TechBloom

Victory Over Paralysis

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 09:03:00 +0000

The last couple minutes of this video are especially impressive...

Combine this with stem cell therapies and rapid advances in exoskeletons and we're looking at the elimination of paralysis, or at least seriously mitigating it.

Vast AI conspiracy...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 07:27:00 +0000

...and its real...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RFLIj4a2kw#t=29

Amazing reporting by 60 minutes. On the one hand this sure feels like the system is rigged. On the other hand there is probably an epic arms race between high frequency traders to developer faster servers and better algorithms. Some of these algorithms are almost certainly using machine learning and neural nets; so the majority of the world's economic activity may be controlled, in a way, directly by AI.

Shadow Games...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 19:33:00 +0000

Juarez, Mexico
August 8th, 2023

"This is News Hour. The group calling itself the Citizens Defense League of Juarez entered a third day of its standoff with Mexican Federal Police and military forces today. The tense confrontation follows three weeks of heavy and sustained fighting in Juarez between members of the vigilante militia and cartel forces. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deaths have been reported in the heaviest fighting in Mexico since the revolutionary period of the early 20th century. Both sides, heavily armed and well equipped, engaged in shelling and intense close quarters combat that resulted in heavy casualties and widespread destruction across the long ravaged frontier city.
After it became clear that the Citizens Defense League was gaining the upper hand, cartel elements reportedly fled the city in disarray while others captured by vigilante forces were summarily executed in front of media cameras. With the fighting dying down, Citizen Defense League forces moved quickly to seize police facilities and government buildings while expelling state and federal officials. The federal response, the deployment of some 8,000 Mexican soldiers around the city, led to the confrontation that continues this hour.
On the U.S. side of the border, the county bordering Juarez remains in a state of federal emergency with elements of the 5th mechanized infantry division cooperating with Texan national guard and homeland security forces to secure the border. Several stray mortar and artillery rounds resulted in three injuries and light structural damage on the U.S. side of the border. Several other stray rounds have been intercepted by defensive systems deployed by the 1st Cavalry division. So far, aggressive police and military presence and a state of virtual martial law have prevented the violence from spreading into the U.S. despite a known heavy presence of the Juarez Cartel in El Paso…”

Corporal Anthony "pancho" Sanchez stared across no man's land into Mexico, sweeping his view across sand bag emplacements and turned over cars that the Juarez Militia had hastily put in place as a makeshift barricade following rumors of a U.S. invasion. Information from intel-net filled his HUD; heavily armed men outlined in bright red, weapons systems and armor identified, firing solutions for his personal weapon and the grenade launchers in his gauntlets, and more. Total Tactical Information Awareness. It was the Army's latest mantra. They'd slayed the fog of war, or so the brass liked to think.
"laze" Sanchez said, the spoken command and subvocal signature activating his suit's targeting and ranging laser system. Taking careful aim, he directed the laser onto a barely visible lens a hundred meters beyond the barricade. Removing his right hand from its gauntlet enclosure, Anthony tapped a series keystrokes into the tactical computer below his HUD. The sequence activated a program hacked into the computer months before. Transmitting. The single word hung there, simple ascii text filling one corner of the trillion color display. Suddenly, Anthony felt the full 108 degree heat weigh down on him like a brick oven. Sweat beaded and ran from his forehead. An instant later the message went away, and he knew that his tactical computer would experience a sudden onboard memory failure after a couple dozen different erasure protocols wiped the storage clean.
"SnapFire one, Bravo unit three here, enemy is hunkered down and sitting tight. Over" Anthony spoke into his throat mike.
"Acknowledged Bravo unit three, hold your position and report any changes" came the reply. Anthony nodded. Brigade was under strict orders not to provoke an incident. Division had Washington up it's ass and the shit was rolling downhill hard. Anthony went into a crouch, his powered exoskeleton shifting to take his weight as he moved. Independent gyros kept his gauntlets aimed in sync with his HUD cross hairs. Settling in for what could be a long and hot afternoon, Anthony removed his hands from the gauntlets and began cleaning his rifle. Despite the suit, it remained his primary weapon. He was cavalry after all, not heavy infantry.

Robert Mendoza clutched the tablet, deftly gesturing his way through the custom OS of the Pakistani gadget. Of course the device had been rooted, its software guts replaced by specialists from one of the cartel’s IT divisions; probably outsourced to Crimean mafia or some black African hacker foundry if he had to guess. You couldn't exactly buy a tablet designed to operate an array of auto-firing mortars at Walmart.
He checked the readouts one last time to make sure the mortars were ready and then triple checked the code he’d gotten from intel. He had no idea where the Cartel brains had gotten the 2024 bit key...but they’d gotten it. Robert shrugged, armed the system, and initiated the sequence. He took a last long drag from his cigarette before smashing the tablet against a rock and kicking dirt over the littered parts. He sprayed a slurry of DNA contaminant over the entire area before he left.

