technology

Help celebrate Future Day on March 1, 2012 by thinking, writing and telling friends and acquaintances about your vision of the future. To find out more about this (unofficial) day of celebration, see the following webpage:

http://futureday.org/

Also see the following H+ Magazine article by Ben Goertzel:

http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/02/10/future-day-march-1-2012/

Thomas Frey, well-known futurist and corporate consultant, recently had this to say about the future of energy:

This is a second posting related to how to grow a narrow A.I. Again, my apologies for putting it here on Evolver. My hope is that one or two people might find it useful; and, as before, I desire no attribution if you use it -- just go out and make stuff...

The Internet and technology as they are today are giving us Godlike powers of perception and action: Digital Natives are the first generation of young adults to be endowed with them.

See:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-19/computers-breakthrough-in-battle-a...

Not only could it greatly speed up the process of discovery of new medicines, but it could also reduce the need to experiment with animals. Medicine is fast becoming an information science!

This forum is probably not the place to submit this posting -- Evolver is more about conscious evolution than about technical matters; but, I have noticed that there are people on here from all walks of life... so maybe it will be useful to someone:

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See!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvwJ5ttqgYs

Whatever happened to virtual reality? It seemed like it was quite promising there for a while back in the 90's, but then it just fell off the radar. Remember those movies? -- Lawnmower Man ? Disclosure ? eXistenZ ?

The world is getting better. You may not realize that, based on what you see on the news or read in the papers; but it is, and the numbers show it, or so says Peter Diamandis. Have a look at the following video where he discusses his new book Abundance , which is due out in February:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyXik42ASAg

Imagine a world where there are virtually no slaughterhouses, anywhere, no animals killed for meat; and yet, a world where you can still eat your hamburgers and hotdogs, experiencing no difference in taste whatsoever. That's the world that in-vitro meat promises to bring about, and the first commercially available products could start to appear in as little as five years from now.

Check out this almost unbelievable video of China's Broad Group pre-fab building construction technology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdpf-MQM9vY

Check out this neat article on Wired.com about how some people from Occupy Wall Street hope to mass-produce cheap, video-enabled quadcopters to spark a mini-revolution in citizen journalism:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/occupy-drones/

Here's a fascinating set of videos of Michio Kaku discussing the Singularity, and what to do about it:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/sci-fi-science-michio-kaku-and-an-a-i-uprising

His solution: merge with the machines.

And here is a nice pdf of who's who in Singularity:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/whos-who-in-the-singularity

Check out this neat video of Jason Silva explaining The Human Project (I blogged about it before):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26jKx74Wc5M&context=C3d42bd9ADOEgsToPDskL...

And here is a weblink to the Human Project App page (the appshould be available for free download soon):

http://thehumanproject.us/

Have you heard of D-Wave? They make what they claim are ``adiabatic quantum computers'', which are believed to be enormously more powerful than standard digital computers -- digital computers such as the one from which you are reading this posting of mine.

Recently, I wrote about how quadcopters could be used to clean up litter and to perform building construction. It turns out, though, that there is a use for them that is a lot further along in its development, namely The Matternet. Like the internet, it has the potential to totally transform the world, especially the Third World.

Ever hear of the ``Internet of Things'' (IOT)? It's where the web seems to be headed next (Web 4.0); the next stage in the evolution of the internet. Essentially, it describes the near future (by 2020) when most every object -- your toothbrush, your car, even sidewalks -- will have an embedded RFID chip that allows it to communicate with the internet.

Two things I have heard about recently that got me wondering about the future of healthcare are the iphone-size x-ray scanner

http://gigaom.com/2011/12/06/darpa-backed-start-up-builds-iphone-sized-x...

and the power of ultrasonic medicine, such as that appearing in the following very impressive TED-MED talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4lA-M3zbdU

There's a great new TV series called Brave New World with Stephen Hawking about all the ways that science and technology are making our lives better, and especially the current technological revolution that is underway (some seem not to notice that there even is a revolution; some people are not particularly observant). Here are the first few episodes:

Neat0 interview with Sonia Arrison, author of the book 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything , that first appeared on Reason TV. See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQebtxnnho