Andrew Hessel, pioneer in synthetic biology, discusses the similarities between computing and biology during a talk at Singularity University.

"MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–While I’m sure that many of the people in the room were familiar with prediction markets, I wonder how many of them had ever seen an active one up close and personal before.

"Providing that sense of deep immersion, of course, was exactly the point of an exercise run Monday during a session of Singularity University’s executive program by Melanie Swan, a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager. Swan, the principal of MS Futures Group, had tasked small groups of students with coming up with world-changing product ideas and then simultaneously had the students vote in an online prediction market looking at which product and team would be rewarded with the most faux-venture capital…"

See Ted’s full post at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/singularity-university-decharms/.

The greatest mysteries yield the biggest opportunities. And for Christopher deCharms, the human brain is the most mysterious thing of all.

A neuroscientist specializing in real-time brain imagery, deCharms suggests that the next wave of knowledge, technology, and business will come from cracking the code that gives humans the capacity to perceive, think, and act.

He flashes a slide on the screen listing a dozen things we don’t know: How does the brain make choices? Predictions? Plans? How does it produce an impression of identity, of experience? How does it adjust to change? How do we see, hear, touch, taste, smell? Why do we feel motivated one moment, depressed the next? Why do we sleep?

One thing that makes the answers so elusive is the staggering complexity of what the brain does. It’s such a thicket that scientists and philosophers can’t even reach consensus on a definition of consciousness. The quickest route to answers, deCharms says, is to break down the problem into manageable pieces. He differentiates between brain functions that involve high information density — say, reading and writing to the visual cortex — and those involving very small amounts of information, like moderating pain.

“Neurotechnology may benefit from questioning what kinds of low-information-content signals we can read and write before we try to upload and download consciousness,” he says.

Case in point: Deep brain stimulation. DeCharms shows video clips of Parkinsons patients moving involuntarily in a jerky, repetitive, exhausting dance. Their ability to control motion is so disrupted they speak in gasps. Switch on the electrodes reaching into the motor cortex, and suddenly they stand still and start talking about how good it feels.

The rest of deCharms’ presentation is devoted to groundbreaking research in brain cartography, perceptual function, neuronal physiology, and several ways to mediate brain activity from drugs to biofeedback. Still, he’s circumspect about the prospect of rapid advance in practical developments.

“If this research follows the usual pattern, progress will take longer than we imagine — but when it happens, it will deliver more benefit than we can imagine,” he says. The bottom line is that the frontier has been breached and wave after wave of troops are flooding over the border, mapping the territory, reshaping it, bringing new capabilities, hopes, and challenges.

The mystery won’t remain a mysterious for long.

Original article is under copyright and is re-published here with permission of the Ted Greenwald and Wired.com.

See Ted’s full post at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/day-in-the-life/.

The Singularity University routine is nonstop. Breakfast at 7:30 am — good, wholesome food, regrettably low on sugary and fatty goodness — followed by a series of deep-dive lectures in delivered in mind-boggling 90-minute blocks … Lunch at 12:30 pm isn’t a time to recharge; it’s an opportunity to deliver more information … The first day, it was presentations by grads of last summer’s nine-week program, detailing the businesses they’ve founded since (SU gets one percent) … Yesterday it was a close look at the Tesla electric car parked in the driveway, with a company rep on hand to answer questions (and presumably to take orders). Today, it’s a detailed demo of the SU spinoff that’s farthest along, the Gettaround car-sharing service. Then it’s back to the lecture room to get your brain stuffed anew … Dinner at 7 pm is a bit more leisurely, but afterward come more lectures and demos. Last night, executive director Salim Ismail’s discourse on metaphysics lasted until 11:30 pm … Get some sleep, rinse, and repeat … Salim tells me I’ll get a chance to recharge when the lecture portion of the program ends and days are filled with field trips to Silicon Valley businesses — but somehow I doubt it.

See Ted’s full post at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/singularity-university-merkle-on-hyperdrive/.

The first part of Ralph Merkle’s talk was a 40,000-foot flyover. The second part shifted into hyperdrive. Feels like a college term packed into 90 minutes or so.

