During the past year, visits to the IEET site have trended strongly upward, and our “Facebook Fan” base has nearly doubled in just six months.

  • Mike Treder IEET Seminar in Southern California

    5 Nov 2009 | 8:26 pm
    David Brin, best-selling author of both fiction (Kiln People, Earth, Uplift series) and non-fiction (The Transparent Society), is the latest addition to what is turning out to be a superb lineup of presenters for the IEET’s one-day special seminar on the “Biopolitics of Popular Culture.” In science fiction novels, movies, comic books, TV shows, advertising, and graphic novels, what lessons are we taught about emerging technologies? How do the subtle—and not so subtle—messages about the future that inundate us every day affect our perceptions about science,…

  • Brain Makeover

    5 Nov 2009 | 7:41 pm
    Click here to get quick lessons from real cheerleaders on 18 important science concepts, then test your knowledge by taking a 26-question multiple choice quiz created by George Mason University physics professor James Trefil as part of Science Cheerleader’s Brain Makeover project.

  • Dale McGowan The Unconditional Love of Reality

    5 Nov 2009 | 5:12 pm
    It’s all too easy to get one’s own narrative wrong. A pattern-seeking brain takes the raw materials of a messy life, viewed in retrospect, and knits a script with you-know-who in the heroic lead. It’s like a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling a 747. Okay, bad analogy. But once we know the outcome, there’s no difficulty in each of us turning our lives into Homeric odysseys of trial and triumph in which Ithaca was always inevitable, and convincing ourselves we’ve merely taken dictation. My own establishing shot has me, at the age of 13, staring into…
 
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    The Technium

  • Evolution of the Space Station

    KK
    11 Oct 2009 | 11:03 pm
    This will be how all space stations are built: Not as one piece, but accumulated in bits and pieces. Smaller stations will be symbiotically combined into larger stations. View this mesmerizing animation by USA Today for a timelapse account...

  • Extropy

    KK
    29 Aug 2009 | 11:56 am
    Extropy is neither wave nor particle, nor pure energy. It is an immaterial force that is very much like information. Since extropy is defined as negative entropy — the reversal of disorder — it is, by definition, an increase...

  • Ratcheting Up Autonomy

    KK
    25 Aug 2009 | 9:42 pm
    We don't usually lose technologies. In the annals of the technium there are extremely few cases where a society has given up a working technology without substituting something superior. Occasionally specific know-how may disappear. In the 6th century Byzantine...

  • The Most Powerful Force in the World

    KK
    17 Aug 2009 | 6:14 pm
    Even counting vast tracks of agriculture, the technium entails fewer than one percent of the atoms on the Earth's land surface. Yet the impact which this minute fraction of technological mass and energy has on the planet is in...

  • Expansion of Free Will

    KK
    13 Aug 2009 | 7:13 pm
    The evolution of the technium is self-directed. Over time it unfolds a sequence of self-organizing forms. Because these self-organized forms are inevitable, we can prepare for them. But the inevitable aspect of the technium provokes resistance because it appears...
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    Existence is Wonderful

  • Enter The Cat Weirdo

    5 Nov 2009 | 4:41 pm
    Well my brain still seems to be in "write about cats" mode, so readers uninterested in cats will just have to bear through another entry about them.But to those of you who might consider yourselves fellow catgeeks out there, I pose the following: how many cats is "a lot"? I will offer my take on this below, but would be interested in others' thoughts.Seeing as I finally managed to trap and adopt Shadow (shown above, brother and littermate to supertabbies Coraline and Brodie) on Monday, October 26, I now live with three fabulous felines. And come the end of December, I'll be adopting one of my…

  • October 16 is National Feral Cat Day - Help Your Local Felines!

    16 Oct 2009 | 10:52 am
    IntroductionHomo Sapiens and Felis Catus have lived alongside one another for thousands of years. It is unknown exactly how or why these two species established contact -- most likely it something to do with human communities storing food, which attracted rodents, which in turn attracted any nearby felines. But however it happened, humankind and felinekind ended up embarking on a course that has led to a very interesting relationship. Unlike domesticated dogs, cats seem capable of coexisting with humans in two very different ways -- that is, as housecats (who are "socialized" to humans and…

  • Kittens! Need I say more?