It was 5:25 PM in El Paso and rush hour, such as it was here, was in full effect. Fair numbers of drones moved east and west in loose air lanes a hundred meters or so over the bustling traffic on interstate 10. One of the drones looked like a standard dronnet courier model, the same sort of cheap grey or beige Chinese or Vietnamese heavy quadcopter that shuffled physical packets over the physical package switching network that had arisen over the past half decade. This drone had the identifier of a nondescript local courier drone servicer, and the logo to match, but it had taken flight from Franklin Mountain State Park rather than some dronenet node. It flew along its route, blending in perfectly.
As the drone passed over central El Paso a custom transmitter activated, sending a short burst of radio traffic out over the area. Below, not far from the international border crossing, a receiver in the command trailer for the 1st Cavalry Division’s integrated third generation Iron Dome defense system received a communication. Software systems authenticated the incoming key, decrypted the command, and shunted it over to the computer running the system. After a second authenticated protocol was run the computer initiated shutdown protocols…

“...continued breaking news on CNN. Reports continue to come in of a large number of explosions occurring across residential and commercial parts of El Paso in what appears to be heavy shelling from the Mexican side of the border. Social media and local reporters are already getting accounts of casualties…”
President Warren gestured for the sound to be muted on the TV. She sat in silence for a moment, contemplating the numerous ways in which she would be politically savaged for this debacle.
Taking one more moment to compose herself, the president spoke to the assembled joint chiefs.
“Can any of you gentlemen please explain why the god damn Iron Dome system my administration has been touting for the past week just utterly failed to stop this attack?” she said in a cold, warning, tone.

John Darling Jr. loved synchronicity. He loved it when two opposed interests found common cause and came together for that cause. He especially loved it when that cause was one his employers backed. And they backed it in cold hard cash and bitcoins. His walk had an extra bounce in it this morning, a fine August morning indeed. Yes, he loved bringing people together. The grin that split his face had all the practiced innocence of highly refined sociopathic mimicry.
Records would show that his smart phone, display glasses, and smart watch geolocated him on the other side of the city. Several people would testify in court to back this up if it ever came to it. Numerous video captures would further back up his spoofed location.
The records would never show that Mr. Darling met with a shadowy representative of a conservative political action committee and a banker on the payroll of the Juarez cartel. Records never showed such things.
History would only show that the “El Paso folly” permanently wounded the Warren administration and that the U.S. occupation of Northern Mexico had the rather unfortunate side effect of suppressing the Mexican vigilante movement. In time the synth-meth would flow and Warren’s chosen successor would lose in a landslide in 2024.

Hyper News...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:51:00 +0000

November 6th, 2020
Crown Point, Indiana

“Fraud, theft, traitors on the left! Fraud, theft, traitors on the left!” the crowd chanted, the roar growing more powerful as the impassioned crowd whipped itself further into a fury. They’d been arriving individually or via arranged buses for the last three days; ever since the country had been thrown into a political uproar by the vote deadlock in Indiana and subsequent Republican allegations of massive election fraud. Tea Party, National Conservative Action Committee, Concerned Conservatives For America, and many other groups were represented in the protest in addition to embedded right wing media and an assortment of concerned or angry individuals here on their own initiative.

The mainstream media were putting the crowd at 50,000 but rumors of up to several times that number were circulating elsewhere. The police surrounding the Lake County administration facility were as stoic as usual, ringing the complex and looking relaxed but ominous in their cutting edge tactical riot gear. Overhead; media and police helicopters and drones hovered or circled over the scene, and smaller drones of less clear origin were occasionally visible flitting about the area as well. Homeland Security, blogcasters, curious individuals; everyone wanted a live view of the unfolding events.

So far things had been peaceful, if intense, and even the much smaller counter-protest by Re-Occupy activists and Progressive Party cadre from Gary and elsewhere hadn't resulted in anything beyond a few shouting matches. But there was a spark in the air, a grim determination among the anti-Warren protesters to not let the alleged vote fraud stand. Mixed with the undercurrent of outrage that police from Gary and been called in to supplement local police as the protests grew, the air was electric.

Dan Simmons certainly felt that outrage and determination. He’d watched Obama ruin the country for eight years, watched him steal the election in 2012, watched him flip the Supreme Court with his illegally appointed crony justices even as the economy imploded yet again. He’d stood by while the feds smashed the Republic of Texas patriots and murdered his hero, John Smith.

Now he felt he was watching Obama’s chosen successor-in-chief steal the presidency yet again. It could not stand, he thought, not if America as he knew it was going to survive. And Dan was determined that it would survive, no matter what.

He felt nervously for the 9mm pistol at his waist again, felt his determination stiffen as he ran his fingers over the familiar holster concealed beneath his thick jacket. It wasn't even illegal, strictly speaking. Indiana had been a concealed carry state for many years now. But the knowledge of why he had brought the pistol to the protest made him nervous none-the-less. He was, after all, here to make history.

