The Omega Point [Jason Silva] Matrioshka brain A matrioshka brain is a hypothetical megastructure proposed by Robert Bradbury, based on the Dyson sphere, of immense computational capacity. It is an example of a Class B stellar engine, employing the entire energy output of a star to drive computer systems.[1] This concept derives its name from Russian Matrioshka dolls.[2] Concept[edit] The term "matrioshka brain" was invented by Robert Bradbury as an alternative to the "Jupiter brain"—a concept similar to the matrioshka brain, but on a smaller planetary scale and optimized for minimum signal propagation delay. A matrioshka brain design is concentrated on sheer capacity and the maximum amount of energy extracted from its source star, while a Jupiter brain is more optimized for computational speed.[3] Such a structure would be composed of at least two but typically more Dyson spheres built around a star, and nested one inside another. Possible uses[edit] [edit] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] "Matrioshka Micronode".
The Future of Intelligence Cadell Last, Adam Ford By Cadell Last Human intelligence, like everything related to biological systems, is an evolving phenomenon. It has not been static in the past, and will not persist in its current form into the future. The human-version of intelligence has made our species the most powerful agent of change ever produced by the earth's biosphere. Clearly the human ability to engage in these novel behaviours is dependent on the human brain. a comparatively short period of evolutionary time, hominid brain size exploded. Before the emergence of our genus, apes had existed for approximately 18 million years. Recent studies, like those conducted on the 2.5 million-year-old Australopithecus africanus skull known as Taung Child suggest that human-like brain growth had already started in the precursor species to Homo. The Explosion Evolutionary processes can occur in short bursts of hundreds of thousands of years, and sometimes tens of thousands of years. Global Brain
The interspecies internet: Peter Gabriel and Vint Cerf at TED2013 Photos: James Duncan Davidson The internet connects people all over the world. But could the internet also connect us with dolphins, apes, elephants and other highly intelligent species? In a bold talk in Session 10 of TED2013, four incredible thinkers come together to launch the idea of the interspecies internet. The talk begins with Diana Reiss, a cognitive psychologist who studies intelligence in animals. “A dolphin has self-awareness,” says Reiss. Reiss shares her work with dolphins — she’s been teaching them to communicate through an underwater keyboard of symbols that correspond to whistles and playful activities. “You can’t get more alien than the dolphin. Reiss was conducting this work on her own. “I make noises for a living, and on a good day it’s music,” says Gabriel. “What was amazing to me was that [the animals] seemed a lot more adept at getting a handle on our language than we were at getting a handle on theirs,” says Gabriel. “She discovers a note she likes.
Why the Global Brain needs a Therapist The idea that the world itself could be considered an overarching form of mind can trace its roots deep into the religious longings of pantheism- the idea that the universe itself is God, or the closest thing we will ever find to our conception of God. In large part, I find pantheists to be a noble group. Any club that might count as its members a philosophical giant like Spinoza, a paradigm shattering genius such as Einstein, or a songbird like Whitman I would be honored to belong to myself. But alas, I have my doubts about pantheism- at least in particular its contemporary manifestation in the form of our telecommunications and computer networks being granted the status of an embryonic “global brain”. Key figures in this idea that our communications networks might constitute the neural passageways of a great collective brain predate the Internet by more than a generation. We are faced with a harmonized collectivity of consciousness, the equivalent of a sort of super-consciousness.
A Computable Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature as Computation Author: Hector Zenil Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company (5/31/2012) This volume, with a foreword by Sir Roger Penrose, discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. The volume provides a state-of-the-art collection of technical papers and non-technical essays, representing a field that assumes information and computation to be key in understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Alan M Turing — the inventor of universal computation, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and is part of the Turing Centenary celebrations.
