I’m continuing to get caught up on the Linkathon email. “Happy Crow” writes us:

You inspired me to write something while listening to the latest Fast-Forward radio. I don’t know what all the limits are on push-prizes, but what about one that created courses designed to let “the rest of us” benefit from the same kind of linguistic logic that allows philologists to comprehend a dozen-some languages?

Anyway, whether for link, or just for your reaction, here’s the url, and thanks in advance.”

My thought is that push prizes can be effective for most any type of development that people would like to see happen. The keys, I think, are:

1. Have a realistic goal that is within the grasp of foreseeable science,

2. Offer a sum that’s sufficient to inspire action, AND
3. Be someone (or a foundation or whatever) that potential competitors will trust to actually pay the prize when its won.

The amount of money that’s offered for these prizes varies according to what needs to be accomplished. We’ve had fun recently talking on FastForward Radio about the success of both the DARPA Urban challenge, and Stephen Wolfram’s universal Turing machine question. DARPA paid out $3.5 million, Stephen Wolfram paid out $25,000. They both got their money’s worth I think.

-Linkathon.

If you’d like get linked by The Speculist, email us.

I apologize for not checking the Speculist email box more often, but 3/4th of the Speculist email starts out:

Dearest One:

You may be surprised by my writing….

Actually, after thousands of these emails my level of surprise has diminished somewhat. Apparently there are a lot of very wealthy Nigerians that think that “Speculist” is English for “Bank.” But I digress.

Wading through the spam I found this letter from Florian Widder:

Hi Phil and Stephen,

just read a blog post on a big German blog I frequent (this post is in English though, so check it out if you like) that talked about a team at UC Berkely having created the first fully functional radio from a single carbon nanotube.

The second link above goes to the Berkeley Labs website and explains the whole project in greater detail – makes for a fascinating read and it is an incredibly exciting showcase of what we can do in our ever-expanding quest use the laws of nature for our purposes..

I know, I know a radio may not seem all that exciting with everyone in futurist and pro-technology circles talking about AIs, self-replicating nanobots etc… but personally, I find this insanely exciting. Just reading about the long-term possibilities is exhiliarating:

Just one quote to deomonstrate what I mean:

“The entire radio would easily fit inside a living cell, and this small size allows it to safely interact with biological systems,” Zettl said. “One can envision interfaces with brain or muscle functions, or radio-controlled devices moving through the bloodstream.”

Need I say more?

No you don’t.

Phil and I were also impressed. We spoke about this in our October 21 FastForward Radio podcast.

-Linkathon.

If you’d like get linked by The Speculist, email us.