My wife and I have homeschooled our four sons. Two are still at home being homeschooled, two are in college. A particular episode with my oldest son Timothy stands out – it was about 5 years ago. A particular concept in algebra stumped him – it might have been quadratic equations. He complained that the particular online instructor poorly taught that lesson.

I didn’t even check on whether he was correct. My response to him: “So what?” You have the world at your fingertips. Find someone else to teach that concept. I was rather stern. I told him that his learning was his responsibility regardless of the quality of instruction in the particular online service we were using. That he was to become his own best professor.

With Sheralyn’s backup – I’ve been teaching that lesson with Timothy and the other three boys ever since. Timothy has since told me that his comfort level with seeking out information has become a huge competitive advantage for him versus his peers. He is doing extremely well in his engineering coursework.

I think that homeschooling unfortunately occupies both tails of the bell curve in primary education. The best prepared students are homeschooled. I think the worst prepared students probably are too.

Some of the low end results in homeschool can perhaps be excused by learning disability. The reason the parents chose to homeschool was some learning problem – that child was going to struggle regardless. And maybe a loving home environment would be best for that particular child.

But some homeschooling parents are simply not pushing education like they should. And policy makers are pointing to the Turpin child abuse story to fight homeschooling. Its far too broad a brush with which to paint the entire community. It ignores the high end results of many homeschoolers – the right tail. And it ignores the many cases of abuse and mediocre education that sometimes occur on traditional school grounds.

Universities Will Become Coffee Shops

We’re faced with an education bubble. Tuition and other costs associated with a college education have been outpacing inflation for decades. It’s a trend that simply cannot continue. It has continued, so far, because the demand for education has proven to be somewhat inelastic. If you want a good job (the thinking went) there really wasn’t much of a choice. You went and you paid whatever price they put in front of you.

But what’s the advantage of a good job if the salary difference between that job and a non-college-level job is lost servicing student debt? It’s a reasonable question that has become more pressing as the amount of student debt required to get an education has risen.

At the same time several universities with world renown branding have begun offering online courses for free. MIT has been the pioneering institution in this. They were first to make practically all classes available online. Now they are beginning to offer some level of credential for completion of online courses through a new program they’re calling MITx.

Imagine a personnel manager at a mid-sized industrial corporation in Kansas who’s looking for a candidate with a particular set of knowledge. There are two candidates: one from the local state school with an appropriate college degree, a second with relevant MITx certificates of completion.

Let’s say all other things between the candidates are equal. Which should be chosen? It’s true that an online education is not the same as the college experience. The candidate who went to college probably enjoyed his experience more, but how much is that experience worth to a potential employer? Unless he’s a member of the same fraternity, probably not as much as the college candidate would hope.

And here’s the reality: the student debt of the college candidate controls, to some extent, his salary requirements. Since the MITx candidate appears to have the knowledge required, and has no student debt, he probably can be hired cheaper.

There is a tendency to go with the college candidate because: “that’s the way its always been done.” But cheaper ultimately wins. Repeat that story a million times over the next few years and you begin to see how the local colleges – which already are overcharging for their product – begin to suffer in favor of free programs like MITx.

Eventually you could have local campuses becoming places where MITx students seek tutoring, network, and socialize – reclaiming some of the college experience they’d otherwise have lost.

Phil thought this sounded like college as a giant coffee shop. I agree. Every education would be ad hoc. It would be student-directed toward the job market she’s aiming for.

This trend toward… coffeeshopification… is changing more than just colleges:

Book Stores Will Shrink to Coffee Shops

Ebooks are coming of age – for many reasons. You can keep your library in your pocket. You can annotate and share your thoughts within social networks. Writers can publish more directly to their audience. Once completed, the unit cost of each ebook sold is essentially $0. Those savings can (and sometimes are) passed on to the customer. Also, an ebook doesn’t have to be limited to the written word. An ebook can incorporate video, audio and other methods of presentation. Your book store is always with you and has every book ready to sell. Nothing ever goes out of print because there are no print runs.

Compare that with your local Barnes and Nobel. Those stores are huge but can accommodate only a small fraction of the titles available in the Kindle store. They require expensive real estate, buildings, and employees.

If you don’t like reading from an ereader, there are new on-demand printing options like the Espresso Book Machine that can print a book within minutes.

The Coffee Shop Will Displace Most Retail Shops

My Christmas shopping this year was 90% through Amazon Prime. Not having to fight the crowds and having it delivered free of charge to my home is a big plus, but as with the Kindle store, the online retail selection is much better that even the largest retail outlet.

Which is more enjoyable: Starbucks or Walmart?  For the sane: Starbucks.  So if you can accomplish your Walmart shopping at Starbucks, why do it any other way?

Also, imagine the 3D print shop of the future. You put in your order, probably from your smart phone, and then go pick it up. What does the lobby of such a business look like?  Again: a coffee shop.

Offices Become Coffee Shops… Again

We’re going back to the future: the modern office was birthed in 17th century coffee shops. Steven Johnson has argued that coffee fueled the enlightenment. It was certainly a more enlightening beverage than the previous choice of alcohol.

Now a single person with $500 can duplicate most of those functions with a single laptop computer.  So the remaining function of the office is to be that place that clients know to find you… and that kids and the other distractions of home can’t.