Pathway to the Global Brain (part 1/5): Introduction to Cybernetics What is the nature of intelligence? If you share this, please use the hashtags #GlobalBrain and/or #LongReads The Global Brain is a concept representing the hypothesized emergence of a higher-level distributed intelligence caused by human-machine communication networks on the Internet. Leading research and model-building on this phenomenon is occurring at the Global Brain Institute in Belgium. The following blog series is in preparation for my Ph.D. work on the Global Brain. I hope you enjoy the groundwork for this work (below). Biological intelligence is a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe. – Paul Davies The human story is a story about reaching towards the Sun. – Me Imagine it is the year 3,000 C.E. If you are like me, this would be quite a strange future. In a 2007 Long Now Foundation article by computer scientist Vernor Vinge, he proposed a few thought experiments about our future. 1) “The Wheel of Time” scenario – humanity experiences series of endless cycles. City / Neuron
Tim O'Reilly: Birth of the Global Mind “The history of civilization is a story of evolution in our ability to build complex ‘multicellular minds,‘" says Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media (books, conferences, foo camps, Maker Faires, Make magazine.) Speech allowed us to communicate and coordinate. Writing allowed that coordination to span time and space. Twentieth century mass communications allowed shared information and culture to blanket the world. But that's not all. The future belongs not to artificial intelligence, but to collective intelligence. The global mind is us, augmented As a student of the classics at Harvard in the 1970s, O’Reilly was impressed by a book titled The Discovery of the Mind: In Greek Philosophy and Literature, by Bruno Snell. Global consciousness was a recurrent idea in the 1970s---from Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere and Omega point (“the Singularity of its day”) to “New Age mumbo-jumbo” such as the Harmonic Convergence. The global mind is not an artificial intelligence.
Pathway to the Global Brain (part 2/5): Waking Up Our evolution If you share this, please use the hashtags #GlobalBrain and/or #LongReads The Global Brain is a concept representing the hypothesized emergence of a higher-level distributed intelligence caused by human-machine communication networks on the Internet. Leading research and model-building on this phenomenon is occurring at the Global Brain Institute in Belgium. The following blog series is in preparation for my Ph.D. work on the Global Brain. I would like to create a new perspective on our evolutionary history which combines evolutionary anthropology and cybernetics. Previously in the Pathway to the Global Brain blog series: (Part 1/5): Introduction to Cybernetics I hope you enjoy the groundwork for this work. My contribution to the discussion on the Global Brain is rooted in evolutionary anthropology. Before the Transitions There have been three major metasystem transitions in human history: HuntingAgricultureIndustry Cooperation has increased with every transition Hunting Cadell Last
Brain Preservation Foundation Pathway to the Global Brain (part 3/5): Agriculture and Industry Agriculture and Industry If you share this, please use the hashtags #GlobalBrain and/or #LongReads The Global Brain is a concept representing the hypothesized emergence of a higher-level distributed intelligence caused by human-machine communication networks on the Internet. Leading research and model-building on this phenomenon is occurring at the Global Brain Institute in Belgium. The following blog series is in preparation for my Ph.D. work on the Global Brain. Previously in the Pathway to the Global Brain blog series: (Part 1/5): Introduction to Cybernetics (Part 2/5): Waking Up I hope you enjoy the groundwork for this work. Agriculture Agriculture During the first metasystem transition, everything that we think of as “uniquely human” first developed. Cue the agricultural revolution. The hunting transition likely had many centers. Omo Omo To illustrate this I want to discuss Omo. Energy and Control But with the agricultural revolution, as I stated, an energy source is controlled. Industry
The Strange Neuroscience of Immortality By Evan R. Goldstein Cambridge, Mass. Illustrations by Harry Campbell for The Chronicle Review In the basement of the Northwest Science Building here at Harvard University, a locked door is marked with a pink and yellow sign: "Caution: Radioactive Material." Hayworth has spent much of the past few years in a windowless room carving brains into very thin slices. Why? But first he has to die. "If your body stops functioning, it starts to eat itself," he explains to me one drab morning this spring, "so you have to shut down the enzymes that destroy the tissue." It's the kind of scheme you expect to encounter in science fiction, not an Ivy League laboratory. To understand why Hayworth wants to plastinate his own brain you have to understand his field—connectomics, a new branch of neuroscience. Among some connectomics scholars, there is a grand theory: We are our connectomes. Hayworth takes this theory a few steps further. That is not a prevailing view. Hayworth knows he's courting ridicule.