How do physics change at nanoscale? Merkle ticks off a list. Length scales down linearly. Area scales down by a factor of a 2 — it gets exponentially smaller — and volume by a factor of 3. Frequency gets faster. Time changes (a nanosecond is a sensible interval for a molecular machine). And so on. Interesting points: Speed doesn’t change; a walking pace is reasonable for us and for a nanomachine. Gravity disappears Magnetism drops off. Stiff things become floppier and more subject to thermal noise.

From there, we dive into the structure of atoms, with probabilistic electron cloud surrounding a point-mass nucleus (for most practical purposes). Wrap that up with a few basic forces, and you have the basis for modeling atoms and their interactions fairly accurately. And once you can do that, you can think about atoms as building blocks of nanomachines.

So what can you build? A nanotube — a sheet of graphite rolled into a tube, or concentric sheets rolled into concentric tubes. Merkle mentions two concentric tubes, which make a molecular spring; pull one end out, let it go, and it pops back in, courtesy of van der walls force. Unlike a macroscale spring, this nanospring snaps back with the same force no matter how far you pull it out.

These days, though, Merkle is setting his sights much higher. Over the past few years he has put together a theoretical system for building diamond, atom by atom. It involves nine molecular tools and methane/hydrogen feedstock on a diamond substrate. He has analyzed all the side reactions, he says, and shown why they won’t throw the process out of kilter. “This is the first effort to define a minimal tool set for positional diamond mechanosynthesis,” he says. “It’s hard,” he says — an understatement — “but it ought to work.”

Original article is under copyright and is re-published here with permission of the Ted Greenwald and Wired.com.

See Ted’s full post at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/singularity-university-rearranging-atoms-with-ralph-merkle/.

“If you rearrange the atoms in coal, you get diamond. If you rearrange the atoms in sand, you get silicon. How atoms are arranged is fundamental to all material aspects of life,” says Ralph Merkle, currently senior research chair at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. He’s a large, pear-shaped man who, as he speaks, waves his arms far more energetically than his physique would imply. He modulates his tone dramatically for effect, often humorous.

Those words kick off day 2 at the Singularity University Executive Program. The curriculum divides roughly into three days of intensive classroom introductions to critical tech domains, three days of visits to Silicon Valley companies, and two days of workshops devoted to specific industries, plus a final day to wrap up. On Saturday I settled gingerly into a lightly padded metal chair for highly compressed, sometimes super technical, up-to-the-minute overviews of artificial intelligence, robotics, networking, computing, and quantum computing. (Forecast: sunny! With patchy clouds and fog.) That took until dinner time with only a quick break for lunch, which was filled with presentations by graduates of SU’s nine-week summer program.

Merkle differentiates between “linear nanotech” like stain-resistant textiles and the real thing: molecular machines first suggested by physicist savant Richard Feynman. “We can arrange atoms in most of the ways permitted by physics,” he says, showing a slide of a tabletop molecular assembly machine that can make “pretty much anything you want.” Can we get that far? “We can get at least that far.”

From there he skims through a catalog of progress — familiar example of pushing atoms into IBM logos and such on a 2D grid — to the goal of 3D shapes, and ultimately nanoscale machines. It doesn’t always work. “You’re not seeing the failures,” he allows, and describes a planetary gear he built that was just too slippery to hold together. “There’s no friction at that scale.” Moreover, that style of assembly is one atom at a time — very resource-intensive. A better solution is self assembly, along the line of, say, a redwood tree — a huge structure self-assembled by nanomachinery. If we can accomplish that, “manufacturing costs will go through the floor.” Products of nanomachinery will be as cheap as potatoes.

The notion that nanotech will provide new materials with superior strength-to-weight characteristics or other cool properties is familiar. Eye-opening proposals: Respirocytes (carry oxygen in the bloodstream so you can hold your breath for an hour), microbivores (eliminate diseases more rapidly than they body’s own system), chromallocytes (removes chromosomes in a cell and replaces them with a new set). Finally, Merkle sketches out a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle made of specific (theoretical) nanomaterials that apparently has been designed by someone in a published paper, name and title I didn’t catch. Bottom line: It could transport four passengers into space for a few thousand dollars.

