Bandwidth

Tokyo scientists achieved 9.8 Gbps at the last Internet2 Consortium, over a distance of 20,000 miles. That's fast enough to download an entire high-definition movie in a few seconds, or perhaps more importantly to consumers, enough to simultaneously stream high-definition movies to an entire neighborhood. This underlines the woefully poor bandwidth in the United States. We don't even have broadband across the country, and conventional broadband is barely enough to stream low-quality video. This is basic infrastructure, people. This, more than national defense and road systems, is the future. The government should finance the modernization of our communications infrastructure.

The End of Bananas

This article describes two diseases threatening the banana. The commercial banana, according to the article, is a species with no genetic variation. That means that all bananas in the world are twins. Bananas reproduce asexually by planting clippings from one plant to make a new plant. That means that there is no mechanism for adaptation, and the entire species can be wiped out by a common cause. Life requires diversity. The only thing keeping the banana alive is it's symbiotic partner, mankind, with its pronounced intellectual diversity.

Next Generation Computer Processor Prototype

The University of Austin has announced the unveiling of a new prototype processor that could be significantly faster than todays fastest processors. Today's processors typically execute four operations at a time. This, in itself, is extremely complex, because the processor must compute the consequences of the first operation while simultaneously beginning to process the other three operations. If the result of the first operation impacts the other three operations, it has to change the way the other three operations are computed to take that into account, and sometimes it must wait for the first operations to complete before going on to the next one (this is called a bubble in the processor).

A weak analogy: suppose you were adding two four digit numbers together. But you wanted to do it really fast, so you decided to add each column in your head simultaneously. The only problem is, if you need to carry a one from the first column, that's going to change your answer for the second column, which in turn might force you to carry a one in that column, and change your answer for the third column, etc. But theoretically, if your brain could do them simultaneously, it's still going to be faster with most numbers, because sometimes carrying will not be necessary. When it is necessary, there will be a "bubble" while you slow yourself down to carry the one.

With computer processors, the operations are more powerful than just adding two single-digit numbers, which makes the logic of determining when a "bubble" is necessary much more complicated.

What the University of Austin has done is extend the width of their processor, so that instead of doing four operations simultaneously it will do sixteen operations simultaneously. Naturally, the logic for guaranteeing that no matter what the sixteen operations are coming in, the processor doesn't fail to take into consideration the first through fifteenth operations while it is already starting on the sixteenth, is extraordinarily complex. Often, the processor will have to "bubble" so much that it will be as slow as a four-operation wide processor. But occasionally, it will intelligently recognize that all sixteen operations can be done simultaneously without impacting each other, and it will be four times faster. It's a delicate balance between the complexity of the circuit, which tends to make the chip slower, and the possibility of zipping through the easy parts, which tends to make it faster.

So the University of Austin's claim is that they have figured out how to make a sixteen-wide chip that is clever enough to know when to run without sleeping the rest of the time. We'll see if the hare beats the tortoise this time!

Google Web History

Google has released a new feature for their toolbar, Google Web History. After it is enabled, Google keeps a record of every page you have ever visited. Naturally they use your history for their own statistical purposes, but you now have a (searchable) record of every web site you have ever visited (and every search you have made at Google). This is quite amazing, if you think about it. I hope they add features where you can reference and share parts of it. This expands on the idea of supplying a link - you can supply a train of thought, a methodology.

Perhaps some day they will be archiving all the pages you have visited as well, so that you will have a permanent record of every web site you have visited.

The web history is integrated with a web bookmarking service. That means no matter where you are, you can have your bookmarks and your life-long web history with you.

This is a record of your interests, and of the history of your reading. So many amazing features could be integrated into this. You could rank and comment on your history, and always have a record of what you thought about the pages you were visiting. Perhaps they could even allow you to add inline notes.

Man of the Century

This man won $41K in a contest called "Live Your Dream" and used it to construct an energy self-sufficient submersible, powered only by a stationary bicycle and solar panels. He lived underwater for 13 days, and for entertainment, "watched videos on his laptop and used a wireless Internet connection to communicate with schoolchildren from around the world."