Going forward the workplace will need the same sort of flexibility that I described for education. Groups for one project will form and then disband and then reform with new members for the next project. What will that workplace look like? Probably closer to Starbucks than Bob Par’s cubicle.

I’d say the last holdout will be houses of worship, except that the church I grew up in now has a coffee shop. They buy Land of a Thousand Hills coffee to aid war ravished Rwanda, and the profits go to missions. Just as important, I suspect, is their desire to be a community hub: a place where people – most especially those who don’t normally go to church – are comfortable.

“The Well” at my home church.

Brick and mortar retail stores will be converted to public spaces. Multi-use space will be in increasing demand as connectivity tools allow easy coordination of impromptu events. Some large retail stores will be converted to industrial 3D printer factories. These heavy-duty fab labs will fabricate products that are too big or complicated to fabricate at home.

100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything,

From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith.

Is it possible that living to be 100, 150, 200 or even older will soon be the norm in some parts of the world? How will this happen? What are the implications?

Tune in and find out!

 

About Our Guest:

Sonia Arrison is an author and policy analyst who has studied the impact of new technologies on society for more than a decade. A Senior Fellow at the California-based Pacific Research Institute(PRI) and aorld, she is author of two previous books (Western Visions and Digital Dialog) as well as numerous PRI studies on technology issues. A frequent media contributor and guest, her work has appeared in many publications including CBS columnist for TechNewsWorld, she is author of two previous books (Western Visions and Digital Dialog) as well as numerous PRI studies on technology issues. A frequent media contributor and guest, her work has appeared in many publications including CBS MarketWatch, CNN, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall StreetJournal, and USA Today. She was also the host of a radio show called “digital dialogue” on the Voice America network and has been a repeat guest on National Public Radio, Tech TV, and CNN’s Headline News.

Often asked for advice on technology issues, Sonia has given testimony and served as an expert witness for various government committees such as the Congressional Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce and the California Commission on Internet Political Practices. She is an instructor for California’s Command College and serves on the Board of Trustees for Singularity University. MarketWatch, CNN, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. She was also the host of a radio show called “digital dialogue” on the Voice America network and has been a repeat guest on National Public Radio, Tech TV, and CNN’s Headline News.

Image via Wikipedia

If a family’s one-and-only car is retired – and the family has no idea when they’ll have another car – wouldn’t that be considered, generally, a very bad thing for the family?

It seems sad to me that the last shuttle mission just took off and the next-gen space ship isn’t back in the hanger getting a final coat of wax.

Sure it is. It’s just not in the NASA hanger — it’s over at SpaceX.

Dragon is a spacecraft developed by SpaceX, a space transportation company based in Hawthorne, California. In December 2010, it became the first spacecraft ever placed in orbit and recovered by a private company. The first operational Dragon missions will be flown for NASA to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Dragon is designed to carry up to seven people, or a mixture of personnel and cargo, to and from low Earth orbit. These flights will be contracted under the Commercial Resupply Services program.

Dragon’s heat shield is designed to withstand re-entry velocities from potential lunar and Martian space flights

…

In June 2009, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated that the company planned to conduct the maiden flight of the Dragon spacecraft in 2009, and have the capsule enter service in 2010, before the scheduled final flight of the Space Shuttle.

…

On December 8, 2010, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying an unmanned SpaceX Dragon lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on COTS Demo Flight 1. The launch was a success, and the Dragon cleanly separated from the Falcon approximately 10 minutes after launch. Three hours of orbital maneuvering testing were conducted at an altitude of 300 kilometres (190 mi; 160 nmi) before a deorbit burn was conducted, putting the Dragon on a re-entry course that ended in a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 800 kilometres (500 mi; 430 nmi) west of Mexico’s Pacific coast.

Related articles

• National Geographic celebrates the last space shuttle mission ever (gadling.com)
• STS-135 Atlantis Space Shuttle Launch [Video] (arkhilario.com)
• Space X Dragon Spacecraft Returns To Florida (gcschileastronautics.wordpress.com)

1. Robots:
   • Drudge Report: …self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles http://drudge.tw/9PJ6rD

   • Barry Ptolemy: Computers Are Driving Cars In Traffic http://fb.me/ItKWo1Wa

   • Pete Cashmore: 10 Amazing Real Life Robots – http://mash.to/2RodQ

2. Space:
   • Drudge Report: Private spaceship makes 1st solo glide flight… http://drudge.tw/cM9dD0

   • Scientific American: Mission To Mars Will Search For Lost Atmosphere

3. Medicine:
   • Lifeboat Foundation: Atomic Medicine: Bret Kulakovich, author of “Atomic Medicine: Further Evidence of Accelerating Returns.” link

   • DISCOVER Magazine: Now that we can make designer babies, do we have an *obligation* to do so?

   • Sarah Multiverse: Berkeley Bionics had parapalegics using their new exoskeleton. Bawling like a baby.