The media, mainstream and otherwise, had been in a frenzy since election night. And Dan was about to give them something new to feast on. He looked at this watch again. The legal team for the Warren campaign was supposed to arrive any minute now if the latest reports were to be believed. Even thinking of the slick, power-brokering, lawyer they’d brought in to give legal backing to their election theft made the rage boil in his mind, forcing him to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths to regain control.

He’d been slowly making his way towards the front of the crowd for the past hour, and he’d finally gotten right up to the temporary metal barricade in front of the entrance to the county administration building. Now he stood in place calmly, holding up his phone to watch one of the many blogcasts covering the events. This one had a live view of the sedan said to be carrying the legal team. It was just minutes away according to the scrolling text beneath the live video.

Dan fished in his shirt pocket for a moment and retrieved his newly purchased smart glasses. He'd never been a fan of the things but he'd heard good reviews about them on one of the hobby gun forums he followed. He'd practiced with the aim-assist app for several hours the day before. He thought the odds were better than 50/50 that he would hit his target despite what would probably be a bad line of sight. Time seemed to slow and take on a surreal tinge as Dan waited with an icy resolve for his target to arrive...

...Twelve minutes later the internet was on fire with the news of the assassination of President Warren's chief legal consul. It had been captured in clear 4k video by dozens of drones, phones, and smart glasses. Nearly a billion people had heard about it and half of those had seen it from at least four perspectives. Three minutes after that blogs and twit streams blasted the name and address of the assassin, his political views, and dozens of photos and videos of the man culled from across the web. Five minutes after that someone released a VR POV experience constructed by merging dozens of video and photo sources together into a detailed 3D mesh. Mainstream media talking heads droned on in pretend disgust as the FundMe legal defense for the assassin crossed one million U.S. dollars and the price on the assassin's head on crypto-currency markets surpassed five million U.S. dollars.

Within an hour more information had been exchanged in relation to the assassination than all the information ever exchanged in all of human history up through 2013.

Fiction...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:17:00 +0000

I'm going to start posting little bits of fiction here and there to try to capture the feel of the near-term future from my perspective.....

Posting again...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:08:00 +0000

...after a three year hiatus ;)

Looking at my 2019 predictions that I made in 2011 and I have to say most of them are still looking spot on in my opinion. If anything most of the predictions are looking conservative. The one big miss is the 3D TV one I think. It seems clear by now that 3D TV is not going to go mainstream. Though now that virtual reality seems on the verge of going mainstream then its probably no big loss that 3D TV isn't panning out.
I do think that 3D movies will remain a lucrative niche in movie theaters though - at least as long as movie theaters are around at all.

What Watson means...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 07:24:00 +0000

Well, Watson's victory tonight in game 2 was probably its most impressive performance. The human champs put up a much tougher fight but Watson still battled back and won comfortably in the end. And it dominated the 2-game total score. Probably its most impressive moment was getting tonight's Final Jeopardy question correct : It was EXTREMELY vaguely worded, I was fully expecting Watson to miss it, but it nailed it spot on. Being able to parse that question and then answer it precisely represents a vast qualitative leap forward for AI and computing in general.

To watch a computer demonstrate this capability is stunning and exciting. Its a watershed moment in computer science, a major morale boost for the much maligned AI community, a bit of a "we told you so" moment for AI and futurist enthusiasts IMHO. Ok, so we didn't get HAL 9000 by 2001 AD. But as of 2011 we now have something that looks like HAL's predecessor.

Of course, just as Kurzweil and others predicted there are already skeptics attacking the accomplishment by questioning how difficult Jeopardy really is, asserting that Watson had various unfair advantages, etc. Basically the same sorts of things said after Deep Blue beat the chess champion in 1997. No surprise there.

Bobby

My Predictions for 2019

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:56:00 +0000

Listed in no particular order, the big things I expect to happen by 2019 :

- Augmented Reality goes very mainstream. This means location-aware systems and "check-in" services like 'Facebook Places' and 'Foursquare' become more robust and popular, and eventually merge into the fledgling field of Augmented Reality browsers(like layar). For most people, this just means increasingly powerful and popular(to the point of being universal the way facebook is now) location-aware always-on apps on their smart phones. For a minority of business people and techies, there will be 'display glasses' as well with Augmented Reality, widgets, and location-aware information overlaid over normal vision. (we may skip the display glasses and go straight to display contact lenses)

- Cars are increasingly electric and increasingly smart. By 2019 I'd bet that at least 20% of the car market in most of the industrial world is all-electric, and most new cars will have very advanced "smart" features such as automated parking, adaptive cruise control, swerve avoidance, etc. Top-end luxury cars will have intelligent cruise control systems capable of almost completely automated driving on highways and freeways