What he proved is that some people dream of living in isolated cramped quarters watching videos and surfing the internet, and that this environment can be constructed cheaply almost anywhere, even under a lake, even with today's technology. This is the future. This century's technology will allow more serious ventures, including sustainable food supply and maintenance. And this century's scarcity will require it.

First Study on Population Management

A press release for the first systematic study of China's population management program was released yesterday. Basically, it says that China's population management program is working almost exactly as legislated, which may be a bad thing if the Chinese government doesn't change its policy quickly. The major unanticipated consequence is a disproportionate number of males in the Chinese population. This is thought to be due to the practice of infanticide (against females, for cultural reasons). The net result is that the Chinese are having 1.5 children per person, which is a sharp population drop, and about 2/3 of the population is male, which means that it will be difficult to turn the decline around. With China's extraordinary economic growth, there is a good chance that China will become the world's leading importer of white slaves.

This is humanity's first large-scale experiment in population management. China is on the ragged bleeding edge of this infantile technology.

Open Brain

This blog talks about the possibility of an open source transcranial magnetic stimulator. Neuroscientists have demonstrated many effects on cognition by applying magnetic fields to the brain, such as in this recent study. Purportedly drug-like effects can be achieved by around 30 minutes of continuous magnetic stimulation. Magnetic stimulation interrupts the normal cognitive process, disabling or activating regions of the brain.

This seems quite remote, but perhaps some day when open source engineering (fabrication) becomes cheaper, transcranial magnetic stimulation will hit the masses, and everyone will have one next to their TV. As the science of transcranial magnetic stimulation becomes more exact, it may even be possible to induce vague experiences, or to control general attitudes. For example, how many people would be willing to trade lifelong happiness in exchange for a general proclivity for productivity and consumption? This would give the economy nearly complete control over the population on an intimate level.

We need to understand that the economy is more intelligent than us, now, and it is working out, via every avenue, how to more intimately embrace our needs, desires, potential, and fears. It has already overtaken us, and now we have no choice but to serve it. The most amazing thing about this is that it is possibly very good for us to do that!

Analyzing the Milky Way Galaxy

This article describes in vague layman's terms the young science of analyzing the chemical makeup, and thus indirectly the history and systemic properties of the Milky Way Galaxy. The European Southern Observatory has discovered that stars that were born together have a uniform chemical signature. This allows real science to begin. By analyzing the chemical makeup of stars throughout the galaxy, scientists can begin to figure out how stars mix and migrate, and reconstruct the history of the galaxy. Another way to look at this, is that because a very accurate correlation has been found between stars that were born together, the birthing sites can be thought of as a new coherent object - detail finer than a galactic arm, but not as fine as a star. Perhaps even quite old birthing sites, that have since spread out and mixed with other birthing sites, can be detected by correlating the chemical compositions of the stars that composed them. Perhaps this will lead to the discovery of even larger structures, and ultimately to an understanding of how our galaxy has evolved.

High Efficiency Solar Panel Breakthrough

This article is sparse, but significant because a reputable company claims to have produced solar panels that absorb a whopping 40.7% of available sunlight. That's over three times conventional solar panels. There is no information in the article about the cost of production or weight of the panels, and the company specializes in producing solar panels for space missions, so the cost is probably high. However, if it doesn't take too much energy to make them, and they are reasonably durable, this could be enough to solve world energy problems in the long term.

The Dirigible Returns

Sanswire Networks is "ahead of the airship technology curve." A number of modern technologies are converging to bring back the ponderous splendor of the dirigible in the "2008-2011" time frame. "Advances in composite structures, photovoltaics, man-made fabrics, electric motors and energy storage technologies" will allow persistent airships with multi-ton payloads to hover above major cities providing wireless communication services.

With thin-film solar-powered electric engines they will be 100% green. Modern dirigibles are much, much cheaper than satellites, can be reclaimed for maintenance or upgrades, and sadly, will sustain altitudes of over 10 miles to maximize their coverage. But maybe wireless communication profits will catapult dirigible manufacturing, and we will see them giving breathtaking tours through the canyons of New York City. A man can dream, right?

Another interesting dirigible design - this one is purely for power generation.