   • Aaron Saenz: Italian Boy Receives Permanent ‘Artificial Heart’ Implant http://singularityhub.com/tag/artificial-heart/

4. Rapid Prototyping:
   • Sean Flanagan: Full-Scale Turbo-Prop Aircraft Engine built using 3D printing.

5. Computer Interface:
   • Sean Flanagan: Thoughtware.TV – Head-mounted display projects directly onto the retina. link

6. Out of the Box Engineering:
   • DiscoverMag DISCOVER Magazine: OK, this green “incredible edible house” is farfetched, but pics are great. And it has “hydroponic insulating shingles”

   • MIT proposes the Boeing D Series to Reinvent the 737 for 70% greater fuel efficiency

7. Fun Stuff:
   • io9: Death-defying wingsuit video shows what it’s like to be real-life superhero http://io9.com/5657398/

   • Boing Boing: A Free Comic, Courtesy Dan Goldman and Tor Books

8. Memes worth spreading:
   • Jay Oatway: Stephen Johnson’s “Where Good Ideas Come From” is a hymn to multidisciplinary creativity + open systems. link
9. Perspective:
   • Nathan Wolfe’s Jungle Search for Viruses.

10. Prize Winner:
    • Scientific American: Nobel Prize in Chemistry Honors Technique For Synthesizing Complex Compounds

…where Stephen chooses ten of his recent tweets and writes further.

1. Drudge Report: HUMAN WASTE USED TO POWER HOMES?…

   For the first time a sewage treatment plant will start producing “biomethane” that will be placed into the gas grid in England.

   Energy experts believe that 15 per cent of all gas consumed could come from human waste, sewage slurry and food thrown away by households and supermarkets.

   At least one critic has argued that this biomethane will be more expensive than gas obtained by drilling. But that’s not the point. It will be a plus as long as the value of the gas is equal to or greater than the cost of producing it. Until now Sewage treatment has not been a profit center – it costs money. If these plants can produce anything of value, it will a net savings for tax payers. Plus other gas sources can be conserved.

2. Alexander Kruel: The Singularity Hypothesis:

   The first two questions are:

   1. What is the singularity hypothesis? What exactly is being claimed?

   2. What is the empirical content of this conjecture? Can the it be refuted or corroborated empirically, and if so, how?

   Answering these sorts of questions is a purpose of the Singularity Institute. We look forward to their response.

3. Sydell Laura: The winners of the Nobel prize in Physics used scotch tape 2 to get thin carbon flakes off a pencil Science is marvelous!

   Its reassuring to know that not all great science requires billion-dollar funding.

4. Another example of how to do science on the cheap: hobbiest space exploration.

   Father/son homemade space probe. An HD video camera, an iPhone, and handwarmers were the bulk of the equipment.

   Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

   This is just so cool.

5. When complex trade started – trade with more nodes than any one person could keep track of – we experienced an ancient Singularity. This rise of a collective greater-than-human intelligence has been an engine that has modernized and civilized humanity ever since.

   …A note I wrote while reading Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist.”

6. June Cohen: Are mushrooms the new plastic? Wonderful, forward-looking #TED talk on new green materials for architecture.

7. “The whole point of astrobiology is figuring out whether Life As We Know It is the same thing as Life.”

   It may be that life will be found only in conditions similar to Earth (maybe Gliese 581g will be one of those places), or it may be that life can be found many strange environments – including the atmosphere of gas giants. We just need to know more.

8. @nytimesscience: Neanderthal extinction may have more to do with volcanos than homo sapiens.

   Neanderthals may have just had the bad luck of living close to major volcanoes. The replacement stocks may not have been sufficient after these disasters.

9. New Scientist: Poverty, disease, women’s rights – we have to , says Earth Institute

   Why all at once?

   Poverty is multidimensional – it involves hunger, disease and all the other things, and because of that the goals are synergistic. Every target benefits when other goals are achieved. To get children into school in poor villages, you not only need to build the schools and train the teachers, but also make sure the children are healthy and well fed enough to go to school.

10. Roger Ebert: “The Day the Saucers Landed,” a poem by Neil Gaiman.

1. billprady: The “Shelbot” was supplied by the good people at Willow Garage and was a working, practical device.

   And it was used to great comedic effect in the same Big Bang Theory episode where “The Singularity Goes Prime Time.”

   I loved how a hilariously non-plussed Steve Wozniak comments “Hey, nice telepresence device.”

   

2. io9: Photos of an elephant dressing up as the bantha from Star Wars:

   

   

   This completely beats CGI. More pictures at the link.

3. engineer4change: Brilliant: MIT’s H-Lab is developing small robotic planes to deliver blood samples from rural clinics to labs – cheaper, faster.

   This is one way to do it. Giving us a Dr. McCoy Medical Tricorder so that the lab can be taken into the field is another route.

4. TEDTalks about Technology for the Senses. Example: eyeglasses that can quickly and cheaply match any prescription.

5. wilw:
   “” a short story from @scalzi.

6. futureaware: Fujitu computing units for a 10 petaflop supercomputer that will start running in 2012

   The future marches on, even in the midst of this recession.

7. futureaware: After 31 Years and Hello to Faster Booting Computers in 2011 with UEFI

   Great tech for its time, but good riddance.

8. PopMech: Future of #EV: Drivers will be able to buy what they want – not a 3-wheeler, not a golf cart: A car – Aliza Peleg, VP of Better Place

   Or most of us won’t buy them. At least not until gas gets a lot more expensive. Advances in battery technology will control.

   That, and the existence of enough bleeding edge EV guys to pay for the battery advances.

9. ‘An early adopter is someone who pays too much for something that doesn’t work’ – Lisa Gansky.

