Singularity & Futurism

The coming Superphone

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:11:00 +0000

Gigaom - 3.10.10 (by Stacey Higginbotham)

The future of media will be information consumed on superphones while on the go, said Rob Glaser, chairman of RealNetworks, today in his first public speech since stepping down from his CEO position. In the speech, given in Seattle at a Mobile Broadband Breakfast event, he forecast that by 2013 the installed base of smart and superphones (see chart for Glaser’s definition of each) will exceed the installed base of PCs, and those web-surfing devices will be mobile. In this world he sees five big opportunities:

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Fi-Wi - Ultrafast wireless for short range coming

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:09:00 +0000

PhysOrg.com - 3.9.10 (by Lisa Zyga)

A mm-wave Fi-Wi network. An optical fiber backbone (red) provides broadband connections between the central offices and antenna base stations. Then, the base stations wirelessly transmit 5-mm-wave (60 GHz) signals to customers. Within buildings and homes, the short-range wireless signals can provide high-speed connectivity (faster than 1 Gb/s) for a variety of wireless, high-bandwidth communication devices. Credit: Lim, et al.

(PhysOrg.com) -- By looking at the latest electronic communication devices that have emerged over the past few years, it's clear that the trend of smaller, portable devices is strong and expected to continue. Yet while all these notebooks, netbooks, and tablet PCs are becoming more and more popular, their explosive growth also poses a problem: these wireless devices are hogging the already congested lower microwave frequency region of the wireless spectrum.

This congestion problem was not unanticipated by electrical engineers, who, for the past two decades, have been developing new wireless technologies that use different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Specifically, these wireless technologies are exploiting the large, unused bandwidths of extremely high frequency (EHF) microwaves in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency region. One particular area of interest is the unlicensed 60 GHz frequency band, which has 5-mm wavelengths. (In contrast, the heavily burdened lower microwave regions have frequencies of 2-4 GHz, corresponding to wavelengths of 7.5-15 cm.)

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X-Ray Vision - The dream of every adolescent boy

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:31:00 +0000

PhysOrg.com - 3.8.2010

Knowing enough about the way light is scattered through materials would allow physicists to see through opaque substances, such as the sugar cube on the right. In addition, physicists could use information characterizing an opaque material to put it to work as a high quality optical component, comparable to the glass lens show on the left. Credit: American Physical Society

New experiments show that it's possible to focus light through opaque materials and detect objects hidden behind them, provided you know enough about the material.

Materials such as paper, paint, and biological tissue are opaque because the light that passes through them is scattered in complicated and seemingly random ways.

A new experiment conducted by researchers at the City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI) has shown that it's possible to focus light through opaque materials and detect objects hidden behind them, provided you know enough about the material. The experiment is reported in the current issue of Physical Review Letters, and is the subject of Viewpoint in APS Physics by Elbert van Putten and Allard Moskof the University of Twente.

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Top 7 Theories of Everything

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:30:00 +0000

NewScientist - 3.4.10 (by Michael Marshall)

The "theory of everything" is one of the most cherished dreams of science. If it is ever discovered, it will describe the workings of the universe at the most fundamental level and thus encompass our entire understanding of nature. It would also answer such enduring puzzles as what dark matter is, the reason time flows in only one direction and how gravity works. Small wonder that Stephen Hawking famously said that such a theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God".

But theologians needn't lose too much sleep just yet. Despite decades of effort, progress has been slow. Rather than one or two rival theories whose merits can be judged against the evidence, there is a profusion of candidates and precious few clues as to which (if any) might turn out to be correct.

Here's a brief guide to some of the front runners.

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We're too predictable, people! - Cell phone study reveals

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:59:00 +0000

Live Science - 3.5.10 (by Susan Cosier)

Humans are unpredictable, movers and shakers — or so we might think. Yet new research that used cell phones to track people reveals the patterns of our movements and where we can be found, day or night, are predictable as much as 93 percent of the time, no matter how far we travel.

"The most surprising thing to us is the lack of variability in predictability across the population, meaning that most all the users have same degree of predictability," regardless of their gender, age, or language spoken, lead researcher Chaoming Song, a physics doctoral student at Northeastern University, told LiveScience.

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Dispense with all the wires!