    5 Oct 2009 | 10:24 pm
    Well, I guess there is a bit more to say, but first, a picture:These little ones are feral rescue kittens, approximately 6 - 7 weeks old, and currently roaming around my bedroom. They were very scared at first (who wouldn't be?) but now it has been three days and they are settling in nicely. The one on the left is a girl (who has been named Coraline -- yes, like the Neil Gaiman character, as she's very brave and very clever!), and the one on the right is a boy (who has been named Brodie, just because it seems to suit him). They moved in with me this past Friday (I'd been intending to trap…

  • Work, Lack Thereof, and Opportunity

    10 Sep 2009 | 9:10 pm
    Well, seeing as my employer recently announced plans to shut down the facility where I work in San Jose, California, I thought I might take this opportunity to actually discuss some of what my job as an electrical engineer specializing in electromagnetic interference and compatibility has tended to consist of. In other words, expect some posts on such exciting things as grounding, bonding, and shielding (oh my!) in this space, because that stuff is actually pretty interesting, and I think it would be neat to help propagate some knowledge about it.Of course I will not reveal any proprietary…

  • On Longevity, Reality, and Critical Thinking

    1 Sep 2009 | 1:05 pm
    Every now and then, I receive a random e-mail from a random person along the lines of, "Hi! I found your blog. Can you tell me how I can live forever?"Generally I just ignore these letters, as, really, I figure either their authors are credulous beyond all get-out or engaging in some sort of bizarre joke. But seeing as I've received a spate of these comments privately recently, I just wanted to state for the record that if you are looking to random bloggers to "tell you the path to living forever", um, well, you might want to work on those critical thinking skills.Seriously. Critical thinking…
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    Sentient Developments

  • IEET's Biopolitics of Popular Culture Seminar

    George
    5 Nov 2009 | 2:11 pm
    The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies is holding a seminar on the Biopolitics of Popular Culture at Eon Reality in Irvine California on December 4, 2009. This seminar will precede the Humanity+ Summit, December 5-6 at the same venue.The IEET has put together an impressive groups of speakers, a list that includes io9's Annalee Newitz, Jamais Cascio, film maker Matthew Patrick, Natasha Vita-More and science fiction writer Richard Kadrey.From the IEET website:Popular culture is full of tropes and cliches that shape our debates about emerging technologies. Our most transcendent…

  • Link dump for 2009.11.05

    George
    5 Nov 2009 | 8:02 am
    From the four corners of the web:J.D. Trout - The Science of the Good Society | Point of Inquiry J.D. Trout is a professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, and an adjunct professor at the Parmly Sensory Sciences Institute. He writes on the nature of scientific and intellectual progress, as well as on the contribution that social science can make to human well-being. He is the author of Measuring the Intentional World, and co-author of Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. His most recent book is The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the Good Life and the Good Society.

  • Link dump for 2009.11.04

    George
    4 Nov 2009 | 3:47 pm
    From the four corners of the web:Toward a meaningful definition of posthuman sentience | Machines Like Us As we get closer and closer to developing artificial general intelligence, I feel it is necessary to highlight an important limitation of our anthropocentric perspective. While we sometimes have the capacity to treat other species of life in humane ways, we often stumble when it comes to categorizing non-human intelligence. We cannot help but ascribe anthropomorphic qualities to that which we view to be intelligent, and we are virtually unable to imagine intelligence that lacks such…

  • Link dump for 2009.02.02

    George
    2 Nov 2009 | 3:32 pm
    From the four corners of the web:The Next Hacking Frontier: Your Brain? | Wired Science Hackers who commandeer your computer are bad enough. Now scientists worry that someday, they'll try to take over your brain.What's your place in the brave new future? - Times Online Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, it was easy enough to track down Paul Saffo, Silicon Valley's favourite futurologist. He suggested a restaurant in leafy Burlingame, a plush little town south of San Francisco. Coming up next: The super-rich cyborg overclass - Salon.comIs the next stage in human evolution a great leap…

  • NASA Shuttle-derived Sidemount Heavy Launch Vehicle Concept

    George
    1 Nov 2009 | 5:09 pm
    This video depicting NASA's Shuttle-derived Sidemount Heavy Launch Vehicle concept was shown at the 17 June 2009 meeting of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee in Washington DC by NASA Space Shuttle Program.
 
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    Broader Perspective

  • Synthetic biology enables green petroleum

    1 Nov 2009 | 6:25 am
    The good news about the number of worldwide vehicles, approximately 1 billion at present and expected to double in the next few decades, is the number of fossil fuel alternatives feverishly underway, many of which have established pilot projects and are expected to launch in selected commercial markets in 2011.Synbio enables green petroleumThe current killer app of synthetic biology, the programming and engineering of biology, is green petroleum. Several companies are developing improved versions of fossil fuels which can be easily substituted into the existing worldwide fuel infrastructure…

