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POPSThe Information & Technology Singularity I saw this author interviewed. There is so much information and technology, doubling exponentially at an increasingly faster rate, that in the very near future we will be unable to handle or keep up with it without AI. The author says it best: "To express this another way, we won’t experience one hundred years of technological advance in the 21st century; we will witness on the order of 20,000 years of progress (again, when measured by the rate of progress in 2000), or about 1,000 times greater than what was achieved in the 20th century."
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POPSTim O'Reilly - Seeing our culture with fresh eyes More: What will people think of our enormous steak dinners and obese portions of food? That's on the cusp of changing. What will they think of our profligate use of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources? Our assumption that the American way of life will go on forever, just as it is, much as the British thought their empire would go on forever? What about our assumptions about unlimited technological progress? Will science fiction visions of star flight or "the Singularity" seem as quaint as "the White Man's Burden"? Above all, what will they think of the appalling amount of waste in our culture? Have you ever walked through a tourist area - say Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco - and seen entire stores devoted to schlock, made in developing countries by people who must scratch their heads in wonder at a people so wealthy that they can afford to spend money on things that are so utterly and obviously useless?
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POPSNASA & Google Join Forces to Research Singularity -the "Intelligence Revolution" (VIDEO) Real AI effects are closer than you might think, with entirely automated systems producing new scientific results and even holding patents on minor inventions. The key factor in singularity scenarios is the positive-feedback loop of self-improvement: once something is even slightly smarter than humanity, it can start to improve itself or design new intelligences faster than we can leading to an intelligence explosion designed by something that isn't us. The Singularity University proposes to train people to deal with the accelerating evolution of technology, both in terms of understanding the directions and harnessing the potential of new interactions between branches of science like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.
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POPSTunguska was UFO & Meterorite? I knew Tunguska was more than they let it on to be :-) If you want to read an excellent thriller on Tunguska see a friend of mine's book http://singularitythebook.com/thebooks/singularity/ Bill's spin on the event is more interesting.....
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POPSThe Coming Superbrain Some more excerpts: not all humans of the industry are optimistic, "The computer designer and venture capitalist William Joy, for example, wrote a pessimistic essay in Wired in 2000 that argued that humans are more likely to destroy themselves with their technology than create a utopia assisted by superintelligent machines." And some worst fear is the Moses Syndrome being just one generation before: "Indeed, despite this high-technology heartland’s deeply held consensus about exponential progress, the worst fate of all for the Valley’s digerati would be to be the generation before the generation that lives to see the singularity; Kurzweil will probably die, along with the rest of us not too long before the ‘great dawn,’ ” said Gary Bradski, a Silicon Valley roboticist. “Life’s not fair.”
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POPSAn interesting thought about Twitter per @wildcat2030 This is a very interesting idea. I wonder if as our brains are being trained to consume more information in less time, are we losing the ability to patiently listen, think, feel and learn because we're too quickly moving on to the next bit of information we need to process?
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POPSRobot Programmed to Love Goes too Far Admittedly over the board, however given enough iterations this may be a necessary step in the evolution of robots/humans interaction, leading to full fledged co-habitation.. ;-)
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POPSMoore's Moment Futurists such as Vernor Vinge, Bruce Sterling, and Ray Kurzweil believe that the exponential improvement described by Moore's law will ultimately lead to a technological singularity: a period where progress in technology occurs almost instantly.
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POPSWhole Genome Sequencing To Cost Only $1,000 By End Of 2009 In 2008, only one year later, it appears that at least 3 human genomes have been completely sequenced, one of which was the first female to be fully sequenced. The sequencing successes in 2008 took less than 1 month and cost roughly $60,000 to complete. Wow! Now as we approach 2009 the $1,000 barrier just might be eclipsed.
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POPS Good Human Beings & Great Atheistic Quotes
Gore Vidal interview led me here not any intention to rain on good Christians parade.The Jehovah,s Witnesses have just done their relentless rounds reminding me that no one was working in the fields when Jesus was born as it was Winter, seems each mob have their own "Truth". Gore Vidal spoke of Roman and Greek good guys 1000,s of years ago. We inherit to different degrees instinct/ breeding I know not which is most but a sense of sharing, fair play ,& compassion, you can see it in a multicultral playground ,until bullying by older kids surfaces, thats the time for the shrinks to come in to "play" together with parents but I,m no expert on any thing a seeker of love & balance and wish in Xmas silly season for moderation and time to chill out with friends & fun with kids.The christian ethics were the only moral compass I grew up with and my fathers indifference. I dont object to my own son learning them from his Catholic mother but after his 18 yr of hard child learning respect respo
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