   But the rest of the world benefits from these spoiled, impatient heroes. Their unwillingness to wait for the cheaper, perfected later version pays much of the R&D for drugs, gadgets, and other innovations that make all our lives better.

10. tobiasbuckell: Osmos is a very soothing, peaceful game for the iPhone.

    He convinced me to risk $.99. Great game.

1. Cool tech: The records audio, tagging notes to points within the audio stream. Allows “pencasts.”
   

   According to the article it completely changes the art of note taking. You tend to hit key words rather than full outlines. Then, when reviewing later, you can touch the pen to your outline and replay that portion of the lecture.

   “Pencasting” is where the instructor uses the pen and writes out notes or a math problem while he’s explaining it. The resulting Kahn-like movie clips can then be shared.

2. cellresearch
   ‘Major’ stem cell development announced –

   An easy way of turning adult stem cells into embryonic stem cells is a Holy Grail of biology – think of all the political battles that could be avoided.

3. singulr
   ’100 percent’ chance for life on newly found planet? – Gliese 581g may be the new Earth.
   

   That headline is just a little misleading. They are 100% sure that there is a chance of life on this planet, not 100% sure there is life. Cute, huh?

   Since this planet is tidally locked – meaning one side of the planet is always boiling in the sun, the other side is freezing – the habitable zone of the planet would be rather narrow. We are not even sure life could develop under such circumstances.

   Other links to this story:
   most popular on the site now: “Planet Hunters Discover a World That Could Harbor Life”

   Reuters_Science: Just-right planet that can support life detected.

4. Brian Wang explains how we could get to Gliese 581g: metamaterial-based model of the Alcubierre to go up to 25% of the speed of light.
   

   Since the planet is 20 light years away, it would take 80 years (with no time for speeding up or slowing down) to get there with this first-gen warp drive.

5. emilmgeorge tweets:

   O+P+T+I+M+U+S = 15+16+20+9+13+21+19 = 113

   113 is a Prime number;

   Optimus = Prime.

   Your mind = Blown Again.
   

6. Two completely different developments in solar cells – either could make solar cells the cheapest way to produce electricity:

   io9: New technology that captures “exciton” particles could replace today’s solar cells
   

   : Solar cells thinner than light wavelengths hold huge power potential. 12-fold increase in light absorption.
   

7. DIY is the future.

   sciam Tinker Joys: DIYers Turn Inspiration into Everything from to Urban Rooftop Cosmic-Ray Detectors
   
   
   

   
   A dream makers’ and fabbers’ pad
   
   

8. miketreder:
   “New York City is more populous than all but 11 states; but granted statehood, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use.” – David Owen

   No doubt about it. Urban living is more energy efficient, and is easier on the planet.

9. bluepinegrove tweets: Multiple ebook readers present problems for libraries. Will standards emerge?
   

   Multiple ebook standards favor nondedicated devices like the iPad. Dedicated ebook readers will go the way of dedicated word processors. An example is this tweet from Sydell: The New Yorker has released its iPad App. It’s wonderful. Yes, it is bitter sweet. That stack near my bed is going to disappear.

10. newscientist
    Evolutionary biologists : Sparks fly over origin of altruism
    

    I love this mental picture. Scientist “A” argues that altruism developed as a byproduct of language, Scientist “B” argues that it preceded language acquisition by millions of years. “A” picks up a rock, “B” picks up a thigh bone, and the rumble is on.

thrown together in an informational stew for your consumption.

Enjoy!

Follow Stephen on Twitter: @stephentgo

• Personalized Life Extension Conference, October 9-10 #future http://bit.ly/9eRLTc

• Skype Killer? Google had one million Gmail calls on first day http://bit.ly/bICkjs

  Sydell
  Here’s my take on Google’s new gmail phone service. http://su.pr/1LaXT0

• George Dvorsky: Optimize your health with The Zone and Paleo diets [life extension] http://bit.ly/bfhGZ1
• Engadget: Commodore USA announces the PC64, an Atom-powered PC in a replica Commodore case http://bit.ly/akTxK2
• Engadget
  Nike files patent for auto-lacing sneakers, Marty McFly doth protest http://bit.ly/dBBbP7
  Thu Aug 26 2010 00:04:50 (Central Daylight Time)

• Tech Review’s best Young Innovators http://bit.ly/bBOOn5
• Space-based detector could find anti-universe – A huge particle detector to be mounted on the International… http://tumblr.com/xptgqdy2b
• Engadget: Sony’s Netbox streams Netflix, YouTube and other internet stuff for $130 http://bit.ly/c1FqZM
• Searchinvaders
  Report: iTunes to rent TV shows for 99 cents http://bit.ly/9cuDm6

• ALA_TechSource: “Conflict over ebook rights and royalties is one of the most outstanding irritants in the transition to digital publishing.”
• Neiltyson asks: “Why do aliens always disembark via ramp? Do they have problems with stairs? Or are flying saucers just handicap-accessible?”

  I’m sure the guy in the E.T. suit appreciated the ramp.

• Kaplan Publishing experiments with free e-books http://dlvr.it/4FhSG

  Kaplan primarily does test prep guides: SAT, ACT, GRE, etc.

