No Other Possibility

Robotic Exoskeleton

2007-11-24T13:20:00.000-08:00

This video shows a prototype robotic exoskeleton. Current prototype technology could add dexterous hands instead of hooks.

I believe this technology will be refined until soldiers are controlling robots remotely. In this manner, soldiers will be able to gain fighting experience through their whole careers instead of having it cut short by death. At this point, the video game industry will merge with the military industrial complex. Professional video game players will be offered lucrative positions in the military or in security firms.

Marvel Comics Online

2007-11-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

Marvel comic books, from first issues to the present issues, are now available online, with unlimited access for under $60/year or $10/month. So far, the selection of titles is limited, but it seems likely that gradually, they will make all of their titles available from all history. I'm not a comic book person, but it seems to me that if you enjoy reading comic books, this is a great deal. For $10 you could do little else for a month....

Slowly, all past media is moving onto the internet, available for free or cheap access fees.

The New York Times archives are now free. Netflix has a growing selection of movies available for online viewing. I believe the time is coming soon when all historical and present media will be available online for reasonable prices, or free with advertising.

Robotic Random Access Warehouse

2007-11-11T01:32:00.000-08:00

These robots are programmed to use warehouse space as efficiently as computers use memory. The robots instantly process online orders, and carry the contents of shelves to humans who pack boxes for shipping, so that the humans don't have to enter the floor of the warehouse. During their spare time, the robots reorganize the shelves so that the more commonly moved items are closer to the packers. The robots work in unison, according to optimized algorithms, getting all their direction from software, and thereby maximize the efficiency of the human packers.

Actually, the robots are doing the complex part; the humans are assisting the robots, not the other way around. The only thing the humans have to offer is manual dexterity. Soon, probably within a decade, this limitation of robots will surely be overcome, and the first purely robotic warehouses will come online.

Genetic algorithms improve on genetics

2007-11-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

Here is an example of scientists using computation (super computers) to simulate breeding. Their goal was to create a more efficient metabolic pathway for photosynthesis - to make plants grow better. If they had tried to breed plants it would have taken centuries, but instead, they modeled the chemical reactions in a computer, and used an evolutionary algorithm to find better reactions. They were able to double the energy production in the space of a single research cycle.

Now, biologists can attempt to breed plants that produce more of the key enzymes discovered in this research. This is like taking a shortcut straight to the best possible outcome.

As the computation and methodology improves, the types of optimizations that can be tackled with evolutionary simulation will broaden, and the speed of technological advancement will accelerate. This sort of work is evidence that we are approaching the technological singularity.

Ubermaus

2007-11-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

Scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have inadvertently produced a mouse with superior metabolic characteristics, through genetic manipulation. The scientists note that humans could be similarly genetically manipulated.

The mice have increased stamina, strength, longevity, sex drive, and aggressiveness....

Copyright vs. Creativity

2007-11-07T01:22:00.000-08:00

Here is a really great TED Talk about how the internet is changing society, and the battle between free information and property. Larry Lessig makes a really great analogy between how the technology of airplanes affected trespassing laws and how the internet affects copyrighting. He says that in just the same way that common sense tells us that the benefit of transcontinental flights cannot allow land owners to sew airlines for trespassing, the benefit of remixing copyrighted material can't allow 'remixing' internet artists to be silenced or prosecuted for copyright infringement.

Larry Lessig says that both the establishment's view, that all copying is stealing, and the next generation's view, that piracy and breaking the law are acceptable, are wrong. He favors a balanced revision of the law to allow expanded fair use, particularly for amateur productions.

In my opinion, although his framing of the issue is brilliant, he's missed the core of the issue, which is that information IS free now, and there is no way to own it once you've released it. That is why the next generation rebels against the rule of law. The rule of law is outmoded now.

What we need is a new way of looking at intellectual property. In the internet age, the correct way to sell intellectual property, is to advertise that you have something, request pledges, and release it to the world when you have enough pledges that you are justly compensated for your investment in creating the intellectual property. Once you release it, it no longer belongs to you, or the people who paid you, it belongs to everyone. Greed and exposition are now antithetical. Those who create better do it for love. Those who consume better patronize or the art they love will dry up.

Distributors must understand social networking now. Release occurs in the landscape of social interaction. All distribution of information is a pyramid scheme now. When you buy information, you are buying it for your connections as well, and those who are wired in are connected to everyone.

Simplest Universal Turing Machine Proved

2007-10-24T12:15:00.000-07:00

A twenty-year-old undergraduate student has claimed a $25,000 prize for proving that a very simple machine can be programmed to do anything that a computer can do. The machine is a cellular automaton, with a particular set of rules describing how it should use colored squares to decide how to color other squares. It changes between two states that decide how to color squares in three colors. That's all it is, and theoretically, with the right squares to start with, and peripherals, it could run Windows Vista.

As this article points out, what this means is that the simplest conditions are conducive to extraordinarily complex behavior. The universe is teaming with life.

Learning Robots

2007-10-15T17:40:00.000-07:00

Watch this short video (TED talk) on learning and self-aware robots. It depicts a four legged robot that learns its own shape by forming a self image as a hypothesis, and then testing it and adapting its self image until it mirrors its movements. Then the robot refines its movements to maximize forward motion. So the software put onto this robot would allow any robot, regardless of its shape, to learn how to walk if it was physically possible for it to do so.

Radiohead Releases Pay What You Like Album

2007-10-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

Today I downloaded a full professional quality album from Radiohead's website for a price of my choosing. Radiohead is a famous, talented, skillful band, and they have decided to release their latest album under their own label from this website. You can pay any amount you like, down to 1 pence to download a zip file containing mp3s with no copy protection, and no contract.

I paid 5 pounds ($11), because I want to support this trend in music distribution.

I had no trouble at all with the pre-order, or downloading the album today, but I notice the order site seems to be down today.

Thinner TV

2007-10-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

For $1700, this Christmas you will be able to buy a coin-thickness 11" Video display made with organic LEDs. It has superior performance and uses 40% less energy. The last step is not too far away, it seems: TV wallpaper is coming soon.

Automated Software Optimizing

2007-10-04T10:12:00.000-07:00

Researchers at UC Davis have developed software that automatically improves software written in Java. In their paper, "Automated bug isolation via program chipping" they have demonstrated a program called ChipperJ, which can reduce large human-coded Java programs to 25-30% of their size. The process takes about an hour.

Wikipedia now stores all revisions

2007-09-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

I'm posting again, but I can't promise regular posting unfortunately, as I'm quite absorbed with my new daughter, Evelyn Jane Wheeler, born September 4th! I did finish a draft of my book, which was well received by my family/editors, and I plan to revise it when I'm ready for another commitment. In the mean time, I wanted to post this fact about Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia of everything:

Every page in wikipedia has a "Permanent Link" link in the left-hand menu, where you can get a permanent link to a page - the content will never change. Wikipedia is able to do this because they store all revisions of wikipedia, not just the most current revision. They will do this forever, so that twenty years from now, it will be possible (and probably easy) to look at Wikipedia as it was in September 2007.

Hiatus

2007-07-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

There will be no posts for the next month while I finish my novel. Hopefully I will have time to resume in August!

Globalization in Retreat

2007-06-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

This article conveys an interesting perspective on the current world economy, and the role of the Bush administration. Essentially, it argues that the Bush administration has been a primary power behind derailing the movement toward globalization spearheaded by the Clinton administration. Instead, the world has retreated into intense nationalism, and protectionism, where government policy has a significant impact on global corporations, and most corporations are forced into dependence on specific national economies and competition with foreign-based corporations. Under this perspective, there is a strange allegiance between the popular anti-globalist sentiment and the Bush administration; indeed, anti-globalist protest has been directly supplanted by anti-war protest almost since the collapse of the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, mainstream liberal organizations generally support the trend toward nationalism, while supporting measures to diminish the negative impact of the collapse of globalization.

This idea comes from John Feffer of the Foreign Policy in Focus think tank, jointly managed by the International Relations Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. As near as I can make out, these organizations are widely funded by mainstream liberal organizations.

