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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Author: Foresight Editor

Freeman Dyson on New Species of Humans

from the my-new-wings-don't-work-in-Earth-gravity-anyway dept.
Ralph Brave reports in Salon: Princeton's Dyson has his own ideas on what is to be done. In his view, the speciation of humans into different groups is inevitable — and it would be a disaster to allow such diversification without restraint. "We must travel the high road into space, to find new worlds to match our new (genetic) capabilities," Dyson writes in The Sun, the Genome and the Internet, published last year. "To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough." CP: What is the "restraint" here — getting to colonize space? Oh, OK…since they insist.

Yudkowsky's Scale of Future Shock Levels

from the weirdness-comes-in-degrees dept.
How much change can you handle? Find out by seeing where you fit on Senior Associate Eliezer S. Yudkowsky's Shock Level scale showing various levels of coming technologies and potential applications. Which level can you face with "calm acceptance"? You've probably picked your level correctly when lower levels seem boring while higher ones look flaky. This scale, or one very like it, is a key tool of memetic engineering. Read More for caveats.

Self-assembled artificial bacterium?

from the higher-order-self-assembly dept.
BrianWang and GinaMiller both reported this U of Illinois news release: "By manipulating simple and nonspecific interactions, researchers have discovered a way to make chemicals spontaneously self-assemble into ribbon-like tubules that resemble bacterial cell walls. The micrometer-sized tubules have potential applications in drug delivery systems and as templates for the synthesis of inorganic nanostructured materials." The Science article (abstract and summary free with registration) about this work concludes "The tubules described here…can be thought of as constituting a spontaneously assembled 'artificial' bacterium." CP: An overstatement, but the reseachers get points for vision.

Quantum-dot Cellular Automata = Molecular Electronics

from the really-different-computers dept.
Senior Associate Alison Chaiken (alison) writes "In a recent Science magazine article, Notre Dame electrical engineer Craig S. Lent discusses the possibility of molecular electronics circuits based on the "Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA)" paradigm. (This article, as well as a critical response, should be available with free registration.) The primary thrust of the article is to argue that attempts to implement current-switching molecular electronics that mirror the behavior of silicon circuits are misguided, and that molecular electronics will require a different type of architecture altogether." Read More for additional analysis.

Nature Releases Genome Information

from the it's-a-discovery-not-an-invention-so-no-patents! dept.
Foresight Director of Communications Tanya Jones alerts us that the journal "Nature is openly publishing information on the Human Genome project on its website, rather than restricting this to subscribers only. See their index of relevant papers, news, and application data. Included is asection on bioethics which may shed some light on concerns about the development of nanotechnology and provide us with avenues to achieving consensus on how these technologies may safely be developed. –Tanya "

Distributed Biomorphic Bots for Space

from the let's-let-them-do-the-work dept.
Gordon Worley writes "There is a n article up at SPACE.COM about robots being built to explore Mars. The one described in the article is distributed and reminds me very much of the work done by Mark Tilden [of Los Alamos], though not enough details are given to decide how closely. " Read More for details on BiRoD — Biomorphic Robot with Distributed power.

"Ethics for Machines" paper: Excellent

from the great-stuff dept.
Strongly recommended by Foresight chairman Eric Drexler is this paper by Senior Associate Josh Hall. Josh writes "The final version of my ethics for machines paper is now available. Thanks to all those at the "Confronting Singularity" Gathering who read the draft and discussed the ideas with me."Do you agree with Eric that this work is important and should be expanded into a book?

Publius: anonymous web publishing from AT&T

from the technology-makes-strange-bedfellows dept.
BryanBruns writes "Publius enables anonymous publishing over the internet, with strong protection built in for privacy. An article in the Washington Post describes the system, developed by AT&T researchers, which will have a public test from July 28-September 28.

It seems like a good example of pro-actively developing tools to protect key values, which will be important, for example, in trying to make nanotech accessible and safe.

Anonymity raises some of the usual censorship issues like dangerous information, defamation, etc., versus the benefits of enabling free speech, especially to those whose governments would stop them from speaking out. "

Jaron Lanier vs. Machine Intelligence

from the Moravec-as-religious?! dept.
Virtual reality pioneer/musician JaronLanier has published a Critique of Machine Intelligence. Excerpt: The culture of machine consciousness enthusiasts often includes the expressed hope that human death will be avoidable by actually enacting the first thought experiment above, of transferring the human brain into a machine. Hans Moravec is one researcher who explicitly hopes for this eventuality. If we can become machines we don't have to die, but only if we believe in machine consciousness. I don't think it's productive to argue about religion in the same way we argue about philosophy or science, but it is important to understand when religion is what we are talking about. Do you agree with Jaron that the uploading meme is a religious concept?

US News: why nanotech can't be stopped

from the driven-researcher dept.
Author RobertGrudin recommends this news article in US News & World Report. It includes a clear explanation of why researchers won't stop developing nanotech: "We are compelled to keep going. It is just so cool," says Paul Alivisatos, professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley. "We are knocking on the door of creating new living things, new hybrids of robotics and biology. Some may be pretty scary, but we have to keep going." Read More for additional highlights.

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