Category Archives: Singularity

30 Steps

Ray Kurzweil outlining Singularity University at TED. I love the opening explanation: “If you take 30 linear steps, you get to 30. If you take 30 exponential steps, you get to a billion.” 

A Note From "The Rational Optimist"

You got to love that the Kindle allows readers to write notes for books that can be retrieved at the Amazon site.  Here’s a note I wrote while reading Matt Ridley‘s “The Rational Optimist.” “One definition of the Technological Singularity is that point at which we achieve greater than human intelligence – in a single […]

100 Year Starship

Image via Wikipedia It’s tantalizing in its lack of specificity: NASA Ames Director Simon “Pete” Worden revealed Saturday that NASA Ames has “just started a project with DARPA called the Hundred Year Starship,” with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA. “You heard it here,” said Worden at “Long Conversation,” a Long Now […]

Humanity Plus Conference Caltech

Image via Wikipedia Humanity Plus has announced that registration is open for their latest conference, December 4-5 at Caltech. From the Humanity Plus blog: Today, Humanity+ officially opens registration for its next conference, Humanity+ @ Caltech: Redefining Humanity in the Era of Radical Technological Change. Humanity+ @ Caltech will take place on December 4-5 (Saturday/Sunday), […]

The Singularity Goes Prime Time

This week’s episode of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory brings the idea of the technological singularity to one of the widest audiences it has ever reached. In the opening teaser, ubergeek Sheldon (Jim Parsons) explains to his longsuffering roommate and best fried Leonard (Johnny Galecki) that he is trying to determine how much […]

Reminder — No FFR this Week

We did our special show on Saturday from the Singularity Summit. We’ll be back next Wednesday at the usual time. Meanwhile if you need a futuristic fix, may I recommend this blast from a year ago? Listen to internet radio with The Speculist on Blog Talk Radio I was telling a friend about Anita Goel’s […]

What Next?

The Singularity Summit was an exciting two days. I had a great time meeting up with old friends and making new ones. I hope I was able to convey a little of the energy and give a glimpse of some of the amazing ideas that were covered. So now what? Well, being in that environment […]

Singularity Summit Day 2 Evening

6:15 James Randi A few angles to consider in your pursuit of the singularity. Talking about the Singularity is like Aristotle talking about interstellar travel. How do we know things? Human beings are good at tricking, fooling, and bamboozling each other. Randi shows that the “microphone” he is holding is really an electric razor and […]

Singularity Summit Day 2 Afternoon

3:20 PM Tooby, Goertzel, Yudkowsky & Legg panel Narrow and General Intelligence Missed this session. 2:40 PM John Tooby Can discovering the design principles governing natural intelligence unleash breakthroughs in artificial intelligence? Opening comment — “It’s a pleasure to be among the intellectually adventerous.” All the pieces in place for realizing the enlightenment goal of […]