The Invincible Man - Aubrey de Grey Washington Postissa.

In his world of information technology, the norm is making the world new. Try something and if it doesn't work, try something else. Science doesn't pave the way for engineering, it's the other way around. Intel figures out a way to make wires only a few molecules thick. Why the circuits function is at best of passing interest -- as long as they do. Science can take years if not decades to catch up with an adequate explanation of the device's quantum mechanics. It is the final triumph of Edison over Einstein.

The Business of Death

The Outsourced Brain

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

Moving Freely between Virtual Worlds

"Human cognition was designed to function in 3-D, and our computation eventually has to have a 3-D interface to maximize the matchup with the human brain as it evolved," he says. People will need to find a way to combine a concrete, 3-D spatial understanding with the connective power of the 2-D Internet, Lanier says.

The Double Edged Passion

The end of World War II saw Germany and Japan switch rapidly in the Allies psyche from terrible enemies, complete with derogatory nicknames, to stalwart friends, demonstrating that even those prejudices that had been chiselled, literally, into granite, aren’t. Ever since Sherif's experiment, psychologists have wondered about the best way to help such thaws along. Recently psychologists Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Trop (2006) gathered the results from hundreds of studies on this question (covering thousands of people), and used complex "meta analysis" statistics to take a powerful new look at the collected results. What they found is strong support for the ‘contact hypothesis’ - that personal contact between group members helps improve feelings. Contact even works substantially better when a number of conditions are present. From what you've heard so far, you won't be surprised to know that it helps to have a shared goal to work towards (like getting your bus unstuck), and that it is good to have a shared outgroup to rally against ("stupid vandals"). Other things help too, though, such as having the contact occur on an equal footing, with no group having higher status than the other.

A Minor History of Giant Spheres

Future of science: 'We will have the power of the gods' - Michio Kakun uusi kolmiosainen sarja Visions of the Future starttaa viides marraskuuta BBC4:llä.

Tadpoles Grow Extra Eye On Command
Technology, the Stealthy Tattletale
Super-strong body armour in sight

Pivo 2 - Nissanin konseptiautossa on R2-D2 kojelaudassa.
I-REAL - Toyotan kolmipyöräinen ajotuoli.

The Working Dead - Teeskentelet tekeväsi työtä, jota inhoat ostaaksesi tavaroita, joita luulet tarvitsevasi.

Cosmetic surgeon will point your ears?

The Future

Floating Utopias - China Miéville Freedom Shipistä.
As a utopia, the Atlantis Project is pitiful. Beyond the single one-trick fact of its watery location, it is tragically non-ambitious, crippled with class anxiety, nostalgic not for mythic glory but for the anonymous sanctimony of an invented 1950s. This is no ruling class vision: it is the plaintive daydream of a petty bourgeoisie, whose sulky solution to perceived social problems is to run away — set sail into a tax-free sunset.

Droid Rage
The new Bionic Woman (played by Michele Ryan) improves on the original conceits. Besides getting a bionic arm, ear and legs, she gets a bionic eye, “Matrix”-style kung fu skills and a dystopic urban setting. Her campiness has been rewired into a platform for exploring existential meta-questions, like: Is it creepy to be entirely rebuilt by your boyfriend (even if he is a brilliant bioethicist/surgeon)?

Replaceable You - Autografting, allografting, xenotransplants, implants, tissue engineering.

Is It Safe for a Biologist to Support Cryonics Publicly?
A lot of people say to me, “Well, hang on. It’s a hard enough battle as it is, trying to get this radical life extension field to work. It was a pretty damn controversial field as it stands. You know, supporting cryonics publicly as well, surely you’re making life even harder for yourself.” I respect this argument very strongly, but I feel from experience that propounding a point-of-view that is extreme but is logically coherent is actually more productive in the long-run than propounding a point-of-view that is mealy-mouthed. What I am trying to say in this slide is that you should not treat the battles that you fight, in terms of controversy, as being independent from each other. Expediency, the attempt to sound reasonable but to pull the wool over people’s eyes, that tends to get spotted these days.