Next: A quick intro to molecular mechanics.

Original article is under copyright and is re-published here with permission of the Ted Greenwald and Wired.com.

See Ted’s full post at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/singularity-university-peter-diamandis-thinks-big/.

After dinner on day two of Singularity University, Peter Diamandis gives a fantastic presentation about the X-Prize and what it means. This is a guy who radiates energy, seriousness, and goodwill. He would have made a first-class motivational speaker, but he’s focused on substantial issues and favors leather jackets over sharkskin suits.

The man doesn’t think small: “My mission on this planet is to be an agent of transformation for the human race moving beyond planet earth,” he says. Which would seem pompous if he didn’t walk the walk. Over 90 minutes, he shows the assembled SU students how it’s done. “if you don’t do what you love,” he counsels, “do something else. Because all of it is hard.”

Diamandis’ approach is to imagine the world as he would like it to be, chart a course to that destination, and identify the first possible stop along the way. If the larger aim is to diversify humanity’s habitats in the universe, then a first logical step is the Ansari X-Prize for private space flight. (That’s not the first step, actually, but the third or fourth — but it makes the point.)

The scope of his accomplishment becomes obvious as he runs down the list of results: “We brought a new industry to market, made the front page of Google, generated 6 billion media impressions, and ended up with the winning vehicle hanging from the ceiling of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum — right above Charles Lindburgh’s Spirit of St Louis. So cool.”

To have an impact, he says, prizes need to attract the right contestants, set a clear, doable goal, make a huge splash, and allow the contest organizer to retain media rights. Do it right, and you’ll attract capital to the problem you’re hoping to solve, pool brainpower worldwide, make heroes of the winners, and change the world’s perception of what is possible. And he’s ready to do it many times over, with competitions underway to revolutionize transportation, genomics, medicine, bionics, brain-computer interfacing, and undersea exploration. The latest prize, for a lunar lander design, was awarded only a couple of weeks ago.

It’s in the activities of another of his enterprises, Zero G, that the human dimension of his work shines brightest. A while back, Stephen Hawking asked for a ticket. “I was told I would kill this guy and ruin my company,” Diamandis says, but he wasn’t going to pass up the chance to introduce the world’s expert on gravity to zero gravity.

It took six months to get the FAA to drop its requirement that passengers be able-bodied, and when the wheelchair bound astrophysicist was finally aloft, he cajoled the flight crew into flying not one, not two, but eight parabolas. The scientist is paralyzed except for a few muscles in his face, Diamandis says. Yet in the photos Diamandis flashes on the screen behind him, his customer wears a child’s wide-eyed grin.

Original article is under copyright and is re-published here with permission of the Ted Greenwald and Wired.com.

See Ted’s full post at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/singularity-university-biotech-bioinformatics/.

Biotech is a hidebound industry. Elephantine budgets. Glacial development timelines. Stultifying regulatory oversight. Pitiful productivity. Andrew Hessell, once employed by a major biotech drug developer (unnamed) and now an evangelist of synthetic biology, observes that, while biotech and IT share important characteristics — both had similar inception dates and depend on information — they’ve followed completely different trajectories.

The reasons, he says, boil down to greed and fear. Where the captains of IT formed partnerships, forged standards, and opened their source code (however reluctantly), biotech moguls protected their turf tooth and claw, and still do.

Now biotech’s dark lords face a digital-age army, people raised with a networked mindset, bent on taking over the territory. And that, in Hessel’s view, makes biotech the next IT.

The price of gene sequencing is falling precipitously; the $1000 human genome is on the horizon. Inexpensive tools are becoming available, such as LavaAmp, a $10 gene amplifier, currently in prototype. Meanwhile, molecular biologists are beginning to understand how to engineer processes like photosynthesis and sugar metabolism.