• digg_sciences
  “New microbe discovered eating oil spill in Gulf ” – http://digg.com/d21aHFQ?t10

  Well, new to us…

• Engadget: Sharp’s e-reader ready to ‘rival the iPad’ by year’s end, may have a 3D future http://bit.ly/azffFj

  Rivaling Apple – that’s the trick isn’t it? Those guys stay a generation ahead.

  Not that they should get cocky…

  (Mildly NSFW)

• The evolution of Pixar. http://bit.ly/uFPE2
• From the Department of Useless Trivia: Dr. Suess coined the word, “nerd”. http://yourmindblown.com/post/993403657/dr-suess-coined-the-word-nerd
• A TEDx talk from Shimon Schocken at TEDx TelAviv on mountain biking with incarcerated youth: http://on.ted.com/8WGB

• Jerry Bruckheimer: “Great dinner with Cuba Gooding Jr at La Esquina NYC this weekend. He heard that I had dinner with Cruise last week… he reminded me Tom’s not really his agent.”
• Jeremy Piven: “Not how hard you hit, it’s how hard u can get hit that makes the difference in your life….”

  Love that speech from “Rocky Balboa.”

  Sylvester Stallone reminded us why the first “Rocky” won best picture.

• Scifipop.com News: Download an up-and-coming science fiction magazine for a quarter [Deals] http://bit.ly/9bLtAY
• Mike Anissimov: Here’s a good quote from the current Halcyon website: “Sequence data will spark the greatest medical revolution since hygiene.”
• Are ants the key to Artificial Intelligence? http://bit.ly/aqRafu

  Start small.

• Sally J Morem: “Cassini’s been a very, very busy little space probe, check out the pix:”

  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/cassini-gallery/all/1

• Apple patent filed back in January discloses research into layering iOS (iPhone’s OS) functionality atop Mac OS X. http://j.mp/d1GS77
• digg_sciences
  “Urine Could Be a Source of Renewable Energy?” – http://digg.com/d21aBFl?t10

  A fuel cell powered by urine? This might actually be useful in remote areas. I’m less sure it would catch on here in the city.

  A less messy solution? Recharging cell phones from radio waves.

• New Compound Has ‘Superhero-Like’ Powers http://ff.im/-pBUoV
• It’s not all about Ray: There’s more to Singularity studies than Kurzweil #future http://bit.ly/ckrthv

  Not all but some:

  PBS Gives Exposure to Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity, and Bio-ethics #future http://bit.ly/bzSjk9

• GristC
  http://bit.ly/bwYGqZ Mark Twain’s autobiography to finally be published 100 years after his death

• This puts a whole new light on things – how Greek statues originally looked – in full color http://bit.ly/9Kiqy0
• mims
  Using Einstein to Speed Up Supercomputer Simulations 10,000% http://bit.ly/9UiWAX

• TEDx: Here’s a stunning new #TED talk on data visualization by design genius David McCandless http://on.ted.com/8W90
• Syfy
  What do u think r the most memorable, iconic, or best single episodes of sci-fi TV?

  Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Inner Light.”

• Engadget: Stamp $50 Android tablet prototype raises eyebrows in India and beyond (video) http://bit.ly/aHArYd
• Bad Astronomer: Penn and Teller’s awesome vaccine demo is now on YouTube! http://youtu.be/RfdZTZQvuCo NSFW. Duh.
• Mike Treder: Nanotechnology, For Better or For Worse #future http://bit.ly/bGGC0l
• Scifipop.com News: Fingerprint check-in tried at 24 Hour Fitness – San Francisco Chronicle http://bit.ly/aXDVWA
• Neurosecurity: The mind has no firewall http://bit.ly/cfTfEA
• Underground Wonders of the World: Labyrinths, Crypts and More – Creepy strange places of death. http://bit.ly/9CmKHm
• TEDxB
  #TEDxBerkeley video release! The amazing @tedprize winner Dr. Jill Tarter, @SETIInstitute Director http://bit.ly/90hbVw #TED #TEDx #space

• digg_sciences
  “A Machine That Turns Plastic Back Into Oil” – http://digg.com/d21a7kJ?t10

thrown together in an informational stew for your consumption.

Enjoy!

Follow Stephen on Twitter: @stephentgo

• : Scientists successfully use human stem cells to treat Parkinson’s in rodents.

  Researchers have successfully used human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to treat rodents afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). The research, conducted at the Buck Institute for Age Research, validates a scalable protocol that the same group had previously developed. It may eventually be used to manufacture the type of neurons needed to treat the disease and paves the way for the use of iPSC’s in various biomedical applications.

• The ?

  Are the decisions made by an AI at least as moral as an average person? One way of determining this would be with a blind Turing-type test.

• : Flobi robot head realistic enough to convey emotions, not realistic enough to give children nightmares (hopefully).

  Why cross the uncanny valley when you can go around it?

• Claytronics. An early implementation of utility fog?

• : Awesome timelapse of Milky Way and last week’s Perseid meteor shower at Joshua Tree:

  Joshua Tree Under the Milky Way from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.

• Looking for love in Alderaan places? Sci-fi-themed speed dating.
• : Start up hopes to Reduce Cost of Batteries for Electric Cars by 85% by 2015
• North Korea sends .

  My guess: “get me outta here!”

• shown to quicken heart rate, gives hope for ultra-small pacemakers
• Half.com Offers iPhone App to Find Cheap Textbooks On The Go

  There is a huge need for this. Peer-to-peer selling of textbooks would have eliminated a particularly greedy set of middlemen during my education.