  • Role of B.S. in Advanced Society

    25 Oct 2009 | 7:14 am
    B.S. is a deeper philosophical topic than it might seem at first glance. Two interesting books contemplate the matter: B.S. and Philosophy (2006) and On B.S. (2005).What is the role of B.S. in advanced society? Since it exists, it must have some role, possibly related to conflict reduction and social lubrication. A second reason for B.S. could be the complex values hierarchies in which individuals and societies operate. Social pressure and belongingness may trump truth as values. When someone is asked a question, the presupposition is that he or she may be able to answer and the inclination…

  • Affinity Capital

    18 Oct 2009 | 9:03 am
    A key concept in the 2.0 Economy is affinity capital. Deeper levels of information about every economic transaction are starting to be available such that individuals, businesses and communities can be very specific in directing and democratizing their capital. In many cases, products can be chosen that are organic, recyclable, fair trade, made from sustainable materials and made by companies with fair labor practices or whatever affinities or attributes the buyer cares about.Affinity-directed capital can influence both cash inflows and outflows. Affinity inflows are the money earned. Earners…

  • FutureThink: the Mindset of the Future

    11 Oct 2009 | 9:26 am
    To think strategically about the future, it is necessary to realize that the mindset of today may be outdated for appropriately contemplating the future. The inadequacy of current human minds is sometimes given as a possible reason that humans may not be able to understand the full physics of the universe (multiple dimensions, multiple universes) or design artificial general intelligence.One technique to improve the current mindset is to try deriving future intellectual norms from historically trending principles.There are other examples of this concept. Successful athletes do not move to…

  • Preventive Medicine and Docs vs. Genomics

    4 Oct 2009 | 7:06 am
    Despite NIH Director Francis Collins’ strong support of personalized genomics (he claims he lost 15 pounds after finding out through direct-to-consumer genetic testing that he is at higher risk for Type 2 Diabetes) and noting that the only way to successfully transition to the genomic era is with a skilled professional work force, doctors are taciturn about embracing genomics, and rarely try it even when it is made available to them and their patients for free (less than 5% uptake in a recent example with El Camino Hospital and DNA Direct making genomic testing available to 1000…
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    Andart

  • Horror movies

    Anders3
    2 Nov 2009 | 3:48 pm
    Some more Halloween horror movies (or maybe not): here are the talks from the Singularity Summit. In particular, here is mine. I look like a musical conductor in the cover still....

  • Halloween AI

    Anders3
    2 Nov 2009 | 1:41 pm
    This Saturday I attended an excellent lecture on superintelligence and AI by Shane Legg. It is now online on YouTube, available via Halloween lecture online. David Wood has a summary here. I found the talk very enjoyable, and it was...

  • Please, just give us *nice* independent advice

    Anders3
    2 Nov 2009 | 12:48 pm
    Practical Ethics: Speaking truth to power - about the affair caused by the sacking of professor David Nutt from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs since he had criticised how the government has been systematically ignored or distorted...

  • David Chalmer's photos from SS09

    Anders3
    2 Nov 2009 | 8:32 am
    Singularity Summit photos - look for the series of pictures of the "International Singularity Sign". I think it tells a lot about us. Especially Eliezer's version....

  • Autumn clouds and floods

    Anders3
    21 Oct 2009 | 7:39 am
    More writeups of the Cloud Intelligence symposium at Ars Electronica, with videos and presentations. David Sasaki has a writeup of the symposium. My presentation on cloud superintelligence can be seen here. Looking back at this event and the Singularity Summit,...
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    Black Belt Bayesian

  • Yudkowsky/Gelman Bloggingheads

    steven
    13 Oct 2009 | 10:51 am
    For those of you who actually came here because of the title, this is self-recommending.

  • Horned Gods, Dread Bioethicists

    steven
    13 Oct 2009 | 10:46 am
    From some druid site: Yet die we must. As Sherwin Nuland points out in his book, How We Die, we must die for the sake of our species; if somehow we contrived to live forever, we would quickly overwhelm our environment’s carrying capacity and all perish like lemmings. “Must,” in biological terms, thus carries not only its ordinary meaning of inevitability, but also a sense of appropriateness. Our need for death is personified in Herne the Hunter, sometimes called Cernunnos by the Celts. He is the god of culling, who takes away life for the sake of balance and health in the…

  • A New Challenge to 98% Confidence

    steven
    13 Oct 2009 | 10:41 am
    According to A New Challenge to Einstein, General Relativity has been refuted at 98% confidence. I wonder if it wouldn’t be more accurate to say that, actually, 98% confidence has been refuted at General Relativity.

  • Singularity Summit 2009 in New York

    steven
    27 Jul 2009 | 10:42 pm
    SIAI is organizing the 2009 edition of their yearly Singularity Summit on October 3rd and 4th. Unlike the 2006-2008 summits, which were in the Bay Area, this one will be held in New York. For interested people in East Coast US and in Europe, especially, the Summit seems a unique opportunity to see speakers of various awesome expertise on the kind of subjects this blog talks about. Subjects are broadly based around the idea of the technological singularity, but look like they will include cognitive enhancement, neuroscience, the philosophy of mind, nanotechnology, and future forecasting.