This perspective appears to be complex, multi-faceted, contrary to general understanding of the issues, and veracious. Suddenly the cooperation between Democrats and Republicans in the United States Government makes more sense to me. If there ever was a non-partisan issue, it is that nationalism sustains the United States Government.

The Clinton administration brought us to the brink of a world dominated by corporate interests, but an unlikely coalition reversed the movement:

"Another factor unraveling the globalist project is its obsession with economic growth. Indeed, unending growth is the centerpiece of globalization, the mainspring of its legitimacy. While a recent World Bank report continues to extol rapid growth as the key to expanding the global middle class, global warming, peak oil, and other environmental events are making it clear to people that the rates and patterns of growth that come with globalization are a surefire prescription for ecological Armageddon."

The battle lines are not drawn the way we think they are, at least in some arenas. An interesting question arises: had Al Gore been elected in 2000, would the world have looked much different? This suggests that nationalism, protectionism, and perhaps even war would still have stalled globalization. The world economy would still be characterized by international conflict, but perhaps with environmentalists instead of military industrialists in the driver's seat. World economists agree that global warming is less significant and less controllable than malaria and HIV (TED Talk). Would rampant environmentalism be any less corrupt than rampant military industrialism? Perhaps not, but at least the air might be cleaner, and Iraq might be a better place to live.

Microwave Hydrocarbon Processing

2007-06-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

Global Resource Corporation claims to have prototyped an industrial process to recycle impure hydrocarbons (plastics, tire rubber, oil shale, auto shredder residue) into pure gaseous hydrocarbons. They claim the prototype uses microwaves of specific frequencies to break complex hydrocarbon chains into simpler chains that condense to high grade natural gas, diesel, gasoline, and lubricating oil. The process takes place in a vacuum chamber so there are no inherent environmental contaminants. Supposedly, the entire process can be powered by the fuel byproducts, with an excess remaining.

Global Resource Corporation is currently seeking patents and independent verification. There is a dearth of scientific information on their website, but here are some quotes:

"Energy recovery rates [from oil shale]: Current technology - 15% by Weight, GRC technology 50% from Estonia[n shale]; 30% from USA [shale]." - GRC

"GRC says its Hawk-10 can extract enough oil and gas from the [auto shredder residue] to run the Hawk-10 itself and a number of other machines used by Gershow [an auto shredding company]." - New Scientist

According to this GRC press release (PDF)

"Global Resource Corporation (OTC: GBRC.PK) announced today that they were recognized by the United States Department of Energy as a company that may one day unlock billions of barrels of energy from domestic United States deposits. Patent pending gasification technology, developed by engineers at Global Resource, is applied to various materials to unlock energy in the form of oil and gas, and this technology, when commercialized, may succeed in satisfying domestic energy consumption."

Perhaps the Department of Energy is jumping the gun a little bit with independent verification pending. Or perhaps GRC is jumping the gun, since I can't find any mention of Global Resource Corporation on the DOE website. Yahoo Finance has picked up the story too, probably from New Scientist.

Class Divide Between Facebook and MySpace

2007-06-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

This essay is a fascinating exploration of the class divide between high school teenagers who use the Facebook social networking site (Microsoft subsidiary) and the MySpace social networking site.

Danah Boyd argues that Facebook is hegemonic, while MySpace is subaltern. She traces this class distinction through history, usage patterns, style, and established policy.

The most powerful observation she makes in the essay is that the military prohibits use of MySpace, but allows use of Facebook:

"A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This was a very interesting move because the division in the military reflects the division in high schools. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook. Facebook is extremely popular in the military, but it's not the SNS of choice for 18-year old soldiers, a group that is primarily from poorer, less educated communities. They are using MySpace. The officers, many of whom have already received college training, are using Facebook. The military ban appears to replicate the class divisions that exist throughout the military. I can't help but wonder if the reason for this goes beyond the purported concerns that those in the military are leaking information or spending too much time online or soaking up too much bandwidth with their MySpace usage.

MySpace is the primary way that young soldiers communicate with their peers. When I first started tracking soldiers' MySpace profiles, I had to take a long deep breath. Many of them were extremely pro-war, pro-guns, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, pro-killing, and xenophobic as hell. Over the last year, I've watched more and more profiles emerge from soldiers who aren't quite sure what they are doing in Iraq. I don't have the data to confirm whether or not a significant shift has occurred but it was one of those observations that just made me think. And then the ban happened. I can't help but wonder if part of the goal is to cut off communication between current soldiers and the group that the military hopes to recruit. Many young soldiers' profiles aren't public so it's not about making a bad public impression. That said, young soldiers tend to have reasonably large networks because they tend to accept friend requests of anyone that they knew back home which means that they're connecting to almost everyone from their high school. Many of these familiar strangers write comments supporting them. But what happens if the soldiers start to question why they're in Iraq? And if this is witnessed by high school students from working class communities who the Army intends to recruit?"

Fascinating stuff. It's well worth the read.

Cyborg Insects at Cornell University

2007-06-24T15:27:00.000-07:00

Cornell University's David Erickson presents the frontier of cyborg insect technology in this YouTube video. They implant microchip controllers into developing insect pupae. The pupae survive the transition to adult flying insects with the microchip controller intact. They are also experimenting with implanted microfluidics, which I speculate might allow "refueling" the insect, or using it to deliver agents.

Essentially, they are replacing the natural insect brain with an artificial one, which can be controlled remotely. They are doing this because implanting an artificial insect brain is easier than designing a flying machine of that size - that is, nature can produce better small flying devices than man.

Eventually, they might be able to add external cameras (or create an interface between the controller and the insect's eyes) to create an insect cyborg reconnaissance device.

David Ericson's lab is following in the footsteps of the mad scientist Nikola Tesla, who in his youth experimented with june bugs as a power source.

ENECO Thermal Engine

2007-06-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

ENECO's website claims that they have independent verification from the National Institute of Standards and Measures (NIST) for an efficient heat engine. This solid state device efficiently converts heat differential into electricity. It's like the opposite of a refridgerator (and it can also be run in reverse to behave exactly like a refridgerator).

ENECO has received $20 million in funding from Proterra Energy and has the attention of U.S. Military contractors. It's technology could also serve as an alternative to fuel cells, and could even have application to the laptop battery market. Here is a chart from their website:

The time to Recharge assumes use of a refueling capsule for an ethanol engine which generates the heat for conversion to electricity.

ENECO's technology is probably best applied to industrial waste heat reclamation for the time being.

Interactive Crop Watering

2007-06-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

This article is about an interactive plant watering system originally developed by NASA for space missions that will become cost effective for large scale farming. The system uses sensors that analyze the metabolism of individual plants to ascertain the optimal time to water the plants. As a result, less water is required, which saves money.

In effect, the plants can communicate through the sensors, asking for the water valve to be opened when they get thirsty.

Why Technology Isolates

2007-06-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

This idea struck me as I read the first chapter of One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey which I recommend for its beautiful prose and relaxing wholesome simplicity. Here is a stanza from the introductory poem:

I feel it's all wrong, but I can't tell you why...
The palace, the hovel next door;
The insolent towers that sprawl to the sky,
The crush and the rush and the roar.
I'm trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt;
I cower in the crash and the glare;
Oh, I want to be back in the avalanche belt,
For I know that it's safer up there!

It may seem paradoxical that despite the fact that information, communication, and population density are mushrooming thanks to our technological strides, people on the whole are less socially connected. But think about it this way: technology is the purview of those who are bred explorers. These are people who's curiosity drives them away from the comfort of typical ideas, company, and establishment, into the wilderness (literal or figurative). The wilderness of Earth is in scarce supply now. Also what people want and need is concentrated in the areas with the most population density. So to explorers, natural hermits, and the introverted, privacy, isolation, and individuality are always under attack. Naturally, technological innovation tends to address the problems of those who create it, and the most pressing problem to many technological innovators is the lack of isolation. How does one find, let alone explore, the new frontier, without exposing oneself to a crowd of people? Especially when the newest frontiers are so linked to the exploding population of people!

One innovation, among others, is the internet. On the internet, you can learn a great deal about people without ever meeting one. You can interact with people at various levels of intimacy, establish or cut off connections at will, or remain an observer for your lifetime. Many of the tools of the 21st Century have been developed by introverts, for introverts. Meanwhile, the richest extroverts are still stuck flying around in fuel-burning hunks of steel for weeks on end to drink with friends and execute simple business transactions.