- A universal open standard for social networking technology, means that virtually the entire population of the developed world are linked into what becomes a new branch of the Internet in and of itself, The Social Web. (Facebook, Google, twitter, Myspace, etc, all interconnect their data via a unified open standard that has standard privacy controls and whatnot. This is what finally ushers in the 'Semantic Web', since it becomes possible for anyone to write software that can leverage this universal social graph. More than ever, the Internet acts more like a single interconnected machine and database than a lose network of networks. (the combination of a universal Social Web with the Augmented Reality stuff is hugely powerful and I could write for hours about the implications of it if I had the energy ;)

- Materials science goes nuts and we start to see practical applications for things developed after 2005. By the second half of the decade we start to see practical results in battery tech, construction materials, super conducting, metamaterials, etc, etc, etc. The sorts of new stuff not really seen since the introduction of composite materials in the 70's and 80's or the introduction of plastics and whatnot early in the 20th century.

- Practical application of all the crazy medical/bio stuff developed in the lab from 2000 to 2010. Growing organ replacements becomes common for certain organs, various stem-cell derived regenerative treatments become available which means actual cures for lots things by the end of this decade.(Aids, Diabetes and other things like this are finally outright cured or at least made into little more than a nuisance) Brain/machine interfaces combined with cybernetric limbs, slick exoskeletons, and spinal nerve cell regeneration gives paralyzed people varying amounts of real mobility. By 2019, some people with "locked-in syndrome" will be able to speak, use a computer, and even have limited mobility at least for a few test subjects. The term "formerly paralyzed" or "formerly handicapped" will start to see common use. Nerve damage in general starts to become treatable to varying degrees. A combination of various treatments and therapies means that the lethality of cancer and heart disease drops by at least 50% between 2010 and 2019. (and possibly a lot more than 50%). Vision-restoring implants are as common and useful as today's cochlear implants are for the hearing impaired. Profound total-blindness is now rare and total-deafness is virtually eliminated.(in the developed world)

- The DIY "maker" revolution will be in full force, with home 3D printers/fabs becoming commonplace for small business people, artists, and various sorts of hobbyists and tinkerers. A whole new class of independent entrepreneurship and small and medium sized business will have arisen by 2019 involving local assembly of products from parts "printed out" by desktop or industrial-scale fabs. Also, for the first time in 100 years independent inventors/tinkerers working out of a garage or small shop will be able to do meaningful research and hardware development that competes with the big boys. (just like Apple and Google arose out of garages, we may see new big-name metal-bending/hardware/manufacturing companies arise out of garages. Companies that don't exist right now may be competing with the big boys or even toppling them in the areas of car manufacture and other big time industries by 2019

- 3D is not a fad. It sticks around and gets better, and by 2015 or so you no longer need the 3D glasses since displays capable of rendering 3D images without the use of goggles will be mainstream. This could be the death knell of the Movie Theater since they're banking on 3D movies to power them into the future but why would people go to a Theater and have to wear the 3D glasses when they can stay home and watch the 3D movie on their 70 inch 3D TV that doesn't require glasses(or your 100 inch or bigger TV by 2019)? Movie Theaters in general may be as rare as drive-in movie places already are.

The theater will survive mainly as the venue for live-action plays, musicals, opera, going back to its roots in other words.

- Brick and mortar places that specialize in selling media are DEAD and gone by 2015 and no one misses them. (By "media" I mean movies, books, music, etc, anything that can be consumed digitally) Possible exception of a few nostalgic used book stores and the like, little boutique type places on tourist areas, etc.

- telepresence becomes a real thing and not something occasionally used in offices. Video conferencing will be so cheap(thanks to increasing bandwidth and lowering costs of video conferencing hardware) and ubiquitous that it wouldn't be unusual for someone to have an always-on video-conference connection with a co-worker, family member, etc. That is, you have a large monitor dedicated primarily to having an always-on video conference line with that person so can "virtually share a room".

- paper really is finally going away as a commonly used medium to store written information. Even things like taking notes or post-it notes have been replaced by dirt-cheap e-ink pads of various sorts. Even a lot of the legacy base of paperwork gathering dust in cabinets and archives is getting steadily scanned in. (the post office may only be operating 3 or 4 days a week by 2019 as snail mail gradually dies)

- Theres are software agents that can pass the classical Turing Test by 2019, but most people reject the notion that this makes the software intelligent. Its just considered "social adaptation/simulation/conversation" software. And there is not yet human-level general purpose AI. (but there is really really good weak-AI everywhere and really good voice control software and really good machine translation and dictation, etc.). There are some projects trying to put it all together into a full fledged strong-AI but they aren't quite there yet)

- Private Space activity Taking off. We'll have fairly regular sub-orbital tourism, several private space stations(hotels and research stations leased to governments), virtually complete privatization of orbital launch services around the globe, real infrastructure like automated satellite repair and re-fueling tugs, on-orbit fuel depot, etc, before 2019. By 2019, I'd expected serious private efforts underway for lunar and mars missions.(probably the customers will be national space programs and maybe a couple billionaires who'd like to visit the Moon or Mars)

- Towards the end of 2019 there is a fierce debate as to the accuracy of Kurzweil's predictions for2019 ;) (though in spirit and in a macro-sense the large majority of the predictions bear out. where he is wrong, he is wrong for social/market/fashion reasons and not because the tech isn't possible) FREX, we might not have AI-based personal assistants that are tied to an animated avatar - not because it isn't possible to make them, but because there just isn't a demand for them.