  • Quantum Wildlife

    steven
    4 Jul 2009 | 4:45 pm
    David Wallace wrote an article about reductionism, emergence, and worlds in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics that’s enlightening and more accessible than his earlier writings: Decoherence and Ontology (or: How I learned to stop worrying and love FAPP) Ultimately, though, that a theory of the world is “unintuitive” is no argument against it, provided it can be cleanly described in mathematical language. Our intuitions about what is “reasonable” or “imaginable” were designed to aid our ancestors on the savannahs of Africa, and the Universe is not obliged to…
 
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    the Foresight Institute

  • Brain mapping and the connectome

    I’m at the AAAI Fall Symposium session on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, and there was a really interesting talk by Walter Schneider of Pitt about progress in mapping the nerve bundles that are the “information superhighways” between the various parts of the brain.  You’ll find his slides from last year’s talk on his home page, and [...]

  • Is Robo Habilis a gateway to Intelligence?

    In response to my Robo Habilis post, Tim Tyler replied: An intelligence challenge should not involve building mechanical robot controllers – IMO. That’s a bit of a different problem – and a rather difficult one – because of the long build-test cycle involved in such projects. There are plenty of purer tests of intelligence that use more abstract [...]

  • Nanotechnology devices: Molecular machines shift into gear

    Nanotechnology devices: Molecular machines shift into gear. An atomically precise gear, rotated by pushing the teeth one at a time with a STM tip.

  • More on the AI takeover

    There are at least 4 stages of intelligence levels that AI will have to get through to get to the take-over-the-world level. In Beyond AI I refered to them as hypohuman, diahuman, epihuman, and hyperhuman; but just for fun let’s use fake species names: Robo insectis: rote, mechanical gadgets (or thinkers) with hand-coded skills, such as [...]

  • Rice scientists point out that nanotubes are polymers

    (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSxihhBzCjk) From NanoWerk: Rice scientists argue nanotubes can be treated like polymers Wade Adams, Matteo Pasquali, Micah Green and Natnael Behabtu at Rice pick up that thread in their discussion of what we know — or think we know — about carbon nanotubes. Their review in the journal Polymer (“Nanotubes as polymers”) makes the argument that single-walled carbon [...]
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    Futurismic

  • Designer drugs develop faster than designer legislation

    Paul Raven
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am
    I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be proud or ashamed of this one, but apparently Britain has been declared the “designer drugs capital of Europe” by the EU drug agency. [image by Greencolander] This new generation of online “head shops” is at the centre of a rapidly growing market in highly potent synthetic drugs, such as Spice, that mimic the effects of illegal substances such as cannabis and ecstasy. European drug agency officials are also alarmed by the way the online retailers are reacting to moves to ban individual “legal highs” by…

  • The Anonymous Hunters: corporate critics and whistleblowers beware

    Paul Raven
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am
    Have you ever bad-mouthed a big company in an internet comments thread? If so, the Wragge and Co. law firm of Birmingham, UK may be hot on your tail (provided the comment is vitriolic enough to provoke the company to spend money, one assumes) – they’ve just announced a new legal “task force” for tracking down the identities of nefarious anonymous commenters [via TechDirt]. The Cyber Tracing team at Wragge & Co was set up to deal with what the law firm said was a rising problem with people making anonymous statements that defamed companies, and people sharing…

  • Second Llife Enterprise: virtual worlds behind the corporate firewall

    Paul Raven
    5 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am
    Here’s an interesting development in the metaverse – Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, have announced the formal launch of their “Second Life Enterprise” platform, which is essentially a fragmented piece of the virtual world that runs on corporate servers behind the firewall. Private, hermetically-sealed virtual worlds, in other words. [image by Daneel Ariantho] This is important for two reasons. First of all, it’s a major step in Linden Lab’s attempts to turn a decent profit from Second Life, which it has struggled to achieve with the free-to-use…

  • Transhuman equality? Athletes with a prosthesis do not have an unfair advantage

    Paul Raven
    5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am
    Remember all the fuss last year about Oscar ‘Bladerunner’ Pistorius, the amputee athlete who was banned from competing against able-bodied runners in the Olympics because the authorities were concerned that his prosthetics might give him an unfair advantage? Well, it turns out that the authorities guessed wrong – recent research suggests that, far from conferring a performance edge, Pistorius’ blades are more likely to be putting him at a disadvantage: Simon Choppin, a sports engineer at Sheffield Hallam University, said the Pistorius controversy rested on whether his…