Recently I was able to sign up for the Spock beta, thanks to Nick Douglass and his hip Valleywag, which I found using StumbleUpon. Thanks Nick! Spock is the latest social network, creating a massive searchable database of tagged people. Think of it as the Web 2.0 version of Who's Who. If you'd like an invitation, please email me.

Power to the Squatters

2007-06-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Promethean Power wants to develop a cheap solar power station that efficiently combines electricity generation, refrigeration, and hot water heating, for about $5000 per unit, down to $3000 with volume production. Perhaps most importantly, the crucial parts in the unit are also used in automobiles, so they are readily available in the countries where it could be of most use, and could conceivably be built by hand. One unit can supply approximately enough power for a small grocery store.

Promethean Power arises from MIT's annual entrepreneurship competition, where it won the $10,000 first prize. Now it has received a total of $170,000 in prizes and grants, including $130,000 from World Bank Development. It is seeking $1.3 million in venture capital, with $450,000 for the first year.

Promethean Power intends to focus its business in India. A technology of this kind will revolutionize the burgeoning squatter cities of the third world. Currently, squatter cities subsist primarily on stolen electricity. Already, over 1 billion people live in squatter cities, and this number is projected to grow at the rate of 70 million per year until over 50% of the world population lives in squatter cities.

Here are a couple of TED talks about squatter cities: Robert Neuwirth, Stewart Brand.

Promethean Power doesn't even have funding yet, and it is a start-up company hoping to do business in a foreign country. But their business plan is sound enough to receive $170,000 in gifts, and the bottom line is that it is now possible to power a business in a squatter city for less than the price of an automobile. In the information age, reliable access to power is more revolutionary than an automobile. Combined with cell phone networks and wi-fi repeaters, squatter cities will soon have everything they need to compete with the first world - the internet.

"Junk" DNA is Integral

2007-06-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

The ENCODE consortium published results in Nature and Genome Research that suggest that the received view of how DNA functions is incorrect. The received view is that it is composed of a small number of active genes that do all the important work, and they are separated by large tracks of inactive junk DNA that is just a random mish-mash of outmoded genetic code that no longer serves any purpose.

Instead, ENCODE has demonstrated that "The majority of the genome is copied, or transcribed, into RNA, which is the active molecule in our cells, relaying information from the archival DNA to the cellular machinery." In short, most of it is not junk. This will broaden the potential for genetic discovery.

Here is a press release published at NIH.

Profitable Synthetic Life

2007-06-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

Carl Zimmer's blog has an article on recent developments at Craig Venter's (called the father of the Human Genome project) startup, Synthetic Genomics.

Venter has patented a synthetic life form created by further simplifying Mycoplasma genitalium, an organism with small and fully sequenced genetics. Mycoplasma genitalium has 470 coding regions (or genes), of which, Venter has discovered, only 382 are essential. The patent is for a fully synthetic organism with 381 genes. His patent is opposed by watchdog non-profit ETC.

Venter plans to produce a simple fully understood organism that could easily support the insertion of customized, wholly synthetic metabolic processes. In other words, he wants to make an organism that you can program like a computer to produce biological chemicals. He plans to use it to make a reproducing bacterium that eats sugar or absorbs sunlight, and excretes fuel, thereby solving the world's energy problems forever.

According to a recent interview, Venter is having good luck with funding, much of which comes from foreign investors in Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica.

Nice Functioning Robotic Prosthetic

2007-06-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

This video is very nice. The test subject looks almost as surprised that it's working as we do. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, presents a functioning prototype robotic prosthetic arm, capable of picking up and flexibly manipulating a water bottle, a pen, and a pad of paper.

Gravity's Rainbow 2007

2007-06-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

This week I saw Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, which was for the most part, unsurprising, with the exception of the sheer volume of waste, excess, and corruption produced by the cost plus contracts for companies such as Raytheon, KBR, Halliburton, Boeing, Blackwater, and URS. Anyway, it prepared me for this article. Despite the flowery, hyperbolic style of the writing, and the anonymity, I believe it is essentially true. Here is the most amazing passage, something that belongs in Gravity's Rainbow:

"In any case, salaries are the major pull for contractors to come to a war zone. I myself am making six figures doing a job that is one of the easiest I have ever had. Though I had to do a few lesser-paying gigs to get to this one, I have now landed a nipple that I will suckle until it dries up. Even if a lawyer or doctor is pulling in over $200,000 a year back home, they still have to deal with the insurance, the car and house payments, the cost of food, the gas prices, and I have to laugh because finally there is a wee bit of gravy for the blue-collar worker. Key example: I had a supervisor in Camp Taji who couldn’t read or spell or speak or really do anything productive besides breathe and smoke cigarettes. She labeled our Supply Manual with "Suppy Manula" and she was making six figures. She can thank Bush for that. The number one reason however that I enjoy the War Zone contract more is because so many amazing and horrible things happen in war zones, and being part of that has changed me. I have swam in Saddam’s swimming pools and hung out in his palaces, I have shook hands with Bush, lifted body-filled caskets onto trucks with a forklift, built boxes for the KIA (killed in action), have been in over 80 rocket and mortars attacks, have lived in a tent with over thirty insane truck drivers, watched helicopters blow up insurgents. I have shot big guns, have rode in big tanks, have flown in a big chopper as it attacked ground forces, have been rocked by car bombs, have been involved in underground booze operations, have mingled with the Iraqi and Afghan People, have been to cat houses and bars in the red zones, have sang "Blue Suede Shoes" in the middle of Kabul in front of a bunch of locals, have said goodbye to somebody and ten minutes later they were dead, have worked with soldiers from all over the world, have lived with a porn-crazed Iraqi who is part of the new forming government, have seen Saddam go in and out of court, have watched bullets pound the wall directly above my head as I smoked a cigarette, have watched them pull bloated bodies from the Tigris, have ran from camel spiders and snakes, have done road trips across Afghanistan in a pickup drinking Heinekens purchased from Afghan soldiers, and have been introduced to local warlords.

To be a part of a historic moment in time, part of a complete clusterfuck, a money monster that is chewing and chewing, part of the battle against the Axis of Evil, but no one is right. It is an insane 'perfectness.'"

Quantum Computer Breakthrough

2007-06-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

Harvard University scientists have discovered a method for using atoms in diamond lattice as q-bits (quantum bits), at room temperature. The q-bits are manipulated indirectly by applying optical or microwave radiation to a nitrogen flaw in the diamond lattice.

Previous q-bits only functioned in vacuum at temperatures near absolute zero.

What this means it that we have discovered a method which theoretically should allow practical, scalable quantum computers. All we have to do now is figure out how to manipulate the structure of diamonds at an atomic level. This may be easier than one might think. Diamonds self assemble, and it is reasonable to assume that with the right quantities of carbon and nitrogen, at the right pressure and temperature, large registers of q-bits could spontaneously assemble, requiring only the addition of extremely sensitive microchip-controlled lasers to form a working quantum computer.

Quantum computers should revolutionize certain areas of computation, and allow large-scale accurate simulations of sub-atomic particles.

Incredible Image Convergence

2007-05-31T02:02:00.000-07:00

Two web image technologies are close to general availability, and together they will revolutionize the visual power of the internet.

The first is Google's adoption of a human computation algorithm, which will slowly but surely accurately label a vast quantity of images on the internet. Google Image Labeler is based on The ESP Game designed by Luis von Ahn, a subject of one of my previous posts, "The Web is Us(ing us)." Another of von Ahn's games, Peekaboom, may eventually make it to Google as well. Together, the ESP game and Peekaboom accurately associate areas of an image with words that describe them, allowing computers to "see" the contents of images by using people as processors.

The second is Blaise Aguera's algorithm to automatically generate spacial links between images. He presents it here in another TED talk (the first part of his presentation is only tangentially related, but it is also extremely cool - probably next generation web design). His algorithm allows a collection of images on the same subject from widely different sources, of any quality, to be combined into a 3-D model of the subject. All images on the web, categorized by human computation, will be joined together, enhancing each other, creating 3-D models of objects all over the world.