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:49:00 +0000

Purdue Newsroom - 3.3.10

The wireless house of the future might use a system being developed at Purdue University that could eliminate wires for communications in homes, businesses and cars. The researchers designed and built a miniature device capable of converting ultra fast laser pulses into bursts of radio-frequency signals using innovative "microring resonators." Such an advance could enable all communications, from high-definition television broadcasts to secure computer connections, to be transmitted from a single base station. (Purdue University, Michael Esposito).

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University researchers have developed a miniature device capable of converting ultrafast laser pulses into bursts of radio-frequency signals, a step toward making wires obsolete for communications in the homes and offices of the future.

Such an advance could enable all communications, from high-definition television broadcasts to secure computer connections, to be transmitted from a single base station, said Minghao Qi, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

"Of course, ideas about specific uses of our technology are futuristic and speculative, but we envision a single base station and everything else would be wireless," he said. "This base station would be sort of a computer by itself, perhaps a card inserted into one of the expansion slots in a central computer. The central computer would take charge of all the information processing, a single point of contact that interacts with the external world in receiving and sending information."

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Free will not real? You choose.

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:11:00 +0000

PhysOrg.com - 3.3.10 (by Lisa Zyga)

When biologist Anthony Cashmore claims that the concept of free will is an illusion, he's not breaking any new ground. At least as far back as the ancient Greeks, people have wondered how humans seem to have the ability to make their own personal decisions in a manner lacking any causal component other than their desire to "will" something. But Cashmore, Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, says that many biologists today still cling to the idea of free will, and reject the idea that we are simply conscious machines, completely controlled by a combination of our chemistry and external environmental forces.

In a recent study, Cashmore has argued that a belief in free will is akin to religious beliefs, since neither complies with the laws of the physical world. One of the basic premises of biology and biochemistry is that biological systems are nothing more than a bag of chemicals that obey chemical and physical laws. Generally, we have no problem with the “bag of chemicals” notion when it comes to bacteria, plants, and similar entities. So why is it so difficult to say the same about humans or other “higher level” species, when we’re all governed by the same laws?

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Haptics - You feel me?

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:09:00 +0000

Technology Review - 3.3.10 (by Duncan Graham-Rowe)

Forget putting your phone on vibrate. A novel "high-definition" touch-feedback display can give a touch screen the feel of a textured surface. The technology was developed for mobile devices by the San Jose CA-based company Immersion, and is a step toward mimicking the feel of physical buttons on flat screens.

Simple haptic interfaces have been used in cell phones for years, to create silent alerts or provide limited tactile feedback when an onscreen button has been pressed. But such interfaces typically rely on elliptical vibration motors to create a shaking sensation, an approach that is slow and imprecise. Immersion believes this can be greatly improved by switching to a piezoelectric actuator.

Piezeoelectric materials produce mechanical stress in response to an applied voltage, or vice versa. They do this at great speed, which means piezoelectric actuators can respond quickly when a screen is being touched, says Steve Kingsley-Jones, Immersion's director of product management.

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What the Internet Looks Like

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:55:00 +0000

NYT - 3.1.10 (by John Markoff)

Photo credit: Peter Morance.

SAN FRANCISCO — In a dimly lit chamber festooned with wires and hidden in one of California’s largest data centers, Tim Pozar is changing the shape of the Internet.

He is using what Internet engineers refer to as a “meet-me room.” The room itself is enclosed in a building full of computers and routers. What Mr. Pozar does there is to informally wire together the networks of different businesses that want to freely share their Internet traffic.

The practice is known as peering, and it goes back to the earliest days of the Internet, when organizations would directly connect their networks instead of paying yet another company to route data traffic. Originally, the companies that owned the backbone of the Internet shared traffic. In recent years, however, the practice has increased to the point where some researchers who study the way global networks are put together believe that peering is changing the fundamental shape of the Internet, with serious consequences for its stability and security. Others see the vast increase in traffic staying within a structure that has remained essentially the same.

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Drug-resistant germs on the rise

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:31:00 +0000

NYT - 2.26.10 (by Andrew Pollack)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A minor-league pitcher in his younger days, Richard Armbruster kept playing baseball recreationally into his 70s, until his right hip started bothering him. Last February he went to a St. Louis hospital for what was to be a routine hip replacement.

