…where science, futurism, and anything else Stephen finds interesting are thrown together in an informational stew for your consumption.
Enjoy!
Follow Stephen on Twitter: @stephentgo
With the exception of perhaps jetpacks, nothing says that you’ve made it to the “future” more than seeing actual flying cars in the sky.
Fisker plans to use this facility to make a lower priced entry-level EV.
By the way, please feel free to link to the Speculist.
Old news, but true: the Internet is creating opportunities for people to help each other in ways that just weren’t possible before.
And here’s a good example of that cognitive surplus in action. People answering specific questions like “What’s the best app for navigating New York subway?”
With more intelligent species, knowledge can be passed on to succeeding generations. This creates evolutionary pressure toward increased longevity.
We call this “The Solar Singularity.”
Well, the customers were already saying it when they dropped off their pets, so it seemed like a good name for the business.
Particularly since our brains seem to create the reality around us. What if the missing piece of the Grand Unified Theory is our consciousness?
The thought of Wil Wheaton having to put aside Netflix for a book strikes me as funny somehow. The future is still a work in progress. Still, pretty awesome that it was working at all.
UPDATE: Looks like we’re back in business. Typekey registration is now required for commenting. If you’re not already registered with Typekey, it’s easy to do, and you can use your Facebook account if you prefer.
…where science, futurism, and anything else Stephen finds interesting are thrown together in an informational stew for your consumption.
Enjoy!
Follow Stephen on Twitter: @stephentgo
The slightest push can move even massive objects in space. So space junk can be pushed into the atmosphere for quick disposal. If the power demands of a beam system were reasonable, this could be an incredibly efficient way to zap the problem.
…that according to the scientist / entrepreneur who’s setting up the project.
I find that some apps are an improvement over their PC equivalents. I prefer Twittering from my iPhone to doing it on the computer.
Encouraging teeth to heal themselves strikes me as a much prefered method of dealing with cavities than the comparably barbaric drill-and-fill method.
I hadn’t heard of this film before today. I’ll try to see it and post a review ASAP.
More spooky stuff!
Up till now cash transfer systems have used a central server to verify the transfer. This system builds verification into the software. If this could work (I have some doubts) it could become the cheaper alternative (no middleman fees).
I’ve also noticed more of errors and typos in electronic versions of books. There is no reason for this. If a work is going to be subjected to an editor at any point, shouldn’t the electronic version be published AFTER that point?
Another solution to replanting akin to the Perennial grains mentioned in my last post. What if corn could grow from the corn stalks laying in the field?
An interview published in Hplus magazine last year. Definitely worth a look if you haven’t seen it yet.
Manipulating optical signals without conversion to electric has been a tough problem to crack. It appears that we may be getting close to a solution.
Maybe the problem is scalability, but how’s Dad going to feel when Junior has better 3D tech on his handheld Nintendo than the family has on the new expensive flat screen TV?
I’m sorting through some issues related to our new version of Movable Type. Expect to have comments back later sometime today. Sorry for the inconvencience.
In the latest FFR show, Phil asked what started me on Twitter. The event that got me going was the Humanity Plus Summit. I set up an account, originally, just to follow their feed.
But I was also inspired by a fictional technology within Cory Doctorow’s novel, “Makers.”
Mild Spoiler Alert
“The ride” is an interactive museum created by the novel’s two main protagonists, Lester and Perry. Riders move through the museum on scooters and offer instant feedback to objects in the museum; and, often, contribute new objects. Robots tend the ride by rearranging existing objects according to feedback, and by 3D printing and placing new physical objects that were added first at other rides throughout the world – all of which are networked together. Some of the riders begin to see, almost mystically, a narrative begin to take shape within the ride which they call “The Story.”
What “the ride” was accomplishing in a physical space in “Makers” is similar to what I’m pursuing with Twitter. I see these “not-quite-random snippets of information” as an almost-narrative of the future unfolding. Like those aggravating autostereograms that were popular a few years back – some people can see it, some can’t. Those who can see it will struggle to see it more clearly, and will find the experience difficult to describe to those who can’t see it.
Good luck seeing “The Story.” It might help to squint your eyes a little.
Follow Stephen on Twitter @stephentgo.
“Makers” is available to download free here.
The airship needs to make a comeback. Sometimes flight should be about having a good time rather than making good time.
Imagine the money saved if we didn’t have to replant food crops every season. Imagine how much soil would be retained if the root structure of crops persisted all year.
Jacques Cousteau was more than a television personality. He was an inventor who opened the seas to many who would not otherwise have experienced it.
The 2010 sci-fi movie I’m most looking forward to is “Tron: Legacy.”
We may, finally, be reaching the elbow in the curve on the development of adult stem cell therapies.
I agree that the $1000 per person genome sequencing will be here in 5 years. And, I agree that the $1000 price point may allow the critical mass necessary to develop truly personal medicine.
I do not agree that blood tests will be made obsolete.
Radio signals aren’t the only way to communicate.
…the funniest comment I’ve read so far about the iPhone 4.
The most amazing thing about this story to me – Suppes is not the first independent physicist to do this. He’s the 38th.
Technology developed for a type of fusion reactor that has not caught on, could, nevertheless, be used to significantly boost the production of existing nuclear reactors with a minimal additional capital cost.
The high tech slums described in “Makers” already exist in China.
…because Ray Kurzweil appears constitutionally unable to rest upon his laurels.
