3rd Annual Terasem Colloquium on the Law of Transbeman Persons

Read the speeches by Marvin Minsky, David R. Koepsell, William Sims Bainbridge, Linda MacDonald-Glenn, Max More, Sebastian Sethe, R. Michael Perry, Gene Natale and Martine Rothblatt from the 3rd Terasem Colloquium on the Law of Transbeman Persons.

Source: Terasem and Michael Anissimov.

UK 2017: under surveillance

IT is a chilling, dystopian account of what Britain will look like 10 years from now: a world in which Fortress Britain uses fleets of tiny spy-planes to watch its citizens, of Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice, of an underclass trapped in sink-estate ghettos under constant state surveillance, of worker drones forced to take on the lifestyle and values of the mega-corporation they work for, and of the super-rich hiding out in gated communities constantly monitored by cameras and private security guards.

Source: Sunday Herald.

The reality of our science future

Most of the predictions of the future have been done by science fiction writers, Hollywood screen writers, and social critics, who either paint a blissful, Gee-whiz future when obedient robot maids and butlers cater to our every whim, or a gruesome, dark dystopia when the machines take over and humanity is enslaved.

But what do the scientists themselves say? What are the views of the people who are actually doing the yeoman’s work of inventing the future in their laboratory?

Source: BBC. Also see “Robot cars race around California”, BBC.

Quest for Immortality: De Grey, Bostrom and Sandberg

Iran, US: Prospects for a ‘hot war’

In the first of a two-part series, ISN Security Watch examines the chances of military conflict between Iran and the US, which some believe could come at the start of next year. By Kamal Nazer Yasin in Tehran for ISN Security Watch (01/10/07)

“Postsingular” by Rudy Rucker

Cover page from www.rudyrucker.com

In Postsingular, a mad scientist creates a race of nants — nanites — that digest the planet and turn it into a computational simulation of Earth, called Vearth. However, an autistic child memorizes a long string of numbers that poisons the nants and causes them to reverse themselves (luckily, they’re engaged in reversible computation) and put the planet back. That’s the setup.

Via Boingboing about Rudy Rucker’s new book “Postsingular”:

Alt-cultural folk strive to save Earth from digitized doom in this novel from the prince of gonzo SF. A computer mogul’s threat to replace messy reality with clean virtuality and by a memory-hungry artificial intelligence called the Big Pig propels nanotechnologist Ond Lutter, his autistic son, Chu, and their allies on an interdimensional quest for a golden harp, the Lost Chord, strung with hypertubes that can unroll the eighth dimension and unleash limitless computing power. Though he tries to unite the hard and the fuzzy sides of physics, Rucker (Mathematicians in Love) favors the flower power of San Francisco over the number crunching of Silicon Valley. His novel vibrates with the warm rhythms of dream and imagination, not the cold logic of programming (or, for that matter, plotting). Playing with the math of quantum computing, encryption and virtual reality, Rucker places his faith in people who find true reality gnarly enough to love.

I have to buy this book.

Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

The Futurist has published forcasts on global change the coming 25 years in their recent newsletter (”Forcasts for the Next 25 Years“). Compared to more radical molecular manufacturing and transhumanist groups the World Future Society represent main-stream futurism. So if this is the most conservative estimate on cognitive technologies we should be in for some mind-expanding times:

Forecast #4: We’ll incorporate wireless technology into our thought processing by 2030. In the next 25 years, we’ll learn how to augment our 100 trillion very slow interneuronal connections with high-speed virtual connections via nanorobotics. This will allow us to greatly boost our pattern-recognition abilities, memories, and overall thinking capacity, as well as to directly interface with powerful forms of computer intelligence and to each other. By the end of the 2030s, we will be able to move beyond the basic architecture of the brain’s neural regions.

Source: WFS.

Public meeting will re-examine future of artificial intelligence

For decades, scientists and writers have imagined a future with walking, talking robots that could do everything from cooking your eggs to enslaving your planet.

Trouble is, this fabled artificial intelligence has never happened.

But this weekend, more than 700 scientists and tech industry leaders will gather at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts Theatre to plan for the day - still decades away - when computers start improving themselves without the approval of their former masters. Participants wonder whether this will yield the kindly Commander Data of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fame or the mob of killer machines that attempted a world takeover in the movie “I, Robot.”

Source: San Francisco Chronicle.

The 11th Hour Time Capsule

Source: 11th Hour Action.

Artificial Life Likely In 3 To 10 Years

Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they’re getting closer. Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of “wet artificial life.”

Source: AP via CBS News.