  • Required reading: mapping the favela

    Paul Raven
    5 Nov 2009 | 2:00 am
    Via Chairman Bruce, here’s some required reading for anyone writing near-future fiction that involves a favela as a setting… and given the way the world is becoming urbanised, a near-future story that doesn’t feature a favela can probably be considered to have something missing from it! It’s an article from 2008 in the Harvard Design Magazine, titled “Resisting Representation: the Informal Geographies of Rio de Janiero“, and it’s well worth the half hour or so it’ll take you to read it. Here’s a brief sample: Rio de Janeiro is a city with…
 
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    Overcoming Bias

  • Pride Is About Status

    Robin Hanson
    5 Nov 2009 | 4:40 pm
    We used 3 different … [ways] to test whether the nonverbal expression of pride sends a functional, automatically perceived signal about a social group member’s increased social status.  Results suggest that the pride expression strongly signals high status, and this association cannot be accounted for by positive valence or artifacts of the expression such as expanded size due to outstretched arms. … The pride expression is a fairly specific signal of high status. … [It] sends a message that is distinct from that of happiness,…  [and] also appears to be distinct…

  • FDA Blunders

    Robin Hanson
    5 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am
    Popping into the office on a recent Saturday, I overheard Alex Tabarrok practicing a talk, with fascinating details on FDA history.   From FDAReview.org: Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the FDA brought hundreds of court actions against nutrition manufacturers for making health-related claims for their products. Under threat of law, food manufacturers were even prevented from labeling the fat, cholesterol, or other nutritional content of their food! (Later such labeling was allowed, and with the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 nutrition labeling became mandatory.) The FDA…

  • Sports Signals

    Robin Hanson
    4 Nov 2009 | 11:50 am
    Sports leagues are cracking down hard on athletes who look smug after making a good play.  Football: A crackdown on excessive touchdown celebrations … has moved from the National Football League to college football and now to high school football games across the country.  In the Washington area this fall, a wide receiver from 13th-ranked McNamara was flagged for pointing to the sky after a touchdown, and a Gwynn Park defender was penalized for pointing up at the sky after intercepting a pass. … “What’s happening is in the old days, there was a certain level of…

  • Pondering Panspermia

    Robin Hanson
    3 Nov 2009 | 7:15 am
    Over the last few days I’ve neglected my duties to obsessively browse the last seven years of three journals:  Astrobiology, International Journal of Astrobiology, and Origins of Life.  In the process I’ve become converted to a more expansive version panspermia – life here probably originated outside our solar system. I’ve also learned: panspermia is no longer a marginalized view.  It may not yet be the majority opinion, but it shows up often in journal articles and conference proceedings, if not in summaries intended for wider audiences. My interest in panspermia…

  • All Hail William Napier

    Robin Hanson
    2 Nov 2009 | 7:40 pm
    William Napier was born in 1940 and got his Ph.D. three years after his B.S., in 1966.   After a career as a professional astronomer, he published his first book of fiction in 1998, at the age of 58, and published three more over the next five years. But I still would not have heard of Napier had I not read his two brilliant 2007 Astrobiology papers, published when he was 67.  The first argued comets were a likely origin of life: A single comet of radius 10 km … contains [about] as much clay … as … early Earth. … Our Solar System is surrounded by about 1011 comets…
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    The Speculist

  • The iPhone, Free Markets, and Alternative Energy

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:54 pm
    In a comment on our recent discussion about energy, Harvey notes that "the free market is a myth." This is, of course, absolutely correct. The free market is a myth in the same way that freedom of speech is a myth and that freedom of religion is a myth. Ideally, anyone can say anything he or she wants. In reality, it's better to avoid committing libel or shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater. Ideally, there would be no interference, government or otherwise, in one's spiritual beliefs or the practices derived from them. In reality, religious practices can't be used as an excuse to exploit or…

  • FastForward Radio -- More About the Future of Energy

    3 Nov 2009 | 6:39 am
    Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon continue their discussion from last week about the future of energy: What role does energy technology play in the unfolding of the major transformations we are currently experiencing? What are the economic impacts of choosing to change energy sources...or choosing not to change? What are the unexpected energy solutions that might prove to be game-changers? Tune in and find out! Archived recording available here:

  • Great Headline, Great Idea

    31 Oct 2009 | 6:38 am
    Every now and then you see something that just puts a smile on your face: Humans, Shmumans: What Mars Needs Is an Armada of Robots and Blimps Airships may be the key component in a new robotic system for exploring the celestial bodies most likely to harbor life like Mars and Jupiter’s moon, Titan. The dirigibles would provide regional observations and autonomous command for ground-based vehicles, while maintaining contact with orbiters. It’d be a new role for airships, which were the wonder of the aerial world in the days before airplanes (and rockets and space shuttles). An armada of…