Composition of Extrasolar Planets

This article documents the first time water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. Our telescopes will continue to improve until we are able to get more information about the composition of planets outside our solar system, until eventually we will even be able to determine their color, and possibly seasonal variation in their color, which would be evidence for life. Perhaps within my lifetime (electronic immortality aside) they will announce the discovery of the first extrasolar Earth-like planet.

Parallel Computing

The speed-up from miniaturization of silicon processors is finally starting to reach the point of diminishing returns. The current phase of hardware speedup is all about combining multiple processors on one chip. The problem with this is that it is usually hard to program in such a way as to take advantage of multiple processors. Without care, one processor will do all the work, while the others sit idle, and the hardware yields no speed-up. For most applications, it is difficult to use more than three processors, but the latest chips have 6, 8, 16, or even more processors.

Quite a lot of software simply can't use more than one or two processors at a time. Some problems must be solved linearly, so that no two steps can be performed at once, because every step needs information from the previous step. By analogy, one cannot walk two steps at a time. However, many problems are only difficult to solve with multiple processors. There is no inherent limitation due to the problem, only a limitation in the skill of the programmer. The programming language itself can make it more difficult to see the method to maximize the parallelism of the software.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has recognized this problem, and is trying to address it by funding the development of new programming languages geared toward parallelism. Here is an article about this.

There seems to be a technology gap between silicon and the next paradigm (probably carbon), and it will force us to advance our understanding of parallel computing in the mean time. Depending on how long it takes to research and develop nanoscale computer chips (I'm guessing 2020ish?) the parallel computing industry may become quite important. The tip of the iceberg is that the Play Station 3 has six processors, and many believe that although it has the most computing power of any game platform, developers will never be able to make games that use it, and so its perceived power will be on par with slower systems like the XB0x 360.

Perhaps these defense industry programming languages will make it to the mainstream in time to become bolded words in resumes: Sun's Fortress, Cray's Chapel, and IBM's code named X-10.

These languages are still incomplete, and only intended for parallel super computers. The holy grail of software, web-based distributed computing, is still a long way off. Parallel processors are one problem, but distributed memory is another, even more difficult problem.

The New Story

A substantial component of any growing religion is the organization required to maintain and communicate it. The message of a religion, no matter how good and true, has to be compromised by the importance of maintaining its revenue and power. Religions have evolved to indoctrinate and compete ruthlessly, and what they preach has become subservient to the ideas that preserve them.

Nothing has changed fundamentally, but now the cost of maintaining and communicating a religion, of bringing its followers together, has become nearly free. Now the content of a religion alone is what attracts and maintains followers. For the first time, it is possible to have a religion with nearly no tithe - a free religion. As computer memory becomes exponentially cheaper, and penetration becomes ubiquitous and approaches zero cost, soon web content will be essentially free. Right now, the minimum tithe is probably around $15/year to maintain as much content as will be needed to maintain a religion: a holy book, a forum, and a chat room. Finally, it's the ideas that matter, not the means of spreading them and forcing them.

Here then, is The New Story, which is what happens when peace-loving, Californian spiritualists try to embrace scientific truth to create a new idea that will spread on its merits alone. The web site is funded by Global MindShift, which is a web site that will stay up forever, thanks to funding from the liberal NGO Foundation for Global Community. Googling FGC yields no negative statements on the first page, and according to FGC's history page, they have been on the forward thinking side of every issue since 1960, and putting money toward improving the world all this time.

I like The New Story video, even though some of the science is a little hazy - it's the ideas that are important, and frankly, I agree with all the stories presented in the video. But that's not what's important about it. What's important about it is that they are trying to reach people like me (peace-loving Californian spiritualists) and Google and StumbleUpon have them listed. While their scratchings and musings are somewhat inept, and probably incapable of capturing more than a million minds or so, there will be hundreds of thousands of these web sites, all at least as professional, all vying, evolving, capturing adherents. Surely, if given enough time, one of these will beat out the selfish, violent, pyramidal, indoctrinating religions that still have one hand firmly grasping world politics.

U.S. Joint Economic Committee on Nanotechnology

In one of my earliest posts, I asked the question, does the establishment understand the world-changing consequences of exponential technology? This month A report titled, "Nanotechnology: The Future is Coming Sooner Than You Think" (pdf) was presented to the U.S. Joint Economic Committee. It's certainly worth browsing through.