• Robert Sloss predicted the iPhone …

  He predicted the device would:

  • Serves as a telephone, the whole world over.

  • Either ring or vibrate in your pocket.
  • Transmit any musical recording or performance with perfect clarity.
  • Allow people to send each other photographs, across the entire world.
  • Allow people to see the images of paintings, museums, etc. in distant locales.
• Movie critic Roger Ebert is a big fan of paper books:
  

  Every home I’ve ever lived in has had a Library. When I lived in one room, I put my bed in the Library.

  And he looks with a somewhat jaundiced eye at ebooks. He had a series of tweets mocking their incorporeal character:

  I’ve read my e-book of Shakespeare so many times since graduating college in 1964 that look how lovingly the pages are thumbed.

  Here’s my old e-book “10,000 Jokes, Toasts and Stories,” and written inside “To my boy Roger from Daddy.

  I don’t disagree with Ebert’s point. A physical book can be a special thing. I wouldn’t throw out a signed copy of “The Stand” if I were given the ebook.

  But what avid reader doesn’t love having a library in his pocket at all times? (see also: “5 Ways That eBooks Are Better Than Paper Books“)

  When “Fellowship of the Ring” was released there was zero chance that I was going to wait to see it on DVD. That movie needed the big screen. And while I loved “Dodgeball,” it is just as funny at home as the theater. It loses little in the transition to the smaller screen.

  Likewise, some books seem to cry out for paper. Imagine a dark and stormy night. You decide to read “The Raven.” Do you reach for a dusty tome… or your laptop? Easy choice. But does a tree really need to die so that I can read the latest Patterson thriller? Probably not.

  And if your e-Reader doesn’t feel real enough, you can always give it a vintage book cover.

• Lungs Grown on Scaffolds After Transplantation in Rats
  
  How to Grow Lung Tissue
  Uploaded by teknoport. – Technology reviews and science news videos.
• Article asks “is consumerism robbing our creativity?” The author suggests that too much choice is a bad thing.

  But bad for who? I don’t see paralyzed shoppers at the mall and supermarket. I see people making choices. Choice is good. Competition is good. Consumerism supports creativity.

  There’s a much more interesting way of looking at this question. In his recent TED talk, Larry Lessig states that we have just gone through a period of read-only culture – consumers just listening to the radio, not singing and making their own music as they had throughout history. The means of music production and distribution were centralized.

  But, Lessig argued, read-write culture is battling back. Every kid with a lap-top possesses a recording studio and a distribution system.
• One square meter of sunlight is equivalent to about one horsepower.

  Matt Ridley – no huge fan of solar power in its current subsidized form – said in his book “The Rational Optimist,” that…

  …once solar panels can be mass-produced at $200 per square metre and with an efficiency of 12 per cent, they could generate the equivalent of a barrel of oil for about $30. Then, instead of drilling for $40 oil, everybody will be rushing to cover their roofs, and large part of Algeria and Arizona with cheap solar panels… it would take about one-third of Arizona to supply Americans with all their energy.

• : Arthur Nozik, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and professor at the University of Colorado told PhysOrg.com. “There is a theoretical possibility based on thermodynamic calculations of increasing the efficiency of present day solar cells by a very significant amount of 50-100%. In addition, quantum dots could lower the capital cost of solar cell production in terms of cost per unit area.”

  Increasig the efficiency of solar cells while bringing down their costs will make the cost effective in more and more places and in new applications.

• Ben Goertzel’s new on AGI, long-lived flies, antagonistic pleiotropy and immortality.
• Canadian librarian leads worldwide digital revolt for free knowledge (64 flags)
  

  It began when an academic database proposed increasing the fee it charges the University of Prince Edward Island by 120 per cent.

  Mark Leggott snapped.

  “The world’s knowledge is increasingly being held to ransom and available only to those who can pay the fees,” Leggott told the Star on Tuesday.

  He announced in a campus-wide letter that as chief librarian he had cancelled UPEI’s subscription to Web of Science and was launching “an effort to create a free and open index to the world’s scholarly literature called ‘Knowledge For All’.”

  Then he contacted librarians in Canada and around the world.

• Google’s MapReduce algorithm turns smart phones into a self-contained cloud computing environment.
  

  The point of this exercise is to create a system that allows the MapReduce magic of distributed processing of large amounts of data to happen closer to the data itself. By eliminating the need to first transmit the data over a relatively slow wireless network, it can, in some situations, be processed even faster than if it were first uploaded, in total, to a remote server. This, despite the fact that the remote server would be much faster than the processor on any one phone.

• “You Have Reached My Mind, Please Leave a Message.”
  

  Our current state of wireless communication is, already, high friction telepathy.

  It seems a safe bet that we will work to reduce this friction in every way possible.

• Book “Power to Save the World” – how the author morphed from nuke-fearing into proponent who believes we need nuclear power.
• Via Brian Wang’s “:” Scientists from the University of Cambridge are talking about a “Nuclear Renaissance.”