  • Happy 40th Birthday Internet

    30 Oct 2009 | 8:11 am
    Forty years ago on October 29, 1969, the first two nodes of ARAPANET were connected between UCLA and SRI International in Melo Park, California. The father of the Internet Professor Leonard Kleinrock (no not Al Gore) was at the 40th celebration. He said, The Internet is a democratizing element; everyone has an equivalent voice. There is no way back at this point. We can't turn it off. The Internet Age is here. The next step is to move it into the real world. The Internet will be present everywhere. I will walk into a room and it will know I am there. It will talk back to me. The remarkable…

  • Climate Change

    29 Oct 2009 | 9:48 am
    Lovely autumn scenes from the metro Denver area. About 2 feet so far and now it's really coming down. I can't shovel fast enough to keep up. That drift on the fence peaks at about eye level, with heavy stuff up to shoulder level.
 
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    Pink Tentacle

  • Velvet kaiju paintings

    Pink Tentacle
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:40 am
    The fierce beauty of classic Japanese movie monsters is dramatically captured in these black velvet paintings by artist Bruce White. Gamera Mechagodzilla Godzilla Ultraman Hedorah Mothra [Via: @bonniegrrl]

  • Video: Rinpa Eshidan paints a half-pipe

    Pink Tentacle
    29 Oct 2009 | 10:15 pm
    The illustrious Rinpa Eshidan art crew has re-emerged with a dazzling new time-lapse painting performed on a skate ramp. + IFO x Rinpa

  • Animated stereoviews of old Japan

    Pink Tentacle
    27 Oct 2009 | 10:05 pm
    In the late 19th and early 20th century, enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929) captured a number of 3D stereoviews depicting life in Meiji-period Japan. [Sumo wrestlers] A stereoview consists of a pair of nearly identical images that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope, because each eye sees a slightly different image. This illusion of depth can also be recreated with animated GIFs like the ones here, which were created from Flickr images posted by Okinawa Soba. Follow the links under each animation for the original stereoviews and background information. [Meeting…

  • Video: Giant animatronic ‘Gomora’ suit

    Pink Tentacle
    26 Oct 2009 | 9:35 pm
    Special effects studio Tsuburaya Productions has released some video of a fancy new animatronic Gomora suit being tested in a parking lot. + Video The Gomora suit — the first in Tsuburaya’s new line of “Dekaiju” giant animatronic monster costumes — stands 3 meters (10 ft) tall and measures 6 meters (20 ft) long from nose to tail. In addition to moving its head, mouth and arms, the glowing-eyed monster can shriek and spit vapor. The studio plans to unleash the new and improved Gomora at promotional events for the upcoming movie “Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend.”

  • ‘Tele Scouter’ retinal-display translation glasses

    Pink Tentacle
    25 Oct 2009 | 9:28 pm
    Electronics giant NEC has reportedly developed a wearable optical device that interprets foreign languages and projects a real-time translation directly onto the retina, enabling the wearer to communicate with other language speakers without an interpreter. The prototype device — called “Tele Scouter” — consists of a tiny retinal display and microphone mounted on an eyeglass frame. The microphone picks up the conversation and transmits it to a small computer worn on the waist, which converts the speech to text and translates it into the user’s native language. The retinal display…
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    vetta project

  • Arel’s neuroscience inspired AGI

    Shane Legg
    3 Nov 2009 | 12:03 pm
    The Singularity Summit ‘09 videos are now up and I’ve been asked about the relationship between Itamar Arel’s talk and the neuroscience part of my Halloween talk (1 minute into Part 9, through Part 10, Part 11 and Part 12). The short answer is: yes, our perspectives are indeed very similar. Essentially, brain-like deep belief networks + brain-like reinforcement learning + powerful computers = AGI quite soon. This similarity isn’t all that surprising: I know a number of people who are thinking along these lines. I actually met Itamar briefly before the conference and…

  • Halloween lecture online

    Shane Legg
    1 Nov 2009 | 6:09 am
    My Halloween lecture has been uploaded to youtube. The basic outline is: * what is intelligence? * Solomonoff induction * Hutter’s AIXI * Monte Carlo AIXI (here’s the missing video of it playing pac-man) * universal intelligence measure * what neuroscience can teach us about AGI design * early 2020’s: the Halloween scenario You can get the slides here. I talked for 2 hours, so it’s broken up into many parts on youtube: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Thanks to David Wood at ExtroBritannian for organising this, and…

