What forces are going to shape the world throughout the 21st century? A recent NYT bestseller, The Next 100 Years, by George Friedman, proposes a number of very interesting theories. Friedman is considered to be something of an intellectual maverick, contradicting the conventional wisdom at many points, and very insightful, since in many cases his… Continue reading Required Reading
Over at CRN, Chris Phoenix posted a very nice piece about the reception Foresight gave to introduce me as President. He mentions that I am broadening Foresight’s focus to include AI as well as nanotechnology in the picture we see of transformative technologies on the horizon. But he ends with an interesting twist: But I’ll… Continue reading Prometheus
Last week at AGI-09, I chaired a one-day workshop on the future of AGI. (“AGI” means Artificial General Intelligence, which is essentially what the term “AI” meant before 1980: the attempt to build a system that would be the equivalent of a human in its thinking abilities, displaying a robust ability to think, converse, exhibit… Continue reading Early Retirement
Nanotech advances are leading toward bone implants that are are smart, multifunctional devices that will be capable of improved integration with surrounding bone tissue, and that will resist inflammation, bacterial growth, and the recurrence of bone cancer.
The relevance of the ribosome to nanotech may be greatly increased by the announcement that synthetic ribosomes have been created and used to synthesize a complex protein named firefly luciferase.
Another promising nanotech approach to harnessing the potential of siRNA molecules is to pack them on the surface of gold nanoparticles.
Using optical near-field effects with a laser to localize heating effects, scientists were able to induce the growth of 1.4-nanometer-diameter ultra-short single-walled carbon nanotubes between the sharp tips of electrodes separated by about 200 nm.
“It is time we do what’s necessary to make NANO the next national priority.”–U.S. Rep. Michael Honda, D-San Jose
Two publications in the current issue of the IOP journal Nanotechnology report techniques that may bring real-time quality control to two different nanotech fabrication methods.
This the sixth essay in a series exploring if, when, and how the Singularity will happen, why (or why not) we should care, and what, if anything, we should do about it. Part VI: The heavily-loaded takeoff The fastest software I ever used ran on some of the slowest computers I ever had. Circa 1980,… Continue reading Singularity, part 6