- There are a sizable number of 70 year old baby boomers who have multiple re-grown organs, stem cell rejuvenated organs, regenerative treatments for immune systems and nervous system and metabolic systems, medical implants of various sorts, etc. The phrase "70 is the new 60" is quite commonly heard and is taken seriously

- A few hard core trans-humanists, calling themselves cyborgs, are aggressively having implants hooked into their brains to augment memory, add new senses, etc. (but most such devices by far are used for medical reasons)

- By 2019, many transhumanist and techie types are starting to assert that we are IN the "singularity" but this is not commonly agreed with even among techies and no one can even agree on what the "singularity" is anyway.

The next tech/social revolution?

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 22:14:00 +0000

Read this article on Global Guerrilla's...

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/10/the-next-social-networking-juggernaut.html

And it got me to thinking about how powerful hybrid systems that combine elements of a social network and elements of an MMO could be...especially when tied to location-aware functionality.

Simple example :

You want to create an open platform where people can exchange stuff. Theres already web sites out there for this that are having some degrees of success. But imagine you implement this using the social-network/MMO hybrid concept, call it E-trader...

-- within the system, there is a unit of currency. Call it credits.

-- prices for items, in credits, float on a open free market; supply and demand

-- users can earn credits by finishing missions

-- missions can be things like "transport item X to location Y", "hold onto item Z that you recieve from player A", etc. And the things are real things from the real world.

-- the missions themselves are created by users

-- completing missions also earns XP, and "talents" can be unlocked as you "level up"

-- the talents give you access to higher-level system functions, like serving as a storage node or creating more elaborate "missions",etc.

-- you also get special ranks and badges and such as you "level up"

-- the system is location-aware and runs of smart phones in addition to other platforms

-- credits can be exchange for real dollars by users on a floating exchange rate

-- whoever is running the servers to host this thing, get a small fee whenever credits are changed for dollars, and that is how they're making money.

The net effect, once you get a critical mass of users, would be a completely open-sourced, de-centralized, version of craigslist that can also provide delivery services. In real terms it looks something like this...

----------------

John is a level 46 Transporter, with 384,313 credits in his vault. His talent tree is specialized in ad-hoc deliveries of smaller items, which makes sense since he lives in San Francisco and likes to bike all over the place.

He's at lunch with some friends when his smartphone vibrates, he brings up his data-overlay on his eyeglasses and sees he's getting a ping from E-trader. Some noob has put in a low level request to have a iPhone 8 delivered to his apartment. The user has offered 5000 creds for the mission, which is barely above break-even given the cred-dollar exchange rate at the moment....

However, the mission is rated at 1000 XP...which is enough to put John over the top to ding level 47...and he's been wanting the next upgrade on the ad-hoc talent tree....and he'd been planning on going to Best Buy anyway. So he finishes his lunch and rides over to the Best Buy..where he always shopped for his gadgets lately because Best Buy had started offering discounts to higher level E-traders.

With his discount he gets the iPhone 8 for $20 off, which brings its cred cost down to 4,787. He rides the five blocks to the lazy noob's apartment and bumps phones to complete the mission. Five minutes later he is at Starbucks downing a Latte, which the 217 creds he'd earned from the noob mission more than covered...given what his cred/dollar exchange-rate widget was showing him at the moment.

With the caffeine pouring into his system, he unfolded his tablet to delve into his user sheet, he had to decide exactly what talent to unlock now that he'd dinged 47. If he went for 'Long-Distance Courier rank 3' he could gain access to longer distance runs around the city...but 'Mover and Shaker rank 2' would let him get first crack on higher level priority missions and higher level access to local storage nodes....

While he set his new rank badge to display on his profile,and on his shirt when the mood struck him, John membered the days when he'd worked 9-5 at a desk and couldn't imagine how he'd ever lived that way.

A few minutes later he was getting pinged again, it seemed someone had noticed that a new 'Mover and Shaker rank 2' was in the area and they had some paperwork that had to get downtown ASAP....their mission was offering 1000 creds, 2000 XP, and some loot from a nearby storage node...

---------------------

Once such platforms reach a critical mass, its potentially disruptive to status-quo economics IMHO.

