Three Major Schools (Originally appeared on the Machine Intelligence Research Institute blog, September 2007.) Singularity discussions seem to be splitting up into three major schools of thought: Accelerating Change, the Event Horizon, and the Intelligence Explosion. Accelerating Change: Core claim: Our intuitions about change are linear; we expect roughly as much change as has occurred in the past over our own lifetimes. But technological change feeds on itself, and therefore accelerates. Change today is faster than it was 500 years ago, which in turn is faster than it was 5000 years ago. The thing about these three logically distinct schools of Singularity thought is that, while all three core claims support each other, all three strong claims tend to contradict each other. I find it very annoying, therefore, when these three schools of thought are mashed up into Singularity paste. Apocalyptism: Hey, man, have you heard?
Singularity Theory May Explain Fermi Paradox The Drake equation demonstrates that due to the vast scope of our universe, it is highly unlikely that there is not intelligent life other than us. The Fermi paradox ponders why (considering the results from the Drake equation) we have not yet detected any other intelligent life. Singularity theory anticipates a point in time where rapid growth in intelligence and replication create a border that is like an asymptote or singularity threshold beyond which lies an undefinable area that is not comparable to what we currently know as intelligence. The Schwarzchild radius describes the limit of the ability of light to escape a black hole singularity, or the “edge” of the black hole where it becomes totally black. The answer to the Fermi paradox may lie in the idea of a singularity-like expansion in intelligence that rapidly moves beyond our ability to understand it or detect it. By Omar Fink on September 22nd, 2010 Stumble It!
molecules storage Storage is a very exciting thing these days: SSDs are increasing in capacity and becoming cheaper, hard drives are offering storage capacity that’s unprecedented at the consumer level, and recently, scientists have been able to store significant amounts of data using unusual mediums, such as strings of DNA and small groups of atoms. Now, scientists have managed to store data in individual molecules. Using a new, still-experimental technology, researchers have managed to turn individual molecules into a storage medium. In theory, this molecular memory could increase current storage capacities by one thousand times over more conventional means. Molecular memory isn’t an entirely new concept but there have always been significant hurdles, the first of which is no stranger to the computing world: cooling. The team also overcame another significant hurdle standing in the way of molecular memory. Research paper: Interface-engineered templates for molecular spin memory devices
A solar cooled air-conditioning system Why the Word "Transhumanism" Should Bother You, Too Want to have the ability to move things around with your mind, print out any new body parts you might need, including organs, and be able to work from home every day via a completely convincing virtual reality setup? All of these things are not only within reach, according to a movement that is gaining traction more rapidly than almost any other in history, but they are inevitably happening within the next 30 years. Many authors (myself included) struggle to give a name to this incredible movement, instead deferring to the event where all of this converging technology culminates in a brand new way of life for all human beings, utterly different in ways we aren't capable of imagining with our "unaugmented" human brains: the Technological Singularity. The world we live in is not one of linear growth, nor has it ever been one.
Contact lenses upgrade your eyes to enable true immersive VR Our eyes are just not built for the future. It sucks, but it's true. We can't physically focus on things that are very close to us, which is why we're not all rocking high-resolution immersive virtual reality displays built into our eyeglasses. We've posted about head-mounted VR displays a lot around here, but there's always a compromise going on: you can have a small, slick system that projects a little image with a narrow field of view, or you can have a gigantic bulky system that projects a big image with a wide field of view. The obvious solution, then, is to modify our eyes to enable them to focus on objects that are much, much closer. Innovega's iOptik contact lenses have special filters and secondary lenses built into them that block out all of the light from close-up displays except for a narrow beam that's refocused by the lens itself and fired straight back into your pupil. Via Innovega
inversion vieillissement A technique to keep the tips of your chromosomes healthy could reverse tissue ageing. The work, which was done in mice, is yet more evidence of a causal link between chromosome length and age-related disease. Telomeres, the caps of DNA which protect the ends of chromosomes, shorten every time cells divide. Mariela Jaskelioff and her colleagues at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, engineered mice with short telomeres and inactive telomerase to see what would happen when they turned the enzyme back on. Four weeks after the team switched on the enzyme, they found that tissue had regenerated in several organs, new brain cells were developing and the mice were living longer. Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature09603 Topics: age
Technology Review: Long-Distance Wi-Fi Intel has announced plans to sell a specialized Wi-Fi platform later this year that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The wireless technology, called the rural connectivity platform (RCP), will be helpful to computer-equipped students in poor countries, says Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel. And the data rates are high enough–up to about 6.5 megabits per second–that the connection could be used for video conferencing and telemedicine, he says. The RCP, which essentially consists of a processor, radios, specialized software, and an antenna, is an appealing way to connect remote areas that otherwise would go without the Internet, says Galinovsky. Already, Intel has installed and tested the hardware in India, Panama, Vietnam, and South Africa. One node is usually installed at the edge of an urban area, wired to a local-area network cable, he explains.
Evolution of evolvability Evolution of Evolvability This paper shows how evolution tunes the content and frequency of genetic variation to enhance its evolvability. Genetic evolution is not random or entirely blind. Genetic systems are like nervous systems and brains—they have been structured and organised by evolution to enhance their ability to discover effective adaptations. (For a more general approach to the evolution of evolvability, see Chapters 8 to 12 inclusive of the on-line book Evolution's Arrow. It examines in detail how evolution itself has evolved. (a final version of this paper was published in the Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems (1997) 20: 53-73.) The cognitive ability of a genetic system is its capacity to discover and perpetuate beneficial adaptations. Cognitive ability will be influenced by genetic arrangements which affect the range and types of variant genotypes which are produced and trialed within the genetic system. Are genetic arrangements which have these features feasible?
The Neuroscience Of Music - Wired Science Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. The stories it tells are all subtlety and subtext. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deep, to tickle some universal nerves. We can now begin to understand where these feelings come from, why a mass of vibrating air hurtling through space can trigger such intense states of excitement. Because the scientists were combining methodologies (PET and fMRI) they were able to obtain an impressively precise portrait of music in the brain. The more interesting finding emerged from a close study of the timing of this response, as the scientists looked to see what was happening in the seconds before the subjects got the chills. In essence, the scientists found that our favorite moments in the music were preceeded by a prolonged increase of activity in the caudate. The question, of course, is what all these dopamine neurons are up to.