Google Maps already has a street view function in select major cities. Street view, satellite photography, random family photos and tourist snapshots posted to the web will be combined to create an immersing 3-D model of the Earth. It will be as detailed as digital cameras are numerous.

Eventually, video will also be mined for data in the same way, and all the visual data will also be organized in time. You will be able to search through all public recorded time and space. With enough security clearance, you'll be able to search through quite a bit of private recorded time and space as well....

It's going to get very interesting. Already you can zoom in on strangers. People are going to identify themselves and send links to their families. As the volume of accessible images grows, people are going to find x-rated content in public places. Hey, a license plate. Free advertizing? Come on G$$gle, you can do better than that.

Update: here's some more street view shenanigans.

Toys

2007-05-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

This virtual reality RC plane is pretty amazing. Cameras and LCDs are small enough and cheap enough now that a hobbiest can build an RC airplane that can be flown from a first-person viewpoint. I wonder if you'll be able to get one at Target in five years.

And the Japanese are getting close to working transforming robots.

Open Source Invades Windows and Mac

2007-05-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

This probably isn't super big, because mostly it doesn't do anything that platform independent languages like Java and Perl don't already do, but a software technology named Lina has arisen that allows C and C++ software written for Linux to be run on Windows and Mac. This makes it easier for a company to develop software on Linux, and be assured that it will run without changing the source code, on any platform.

The way it works is, you install the Lina platform on your Windows machine or Mac, and then you compile the C or C++ code with Lina, and then it runs like a native Windows or Mac application. On Windows it looks like a Windows program, and in Mac OS it looks like a Mac program. Cool.

Before this, a C or C++ program would have to be laboriously ported to take advantage of the platform-specific ways of doing things, in order to run on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS.

Solar Boom

2007-05-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

Here is a tidy article on the coming solar boom. According to this article the solar power industry is projected to grow from $15 billion to as high as $75 billion by 2010. No clear leaders have yet emerged in the United States market.

Fab@Home

2007-05-25T00:42:00.000-07:00

Look out, Walmart. The fabber is coming. They have successfully produced a working flashlight (complete with LED light source, batteries not included) made from epoxy, rubber, silver, and silicone layed down automatically by a 3-D printer running open source software. Still very primitive stuff, but they are getting closer and closer to the day when a 3-D printer can be constructed by a 3-D printer. Then it's all over, Walmart - are you listening?

Green Architecture

2007-05-24T18:41:00.000-07:00

This TED talk is tremendously hopeful. In general, the TED talks are some of the best layman's presentations on the future I have seen, and if anyone ever recommends one to you, it is almost certainly worth watching. They are short, and usually contain world-changing ideas. If you have some time, go to the front page, and watch anything that grabs your attention.

This one is about sustainable architecture, and sustainable technology. William McDonough advocates that all manufacturing processes are continuously recyclable with no toxic byproducts down to parts per million.

Omega

2007-05-23T02:11:00.000-07:00

This article describes the work of Marcus Chown, who has followed in the footsteps of Godel and Turing, extending the reach of mathematical undecidability. Yet again, new vistas of chaos in mathematics, the most rigorous science, have opened yawning before us. We have glimpsed the Leviathan.

Marcus Chown has demonstrated that there is a real number between 0 and 1, that is unique, exists, and is fundamental to mathematics, but each of its digits bears no relation to any of the others - there is absolutely no means of calculating it. This number, named Omega, is simply the probability that an arbitrary computer program will halt if left to run indefinitely. More damningly, he has witnessed this beast swimming through the waters of number theory (the math you learned in grade school, that uses only +, -, x, and /).

Philosophically, this tells us that not only are there truths that cannot be proven (as Godel discovered), but that truth is predominantly random and unknowable. Those truths which reveal other truths are exceptional, for by an infinite margin, unconnected, arbitrary truths outnumber structured truths. The deepest structure of mathematics is noise.

Chown has brought mathematics low. Exploring mathematics is as arbitrary as any other pursuit. Here then is proof that no life is more exalted than any other.

Very Good Free Online Dictionary

2007-05-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

I've only done a few searches, but this appears to be the best free online dictionary/thesaurus/etc. I've ever used:

http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict

It's fast, no ads, no nonsense. Enjoy!

GENI

2007-05-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Global Environment for Network Innovation (GENI) now has a $2.5 million budget for its project office.

GENI is an ambitious attempt to create a testing ground for new internet technologies that aren't wholly compatible with todays internet. I think the ultimate goal is for GENI to become the seed for a new internet with enhanced features.

If GENI succeeds, there will be two internets:

The old internet with complete freedom of content, poor security, and limited functionality.
The new internet with upgradeable security, continuously updated functionality, and, I imagine, strict controls on who can provide service - accountability for service providers, and every tool that law enforcement requests to control content.

Here is an extremely speculative story:

The old internet will become the rogue internet, while GENI will become the establishment internet. I speculate that the major change in GENI will be vastly improved support for secure remote applications. That is, the software industry and legitimate content providers will want to move to GENI as quickly as possible. On the other side will be all the quasi-legal content providers like the porn industry, online gambling, peer2peer, and pirates of every variety. When the iron is hot, GENI-compliant internet browsers will surface. These will be browsers that allow you to establish a secure connection to the new internet through the old internet. You'll be able to run virtually any kind of software on these browsers, including console-quality games, operating systems, productivity and collaborative software. You'll be able to get all your pay-per-view and limited license copyrighted material this way. iTunes will be a GENI application.

Then the GENI-compliant internet browser will be hacked mercilessly. Serious security questions will be raised, and everyone will suddenly be afraid that their most sensitive information on all their GENI software could fall into the hands of hackers, and contrary to public awareness, that will be the turning point for GENI, where it will truly take hold. Because then internet providers will start selling ultra-broadband direct connections to GENI that don't expose your data to the old internet with all its security problems. The old internet will begin to crumble as its backbone moves over to GENI compliance piece by piece. The tide will turn, and the old internet will have to scramble to connect to customers through GENI, but on the establishment's terms.

The acronym begins to make sense now. When we let the GENI out of the bottle, it will grant us wishes, but GENI will turn our own ignorance against us. We should be careful what we wish for.

3-D Silicon Architecture

2007-05-21T00:18:00.000-07:00

According to this article, Intel has produced experimental 3-D Pentium 4 microchips with immediate gains of 15% better performance, and 35% better performance/watt.

To simplify it even more - until recently, all computer microchips are etched into a flat piece of silicon. What they have done is vertically connect two pieces of flat silicon to extend the chip into the third dimension. This allowed them to make the chip much more compact, and thus efficient.

It seems like this technology will make it to market before an alternative to silicon is found. The microchip industry will have to perfect the process for mass producing 3-D chips, which will be a considerable investment, but once they do that, there are new possibilities for improving design and performance.

Perhaps this will continue until chips are cube-shaped, and manufactured with a technology much like 3-D printers. At this point, perhaps the technology for microchip manufacturing will be directly applicable to nanotechnology. Tiny silicon-based turbines have already been constructed by etching chips into gear-shapes, and then painstakingly stacking them so that they form a machine. If the microchip industry pushes research into designing and aligning 3-D chips, perhaps it will also lead to the production of smaller working machines.

Scarcity and Abundance

2007-05-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

Scarcity and Abundance is the theme of this presentation by Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson. He explains how the shift from scarcity to abundance in our economy has lead to a new system of deciding what is accessible and what is inaccessible. In essence, as commodities become abundant rather than scarce, a new circumstance of freedom arises.

Scarcity results in top-down paternalism, and power structures where "everything is forbidden unless it is permitted."

Abundance results in bottom-up egalitarianism, and power structures where "everything is permitted unless it is forbidden."

Here is a short list of commodities that are becoming abundant:

Computer processing - leads to ubiquitous computing, where everything can be controlled via computer, and computers are everywhere.
Information storage - In the future information will never be deleted, and all information produced will be archived and available in perpetuity.
Media - In the future the means to create and distribute knowledge, ideas, entertainment, and society will be abundant, making all of these free and diverse.
Bandwidth - In the future all data will be available in a broader space, at faster and faster transfer rates, until all data is available everywhere, instantly.
Manufacturing - In the future fabrication of physical objects will be abundant, which will result in devices being as cheap as what they are made of, and of diverse form and complexity.