  They suggest:

  • develop new ‘fast reactors’ could be developed that could use uranium approximately 15 times more efficiently

  • develop reactors with replaceable parts so that they can last in excess of 70 years instead of 40-50 years
  • Flexible nuclear technologies could be an option for countries that do not have an established nuclear industry, suggest the scientists. One idea involves ship-borne civil power plants that could be moored offshore, generating electricity for nearby towns and cities. This could reduce the need for countries to build large electricity grid infrastructures, making it more cost effective for governments to introduce a nuclear industry from scratch.
  • build small, modular reactors that never require refuelling. These could be delivered to countries as sealed units, generating power for approximately 40 years. At the end of its life, the reactor would be returned to the manufacturer for decommissioning and disposal.
  • Thorium is mentioned as having potential to become an important nuclear fuel.
  • Accelerator-Driven Sub-critical Reactors are mentioned as an option
  • Nuclear fusion is mentioned. Fusion-fission hybrids and fusion-driven fission fuel breeders are a route to early commercialization of fusion energy.
• : Neptune’s ‘dead zones’ hold more rocks than asteroid belt.

thrown together in an informational stew for your consumption.

Enjoy!

Follow Stephen on Twitter: @stephentgo

• 

• Michael Annisimov points us to two essential Nick Bostrom essays: “When Machines Outsmart Humans” and “Taking Intelligent Machines Seriously.”
  

  Artificial intelligence is a possibility that should not be ignored in any serious thinking about the future, and it raises many profound issues for ethics and public policy that philosophers ought to start thinking about. This article outlines the case for thinking that human-level machine intelligence might well appear within the next half century. It then explains four immediate consequences of such a development, and argues that machine intelligence would have a revolutionary impact on a wide range of the social, political, economic, commercial, technological, scientific and environmental issues that humanity will face over the coming decades.

• : Swallowing its pride, NASA says it wants to learn from commercial missions to the Moon.

  There’s a growing consensus that the Cold War Space Age was a false dawn – a brute force project necessitated by our conflict with the Soviet Union, and made possible by unsustainable spending.

  Now, we may finally be entering a true, sustainable, Space Age. This time we go to space to earn a living. NASA’s relationship to these entrepreneurs should be analogous to that of the FAA to Delta Airlines.

  As this transition happens, NASA can take a role encouraging others to make the necessary advances:

• New Push Prize: Got a plan to get us back to the Moon? NASA’s got $30 million worth of motivation!
• Negroponte thinks that the e-book will kill the physical book within five years.

  “Kill” may be a strong word. But Phil and I have a little wager going. We both think that by February 25, 2019, most reading will be done on electronic devices. The difference: I think the market for paper books will be diminished as a result of this competition. Phil thinks that the print market will be bigger than ever.

• Richard MacManus asks: “What are your favorite eBook features? I like highlighting a word for its definition. Your faves & the eReader you use?”

  I bought a Kindle that I rarely use now. I read my Kindle books on the device I always have with me – my iPhone. An ebook feature I want: public note sharing. I want to be able to read what other readers think. And add my own thoughts.

• Moderate exercise is good for longevity; “excessively strenuous” not so much.
• Wil Wheaton: “DRM-Free Game Suffers 90% Piracy, Offers $5 Amnesty sale. Come on, Gamers, do the right thing.”

  Developers will probably see this as a failure of the DRM-free experiment. Perhaps there’s an alternative way to look at this – why not drop the price? The iPhone app market has shown that huge amounts of money can be made charging small prices to many people. Price it at $5 or less and it starts to become an impulse buy – something that’s purchased for just the chance that it may be useful or fun.

  Having a $5 amnesty sale is a smart response. With the price that low the incentive to pirate falls too.

• Quite an exit: Flight attendant curses out passengers on the PA, grabs two beers, deploys emergency chute, and slides away…

  Funny from a distance. It was probably less funny for some of the passengers.

• DIY bio-tech! This is the Lava Amp – a cheap and portable thermal cycler for performing rapid polymerase chain reaction in 30 minutes or less. Its powered by USB or AC. Coming soon to a garage near you

  

  But remember Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Moore’s Law for Mad Scientists” – every 18 months, the IQ required to destroy the world drops one point.

• : Seniors face lower risk of getting dangerous prescriptions with computerized hospital Rx system

  Prescription foul-ups occur alarmingly often in busy hospitals. Taking the possibility of human error out of the system is a step in the right direction.

• Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web.

  There’s a parallel to solar power. It makes sense for Arizona to adopt solar faster than Maine. The solar environments are different. The speed at which your community embraces online education will probably depend on your school district. The weaker the neighborhood school (or the more overpriced colleges become), the faster parents and students will embrace alternatives.

• Mike Anissimov pointed us to the Jaron Lanier NYT op-ed, “The First Church of Robotics.”

  …and then commented on the article.

• Filming starts again on my favorite show:

  

• Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Embryonic Stem Cells – TechCombo (blog)

  : human embryonic stem cells and reprogrammed cells virtually identical – EurekAlert

• : Cut-rate, webcam-based 3D scanner coming soon to a MakerBot store near you.

  3D printers will follow the same adoption path as home computers. The first 3D printers have been built for large industrial applications. Then high-priced units with limited functionality will be offered to hobbyists. The practical uses for these machines will grow as the price drops. Eventually we’ll all have one… or more.

• Drudge Report: Physicist Stephen Hawking: Abandon the Earth!

  Actually, that headline is an overstatement. Hawking thinks we should disperse: some staying on Earth, but others moving on elsewhere. The more we move into space, the less chance that all of humanity would be wiped out in a common disaster.