Minority Report style computer interface.....

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:43:00 +0000

And its here 30+ years before the time envisioned in that sci-fi movie. Not sure how practical this is without actually using it, but it certainly looks cool.....

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

A theory on Intelligence...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:45:00 +0000

attempt to put into words an idea bouncing around in my head for quite some time, regarding the nature of information/order/life/intelligence

"information" is a fundamental property of the universe. Information
is normally just a description of the physical universe, dragged
along by the physical forces governing matter.
However - at a certain point dumb information undergoes a phase
change and information becomes a stronger force that the more crude
physical forces that normally dominate matter. This phase change
happens under a certain range of circumstances about which we are not
yet certain. But the environment on Earth 4 to 4.5 billion years ago
is one set of conditions we know for sure results in this phase
change.
The net result of the phase change is to convert a small percentage
of the mass of a body of matter into smart-matter. What we call "life"
is just smart-matter operating under the influence of a deeper
information force(s) called "intelligence". This smart-matter may or
may not always be carbon based and store its information in DNA, etc.
It may use other elements and forms of information storage but all
life of any form is really just smart-matter.
Once smart matter arises on a given body, it will persist
indefinitely unless destroyed utterly by some event that simply melts
down all the smart matter.(like a massive planetary impact that slags
the entire body, etc.). I'll call this coating of smart-matter an
intellisphere(a biosphere in mundane terms).
An intellisphere is to intelligence what a star is to dumb
matter.intellisphere's have a life cycle that may vary depending on
the volume and composition and starting parameters of it's
smart-matter but they all become generally more intelligent over time,
pushed along by some fundamental information force that pushes
smart-matter in the direction of becoming more ordered. There are
thermodynamic consequences from this, since there is no free lunch in
these things. Becoming more ordered, means that more entropy has to
enter the surrounding system, and more waste heat as well, more
entropy.
Over time, at a rate governed by the intellisphere's particular
life cycle, the intellisphere itself will become more ordered, with
more entropy dumped into the surrounding system and more and more
energy consumed. On our particular intellisphere, this gradual
increase in intelligence happened at a linear pace for billions of
years. Eventually, a critical mass is reached and the curve in
intelligence gain goes exponential.
By the time the intellisphere is manifesting tool use and
self-reflection, it has entered the"intelligence bloom" phase in it's
life cycle.(Kind of like a super nova of intelligence). In a bloom,
the increase in self-directed intelligence goes highly exponential and
more and more dumb matter is converted into smart matter. The bloom is
also like a pot of heating water coming to a boil - it brings
turbulence and waste heat. (this manifests itself to us as wars and
violence and increasingly energy dense tool use, etc. We also see the
bloom manifested in things such as Accelerating Intelligence and
Moore's Law, etc.)
What the intelligence bloom ends in is an interesting question.
Some blooms probably result in the intellisphere burning itself out
and settling back down to a lower level of intelligence, only to
resume its climb again and then burn out again, over and over until
something wipes out the intellisphere alltogether. (this manifests
itself as the dominant intelligent strain of smart-matter in the
intellisphere wiping itself out somehow) Perhaps ALL intellisphere's
go this way, and this explain's Fermi's Paradox.
I choose to believe that different intellisphere's may end in other
ways, perhaps at a certain level of intelligence the bloom explodes
out from its gravity well and spreads to encompass an entire solar
system, or perhaps another phase change occurs and the intelligence
changes again to some new higher order(transcendence of some sort?)
Perhaps WE are the first intellisphere and are the spark that will
eventually convert all matter in the universe into smart matter, a
complete phase change of matter in the universe. Or perhaps different
strains of smart-matter compete across the universe in a sort of
universal intelligence eco-system of some sort, just fluctuations of
information and intelligence in the universal system.

The iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:37:00 +0000

So, people are already complaining about the $30/month data plan and asking why they would want this thing if they already have an iPhone. I couldn't disagree more.

I think the iPad really fills a lifestyle niche for a mobile
computer that you can use from the couch, while chilling, to read a
e-book while drinking some coffee, or on the bed, etc. I do this now
with the iPhone...but the iphone is just too small to really be ideal
for this type of use. And iPad would also be PERFECT for
travelling.

I think apple has done it again - this puts tablets on the map as a
device and creates an entire new class of computer. Tablets have been
tried before and this is the first one that gets it right - it looks
like they _nailed_ it. I am excited to see what app developers can do
with the extra pixels and the extra horspower of the 1ghz
processor!

I can honestly see this thing becoming my full time computer - with
the exception of hardcore PC gaming...although the iPad even starts to
cut into that use case.

I honestly might not ever buy a new traditional PC. This could be the "death of the desktop PC" that has been forecast
for 15 years now.

