…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
- Check out “, July 19-23, 2010″
They’re pointing to stories on:
- Fighting Drugs With Drugs: An Obscure
Hallucinogen Gains Legitimacy as a Solution for Addictions - Quantum Time Machine Lets You Travel to the Past Without Fear of Grandfather Paradox
- Bionic Dick Cheney Technically Has No Pulse
- Divers Use Bar Codes on Tablet Computers to Visually Control Underwater Bots
- Fighting Drugs With Drugs: An Obscure
- I wish I was at Comic-Con! Check out the Bare Naked Ladies surprise performance of “The Big Bang Theory” theme song.
- “‘Hyperfast Star‘ Was Booted from Milky Way”
SciFi story idea: Imagine you were an intelligent race marooned in that system. How important would it be to leave that star before it left the Milky Way? How hard would it be to leave?
- After 14 days, the solar powered plane lands.
- Discussion topic: “@MJSL2050: Why are some people so interested in human-like AI? I am glad that my computer is not like me…”
Brent Kearney responded that it was “not just to build new friends. Same reason the computer was invented in the first place: to solve problems faster.”
I see both sides of this one. My computer doesn’t have to be sentient to be an effective tool. And I’d really like to avoid the slave-owner stigma when I buy a robotic butler in a few years.
Still, it seems pretty obvious that AGI could be useful – the whole Singularity thing. I’m glad its being worked on.
- Top 10 countries by robot density.
- New Zealand’s Let Paraplegics Walk for $150,000!
More video .
And, yes, it costs $150,000 now. It will go down.
- “Pentagon Pushes for Near-Perfect Regenerative Medicine”
The Office of the Secretary of Defense is soliciting small business proposals for two new projects to transform the regeneration of damaged tissue and cartilage, which afflict 85 percent of injured troops in Iraq and Afghanistan…
The solicitation anticipates some combination of “biomaterials, tissue engineering, [and] cell therapy.
- TEDtalks: Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kevin Stone says the future of joint replacement is “biologic, not bionic.”
- World’s cheapest “laptop” has touch-screen computing, Internet browsing, and video conferencing .
Drudge Report: India unveils $35 computer, wants to see price drop to $10.
A few years ago one of my kids received a toy cash register in a happy meal. Almost as an afterthought, the cash register had a working calculator built into it. A device that had cost $2,200 in 1963 was being given away to kids that would probably never use it for calculation.
Prediction: one day we will see computers as capable as OLPC given away in Happy Meals.
- JPBarlow: Global Internet traffic is roughly tracking Moore’s Law, doubling every 18 months. Expect 21 petabytes per day by 2012.
Cisco released a report earlier this week suggesting that global Internet traffic is growing exponentially.
…prediction that the Web will nearly quadruple in size over the next four years. Cisco claims that, by 2013, what amounts to 10 billion DVDs will cross the Internet each month… The findings point to “consumer hyperactivity”
…With the Cisco-created “PC Pulse,” you can clearly determine how much bandwidth you use and for what types of traffic. Not a bad way to become aware of the way we surf.
“Consumer hyperactivity?” “Footprint tracking?” Internet traffic is a good thing. All those little kids with the OLPC computers – and the rest of us – are changing the world for the better.
- “Once the rise in the position of the lower classes gathers speed, catering to the rich ceases to be the main source of great gain and gives place to efforts directed towards the needs of the masses. Those forces which at first make inequality self-accentuating thus later tend to diminish it.”
- Friedrich von Hayek as quoted by Matt Ridley in The Rational Optimist
- New Tron Legacy Trailer:
- Bob Richards: Cool to find Singularity University offices buzzing with energized students when I returned at midnight. The Singularity is Here!
- NASA is crowdsourcing: aspiring undergrads given a chance to propose, design and fabricate a reduced gravity experiment.
- DIY: Steampunk Electric Monopoly
- Roger Ebert: “Inception” has entered into the category of a film people think they must see so they can participate in dinner conversations.
- George Dvorsky: Just what Ontario’s campgrounds need:
I’ve enjoyed 21st Century camping lately. Getting outside without having to leave part of my brain behind is a great way to “rough it.”
- More than 100 Earth-like planets in just past few weeks.
- Irradiating the brain’s stem cell cache improves survivability in brain cancer patients.
- Prosperity in spite of climate change? GreenTV presents four scenarios for 2030. ()
- Before inventing the safety razor, Gillette was a futurist. In 1894, he planned a hexagonal city with transparent sidewalks. It was to be built atop Niagra falls for hydroelectric power.
- TED: headset that reads your brainwaves.
- Computer deciphers a forgotten written language within hours.
- Language and abstract symbols is a massive intellectual prosthesis. Human thought is a combination of our evolved neural architecture AND the language prosthesis. Computer networking is just the latest gloss on a prosthesis that’s already given us greater than human intelligence.
- Facebook Credits: The World’s First ?