Abundant commodities will result in flexible, free, permissive industries controlled by consumers. In other words, whatever people desire will be available.

Here is a short list of commodities which may not become abundant:

Energy - Scarcity of energy constrains what is possible in the physical world. Only what is deemed economic in terms of energy by those that control the energy supply will be permissible. If energy can become abundant, then mankind can reshape the world with unlimited creativity and diversity.
Biodiversity - Scarcity of biodiversity constrains what forms of life will exist on Earth. Only life deemed economic by those that control the environment will be permissible. If biodiversity becomes abundant, then life will exist in great diversity.
Health - Scarcity of health constrains how long we live and maintain our faculties. We will only live as long and with as much health as those who control our health allow. If health becomes abundant, then we will become immortal, and have time to explore avenues of existence indefinitely.

Cooking with Quantum

2007-05-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Researchers have shown that, at a quantum level, you can taste what you're cooking, and then untaste it if you don't like what you tasted.

So for example, you carelessly throw all the ingredients for chile into a quantum pot, and you cook it half-way. You figure there is a 50-50 chance you will like it when it is done. Then you take a little taste. If you decide you like it, let it be, and chances are the chile will still taste good when it's finished. But if you don't like it, you simply untaste the chile, and then you still have a 50-50 chance of it tasting good when it's finished!

Shapeshifters

2007-05-15T01:23:00.000-07:00

I imagine that if animals have the intelligence to consider what men are, they would regard us as shapeshifters. When we want to swim, suddenly we grow insulation and flippers. When we want to fly we grow wings. When we want to fight we grow fearsome weapons, and when we want to build nests we acquire the strength of elephants and the teeth of beavers. Here, then, is the future of shapeshifting, presented at TED Talks by Janine Benyus.

Treating the Dead

2007-05-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing article. According to Dr. Sherwin Nuland, the standard medical practice for resuscitating victims of cardiac arrest kills them. Untreated, human cells continue to live for hours after cardiac arrest, not the conventional five to ten minutes. Dr. Nuland claims that the reason it seems that cells die after five minutes without oxygen is that when the oxygen returns, a mechanism in the cell evolved to fight cancer causes the cell to self-destruct. Dr. Nuland wants to conduct research into the machinery of the cell to find a way to resuscitate patients without triggering this mechanism. This would allow heart attack and drowning victims to be resuscitated hours after clinical death. Dr. Nuland has already developed a super-cold saline solution that if administered within five minutes can prevent cells from going into self-destruct mode without oxygen. According to the article, in a small study he was able to resuscitate 80% of victims that should have had a 15% chance of resuscitation.

It's frightening to think that emergency room doctors will continue to use the conventional technique for quite some time, killing people because that is what they've been trained to do. It makes me question the breadth of the establishment.

Online Operating System

2007-05-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

Today I found the YouOS alpha site. YouOS is an online operating system. The idea is that you open a web browser on any computer, log on, and you have a open source desktop environment with open source applications and your uploaded files, which are available to you everywhere.

The current build is pretty rough and it is quite limited, but already you can create rich text documents on the web, and share them via a url, like this. I will probably upload my novel in progress onto it, and that way no matter who's computer I'm using, I won't have an excuse not to write!

There are many limitations to YouOS, but I believe this is the future of computers. Some day, the only application on a new computer will be a web browser, because that's all you'll need. Everything else will be delivered through the internet. The advantage of this, as a user, is that all computers are your computer.

The advantage of this as a software distributor is that you can serve however much of the application you want to the user, or keep as much of it as you want on your server, safe from their hacking and stealing. Also you are free to use whatever pricing model you wish, from totally free to pay by the second.

YouOS is primitive, and probably ahead of its time, but it's getting there. The desktop environment is sluggish and limited. But I wouldn't be surprised if Windows is a web application in 5 years. It's already quite productive to buy a computer that only has the free operating system linux, and the free browser Firefox. That's really all you need to communicate, work, and entertain yourself.

Los Angeles Police Action Video

2007-05-05T23:22:00.000-07:00

A nice video of police breaking up a peaceful demonstration in Los Angeles: The commentary by some of the people in the demonstration is very good. It's becoming increasingly clear that the United States is dominated by industries that cater to every human emotion in proportion to its (buying) power.

The military caters to xenophobia. The military's business is to encourage animosity between cultures, to create an atmosphere of fear in and out of our country.

The health industry caters to fear of sickness and dying. The health industry's business is to interpret every malady as something that could be a sign of something worse, to encourage unnecessary tests, to encourage unnecessary treatments, and to prolong them as long as possible under the guise of standard treatment, health, and safety.

Politicians provoke fear and stir up hatred to curry favor with their financial backers. Republicans fly the banner of the military by speaking on dangers abroad. They fly the banner of religion when they speak of the corruption of morals. Democrats fly the banner of pharmaceutical companies when they speak of the diseases that could be cured by stem cell research, and they fly the banner of non-profits and local governments when they talk about the economic woes of the poor and our troubled schools.

The police cater to fear of anarchy. The speaker in the video correctly ascertains that the police are provoking confrontation, not preventing it. That is their business.

One can look at each of these industries in a positive light, because the positive light is there. They really do provide their services. But they also push as hard as they can to make themselves necessary, and to capture the minds of those they serve.

So one shouldn't ask if we need more military to fight terrorism, or more health care to fight disease, or more incentives to fight global warming. Instead, one should ask, do we need more fear of foreigners, more fear of disease and death, or more fear of the dangers of environmental collapse.

Here is some Colbert Report footage of Congressman Dana Rohrbacher flying the flag of terrorism.

Serious Games

2007-05-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

This article introduces Georgia Tech Associate Professor Ian Bogost, and his work on a new paradigm, "serious games." "Serious games" are games that emphasize real-world modeling, communication, and education above entertainment. They can be thought of as a new communication medium.

Here is a cheap example of this medium, 3rd World Farmer (which has nothing to do with Georgia Tech).

The article mentions that the Georgia Tech program has trouble securing funding for this enterprise, and this makes complete sense. The cost of producing a game is still quite high, especially the VR games that Bogost and his students are developing. The current state-of-the-art in free gaming (games for which advertisement offsets the cost of production) is 3rd World Farmer. So the Georgie Tech program is ahead of its time.

But it will not always be so. As software development technology improves, the cost of producing a game will drop as the quality of the games increases. Eventually, the movement that Ian Bogost is trying to start will succeed, and people will be creating virtual reality "serious games" to communicate, the same way that people now communicate with digital videos. The goal is to represent a problem, an insight, or a situation, to allow the user to actively participate in your world, not just passively observe it.

First virtual applications will become widely available, and then the means to develop virtual applications will become widely available. The widespread availability of serious games will coincide with society's transition into a predominantly virtual world. Simultaneously, other forms of media: audio, video, and written language, will become so cheap and pervasive that nearly all information possessed by the human race will be available for free, in those forms.

Bandwidth

2007-04-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-29T00:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T19:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

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.

Second Life

2007-03-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

This site has some extremely interesting speculative ideas in it.

First, it documents the rise of real-world companies buying virtual space for promotional purposes. Real-world shoe and clothing companies have already done that. They sell products in the Virtual Reality world Second Life just as they do in the real world, because it is cheap, effective advertising for their real-world products. Toyota has also bought space, and might (I couldn't tell from the article) be selling virtual cars. This is similar to the commercialization of the internet. This movement is what will make Virtual Reality widely accessible to ordinary people.

This Google Tech Talk is by one of the creators of Second Life, and goes into more depth about the inhabitants, limitations, and economy.

The site speculates that when real-world enterprise is dominated by robots and other automatic systems, that perhaps the human economy will move wholly into virtual reality. That is a beautiful idea, because as the site documents, the economy has already entered virtual reality. It is also quite clear that a huge number of people in the world are no longer capable of supporting themselves in the increasingly high-tech world, and there is much evidence (such as Moore's Law) that suggests that by 2060 or so, almost no one will be able to support themselves in the real economy. It almost seems obvious that financial pressures will increasingly confine people to smaller and smaller spaces, while the means necessary to work and be entertained simultaneously become small enough to fit in those spaces.

