Tag Archive for 'futurism'

The Singularity Summit at Stanford, Part 1

Published on May 21, 2007 in Memes, Moving Pictures, Science, Technology, Tha Intarweb and The Future. Closed

I’ve been watching and enjoying the talks given at the Singularity Summit at Stanford. The talks are given by a group of very smart people who’ve been doing a lot of thinking about The Singularity. They’re really quite thoughtful and often insightful.

Wait, what’s The Singularity? From Wikipedia:

The Technological Singularity is the hypothesized creation, usually via AI or brain-computer interfaces, of smarter-than-human entities that rapidly accelerate technological progress.

Most speakers assume the Singularity to include Strong AI (as developed as human intelligence), Nanotechnology (the ability to manipulate atoms and build atomic-scale machines), and often some form of brain-computer interface, allowing regular humans to upload their consciousness into digital (and non-degrading) form. All in all, it’s a major event and one that will change humanity forever. As such it deserves a good deal of thought, and that’s what these people were there to talk about.

For those of you who don’t have the time to watch the talks (and you should, most are only 20 minutes), here’s my (lighthearted) summary of a few:

The Singularity: A Hard or Soft Takeoff?
Ray: Hey there, my book is great! Have you read my book? It’s really awesome. My book talks about all these really cool things. It’s quite convincing. See here I’ll show you some illustrations from my book. Oh by the way, I made a handheld device that reads text for blind people; wanna hear it? here it goes:

Reader: RAY KURZWEIL IS AWESOME. HIS BOOK IS GREAT. HAVE YOU READ IT? HERE’S SOME TEXT.

Ray: Yeah so read my book, not like you really need to because I’ve just presented all the major points. Did I mention my book is cool?

Trying to Muse Rationally about the Singularity Scenario
Doug: Hi, I’m Douglas R. Hofstadter. My name has a middle initial, so I’m more important than everyone else. In fact, I’m so important, I’m the one who organized this whole thing. I’m going to now bitch for 20 minutes about the fact that I organized everything and people screwed it all up last year. I really hope people don’t screw it up again this year, even though I’ve changed the name and everything. I’ve even made blood sacrifices upon the altar of Ray Kurzweil.

Ray’s Reader: ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY AND POWERFUL KURZWEIL.

Doug: So anyway, thinking about this new world of powerful AI and nanotechnology and stuff is really hard. Nobody, even Kurzweil himself can really know what’s going to happen. I even think Ray’s quite off his rocker on some of these things. In any case, I’ve assembled some really smart people to come here and talk about what’s going to happen to us. Listen to them because they’re great. I’m still the greatest though and I get to have my picture at the top of the page.

Cory Doctorow

Published on March 8, 2007 in Books, Technology and Tha Intarweb. Closed

Recently I’ve been working through Cory Doctorow’s writings. For those of you who haven’t heard of him before, he’s a science-fiction writer who, among other things, writes regularly for Boing Boing. He has a lot of really interesting ideas, and I generally agree with his stances on society and technology. If you have 5 minutes handy, go read Printcrime. It’s from his recently published collection of short stories, Overclocked.

I read through Overclocked in eBook form on my Smartphone. Reading it in that format was a m interesting double-dose of the future. I used the Mobipocket Reader, which presented the book well on the high resolution screen that my Treo 680 has.

Overclocked was an incredible collection. It covered a wide range of potential future scenarios. Anyone who’s interested in science-fiction or even just the future in general should read it. I’ve also read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which was excellent, and I’m now reading Eastern Standard Tribe. After the first few chapters it’s turning out very well, too.

Finally, if you’re not a paper junkie, I can’t stress how great Boing Boing is. It’s a blog that links to all sorts of eclectic things, but its post-to-interesting ratio is at probably 80% for me. That’s way above any other site out there. Go check it out and learn about such things as knitting Space Invaders socks, free speech issues, international socio-political flame-wars, and way more.

Talking to the Wall

Published on January 25, 2005 in Moving Pictures, Politics, Science, Technology and The Future. Closed

Saw this movie last night (see title), it was pretty good. It was kinda depressing and hope-inspiring at the same time. Really though, overall, I suppose it was depressing. Trying to fight these huge stores is nigh impossible. Especially since even if they don’t come to your home town, the internet is already there. You can mail-order just about anything you can imagine. Really what keeping these people out amounts to is depressing the buying power of the poor and technologically backward.

I suppose it’s more of a problem of globalization than anything. As long as companies can find cheaper labor, they’ll move their production facilities there. What we really need is some sort of even playing field across the globe, with people earning similar wages worldwide for similar work. I don’t think it’s something that can be solved by politicians either, with their tariff wars and trade negotiations. I think the only thing that could possibly solve this problem is a general reconfiguration of the way people think and live.

Seeing how this is pretty much close to impossible, I’m going to remain depressed about the state of the global economy.

Although instantaneous global teleportation would make a huge change.. I think that’s the true solution to globalization - remove the travel barriers (and language too, I guess). Information already travels instantaneously, and you can see how much things have changed since that’s come about. It’s half of what’s caused this globalization crisis.