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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Author: Foresight Editor

Copying Virus Armor For Nanomachines?

from the what-the-well-dressed-virus-is-wearing-this-season dept.
Sentharus pointed out an article at ScienceDaily entitled "Discovery Of Armored Viruses May Inspire New Designs For Nanotechnology," on research reported in the September 22 Science (registration required): "Now scientists have discovered that one type of virus actually comes equipped with an armored coat made of interlocking rings of protein…. remarkably similar to chain mail suits worn by medieval knights…. The armored virus was detected by an international team of scientists from Stanford, the Scripps Research Institute, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Uppsala in Sweden."

Salon article on "Techno-dystopia" ads

from the every-party-has-a-pooper dept.
SeanMorgan wrote to point out a Salon article on the Turning Point Project and their anti-technology ads in the New York Times .

"A mostly sympathetic [to Turning Point] article, but it does include some comments from Foresight Sr. Assoc. Eric Raymond.

They even have a problem with social software:

'Everyone should think different together,' quips the copy, suggesting that huge conglomerates rushing toward globalization are more likely to benefit from 'global computer networks' than individuals."

Controlling Position and Orientation of Molecules

from the keeping-the-little-ones-in-line dept.
alison writes "Scientists at the University of Bielefeld in Germany have come up with a new electromagnetic method of controlling the motion and orientation of polar molecules simultaneously. Control of the motion of Bose-Einstein condensates along wires had already been demonstrated by a group in Austria. Ewan Wright of the University of Arizona tells me that arbitrary hard-to-condense atoms can now be B-E condensed by placing them in a trap with an easy-condensing species to which they transfer energy. This is not unlike a common scheme in lasers where an easy-to-pump molecule transfers energy to another molecule with a desirable transition, e.g. N2 gas in with CO2 in a CO2 laser.

I'm convinced now more than ever that a potential 'assembler' will be a vacuum system with interwoven laser beams, electric and magnetic fields that energy-select species, orient them and transport them to a surface."

Infinite Data on an Electron

from the how-many-bits-on-the-head-of-an-electron dept.
Michael Dale noticed this in EETimes. "Interesting development in the quantum computer realm. '…Bucksbaum used a laser to encode parallel phase reversals along the waveform of an atom's electrons – a pulsating stream of 8-bit phase reversals. A second reference stream enabled the researchers to read back out the original bits by decoding the phase reversals, thereby recovering the stored information like a data register…'

Bucksbaum claims there is no 'theoretic limit to how long a string of 1s and 0s you can store in one'. "

Time to start writing

from the gigahands-make-nanowork dept.
ChrisPhoenix writes "(This was written as a letter to Foresight leadership; Chris Peterson asked us to get Nanodot feedback.)

In a spontaneous group that formed Sunday night after the recent Foresight Senior Associates Gathering, four of us discovered that we all felt similarly: that the time has come to build on the suggestions and issues produced by previous Foresight work and gatherings. Having attended several Gatherings and heard several issues from multiple perspectives, we are ready to start filling in the details. Although large and random groups are great for brainstorming, they are perhaps not the best structure for producing detailed, focused, mature work on specific issues. Small working groups or think tanks would be useful at this point, to begin processing the excellent suggestions that have flowed from the Gatherings." (Click Read More… for the rest.)

The Next Really Big Enormous Thing

from the a-singularity-is-coming dept.
Robin Hanson gave an informal talk titled "The Next Really Big Enormous Thing", which argues that there are reasons, based on historical models to expect that the pace of change may increase soon. He seems to be trying to convince economists and social scientists to take our concept of Singularity seriously, and to start doing active research into what the effects might be.

Nanojets

from the really-tiny-scrubbing-bubbles dept.
GinaMiller (and others) wrote "Simulation shows that liquid jets a few nanometers in diameter might have the potential to produce ever-smaller electronic circuitry, inject genes into cells, or etch tiny features. Writing in the August 18 issue of Science, Georgia Tech researchers suggest that jets as small as six nanometers in diameter may be possible — though they will require special conditions to operate and be sensitive to effects not of concern to macroscopic jets. As a next step, the researchers would like to create nanojets experimentally and use them to apply patterns that could replace current lithographic processes in the manufacture of nanoscale miniaturized circuits. They could potentially also be used as "gene guns" to insert genetic materials into cells without causing damage. The researchers produced some nice graphics "

Gruen Honored For Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Films

Multiple alert Nanodotters wrote in about the Chicago Tribune article describing Dieter Gruen's work at Argonne National Laboratory leading to ultrananocrystalline diamond film. Gruen was honored by the Materials Research Society with the MRS Medal Award. EddieWehri writes, " Preliminary tests show that ultrananodiamonds are 1,000 more wear-resistant than silicon, and 1 million times denser than conventional crystals. This makes them a practical base material for micromachines and other devices that had only been theoretically possible before. Maybe this will mark the real beginning of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age."

"Letter from 2020": Logical conclusion of current IP trends

from the garden-of-pure-ideology dept.
Found on Slashdot: A not-so-fantastic extrapolation of current IP trends called "Letter From 2020" by Mark Summerfield. "The saddest subversive I met claimed to be a programmer. He said that he was writing a program using Basic.NET. He must have been insane. Even if his program worked he wouldn't be allowed to run it. How could one person possibly check every possible patent infringement in a program they wrote? And even if he hadn't infringed he couldn't sell it without buying a compatibility license from Microsoft.NET and who could possibly afford that?"

Immortality prevention described as "unlikely"

from the "a-little-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing" dept.
Saturn Graphix writes "In Daily Telegraph Full Article Here
'Why science may bring curse of immortality' by Roger Highfield
Better treatment of disease could lead to 'generational cleansing' as people live longer, an ethical expert warned last week [in the journal Science]. The elderly could be condemned to death by suicide or euthanasia after an allotted lifespan as medical advances raise the maximum age beyond 120, according to Dr John Harris, professor of bioethics at Manchester University. Professor Harris said a side-effect of research to treat the diseases of old age, such as dementia, cancer and arthritis, could be to extend the maximum age to immortality…He said it was unlikely that we could stop the progression to longer lifespans and even immortality. 'We should start thinking now about how we can live decently and creatively with the prospect of such lives.' " CP: Some of us are already doing so.

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