As obvious as it is that Second Life is the beginning of something that will never go away, I have absolutely no desire to participate in it. We can already see that the upper class will look down on people who confine themselves to a virtual life -- "virtual people." With good reason, most people will struggle very hard to stay out of a second-hand life. This second-hand life will become more and more enticing, in most ways better than the real thing, and a tremendous amount of pressure will be brought to bear on people to push them into it. This will be called the environmental movement. Eventually though, nearly all people will prefer a primarily virtual existence to the sparsely furnished real one-room flat the government assistance affords them. Fortunately, the VR hardware will be eminently affordable. Perhaps ordinary people will still be able to afford vacations to the now pristine environmental paradise in the real world. This is the point where I can't speculate any further, because it depends on whether the virtual population mushrooms far beyond the resources of the real world. If it does, we get something like the Matrix, and if it doesn't, we get population management. The choice seems to be a moral one.

Are 1000 (or eventually 1,000,000) virtual lives more or less valuable than 1 real life? That's the question that we will be forced to answer some day by purely economic and environmental considerations.

Personally, I prefer the 1000 virtual lives, and I believe that will be the direction we will take. But perhaps some amazing discovery will forever remove the distinction between real and virtual.

Nanotube Arrangement

2007-03-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

This article is about using nanotubes to cool microchips, which is one of the most promising near-term applications for nanotubes. It could easily be an important step in the microchip industry, which would yield lots of money for new nanotube research.

What is most interesting to me about the article is the description of the control these researchers have over the arrangement and macroscale combination of nanotubes and the chip. According to them all the techniques they used are well understood industrial processes. The end result is that nanoscale components are arranged in a fairly precise grid, and nanotubes of various widths are concentrically stacked inside each other (like a target). This shows the state of the art in nanotube positioning.

More on Nanosolar

2007-03-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

I found Nanosolar's website today on Stumble Upon. I mentioned it in an earlier blog, but it seems to be taking off now. They claim to have a process that makes solar panels so cheaply that they are competitive with natural fuel burning. The thin film panels are "as efficient as conventional solar panels," but 100x thinner. The thin film can be applied to aluminum, making it bendable. According to Nanosolar, the panels achieve "energy payback," which I assume is the time it takes to recoup the energy put into manufacturing them, in less than one month, as opposed to previous thin film technologies which take 1.7 years. They are currently in the process of building their first large factory. Their target is to generate more solar paneling than the entire solar farming industry has now, per year.

I also found this article today, which is about the creation of nanoscale solar motors. These might be used as a film on solar panels, but their uses are almost inexhaustible.

E8 Mapped

2007-03-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

This article is one of the strangest news stories I've seen. Mathematicians have invested a great deal of brain power and effort to map the E8 Lie group, which is a finite mathematical object of extraordinary complexity. It's about 60 gigabytes according to the article, and of such complexity that great minds have trouble figuring out how to calculate it, and have trouble even determining if they got it right. They think it may have application to theoretical physics. What's funny about that is that they don't really even understand the theories this thing applies to. They are essentially saying, "hey theoretical physics guys: we got something really weird and exotic over here, and we think you are going to like it." They leave it up to the physicists to play with it and decide whether it resembles reality. It would be even more strange if it actually worked. It would be like discovering that the universe had DNA. Here is this 60 gigabyte object that if you plug certain equations into it, it unravels the nature of the universe. It would be something like a seed to a fractal that describes the universe. It's happened all the time that mathematicians have discovered math that turned out to have important application to physics, but we can say with confidence that never before has their discovery required such complex computation. It simply has not been possible to calculate this object before the advent of today's computers. It is right on the threshold of the place where the limitations of the human brain get in the way, and we can no longer understand well enough to be of any use in the process of discovering the universe. From here on out, it is all computers. We will be like mice, and the computers will be feeding us and cleaning our cages while they go on to figure out the big questions that we can't even understand.

Mapping the Brain With Florescent Rabies

2007-03-07T17:28:00.000-08:00

In this article they describe a ghastly experiment wherein slices of rat brain are infected with rabies genetically modified to produce florescent proteins. A number of observations here:

Perverse!
The closing statement of the article, "even accurate tracing methods also have their limitations. Some brain circuits are so complex that one could not hope to accurately trace all the connections within them. In the cerebellum, for example, Purkinje cells form synapses with hundreds of thousands (or perhaps up to a million) parallel fibres. Attempting to visualize the connections of a Purkinje cell, even with the most accurate transsynaptic tracer, would result in an incomprehensible image consisting of a large green blur." is amazing. Essentially, they are saying that the neural connections of some cells in a rats brain are too complex to visualize. That pretty much means that they will never be understood in a comprehensive way by people.
Essentially, they are using the rabies virus like a nanobot. They are using the self-replicating and behavior of rabies, which evolved naturally, to execute a simple algorithm. One can imagine that greater genetic control would allow the virus to produce more complex data, and perhaps even behave in more complex ways.
Mapping individual neurons has been accomplished in much less perverse ways. Neuroscientists can pinpoint live cells firing in 3-D using extremely sensitive electrodes.

Bacterial Data Storage

2007-03-06T21:37:00.000-08:00

This article describes the work of some insane scientists who have experimented with storing data in bacterial DNA.

" DNA stores a large amount of information in a very small space. Considering that a milliliter of liquid can contain up to 10 billion bacteria, the potential capacity of bacterial-based DNA memory is enormous, assuming that the data can be retrieved in an organized way, according to Wong."

They also claim that by the process of reproduction, the stored information can be made well-nye permanent, just by releasing the bacteria. Especially if the information is encoded in radiation/mutation resistant bacteria.

A wealth of ideas come to my mind when I read this.

What if the internet is one day archived in bacteria?
What if bacteria already have information stored in them by extraterrestrial entities?
Is it possible to create bacteria that are already primed to evolve into higher life forms, simply by encoding dormant machinery for higher functions in their junk DNA?
Could it be shown that this has already happened on Earth?

Yes, of course these ideas are all insane, but that should give you a notion as to how twisted Wong and his team are.

Reflections

2007-03-03T14:05:00.000-08:00

This article describes a piece of hardware capable of reconstructing images from partial reflections. In the example, the camera/projector reconstructs the face of a playing card turned away from the camera by studying a partial reflection off a book jacket behind the playing card. At this time, the process takes 14 minutes. This is probably the time it takes for the projector to cycle through all the tests necessary to reconstruct the image. A hardware speed-up might eventually allow real-time active vision capable of using any and all reflections to reconstruct a three dimensional environment. This could be used to create a movie camera able to effectively film from any angle in the scene (with varying clarity depending on the characteristics of the scene). It might also be used for military hardware, allowing it to see around corners to detect targets. With sufficient technology, robots will have vision extraordinarily better than ours.

Center of the Universe

2007-03-01T16:14:00.000-08:00

Way at the end of this article is the following spooky statement by theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss:

"That is, we live in one universe, so we're a sample of one. With a sample of one, you have what is called a large sample variance. And maybe this just means we're lucky, that we just happen to live in a universe where the number's smaller than you'd predict. But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.

The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we're the center of the universe, or maybe the data is imply incorrect, or maybe it's telling us there's something weird about the microwave background results and that maybe, maybe there's something wrong with our theories on the larger scales. And of course as a theorist I'm certainly hoping it's the latter, because I want theory to be wrong, not right, because if it's wrong there's still work left for the rest of us."

It reminds me of the crazy correspondence between the size of the moon and the size of the sun, which allows a nearly perfect solar eclipse, which is sometimes offered up by Christians as evidence of God's immaculate plan.

Anyone For Tennis?

2007-02-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

This article describes a method for communicating with apparently vegetative people through brain scan. The subject is asked to think of "tennis" to signify "yes," and "house" to signify "no." Because some vegetative people are able to hear and process verbal communication, and thoughts of tennis and their home can be localized in brain scans, it is possible to open a channel of communication.

Similar research has allowed paraplegics to control pointers with thought, etc.