MIT’s BioBricks program is recruiting hundreds of bright students every year, teaching them how to create synthetic organisms by snapping together DNA components like Legos. Student teams are engineering new industrial processes and programming VR biotech training. And the DIYbio movement is gaining momentum, poised to make end runs around industry and government. “This isn’t heavy programming,” Hessel says. “More like writing a script for Excel.”

The reward? Multibillion-dollar opportunities removing bottlenecks from the current system. People need drugs. They value health. They will pay for a new generation of medicines, diagnostics, protective measures, tests and measurements. Make biotech more like infotech, Hessel says, and it will happen.

Original article is under copyright and is re-published here with permission of the Ted Greenwald and Wired.com.

See Ted’s full post at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/singularity-university-day-one-infinite-in-all-directions/.

A security guard checks my driver’s license as I drive into the entrance to Moffet Field, a disused naval airbase that hosts the nascent Singularity University. Night has fallen, but it still feels like entering a top-secret installation out of a James Bond movie, crowned by with strange domed buildings and adorned by sculptures of airships.

The Singularity University Executive Program is small — one-to-one staff/faculty ratio, according to executive director Salim Ismail, formerly of Yahoo’s tech hothouse. Inside an elegantly appointed palace, some 30 students assemble, a bright, well groomed group of 30-to 50-somethings representing a dozen industries and nearly as many countries.

The SU administrators shoo the crowd into an adjacent room where rows of chairs have been arranged to face Raymond Kurzweil’s slide show. After introductions from Ismail and X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, who is clearly the driving force behind the school, Kurzweil steps in front of the assembled students. He’s a surprisingly unimposing character, a sort of Walter Mitty for the Facebook age. A casual mention of pills leads him to root around his pockets, looking for the vitamins, minerals, and who-knows-what he pops hourly to slow down the aging process so he can live to see the Singularity — the moment when machines overtake human intelligence and human history shifts into hyperdrive.

He begins by taking on his critics, which he does periodically throughout the address. “They say, Kurzweil underestimates the complexity of — fill in the blank. I agree with critics about the challenge. I disagree about the power of the tools we’ll have to solve the problems at hand.” The essential point is that humans are geared to linear change — say, an elephant charging across the African veld. But evolution — both biological and technological — happens exponentially, clouding our view of the future. Exponential change is inherently counterintuitive, so we underestimate its power. “30 steps linearly is 30 steps,” he says. “30 steps exponentially is a billion.”

For the next half hour, Kurzweil rifles through graph after graph showing how technology is changing exponentially — in all fields, in all eras. It’s a compelling presentation that leaves the audience slack-jawed. Some are resistant, though. What happens when terrorists have the same capability to re-engineer viruses that makes it possible for medical science to disable them? Won’t politics and economics to derail technology? What about capital — does it grow exponentially as well?

The futurist deftly swats down such questions like so many pesky mosquitos. Concerns like that arise from linear thinking. A quick look at history confirms that human problems stimulate technological solutions that then yield further exponential evolution. I’m not entirely convinced, but it’s hard to disagree with the man’s logic.

Kurzweil poses for some group photos and then runs to catch the next flight back to his home near Boston. The inaugural SU Executive Program is underway. Classes start tomorrow at 8:30am.

Original article is under copyright and is re-published here with permission of the Ted Greenwald and Wired.com.

Beginning with this first Executive Program,  Autodesk joins us the first annual Corporate Partner with a very generous donation.

The full press release is below. Stay tuned for news on open events and more during the 9-day program.

SINGULARITY UNIVERSITY PREPARES EXECUTIVES FOR IMPACT OF EXPONENTIALLY ACCELERATING TECHNOLOGIES

New Nine-Day Executive Program Focuses on How to Harness Current and Future Disruptive Technologies to Benefit Companies and Industries

World-Class Faculty and Innovative Interdisciplinary
Curriculum Establish New Model for Executive Education