Not that I am a mindless Apple fanboy. I do hope Apple adds more customization to the iphone/ipad OS and allows competitive browsers....I have grown addicted to Chrome and would love to use it on the ipad....

In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:04:00 +0000

In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits: "In the new age of open source, custom-fabricated, DIY product design, all you need to conquer the world is a brilliant idea, says Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson"

This stuff is just amazing! : DIY(do it yourself) manufacturing is very close to going truly mainstream. Right now you can order these things via the web on demand, in another 5 to 10 years you'll be able to manufacture these things in your home, or at least at a local shop down the street. Who will be the "kinkos" of local manufacturing?

Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time by Ben Goertzel

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:28:00 +0000

Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time by Ben Goertzel: "

The creation of a superhumanly intelligent AI system could be possible within 10 years, with an “AI Manhattan Project,” says Ben Goertzel.

Click here for Ben Goertzel’s views on Artificial General Intelligence.

This documentation is one of the 10 Introductory Publications listed on the Singulartiy Summit website.

Will the Singularity happen?

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:08:00 +0000

My guess is that we'll never cross a threshold over which people say "oh, crap, the Singularity just happened!". Instead, things will just keep advancing and we'll keep taking things for granted as they develop. I think a strong argument could be made that we're in the early phase of a "singularity" now given some developments in the last few years. The breathtaking speed with which Google went from nothing to a $110 billion dollar dominant force in information, the rapid spread and adoption of social networking, (in 2004 it was a niche thing where nerds and internet junkies communicated - now literally everyone in my circle of friends and family is on facebook and/or myspace and are using it in every day life), and the speed at which the Internet itself became what it is today(compare it to the slow and choppy spread of telephone, radio, etc.)

The same is also true of AI. People keep saying that we're making no progress in AI....which just drives me nuts because there has actually been massive progress. Its just that people keep raising their standards and moving the goal further out. I mean - look objectively at how much voice recognition and synthetic voice generation have advanced. They are still far from perfect but they are FAR FAR better than they were even 5 years ago. The same is true in most other fields of AI.
I do think we're getting close to a "tipping point" in AI. Remember how the Internet went from a curiosity to a mainstream phenomena around 1994/1995? Well, I expect the same thing to happen with AI sometime soon. That is to say, we're close to getting to a point where the capability of narrow-AI is going to become much more useful and explode into the public awareness. I expect this to happen within the next 5 years, probably more like within the next 2 or 3 years. I expect the same thing to happen in the area of augmented reality(enabled by location aware applications on smart phones)

Debunking the myth that "technology is making us dumber"

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:58:00 +0000

The Brain How Google Is Making Us Smarter

This article is a brilliant argument against the myth that technologies like cell phones and google are making us "dumber". Quite the opposite, these technologies are increasingly extending our minds - a process that has been underway since before humans harnessed the power of fire.

What increasing computer power allows....

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:05:00 +0000

New Computational Technique Allows Comparison Of Whole Genomes As Easily As Whole Books

Its only the advances brought bu Moore's Law that make this kind
of thing possible. The computational horsepower it takes to run these
algorithms is immense yet a typical work station can now do this
stuff. This is the sort of thing that lends evidence to the
'Accelerating Change' idea. Advancing computer power boosts our
ability to run ever more sophisticated algorithms and models which in
turn allows us to develop and test new theories faster or create
entirely new fields of science like comparative genetic analysis, etc.

Now imagine when an average work station or even a typical PC can do
everything that IBM's 1 petaflop super-computer can do, and more.
(more because there will be more software to utilize all that power by
then)

Flexible OLED devices are coming...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:31:00 +0000

Sony unveils flexible OLED device concepts at CES 2009

This is a window into the near future. Something that was pure science fiction even a couple years ago is now a near-term reality. This, along with e-ink, is one of those "the future is NOW!" kind of developments. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these!

Contrast - A Sony Flex OLED Walkman Concept from Sony Insider on Vimeo.

Talking to Google....

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:20:00 +0000

Now that we can conduct google searches by voice, it seems clear that we'll soon be able to access other google services by voice as well.

Need to update your calendar? Pick up your cell phone, access your google app or call an 800 number, and speak to add items to your google calander or have it read you your daily schedule.

Need to send that pdf report to your boss? Talk to gmail, have it grab the report from your google docs account, and then dictate a short message before having it send off the email.

Want to know what news is breaking in the technology sector? Talk to google reader and google news, and have them read you the day's headlines.

Want to see how your portfolio is doing, or see what NASDAQ is doing today? Talk to google finance. Want to find out where the nearest Sushi place is? Talk to google maps, and then have it guide you there.

None of these things on their own is truly earth shattering, indeed none of these things would be a huge leap beyond the existing voice search they've already implemented. But when you combine all these capabilities together an exciting picture begins to emerge. In essence, google will have become an extremely powerful software agent. A personal digital assistant that knows your schedule, knows your reading habits, knows your interests, etc. What was once a number of useful but distinct web based applications, will suddenly have become a free personal assistant residing in your cell phone.