But the idea of using thoughts to designate either "yes" or "no" gave me the idea that what they have done is establish a method for the subject to communicate one bit of information (per query). As this technology improves (and it will probably improve exponentially) the bit rate of communication will increase exponentially.

Internet Snapshots

2007-02-27T23:47:00.000-08:00

Here are some permanent snapshots of Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia. This makes Wikipedia a useful reference for academic writing, and now clearly superior to published encyclopedias. It was created wholely collaboratively by people of no credentials other than that they could write articles that survived the scrutiny of their peers.

Note however, that the Wikipedia snapshot is still vulnerable to broken links itself - all of its references to outside pages will break over time.

As internet servers become exponentially cheaper, more and more of the web will be archived permanently. When they become sufficiently cheap, it will be possible to link to any page at any time in the past.

Genetic Programming

2007-02-27T02:01:00.000-08:00

This video accessibly depicts the results of genetic programming. This is artificial evolution. The problem depicted, is construct the best shape for moving the farthest distance in a set amount of time, using only rigid contracting pieces in connected pyramidal shapes. The method is to randomly mutate shapes and their contraction and propagate the shapes that are most successful at moving.

Obviously, a solution to the problem is of no use. The problem was chosen because it results in easy-to-simulate shapes that are broadly unexpected, yet engender anthropomorphism. The only reason they didn't simulate more realistic creatures is that it would require more computation. As computation becomes cheaper, we will simulate evolution of molecules, and then evolution of chemical solutions, until finally we are simulating evolution of bacteria.

But even with this simple video, we can see the potential: random permutation augmented by structure, diversity, and expansion results in creativity, intelligence.

Bacterial Machinery Video

2007-02-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

This video gives you an idea of how detailed the computer simulations of biology are becoming. It is depicting an assembly line inside a bacterium, coordinated by RNA. This isn't an artists rendition. These are actual shapes of molecules as calculated by supercomputers, and the statistically and/or functionally predicted interfaces between them in actual cells. This is what actually happens in bacteria. Right now, the computational limitations make this the largest scale we can economically simulate. As computers improve, the scale will enlarge exponentially.

Peak Oil

2007-02-25T10:21:00.000-08:00

I haven't found enough information on the internet to adequately cover this topic, but I'd like to share this data. It's pretty worthless, but it suggests that we will see some changes in the next 15 years.

Chemical Make-Up of Extra-Solar Planets.

2007-02-21T23:35:00.000-08:00

This article describes ground-breaking analysis of the chemical make-up of some extra-solar planets. Both NASA and the European Space Agency have plans for telescopes dedicated to the search for Earth-like worlds.

It's both astounding and deeply satisfying that human beings are already searching for ways to expand, even though our current technology is inadequate to the task of getting beyond our planet, let alone our solar system. This drive to explore and expand is completely intuitive to a large proportion of the people in the world. We are so driven, that it makes me think we have done this before. Sure, life has expanded from one continent to another throughout evolution. But it's a tremendous leap to form an analogy between a distant shoreline and a tiny point of light in the night sky. Yet so many people, people who have trouble keeping geography and basic logic straight, have no trouble at all accepting that one day we will expand to other star systems. That's how this crazy stuff gets funded.

From the standpoint of living on Earth, this research is insane, but from the standpoint of life, it is absolutely the most important research going on today.

I believe that one day life on Earth will reach a consensus that life is more important than the form it takes; diversity of life inevitably leads to every form being taken, so long as life continues to expand. That means that we share something in common with not just people of different races and cultures, but with every organism on Earth, down to bacteria. If we can spread just bacteria to two star systems then we have played our part in the exponential expansion of life -- that is, if life has not already expanded, or originated, on every star system in the galaxy.

Structure, Diversity, Expansion

2007-02-21T13:53:00.000-08:00

This article presents an argument in favor of spontaneous evolution of life from metabolic chemical reactions, without the benefit of DNA or RNA replication. In essence, this is an informed opinion as to whether life is a miracle, or a commonplace occurrence in the universe.

If life is a miracle (an extreme statistical unlikelihood) then perhaps we will not ever find another example in our universe. If, on the other hand, life is a general process that could happen almost anywhere where complex chemical reactions occur, then most probably there are other living systems in our solar system.

Toward the middle of the article, it summarizes some requirements for a metabolic origin of life (and therein argues that a metabolic origin of life is much more likely than the spontaneous creation of RNA or DNA).

The requirements listed in the article are:

A boundary is needed to separate life from non-life.
An energy source is needed to drive the organization process.
A coupling mechanism must link the release of energy to the organization process that produces and sustains life.
A chemical network must be formed, to permit adaptation and evolution.
The network must grow and reproduce.

Even more generally:

Localized reduction of entropy (self assembly, structure)
Diversity
Expansion

And is that not exactly the requirements for life to persist? In other words, there is no distinction between the persistence of life, and the origin of life. These principles apply equally to us and primordial sludge. Notice also, if 1. is removed, the result is turbulence and chaos. This is the condition of the universe at large. If 2. is removed, the result is crystal: an unchanging pattern repeated forever until its necessary constituents are exhausted. If 3. is removed, the result is death: an isolated pocket of (perhaps even self-sustaining) diversity, that will eventually be annihilated by catastrophe.

In order for Earth to remain alive, it is therefor necessary that we maintain a structured environment, diversity in life and thought, and strive to expand beyond our planet. Otherwise, we will be no different from any random collection of chemicals.

AI Vision Breakthrough

2007-02-21T12:11:00.000-08:00

I found this article today with StumbleUpon. MIT and Tel-Aviv University collaborated to produce a ground-breaking vision system that, according to the article, can recognize arbitrary objects, such as cars, trees, and people in digital images. What's more important is that they accomplished this by creating a computer model of human brain physiology, and then training it.

Theoretically, this same technique might be used for other senses. Similar research has yielded breakthroughs in robotics (by studying the physiology of touching and walking). Perhaps it could be applied to voice recognition, or even to linguistic development.

In the short-term, I would guess they will attempt to use this machine learning vision for the DARPA Challenge. The Competition in November will award 3.5 million dollars to the top research teams that produce autonomous vehicles capable of navigating an urban course that includes other moving vehicles, and other typical objects, such as curbs, trees, road blocks, signs, etc.

Naturally, DARPA funds this research toward the goal of producing autonomous military vehicles. However, all the software used in the DARPA challenge is freely available to all the competitors, so this technology will also be available to the private sector. Last year in the DARPA challenge, many teams' autonomous vehicles successfully navigated a long off-road course, and I believe many teams will successfully complete the urban course this year. It seems likely that at this rate, autonomous vehicles will hit the market in the next decade.

Is this the future?

2007-02-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

This made me cry, and not entirely with laughter.

Thin Film Solar Power

2007-02-20T14:12:00.000-08:00

According to this article, thin film solar technology is very close to achieving the cost effectiveness of natural fuels. As opposed to many of the alternative energy claims, this one grabs my attention because reputable companies have already invested. The article says that Shell and Google founders have invested in thin film companies, Flisom and Nanosolar respectively. The (optimistic) estimate is that they will be more cost efficient than natural fuels in five years! The only thing that will keep natural fuels in the running is that solar panels require an initial investment. However, that investment is completely scalable, down to the point where individuals can afford solar panels.

What this means to me is that in at most ten years, nearly every urban surface will be covered with solar panels, and all affluent suburbs will be covered with solar panels. They may even be cheap enough that window blinds and siding will contain solar panels.

The thing about thin film solar power is that they are not very efficient, so very large surfaces will have to be covered with them. They will be everywhere.

The Web is Us(ing us).

2007-02-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of videos that everyone who uses the internet should see:

These videos describe the birth of a new field, a new profession, and something that will change the world. The internet and the people who use it are becoming more and more integrated as a seemless thinking entity. All web content is becoming categorized, rated, and disseminated by people, just through their use of the web. Web pages that resonate with their users are ranked highly, acquire new content through use, and are spread through various recommendation-based software. Soon, experts in producing software that uses free labor from people using the internet to accomplish useful things will be in tremendous demand. YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, Netflix, and Wikipedia are all examples of this young field. It is just going to get better and better at entertaining you and helping you, while at the same time using you to do all the work.