By whatever means, increased yields means more food for a hungry world, less land devoted to agriculture, and less CO2 emitted per unit of food produced.
Nanotech could get “spooky” pretty quick.
Brain imaging is destined to be a bigger part of psychiatry.
Bill Whittle begins a recent edition of his PJTV program Afterburner with an interesting concession. In most conflicts between the US and the rest of the world, he argues, we’re right and they’re wrong. But there are two exceptions:
1. The game the rest of the world calls “football” is more deserving of the name than the game we call “football.”
2. It should be aluminium, not aluminum.
I have no comment on the suggestion that we’re usually right and the rest of the world is usually wrong, nor on Whittle’s excoriation of the whole World Cup phenomenon, but I am forced to take exception to item 2.
I have spent a good deal of time working and living overseas, and have had the chance to hang with quite a few Brits, Aussies, and other Commonwealth folks, and I can tell you that however cordial relations may be between an American and any of them, this issue of aluminum vs. aluminium is never very far from the surface. Generally, the subject comes up after a pint or two (or three) and things have started to fall apart, but we’re not quite yet to the point where people are accused of always being late for every war or of having bad teeth.*
Why do we spell it “aluminum” when the word is clearly “aluminium?” The spelling of “calcium,” “magnesium,” “plutonium,” and numerous other elements suggest that our spelling of “aluminum” is a pretty glaring mistake. This is the argument Whittle makes, along with the rest of the world, with the important difference being that Bill doesn’t offer this up as evidence that Americans are semi-literate baboons.
However, this argument from consistency fails on the merits, as I have pointed out on countless occasions following the aforementioned pint or two (or three.) Why do they worry about our misspelling of “aluminium” when their own misspelling of the word that clearly should be “platinium” is just as glaring? Also, what about molybdenum? Shouldn’t that be “molybdenium?” I always mention both platinum and molybdenum, the former because it clearly refutes the idea that an element name can’t end in “num” rather than “nium” and the latter because my opponents, though clearly the products of a superior educational system and my intellectual betters in every way, have by and large never heard of it.
But let’s put the argument about consistency away. There is a much more compelling reason why we are right to spell “aluminum” as we do. “Aluminum” is the name given to the element by Sir Humphry Davy, the (British) chemist who first identified the metal base of alum. (There is one earlier reference by Davy to “alumium,” presumably meaning the same thing, but this was part of a dashed-off list of potential elements that might be discovered, not the definitive work on isolating aluminum. Since no one has ever used this version of the name, we can discount it.)
Davy named the element “aluminum,” Americans call it “aluminum,” so we’re right and the world is wrong.
Right?
Well, it isn’t quite that simple. Although it wasn’t his idea to change the spelling, Davy did eventually go along with the change to “aluminium,” which caught on in Britain after the original spelling was already out and becoming the accepted usage in the US. The Wikipedia article on the subject actually gives a pretty good account of what happened.
Davy had settled on aluminum by the time he published his 1812 book Chemical Philosophy: “This substance appears to contain a peculiar metal, but as yet Aluminum has not been obtained in a perfectly free state, though alloys of it with other metalline substances have been procured sufficiently distinct to indicate the probable nature of alumina.” But the same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, in a review of Davy’s book, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, “for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound.”
So as is often the case in these instances of divergent spelling, it isn’t really about who is right and who is wrong. Both spellings are legitimate. When Americans use the older British spelling, we honor the wishes of an important scientist who made many substantial contributions to human knowledge. When Brits (and all those Brit-wannabes out there) use the more recent British spelling, they honor the wishes of some anonymous pencil-pusher remembered only for his pretentiousness and his ability to play on the unique British anxiety that perhaps one doesn’t sound as “classical” as one might.
If there is a more succinct and revealing example of the difference between American and British culture than that, I haven’t come across it yet.
* Granted, those two accusations are specific to Brits vs. Americans, but Brits are who we’re really arguing with in these instances. Aussies and New Zealanders don’t (necessarily) have bad teeth, but they all see themselves as Brits when it comes to the spelling of “aluminum.”
Phil and Stephen pick through a small (heck, the show only lasts an hour) sample of intriguing future-related topics introduced in Stephen’s Twitter feed.
What are we to make of these not-quite-random snippets of information? And what does Twitter tell us about where we are and where we’re going?
Phil and Stephen pick through a small (heck, the show only lasts an hour) sample of intriguing future-related topics introduced in Stephen’s Twitter feed.
What are we to make of these not-quite-random snippets of information? And what does Twitter tell us about where we are and where we’re going?
Follow Stephen on Twitter, @stephentgo
Scientists have not always lived up to Thomas Jefferson’s ideal, “we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
I’d add Iron Man 2, A-Team, and Toy Story 3.
UPDATE: The kids reminded me about Shrek 4. That was a fun movie too. I’ve not seen it yet, but the word on the new Karate Kid has also been positive.
For some reason geeks with groupies makes me smile.
Cosmic Easter Egg?
Optimism should be based on reason.
Here’s a chance to encourage a serious Singularitarian scholar.
Electronic paper is easy on the eyes, but Apple’s Retina Display is just so much more functional.
Toy Story 3 was incredible. A must-see even if you don’t have kids. But I think Ebert is forgetting that in its animation hay-day, the Disney-brand had similar drawing power.
If a person uploaded themselves to a computer, would they make the trip or just be copied? Michael argues that gradual uploading is no different from normal neural turnover.
Media like Twitter is what we make it.