Silicon Valley Software Leader Joins University as First Corporate Partner

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – November 5, 2009 – Singularity University (SU) today announced the first SU Executive Program designed to educate, inform and prepare executives for the imminent disruption and opportunities resulting from exponentially accelerating technologies. Led by a world-renowned faculty and featuring a unique, interdisciplinary curriculum, the SU Executive Program is establishing a new model for how to prepare executives and MBA students to face today’s dynamic business realities. As part of the program, faculty, staff, and students will be encouraged to leverage social media channels to distribute content in real and near-real time, providing the entire world with access to the program’s exceptional curriculum. The SU Executive Program is scheduled for November 7-15, 2009 at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

“Our Executive Programs are focused on educating C-suite executives in a fashion that allows them to understand what is in the lab today, and what is likely to make-or-break their businesses in the next 5 to 10 years,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, co-founder and Chairman of Singularity University. “Today’s executives have a choice. They can bury their heads in the sand and rely on old ways of thinking. Or, they can immerse themselves in a program and conversation to be aware of the road ahead. SU’s Executive Program is designed to be insightful, inspiring and hands-on.”

The SU Executive Program addresses six fields experiencing exponentially accelerating change, including AI and Robotics, Nanotechnology, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Medicine and Human Machine Interface, Networks and Computing Systems, and Energy and Environmental Systems. The faculty includes some of the world’s most distinguished leaders in their respective fields: Dan Barry, Robotics; Christopher deCharms, Medicine; Michel Gelobter, Energy; Andrew Hessel, Biotech; Neil Jacobstein, AI; Rohit Khare, Networks; Stuart Kim, Biotech; Daniel Kraft, Medicine; Ralph Merkle, Nanotech; David Orban, Networks; Barney Pell, Networks; David S. Rose, Entrepreneurship; Melanie Swan, Future Studies; Dr. James Canton, Future Studies.

Participants in the SU Executive Program will gain an understanding of how disruptive technologies may impact their industry, explore growth solutions based on disruptive innovation, and develop response strategies relevant to their industries. They will also have an opportunity to expand their network of contacts and become part of the Singularity University Network (SUN), which fosters an ongoing community and develops and promotes follow-up activities.

“The SU Executive Program goes beyond the lecture and workshop models of typical intensive business programs and creates a real-world think tank for sharing knowledge and information,” said Salim Ismail, Executive Director of Singularity University. “We will use social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, to distribute content from the program and foster a broader discussion of the key concepts discussed during the sessions. This model is an important foundation for increasing the global discussion around these key topics.”

The SU Executive Program is limited to a maximum of 40 participants, who are selected based on the level of achievement in their field, recommendations, and a personal essay. A tuition fee of $15,000 includes accommodation on the SU campus, all tuition and academic activities and visits to leading Silicon Valley companies. For more information on applying for the program, which will be repeated in February of 2010, please visit http://singularityu.org/programs/executive-programs/.

Autodesk Partners with SU

Autodesk, which joins SU as its first Corporate Partner, will provide executives with access to its state of the art technology. This will allow executives and partners who concentrate on technology to advance and drive change.

“Autodesk is focused on providing our customers with the latest software to bolster innovation and realize their vision,” said Jeff Kowalski, Chief Technology Officer of Autodesk. “In Singularity University, we see a shared mission and passion around preparing leaders to harness new and accelerating technologies. Based on the Graduate Studies Program and its innovative and interdisciplinary approach, we look forward to a long partnership as well as the exciting developments that are sure to come from Singularity’s programs throughout the next year.”

About Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc. is a world leader in 2D and 3D design software for the manufacturing, building and construction, and media and entertainment markets. Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk has developed the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art Digital Prototyping solutions to help customers experience their ideas before they are real. Fortune 1000 companies rely on Autodesk for the tools to visualize, simulate and analyze real-world performance early in the design process to save time and money, enhance quality and foster innovation. For additional information about Autodesk, visit www.autodesk.com.

Autodesk, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, Civil 3D, Inventor, Revit, and 3ds Max Design are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document.

ABOUT SINGULARITY UNIVERSITY

Singularity University (SU) is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges. With the support of a broad range of leaders in academia, business and government, SU hopes to stimulate groundbreaking, disruptive thinking aimed at solving some of the planet’s most pressing challenges. SU is based at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley. For more information, go to www.singularityu.org.