• Neanderthal bedroom:
  

  The late Pleistocene room, found in the Esquilleu Cave, included a hearth and grass beds that seems to have once been covered with animal fur.
  According to the report published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Neanderthals used the room between 53,000 to 39,000 years ago.

  Scientists say the residents changed the bedding material very often and used the old ones in the hearth.

• : Crackpot Idea or Ingenious Concept?

  According to the article, one mile of highway, if converted to solar cells, could provide enough power to run 428 homes – with just four hours of sunlight per day.

• IGN: Favorite Video Games of 2010 (So Far)
• “I haz !”

  Researchers explore link between schizophrenia, cat parasite.

• – Foldit: Biology for gamers – by Nature Video:

• : Harvesting Waste Heat Could Boost Photovoltaic Power

  Stanford University scientists may have developed a way to double the efficiency of solar power collectors by using heat as well as the light.

• : Solar Motorcycle. Leave it in the sun while you’re working and its fully charged at the end of the day.

• Check out the new site for Acceleration – a Singularity-themed documentary in production.
• Mike Anissimov: Check out the Singularity Summit Facebook page, and click “like it” if you do.

  If you are attending Singularity Summit, get VIP treatment! For an extra $100 you can meet & mingle w/ our speakers.

• : Stewart Brand – Why We Should All Think Like Engineers

• to offer live TV streaming on its free mobile apps next month
• A very interesting new TED talk by Lawrence Lessig:

• World War II photos overlaid on modern pictures.

  

thrown together in an informational stew for your consumption.

Enjoy!

Follow Stephen on Twitter: @stephentgo

• Incredible 1930s motorcycle that could have inspired Tron’s light cycles.

  

• An interview with Aubrey de Grey: “We don’t have to get sick as we get older”
• Favorite makers at :

  

  Alix Stuart, age 19, was homeschooled. She’s about to attend college as a music major, but also likes to build robots like this spherical critter designed to run away from a “chaser bot” built by her friend.

• Brain Wang talks .

  Here’s a man driving this car from Florida to Airventure Oshkosh:

• NPR – Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter.
• “Shrimp of the land?”

  In order to allow us to continue to get enough animal protein, some argue that Humanity needs to start farming bugs for food:

  In a new policy paper being considered by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Belgian entomologist Arnold van Huis [recommends] that the western world eat more insects.

  And here’s Marcel Dicke at TEDxAmsterdam advocating the same thing:

  Add a garlic butter sauce and I’ll give it a try.

• Michael Shermer: Free excerpt from Richard Milner’s “Darwin’s Universe (A-Z encyclopedia).” (pdf link)

  The entry we get at that link is about Barnum Brown – an Indiana-Jones-like dinosaur bone collector. Great story.

• Thomas Frey’s , “When the Smart Grid Meets the Smart Home”
  

  Electric power is the same stagnant business it was a hundred years ago. We’re still connected by copper wires to the same lackluster grid our grandparents knew.

  With homeowner’s growing dissatisfaction, and an eye on the possibilities stemming from a vibrant online computer industry, a similar scenario awaits the power industry. Despite its leader’s disinclination to change the “status quo,” innovation will be driven from the bottom up, where the digital world meets the physical world. And, innovation will be driven by the creation of a better interface.

• Plants and Animals School Us in Energy Efficiency
  

  …it all comes down to the fact that we’ve yet to figure out how to effectively store electricity. Plants can do it. Bears can do it. Human civilization, however, is still developing and refining the technology. But until we can effectively store energy on a large scale, we’ll have to use (or waste) electricity the moment we generate it.

• Singularity primer: “The Intelligent Universe” by Abou Farman
• DNA Wrapping and Replication Video

  H/T Michael Anissimov

• are developing a process to make solar power production greater than 2 times as efficient – up to 60% efficient. The process actually works better as heat rises.
• Graphene gets weirder and more remarkable the more its studied. Scientists were able to create magnetic fields greater than 300 tesla by simply straining graphene. Fields greater than 85 were once thought impossible.
• Michael Anissimov: “Futurist Ray Kurzweil and magician-skeptic James Randi will be speaking in San Francisco this August 14-15!!!”
• : The whimsical inner city airports that never came to pass

  

  What could go wrong?

• : Behind the Scenes of the Race to Sky Dive from 120,000 Feet

  This account includes the story of how Joe Kittinger set the 50-year-old sky diving record when he piloted the Excelsior III up to 102,800 feet… and then jumped.

• Stan Lee: Some have asked the meaning of “Excelsior.” Pride wells within me as I reply–”Upward and onward to greater glory!”
• 106 awesome, sexy and weird from Comic-Con 2010

  

• Faster please: Protein found in the human body appears to be able – when paired with nanoparticles – to find & kill certain cancer cells.
• Interested in designing the next “Farmville?” Check out this article: “The New Games People Play: How Game Mechanics Have Changed In The Age Of Social.”

  (Video at link)

• Plugless Power soon to arrive for electric and hybrid vehicles.

• A very strong review for the new Batman animated movie “Under the Red Hood.”
• Crowd-Tracking Noise and Air Pollution with GPS enabled .
• 70 billion pixels. The largest photo ever taken. Budapest. Zoom in and out, click on the boxes for specific landmarks. Click the picture to get started.