By late March, Mr. Armbruster, then 78, was dead. After a series of postsurgical complications, the final blow was a bloodstream infection that sent him into shock and resisted treatment with antibiotics.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think my dad would walk in for a hip replacement and be dead two months later,” said Amy Fix, one of his daughters.

Not until the day Mr. Armbruster died did a laboratory culture identify the organism that had infected him: Acinetobacter baumannii.

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LHC restarts - will it go all the way this time?

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:15:00 +0000

PhysOrg.com - 2.28.10

Scientists have restarted the world's most powerful atom-smasher overnight, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said Sunday, as they launch a new bid to uncover the secrets of the universe.

"The LHC is on its way again. First beam of 2010 circulated in each direction by 04.10 CET (0310 GMT)," said CERN in a tweet on its website on Sunday.

The 3.9 billion euro (5.6 billion dollars) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was shut down in December to ready it for collisions at unfathomed energy levels. It was run for a few weeks after being successfully revived from a 14 month breakdown.

The particle collider -- inside a 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva -- is aimed at understanding the origins of the universe by recreating the conditions that followed the Big Bang.

In the weeks before the technical shutdown in December, the collider achieved over a million particle collisions and accelerated proton beams to energy levels never reached before, according to CERN.

Collisions reached a world record energy level of 2.36 teraelectronvolts (TeV), already allowing scientists to gather data.

But CERN now wants to reach 7.0 TeV to try to recreate conditions close to the Big Bang, and run it at those levels for 18 to 24 months.

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Whence the wandering apostrophe? Science explores.

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:37:00 +0000

Technology Review - 2.4.10

A new technique for analyzing early English texts is gradually revealing the history of the apostrophe.

Last year, grammatical tragedy struck in the heart of England when Birmingham City Council decreed that apostrophes were to be forever banished from public addresses. To the horror of purists and pedants alike, place names such as St Paul's Square were banned and unceremoniously replaced with an apostrophe-free version: St Pauls Square.

The council's reasoning was that nobody understands apostrophes and their misuse was so common in public signs that they were a hindrance to effective navigation. Anecdotes abounded of ambulance drivers puzzling over how to enter St James's Street into a GPS navigation system while victims of heart attacks, strokes and hit 'n' run drivers passed from this world into the (presumably apostrophe-free) next.

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Dawkins on the Singularity? Very cool

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:52:00 +0000

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Mozart, step aside! Cyber Composer is in da house!

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:51:00 +0000

Miller-McCune - 2.22.10 (by Ryan Blitstein)

David Cope’s software creates beautiful, original music. Why are people so angry about that?

UC Santa Cruz emeritus professor David Cope is ready to introduce computer software that creates original, modern music. (Catherine Karnow).

The office looks like the aftermath of a surrealistic earthquake, as if David Cope’s brain has spewed out decades of memories all over the carpet, the door, the walls, even the ceiling. Books and papers, music scores and magazines are all strewn about in ragged piles. A semi-functional Apple Power Mac 7500 (discontinued April 1, 1996) sits in the corner, its lemon-lime monitor buzzing. Drawings filled with concepts for a never-constructed musical-radio-space telescope dominate half of one wall. Russian dolls and an exercise bike, not to mention random pieces from homemade board games, peek out from the intellectual rubble. Above, something like 200 sets of wind chimes from around the world hang, ringing oddly congruent melodies.

And in the center, the old University of California, Santa Cruz, emeritus professor reclines in his desk chair, black socks pulled up over his pants cuffs, a thin mustache and thick beard lending him the look of an Amish grandfather.

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Controlling the brain with light

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:31:00 +0000

Technology Review - 2.24.10 (by Mark Williams)

A novel optical device could ultimately be used to treat neurological disease.

Light therapy: A neuron (green) engineered to express a light-sensitive protein fires in response to specific wavelengths of light. A glass electrode (lower left corner) records the neuron’s electrical response. Researchers from Medtronic used this system to confirm that a new implantable stimulator can properly activate neurons with light. Credit: Karl Deisseroth, Stanford University.

Researchers at Medtronic are developing a prototype neural implant that uses light to alter the behavior of neurons in the brain. The device is based on the emerging science of optogenetic neuromodulation, in which specific brain cells are genetically engineered to respond to light. Medtronic, the world's largest manufacturer of biomedical technologies, aims to use the device to better understand how electrical therapies, currently used to treat Parkinson's and other disorders, assuage symptoms of these diseases. Medtronic scientists say they will use the findings to improve the electrical stimulators the company already sells, but others ultimately hope to use optical therapies directly as treatments.