  • I’m speaking at Extrobritannia

    Shane Legg
    14 Oct 2009 | 7:37 am
    On Saturday the 31st of October, I’m going to be the speaker at Extrobritannia here in London. I went along to their last meeting and it was totally packed out, nearly a hundred people I believe. Having both Dr. Aubrey de Grey and Dr. Anders Sandberg speaking explains why! I’ll be covering topics from my PhD thesis, such as the definition of intelligence, Solomonoff’s model of Induction, Hutter’s AIXI and more recent work such as the Monte Carlo approximation of AIXI by Veness et. al. I’ll also include a few thoughts on how recent discoveries in theoretical…

  • Post-singularity summit

    Shane Legg
    7 Oct 2009 | 8:29 am
    With the summit still fresh in my mind I thought I’d put a bit of a summary together — or perhaps more a collection of random thoughts and observations. For a less personal overview, read the Reason magazine article. What I will remember most clearly about this summit was Peter Thiel. Firstly, the pre-summit party at his penthouse apartment. That was a treat: a tiny peak into the world of the ultra-rich. His mix of intelligence, focus and energy was quite something to behold and he left a real impression on me. His talk was also among the most engaging in my opinion. No slides, no…

  • US visa waiver scam

    Shane Legg
    30 Sep 2009 | 2:31 am
    I got scammed online. I guess it was just a matter of time, but I’d thought that I was smart enough to avoid such things. It’s a pretty slick scam, here’s how it works: To visit the US from many countries one must now apply online to something called ESTA in order to obtain a so called “visa waiver”. We’ve been doing this for many years on the plane, recently it’s gone online and now you must to do it online before your travel. Knowing this, I googled for US visa waiver and up came a site for applying for US ESTA visa waivers online. I went through…
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    Everyone's Blog Posts - Transhumanist Network

  • Condorcet Esquisse d un tableau historique de l esprit humain (1793-1794) ...Enfin, l’espèce humaine…

    Constant Xarax
    Condorcet Esquisse d un tableau historique de l esprit humain (1793-1794) ...Enfin, l’espèce humaine doit-elle s’améliorer, soit par de nouvelles découvertes dans les sciences et dans les arts, et, par une conséquence nécessaire, dans les moyens de bien-être particulier et de prospérité commune ; soit par des progrès dans les principes de conduite et dans la morale pratique ; soit enfin par le perfectionnement réel des facultés intellectuelles, morales et physiques, qui peut être également la suite, ou de celui des instruments qui augmentent l’intensité et dirigent…

  • The Birth of Celestial Man

    TransAlchemy
    Transhumanist Declaration "Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth." Written to the tune of Trumpet concerto in D major: Mood Blissful Ohh humanity are you not on the verge of making your greatest reach out into the cosmos. No matter what peril lies in front of you, so determined you are to fly sky high. Let not the fables of those before you cause any concern. Is it not man's rightful place…

  • Video Chat

    Christopher
    would anyone be interested to have video chat on this site? TokBox or ooVoo are the choices.

  • Alcor, Larry Johnson and Ted Williams: The Circus Continues

    Matt Brown
    Larry Johnson has a bone to pick with Alcor. The author and former COO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation is coming out with a new book, "Frozen: My Journey Into the World of Cryonics, Deception and Death" that he says details the gruesome world of cryogenic freezing, where bodies or sometimes just heads are suspended at freezing temperatures in the hope that future technologies will one day be able to revive the dead. Before we go too much farther lets take a step back and look at how this story got to this point. For those that don't know, Alcor Life Extension Foundation is an Arizona based…

  • Gender Singularity Summit 2009

    TransAlchemy
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4tcZ9RVAZQ
 
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    MediaFuturist

  • Cross-Media Interview on Mobility, Future of Content, converting Attention into Money

    Gerd Leonhard
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:57 am
    This was recorded at the Roemer Hotel in Amsterdam, last week, during the Emerging Communications Conference where I spoke about the coming TeleMedia economy. This interview touches on a variety of topics such as building an audience online, turning attention into money and the use of social media.  Below is part 1, part 2 is here. Related articles by ZemantaNice FreedomLab Video with me (Future of Content & Media) (mediafuturist.com) Book publishers: please learn from the mistakes of the music industry - my thoughts on what to do (mediafuturist.com) The Mobility Revolution and the…

  • The Future of Digital Content and the coming Tele-Media Ecosystem (my presentation at Telco2.0 conference)