And it doesn't stop there. We'll soon be talking to facebook and yahoo and amazon and others, and they'll all be talking to each other. Could this be what web 3.0 will look like?

And now, google does voice recognition...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:44:00 +0000

You've probably heard by now that google is releasing a new version of their mobile search application that integrates voice recognition. Its all over the internet, but if anything I would say this development is being under-estimated by most. I mean, yes, it will be nice to be able to do voice searching on mobile apps where typing in keywords can be a pain. That is a cool new feature and brings forward mobile computing by leaps and bounds.

However, to me the really big deal here is that this represents a major step forward in the field of voice recognition, and ultimately the field of AI in general. We're now in the era of working, reliable, voice recognition systems that don't require any training. If google is releasing this, then its fair to assume that we'll soon be able to talk to amazon, yahoo, microsoft, and other major web players as well. And all of these competing voice recognition engines will improve over time as the vast data centers collect more and more voice data to improve their statistical models.

And so, very shortly, we'll be able to "speak" to any device with an internet connection or to any web service, and they will understand the words and their underlying meaning. We're right on the cusp of a major change in the way we interact with technology and the Internet.

Where smartphones are headed....(update)

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:33:00 +0000

And now, this project is demonstrating a working prototype of a very early augmented reality system, using the Google Android platform....

Enkin from Enkin on Vimeo.

Where smartphones are headed....

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:46:00 +0000

For the near-term future, various sorts of display glasses will be how augmented reality and virtual reality are delivered, with smart phones as the computing platform. This is close, so close I can taste it. A pair of led/oled display glasses, that look close enough to regular sunglasses to avoid the nerd factor, are probably two years away from the mass market. That is when a lot of cool stuff will come to bear. Augmented reality, with different overlays available where different sorts of data are overlaid over your normal vision. Widgets and RSS feeds available any time, accessible via voice command or a flick of a finger on your phone's touch screen and visible as a translucent box in your vision. Reality tagging, life blogging, smart alerts, always-on GPS, real time instructional guides, tours, etc, its all coming and soon. In fact, the iphone and other advanced smart phones as they exist right now could deliver virtually all of this, its just waiting for the next firmware patch that will allow third party software development on the platform and for the eyeglass displays themselves to deliver all this via hud.
Smart phones are poised about where PC's were in 1980, right at the beginning of an explosive couple of decades of growth and innovation.

Sub-vocal communications, computer interaction...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:25:00 +0000

In this video, a prototype voiceless communication system is demonstrated...

Even more exciting than the obvious uses for this technology in voiceless communication, is the implications the demonstrator mentions regarding how this could enhance augmented reality systems. You sub-vocalize a question or key word search phrase and get data back from the Internet. The power of this for enhancing intelligence is stunning.

Imagine this scenario. The year is 2018 and you are sitting in one of those mind- numbingly boring meetings. The data overlays in your eyeglass displays are showing reports and graphs prepared by the presenter as well as personal and business information about each of the attendees. Suddenly, an idea occurs to you. You spend a few seconds sub-vocalizing commands to your smart phone(5th gen iphone?, 3rd gen android platform?) to search for a series of documents and related blog postings, while also chatting voicelessly with colleagues in a different department to bounce your idea off them. By the time you open your mouth 30 seconds later to voice your brilliant idea you have done the background research and networking that might have taken 30 minutes(after the meeting) to do a decade earlier. This is just one small example of the type of Intelligence Enhancement we're talking about here.

Towards nanobots...

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:21:00 +0000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7288426.stm

This looks like the first big step towards moving from nanoparticles to true nanobots.

"A tiny chemical "brain" which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented.

The molecular device - just two billionths of a metre across - was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test."

"The machine is made from 17 molecules of the chemical duroquinone. Each one is known as a "logic device".

Mind Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:37:00 +0000

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/mar/06/medicalresearch

"The software matched their observed brain activity with the predicted activity from the decoder. When using a set of 120 images, the software got it right nine out of 10 times. With 1,000 images, the accuracy was eight out of 10. For 120 images, if the software were to simply make random predictions, its success rate would be just 0.8%.

The team estimate that if they used 1bn images (roughly the number on Google) it would have a success rate of 20%. With that many images, Gallant said, the software is close to doing true image reconstruction - working out what you are seeing from scratch. "There is no reason we shouldn't be able to solve this problem ... That's what we are working on now."

Gallant said it might be possible in future to apply the technology to visual memories or dreams"

These researchers are talking about a practical, realistic, path towards actual reading of minds via technology. In fact they have demonstrated an early version of that already. In another part of the article the scientists make an estimate of 30 to 50 years for how they expect it to take this technology to mature. Want to bet their estimate is too conservative? I'd guess the real time is half their estimate, if not less.