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Augmented Identity - I know who you are (if not what you did!)

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:50:00 +0000

Technology Review - 2.23.10 (by Erika Jonietz)

An application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them premiered last Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm, the prototype software combines computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality.

"It's taking social networking to the next level," says Dan Gärdenfors, head of user experience research at TAT. "We thought the idea of bridging the way people used to meet, in the real world, and the new Internet-based ways of congregating would be really interesting."

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Midday naps make you learn better - Tell your boss.

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:23:00 +0000

PhysOrg.com - 2.21.10

If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.

Conversely, the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, according to the findings. The results support previous data from the same research team that pulling an all-nighter - a common practice at college during midterms and finals -- decreases the ability to cram in new facts by nearly 40 percent, due to a shutdown of brain regions during sleep deprivation.

"Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap," said Matthew Walker, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the lead investigator of these studies.

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Is Aging Really Necessary? (Panel Discussion)

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:06:00 +0000

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Newest generation of brain-like computers under development

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:05:00 +0000

ScienceDaily - 2.19.10

Nerve cells are joined together by independent connections called synapses. (Credit: Copyright TU Graz/IGI).

Intelligent machines that not only think for themselves but also actively learn are the vision of researchers of the Institute for Theoretical Science (IGI) at Graz University of Technology.

They have been coordinating the European Union research project "Brain-i-Nets" (Novel Brain Inspired Learning Paradigms for Large-Scale Neuronal Networks) for three years, and are launching a three-day meeting of the participating researchers in Graz. The scientists want to design a new generation of neuro-computers based on the principles of calculation and learning mechanisms found in the brain, and at the same time gain new knowledge about the brain's learning mechanisms.

The human brain consists of a network of several billion nerve cells. These are joined together by independent connections called synapses. Synapses are changing all the time -- something scientists name synaptic plasticity. This highly complex system represents a basis for independent thinking and learning. But even today there are still many open questions for researchers.

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Taking the search for extraterrestrials off-world

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:00:00 +0000

NewScientist - 2.18.10

Boosting signals from ET (Image: TED/James Duncan Davidson).

FRANK DRAKE, the founder of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), wants to take the search for aliens further: about 82 billion kilometres away, in fact.

At this point in space, electromagnetic signals from planets orbiting distant stars would be focused by the gravitational lensing effect of our sun, making them, in theory, more easily detected. Drake wants to send spacecraft there in a bid to overhear alien communications, which would be too faint for telescopes on Earth to detect.

It's neither a new or original idea, but it has never taken off because of the distances involved. With existing propulsion technologies, spacecraft would take hundreds of years to make the voyage, which is about 550 times the distance from Earth to the sun.

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What could you do with 100 megabits per second?

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:40:00 +0000

Networkworld - 2.16.10 (by Jeff Bertolucci)

There's little debate that the United States lags behind other industrialized nations in high-speed Internet use. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), more than 100 million Americans don't have broadband at home because they either can't get it, can't afford it, or aren't aware of its benefits. Some 65 percent of U.S. households have broadband, a far lower adoption rate than in other technologically advanced countries such as Singapore (88 percent) or South Korea (95 percent).

And that's why FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is proposing a National Broadband Plan that would greatly widen the data pipe to most American homes. Speaking in Washington D.C. on Tuesday at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference, Genachowski set an ambitious goal: His "100 Squared" initiative would bring 100-megabit-per-second broadband to 100 million U.S. households by 2020.

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The Future of Futurism (Guest Post)

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:46:00 +0000

So you've read all of Ray Kurzweil's books. You've tracked the progression of the technological singularity, and you can feel it coming. You excitedly tell all your friends about the emergence of superhuman artificial intelligence, but they all write you off. Skepticism isn't new, of course. Darwin's theories on evolution were met with the same disbelief that eventually morphed into contempt, a sentiment that still exists today, despite that evolutionary theory has been proved sound.

Roko Mijic, a mathematics and AI researcher, writes about futurism and transhumanism for both his personal blog and GOOD, a blog dedicated to innovative ideas. In one article, Mijic explains the problems that plague futurism. He contends that rejecting absurd ideas--despite there being evidence in favor of such ideas--is a survival skill from our earlier stages in evolutionary development, a skill that we haven't completely discarded.