Olen kokoelma pieniä vempaimia

Kuten oletinkin käyneen, Marvin Minskyn kommentit New Scientistin artikkelissa raportoitiin lähes täysin päinvastoin kuin hän tarkoitti.

Tässä Minsky puhuu Gadgetoff 2007:ssa. Toisen mikrofonin käyttö sopii puheen aiheeseen kuin nakutettu.



'Bionic' Nerve To Bring Damaged Limbs And Organs Back To Life

The Braille Tattoo - Tunnustelutatuointi sokeille.

Tässä Aubrey de Grey puhuu Gadgetoff 2007:ssa



Lahjoita $100 MPrizeen ja saat Aubrey de Greyn nimmarilla varustetun kopion Ending Aging -kirjaa.

Ten Myths of Innovation

The paradox is that the greater potential of an idea, the harder it is to find anyone willing to try it.

Windbelt, Cheap Generator Alternative

Steroids: Not Just for Athletes

In a web-based survey of nearly 2,000 self-prescribed steroid users (the stuff has legitimate medical uses as well, such as correcting hormone imbalances), it turns out that the typical user isn't a competitive athlete at all. He (and it's pretty much always "he") is a highly educated professional, about 30 years old, who doesn't participate in organized sports at all — and never has. He uses steroids to build muscle, increase strength and look good. And he does it, not as an easy, stand-alone shortcut to body modification, but as a supplement to a carefully planned regimen of diet and exercise. In short, says one internist: "They're gym rats."

The Secrets of Intangible Wealth - Aineeton rikkaus on pääasia.

But once the value of all these are added up, the economists found something big was still missing: the vast majority of world's wealth! If one simply adds up the current value of a country's natural resources and produced, or built, capital, there's no way that can account for that country's level of income. The rest is the result of "intangible" factors—such as the trust among people in a society, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights and effective government. All this intangible capital also boosts the productivity of labor and results in higher total wealth. In fact, the World Bank finds, "Human capital and the value of institutions (as measured by rule of law) constitute the largest share of wealth in virtually all countries."

Atheists and Anger - Pitkä lista syitä olla hieman harmissaan uskonnosta.

The Meaning That Immortality Gives to Life

I have met many people who, when I try to tell them of the Singularity, say, “But do you really think all this will happen in our lifetimes?”, as if the universe ceases to exist beyond the horizon of their personal deaths. Given what I’ve actually seen of people’s psychology, if you want anything done about global warming (like building 1000 nuclear power plants and moving on to real problems), then, yes, you should urge people to sign up for Alcor.

What the F***? Why We Curse

The biologists Valerie Curtis and Adam Biran identify the reason. It can't be a coincidence, they note, that the most disgusting substances are also the most dangerous vectors for disease. Feces is a route of transmission for the viruses, bacteria, and protozoans that cause at least 20 intestinal diseases, as well as ascariasis, hepatitis A and E, polio, ameobiasis, hookworm, pinworm, whipworm, cholera, and tetanus. Blood, vomit, mucus, pus, and sexual fluids are also good vehicles for pathogens to get from one body into another. Although the strongest component of the disgust reaction is a desire not to eat or touch the offending substance, it's also disgusting to think about effluvia, together with the body parts and activities that excrete them. And, because of the involuntariness of speech perception, it's unpleasant to hear the words for them.

Aivokäyttöliittymä Second Lifen avatarin ohjaamiseen.

Pentagon backs plan to beam solar power from space

At the same press conference, over a dozen space advocacy groups announced a new alliance to promote space solar power – the Space Solar Alliance for Future Energy. These supporters of space-based solar power say the technology has the potential to provide more energy than fossil fuels, wind and nuclear power combined.

Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen

The main benefit of human-robot marriage could be to make people who otherwise could not get married happier, "people who find it hard to form relationships, because they are extremely shy, or have psychological problems, or are just plain ugly or have unpleasant personalities," Levy said. "Of course, such people who completely give up the idea of forming relationships with other people are going to be few and far between, but they will be out there."

Visions for the cars of 2057

Enhancing the species - John Harris

For him there is no particular virtue in human frailty, nothing particularly special about “humanness” (except our capacity for self-awareness, which is not threatened by opera glasses, vaccination or other enhancements) and no particular reason to preserve our stage of human evolution in aspic: “Can you imagine our ape ancestors getting together and saying, ‘This is pretty good, guys. Let’s stop it right here!’. That’s the equivalent of what people say today.”

