More on the “is technological change accelerating front, from Ars Technica: High-tech adoption happening faster, driving economic growth – Ars Technica. Some economists have attempted to measure the spread of technology within various nations, and discovered it’s not just our imagination: newer tech is being adopted faster, and appears to account for some of the… Continue reading High-tech adoption happening faster, driving economic growth – Ars Technica
Koreans Show Feasibility of Room Temperature Version of IBM Millipede Super High Density Memory.
Accelerating Future » World Future Society 20 Forecasts for 2010-2025. Michael A is mildly skeptical about World Future Society claim we’ll have “human-level AI” by 2025. This caused me to think about whether I believed it myself. I think the answer depends on how you define it. I think AI is going to be really… Continue reading Human Level AI
Five essential things to know about evolution – Ars Technica. John Timmer dispels some common misconceptions. An understanding of evolution is key to understanding technological change — we individual humans are the mutations and crossover, but the dynamics of the overall process is similar.
I (and others) get interviewed by Minnesota Public Radio (podcast) about machine ethics… Robots: Our Future or Our End? | In the Loop | Minnesota Public Radio . Not deep but fun…
Norman Borlaug: The Man Who Saved More Human Lives Than Any Other Has Died – (h/t Reason Magazine). Norman Borlaug, the man who saved more human lives than anyone else in history, has died at age 95. Borlaug was the Father of the Green Revolution, the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe… Continue reading Norman Borlaug, R.I.P: The Man Who Saved More Human Lives Than Any Other Has Died
On 9/11/01 I stood at Newark airport in New Jersey waiting for my flight to Toronto, which never flew. The airport was in clear sight of the World Trade Center 10 miles away across Jersey City and the Hudson River. As I watched the towers fall, I had a curious sense of detachment from the… Continue reading Terrorism and advanced technology
Lithographic Graphitic Memories. HPC Wire reports that advances by the Rice University lab of James Tour have brought graphite’s potential as a mass data storage medium a step closer to reality and created the potential for reprogrammable gate arrays that could bring about a revolution in integrated circuit logic design. (H/T Sander Olson) (H/T Brian… Continue reading Lithographic Graphitic Memories
One of the major problems for micromachines, much less nanomachines, is wear. The phenomenon of stiction combines the two worst aspects of surface-to-surface interaction — a high coefficient of friction and a locally-generated high applied force — to cause enormous problems. At the very smallest scale, once we gain complete control over atomic configuration, superlubricity… Continue reading Nanoscale Wear
In Singularity or Bust I discussed the work of econophysicist Didier Sornette et al in using oscillating hyperexponentials to predict the collapse of Chinese equity markets. They have a new paper out which tells a bit more about how they predict the point of collapse. H/t Physics arXiv Blog. By combining (i) the economic theory… Continue reading Singularity or Bust — update