He argues that futurism is also hampered by the media proffering a very misconceived version of futurism, in which evil robots run the world. Mijic reasons that futurism is based on probability theory, which is the most rigorous mathematical model available for analyzing uncertainty. And so, as long as we see futurism in this light, as a theory supported by analyzing current trends and numbers, then it won't seem as far-fetched as the media and futurist critics make it out to be.

Another area that Mijic predicts will be at the heart of futurist studies is ethics. In another article, Mijic focuses on the question that's on everyone's mind concerning the technological singularity--will artificial intelligence, even though surpassing our own capabilities, want to do good? Will AI be able to empathize, to love? Or will the media be right about "evil robots?"

Mijic takes these questions very seriously, and he supports the latest solution to the problem of unrestrained, self-improving AI--Coherent Extrapolated Volition, known as the CEV algorithm. Instead of programming human values directly into AI, the CEV algorithm--currently being developed by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a scientist at the Singularity Institute of Artificial Intelligence (SIAI)--would create a procedure that allows AI to extract information on human values based on human behavioral studies, brain scans, and more. To read Yudkowsky's research on the CEV algorithm, visit the SIAI's publications web page.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Pamelia Brown, who writes on the topics of associates degree. She welcomes your comments at pamelia.brown@gmail.com.

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Gesture-activated computer interface - it'll be big

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:07:00 +0000

NYT - 2.15.10 (by Jennifer 8. Lee)

John Underkoffler, who helped create the gesture-based computer interface imagined in the film “Minority Report,” has brought that technology to real life. He gave a demonstration at the TED Conference in Long Beach, Calif., on Friday.

Hollywood imitates life. And sometimes life imitates Hollywood.

John Underkoffler, who led the team that came up with the interface that Tom Cruise’s character used in the 2002 movie “Minority Report,” co-founded a company, Oblong Industries, to make the gesture-activated interface a reality.

Using special gloves, Mr. Underkoffler demonstrated the interface — called the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment — on Friday at the annual TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., a series of lectures by experts across a variety of technologies.

He pushed, pulled and twisted vast troves of photos and forms that were on a screen in front of him, compressing and stretching as he went. He zoomed in, zoomed out and rotated the images using six degrees of control. In one part of the demonstration, he reached into a series of movies, plucked out a single character from each and placed them onto a “table” together where they continued to move. (Oblong has released its own demonstration video).

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Introducing new and improved lifeforms!

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:21:00 +0000

NewScientist - 2.14.10 (by Linda Geddes)

A new way of using the genetic code has been created, allowing proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the creation of new or "improved" life forms incorporating these new materials into their tissue.

In all existing life forms, the four "letters" of the genetic code, called nucleotides, are read in triplets, so that every three nucleotides encode a single amino acid.

Not any more. Jason Chin at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have now redesigned the cell's machinery so that it reads the genetic code in quadruplets.

In the genetic code that life has used up to now, there are 64 possible triplet combinations of the four nucleotide letters; these genetic "words" are called codons. Each codon either codes for an amino acid or tells the cell to stop making a protein chain. Now Chin's team have created 256 blank four-letter codons that can be assigned to amino acids that don't even exist yet.

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Gonna get colder before it gets warmer

bmahfood@gmail.com (Barry Mahfood) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:50:00 +0000

Daily Galaxy - 2.12.10 (by Casey Kazan with Rebecca Sato)

Evidence has mounted that global warming began in the last century and that humans are, at least in part, responsible. The concern is that the warming of our climate will greatly affect its habitability for many species, including humans. Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concur that this is the case. But some argue that this thinking is too limited. They say that too many scientists are either ignoring, or don’t understand, the well-established fact that Earth’s climate has changed rapidly in the past and could change rapidly in the future—in either direction.

Evidence for abrupt climate change is readily found in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. One of the best known examples of such an event is the Younger Dryas cooling of about 12,000 years ago, named after the arctic wildflower found in northern European sediments. This event began and ended rather abruptly, and for its entire 1000 year duration the North Atlantic region was about 5°C colder. Could something like this happen again? It sure could, and because the changes can happen all within one decade—we might not even see it coming.

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