Are mirrors the best way to deflect asteroids?
In this way, they would heat the asteroid's surface to more than 2100° C, enough to start vaporising it. As the gases spewed from the asteroid, they would create a small thrust in the opposite direction, altering the asteroid's orbit. -- To deflect a 20-kilometre asteroid, about the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, it would take the combined work of 5000 mirror spacecraft focusing sunlight on the asteroid for three or more years.

The Future of Food - 25 keittiövälinettä molekulaariseen gastronomiaan.

LucidTouch - Läpinäkyvä näppäilynäyttö.

New Scientist Death special: The plan for eternal life

Sukupuuttoon kuolevien bisnesten listalla ovat mm. levykaupat, homobaarit, sanomalehdet, kirjadivarit ja puhelinmyynti. Kannattaa keksiä jotain uutta selvitäkseen.

Your Outboard Brain Knows All
In fact, the line between where my memory leaves off and Google picks up is getting blurrier by the second. Often when I'm talking on the phone, I hit Wikipedia and search engines to explore the subject at hand, harnessing the results to buttress my arguments. My point is that the cyborg future is here. Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us.

Quid - Värikkäät, pyöreät muovikolikot ovat avaruuden rahayksikkö.

Radiation damage is simply cellular damage. If we can learn how to repair such damage — something that our bodies do well when young — and do it fast enough, one can sustain an almost arbitrarily large amount of it while staying in good health. (Note that if you want to ride a nuclear rocket, radiation repair would be a handy trick as well.)
- Transhumans in space

If extraterrestrial intelligence exists, Stephen Dick concludes in an article in the International Journal of Astrobiology, it has probably evolved beyond biology to an advanced form of artificial intelligence that is the product of million or billions of years of technological and cultural evolution similar to the civilizations Arthur C Clarke envisioned that created the Tycho Monoliths in 2001 - A Space Odyssey. In a post-biological universe machines are the dominant form of intelligence.

Nick Bostromin simulaatioargumentti telkkarissa. Mikäli mahdollisuus simulaatiossa elämiselle on (vain) 20 prosenttia, veikkaisin rahaa sen puolesta, että emme elä simulaatiossa.

New plastic is strong as steel, transparent

Atmocean - Ilmaston lämpenemistä voisi kenties estää aalloilla toimivilla kumpuamispumpuilla.

Three Major Singularity Schools - Jos puhut teknologisesta singulariteetista, kerro ensin mitä singulariteettikoulukuntaa tarkoitat.

1. I.J. Goodin Singulariteetti (älykkyysräjähdys)
2. Ray Kurzweilin Singulariteetti (eksponentiaalinen kehityskäyrä)
3. Vernor Vingen Singulariteetti (tulevaisuusmallien hajoaminen)

Minä tarkoitan yleensä aina ykköstä, vaikka kolmonen onkin se alkuperäisin.


Singularity Summitin puhujien haastatteluvideoita. Myös transkriptit videoista. Audiotiedostot itse puheista. Suosittelen erityisesti Yudkowskyn puhetta The Challenge of Friendly AI (mp3).

SENS3-konferenssin puheet videotiedostoina.


Beyond a 'speed limit' on mutations, species risk extinction

-- magic number appears to be 6 mutations per genome per generation -- a level beyond which species run the strong risk of extinction as their genomes lose stability. -- In more complex organisms, cells have evolved correction systems to detect and fix errors in DNA replication. -- "As organisms become more complex, they have more to lose and can't be as radically experimental with their genomes as some viruses and bacteria."

"The movie has an underlying assumption that I just don't relate to: that people want a slave class. As I imagine the potential of engineering the human genome, I think, wouldn't it be nice if we could have 10 times the cognitive capabilities we do have? But people ask me whether I could engineer a stupid person to work as a servant. I've gotten letters from guys in prison asking me to engineer women they could keep in their cell. I don't see us, as a society, doing that."
- J. Craig Venter Blade Runnerista