    Gerd Leonhard
    5 Nov 2009 | 4:48 am
    It was a pleasure and a privilege to be invited to the Telco2.0 Executive Brainstorm event in London, today, and to address a roomful of telecom  & media executives that were - as it says in the conference tagline - looking for a way to 'reduce the friction in the digital economy'. After having to listen to some rather bizarre and, sadly, rather 'retro' justifications about why those pesky Internet users and Digital Natives (i.e. our kids) really do need to be threatened with disconnection from the Net if they don't comply with the rules of yesterday's game,…

  • Yubby: great tool to aggregate embedded videos - so here are...49 of mine;)

    Gerd Leonhard
    4 Nov 2009 | 2:38 am
    See below - omg - there are a lot of videos with me, out there;)). Yubby is here. I liked it so much that I have set up an extra page for this, at www.thefutureofcontent.com Related articles by ZemantaKevin Spacey explains Twitter to Dave Letterman - hilarious! (mediafuturist.com) The Future of Conferences (Video) (mediafuturist.com)

  • Every abundance creates new scarcities (the future of content commerce)

    Gerd Leonhard
    4 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am
    Related articles by ZemantaPre-Web Content Economics vs Web-Native Content Economics (mediafuturist.com) Enjoy;)

  • The Future of Social Media: audio & video of my presentation at PICNIC09 in Amsterdam

    Gerd Leonhard
    3 Nov 2009 | 6:57 am
    PICNIC09 was a fantastic event and I really enjoyed being there; see my previous blogpost and PDF / Slideshare here.  For those of you that regularly cruise on the Autobahn or spend a lot of time in the gym: the audio-only / MP3 version is here. If you prefer Youtube to Vimeo, the GerdTube.com i.e. Youtube versions are available now, too (yes... chopped up in those required 10 minute chunks): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. PICNIC '09: The Future of Social Media with Gerd Leonhard from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo. The Blip.tv version (use the full-screen option!) Related articles by ZemantaNew…
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    Diary Of A Madman

  • Letter from America - Finance

    Derek.Dunlop
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:48 am
    Well I’ve been here (the good ol’ US of A) for over two weeks now, my how the time has flown! And what are the major differences on this side of the pond vs UK? Is what I intend to write about here and when I can I’ll update on some of the work that I’m doing with the team out here. First off I guess, everything is just bigger! I know it’s an old cliché, but it’s true, and to be honest I love it! Bigger is better and with that I noticed that the car I’m currently driving (a Chevy Suburban) you could almost fit two of my previous cars into this one… Another…

  • Retail & eCommerce: Why is it not going to plan?

    Derek.Dunlop
    8 Jul 2009 | 6:31 am
    I was prompted to write this blog in a sort of pseudo response to an article in the FT  article http://tinyurl.com/RetailFT around the predictions of ecommerce and why there is not the glutton of mass adoption of this medium. Well firstly it is doing very well just now, thank you very much, across Europe online retail sales grew from €98bn in 2007 to €116bn with year on year growth at around 10.8% – so before the economic landslide of the last few months things were, going well, and to plan… However the reason why I included €uros and €urope rather than UK is that one of the…

  • Time to Reboot or Replatform Britain?

    Derek.Dunlop
    7 Jul 2009 | 4:04 am
    …or even decide that seeing as the UK Government has hidden the reboot switch – perhaps its now time that old "’Blighty’ switched the whole thing off, brought in some new hardware, OS, software and tools (metaphorically speaking of course this means remove the current Government – and replace with what……..?) Now I’m not going to deliver this as a distinct political blog – but with Digital Britain (Lord Carter – cut & run) and yesterday Reboot Britain, there just seems to be this constant knee jerk reaction that in this current economic climate, the “easy” money is…

  • Social Media Networks & Communication Services: When do you engage and How?

    Derek.Dunlop
    3 Jul 2009 | 4:29 am
    At what point do retailers embrace the social shopping sphere? From reviews, comments, payments, marketing and brand voice, where and how do they begin? There are so many social networks and sites here today gone tomorrow that retailers and brands are  concerned that there either too late, too early or will waste their money on something that could potentially damage their brand and reputation! Equally they feel that they are missing out on this new ‘Social Shopping’ (Look at Dell who have attributed $2million in sales thanks to Twitter) and would like to get their brand and company…

  • Losing your Individualism and Personal Expression – or just Learn, Play & Perform?

    Derek.Dunlop
    15 Apr 2009 | 3:46 am
    After listening to a member of London Symphony Orchestra on BBC Radio 3 last week about the stress and pressure that the musicians were under as part of the LSO, it got me thinking about how as a musician, and specifically either a session musician or member of an orchestra (which in essence is a glorified session musician - however being part of the LSO or SFSO is always seen as a more prestige gig rather than being session musician for George Michael, Roger Waters or Rob Thomas) would feel the pressure and strain of what is in fact reciting and replaying someone else's music? As well as the…
 
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