• It mentions this research (from a year ago, with a broken http address in the report) on using viruses to self-assemble cheap, light-weight (but small scale) batteries.
• It provides a largely insubstantial time line on the progress of nanoscale control, and the scope of probable innovations. It strikes me as optimistic and perhaps less comprehensive than this blog.
• It brings up a very important consideration that many technology buffs are unaware of: political and societal pressures have a strong impact on the emergence of technology. Technology can not advance any faster than it is able to incorporate into useable, lucrative products, and society and the government both regulate the penetration of these products.
  
• The report discounts the traditional science fiction threat of "grey goo," claiming that the scientific establishment finds this threat unlikely because the grey goo could not become self-sustaining, because it couldn't create its own power supply. Surely grey goo could self-assemble its own solar panels, and possibly, it could self-assemble its own fusion or zero-point energy power sources. It doesn't seem that anyone could have enough information to discount this threat, but the report is correct that grey goo does not pose a near-term threat.
• The report dismisses the threat of nano-engineered biological weapons by merely stating that the advantages of research along these lines outweigh the dangers. It seems like a thoughtless position to me. Advantages of research don't much matter if everyone is dead. On the other hand, I tend to agree that limiting research along those lines is foolish, but only because I have faith that humanity will not seek self-destruction.
• The report very quickly dismisses the threat of the singularity, or a quantum leap in artificial intelligence beyond the limits of human intelligence. Quite tersely, it reminds that technology has always been good so far, and lets that stand as grounds to dismiss the threat.

So, in short, despite its provocative title, the report advocates the status quo, and essentially provides nothing except for a quick future-tech vocabulary primer, and perhaps the dangerous sense that the issue is well-contained and should fit nicely into the existing political structures of reactionary environmentalists and playfully irresponsible industries -- that somehow, as far as the U.S. government need be concerned, nanotechnology is just another health issue, like radioactive waste or fertilizer runoff, but that ultimately it is good because it will help the pharmaceutical and defense industries (hey, viruses might be making batteries that weave into our soldiers' uniforms, so they don't have to carry an extra backpack!).

One thing it does get right, is that nanotechnology is bound to be extremely lucrative, and upset the status quo in the economy. It warns against allowing narrow interests with alarmist, unscientific platforms to get in the way of this wealthy turbulence. So the U.S. government's position is not surprising: as long as we can tax it, nanotechnology is all good. The economy will drive technology. The economy is the directing intelligence in the world, and nanotechnology will make it faster, cleaner, smarter, and eventually, all-embracing.

Electronic Brains

For over a year now, EPFL (a Swiss University) and IBM have been collaborating to accurately simulate connected neurons with software. The project is called Blue Brain. According to recent press coverage, they have currently successfully simulated 10,000 neurons acting in concert, and plan to push this up to 1 million by the end of 2007. The ultimate goal is to accurately simulate 100 billion neurons so that the human brain can be simulated. The project is scheduled beyond 2015. Their first major milestone will be to simulate a mouse brain.

Quite amazingly, their limited progress has already yielded surprising results. Merely chaining together accurate simulations of individual neurons has already resulted in life-like coordination between the neurons, and simulated physical processes that look very much like real physical processes, in terms of neural firing patterns.

Predictably, Blue Brain is quite optimistic and quick to speak of progress and successes at this early stage. However, quite factually, the software, science, and politics are advanced beyond the capabilities of the hardware. This bodes well for the success of this project. As long as hardware remains the limiting factor, it is almost certain the project will proceed favorably, since hardware development has progressed steadily for decades. Then, it seems very likely that scientists will have at their disposal reasonably complete and accurate simulations of the human brain somewhere around the time when the hardware is first capable of this. According to Robot Nation, they should succeed sometime well before 2040, according to Moore's Law.

That means that by 2050 or so, I may be able to get my brain converted into an unaging electronic model. As long as I can keep entertaining the other electronic brains on Second Life, I should be able to support the increasingly cheap hardware needed to keep my electronic simulation alive indefinitely. So perhaps mine will be the first immortal generation.