My current favorite is StumbleUpon, which I highly recommend. It is the reason I started this blog, and I've gotten all the ideas that I post about through it.

Simply through human interaction, the internet is slowly acquiring all the properties of an excellent mind. I would say that the biggest gap right now is the problem of broken links. Many of the blogs I've added include links that may break some day. In fact, this gives me an idea. There ought to be a browser plug-in that when it encounters a broken link, it uses the link context to search for similar content to the link that was broken. Searching technology is good enough now, and the internet is redundant enough now, that most broken links could be resupplied fairly seamlessly. I wonder if www.broken.com is available.

Nano-scale Fabricator

2007-02-16T15:46:00.000-08:00

Articles such as this one abound on the internet. They describe the quest for, and the consequences of creating the first nano-scale fabricator. This is a device capable of constructing precise molecular-scale objects, including itself. The first device capable of doing this should be able to completely revolutionize manufacturing in the space of a year. At first, any object of simple design will be available dirt cheap. The complexity of dirt cheap objects will increase as quickly as the design software can be developed, so within a few years, objects of any complexity should be available for the price of materials alone. These objects will be constructed precisely down to the atomic scale, so they will last precisely as long as they are designed to, and operate in exactly the way they are designed to (perfect quality, perfect control). It is very likely that within a few years, the fabricator factory will be available to citizens, who will be able to download plans for a wide range of open source designs, such as diamond light bulbs that never burn out, obsolete computers, toys of every variety, weapons, and of course, complete nano- to large-scale manufacturing equipment. Once the cat is out of the bag, it can never be put back in, because anyone who owns even a single fabricator (a microscopic device) could build a full manufacturing plant in a month, which could be used to churn out perfectly constructed weapons of every variety.

Billions of dollars are being invested in nanotechnology in the United States, and of course, around the world. In some sense, all of this research, regardless of its immediate goals, is working toward the construction of the first Fabricator. Most of the research is trying to produce economically valuable results in the short term, so that nanotechnology does not have to rely on funding. Every time a scientist produces something economically viable through nanotech research, a booming company is created, which will eventually have a large R&D budget. Every such company is working toward the construction of the first Fabricator, directly or indirectly.

What is interesting about this is that the government and the military do not seem to be holding back at all in the nanotechnology research. You would think that the economy would protect itself against such a world-changing technology, but it is not doing that. It seems like there are a few possibilities:

Creating a fabricator is much more difficult than many armchair research directors believe, and it is very unlikely that it will ever be constructed.
The powers that be somehow do not understand the disruptive capability of fabricators, and believe they can control the technology. There will be a big "uh oh" moment, and then suddenly all the power structures will be destroyed in a few years as the people take back the world.
It is the goal of the economy to develop this nanotechnology, and the fabricator is a necessary step in a larger plan that supersedes anything that the populous could dream of doing with a fabricator.

Possibility #1 strikes me as unlikely, just because of the sheer volume of research I have seen depicting startling control over nano-scale objects. The fabricator may be 50 or 100 years away (not 20 like some say), but it just doesn't seem intractable. I've seen enough incredible things built out of Legos by hobbyists to believe that all those tinkering geniuses with military funding can come up with a way to attach the nano-engines to the nano-gears and start building progressively more flexible tools.

Possibility #2 strikes me as unlikely too. I have to believe that the powers that be are fully aware of the risks in nanotechnology. It's a consistent theme in science fiction, there are articles all over the internet, and every physicist in the country knows about it, even if they only have one in their think tank.

Possibility #3 seems the most likely to me, although it is of course impossible to work out what that means for us. It sounds scary, but perhaps it will be wonderful. It really does seem likely to me that people will have access to fabricators, but that their naive tinkering impulses will forever lag behind the sheer directed power of industry, which will shape the world God only knows how.

Improved Thermal Power Generation

2007-02-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

This article describes advances in nanotechnology in the direction of improving power generation from heat differential. This is significant because almost all of the power in the United States is generated by burning natural fuels, and this technology doesn't disrupt that. It merely gives natural fuels a leg up against alternative energy sources. So this technology is "safe" for the economy, and would allow oil/coal/natural gas companies to sell less product to provide the same amount of power, thus extending how long they can continue to accumulate wealth. So (in order to preserve the status quo) this technology should be funded such that when supply of natural fuels starts to dwindle, and it becomes more expensive to extract natural fuels, this expense can be counteracted by requiring less to be sold for the same economic benefit.

So in conclusion, this technology will be seen in the future, unless a "rogue" energy technology manages to break the funding barrier.

Nanotube Water Filtration

2007-02-13T22:20:00.000-08:00

Here is another stem to a world-changing technology. If I understand correctly, there is no power consumption in this filtration technique, only application of a voltage. That means that the only hindrance to producing near-free fresh water from sea water is the cost of producing a filter composed of nanotubes. Surely this cost will decrease exponentially in the near future. Tremendous strides have already been made in manufacturing short-length nanotubes, controlling their dimensions, and incorporating them into other materials. So, the science is done. All that remains is the engineering (and funding).

Alternative Energy

2007-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

Today I discovered the fascinating world of alternative energy. Many would-be companies currently promise prototypes for world-changing alternative energy devices. Generally, these fall into a few categories:

Zero-Point Energy devices
Cold Fusion devices
Super-efficient/cheap solar power devices

These companies generally go through the following phases:

Report that they have stunned the world with their new ground-breaking discovery
Demonstrate their limited prototype, present data on past experimentation, challenge scientific community to reproduce, and naturally, request additional funding from private sources.
Stall, repeat 2 to fresh ears?

There's a whole list of these companies compiled here. I think my favorite is this one, which says that it is set to build a factory in South Africa, and an unnamed German company is going to build a factory in Germany. You can google for it, and get a bunch of articles with exactly the same info and text, which suggests a single unverified source.

Many of these companies openly claim that their research has been suppressed by the oil companies because if it came to fruition it would eliminate them. So these companies don't get funded because

All rich people have oil interests.
No one with money is willing to invest in unproven science.

Their ideas can't be tested by universities because they are just secretive enough about their patent-pending devices that they cannot be engineered without too much effort and uncertainty by a graduate research program, and no graduate research program could obtain grants for anti-oil industry research. That's the story anyway.

It's very hard to tell whether the story is true, or whether it is just a great justification for a get-rich-quick scam.

It makes me wonder whether any of these energy technologies are really viable, or whether it even matters. Perhaps the world economy truly is protecting itself against technology that would turn the world on its head. Or perhaps these technologies are just the oil industry's paranoid nightmares before it wakes up every morning to continue providing the world's energy.

But the death of the electric car in California, and the existence of companies like Tesla Motors suggests to me that the economy really is protecting itself against world-changing ideas. If Tesla Motors is successful, then the economy must have decided to let the electric car slip by now, or it can no longer stop it. Tesla Motors' business plan seems strong: 100K sports cars starting with a limited run, followed by expanded availability every year until eventual release of an electric sedan. Supposedly the first run is sold out and they are taking reservations for the 2008 Roadster. There's more about Tesla Motors and their Roadster on wikipedia.

Today's News: 16 qubit quantum computer

2007-02-12T18:22:00.000-08:00

D-wave Systems claims that it will demonstrate the world's first 16 qubit quantum computer on February 13th. You can read news stories galore here.

I haven't seen any articles that spell out the purported capability of this machine. It should allow the simultaneous "checking" of 16 bits of possibilities simultaneously (or 65536 possibilities), whereas a conventional computer would have to try each of the possibilities separately. Naturally, there is nothing that a 16-qubit prototype can accomplish that couldn't be performed on a conventional computer that was 65000 times faster (and you are probably using such a computer right now).

However, this is still the most significant news story we've had for a very long time, because it was just last year (to my memory) that the first 4 qubit machines were tested. D-wave (with funding) hopes to expand the capability of their machine to 256-qubits, and their competitors, IBM and NEC can't be too far behind. Naturally, there isn't anything that a 256-qubit prototype can accomplish that couldn't be performed on a conventional computer that was 1.15 x 10 to the 77th times faster. You see, every qubit increases the advantage of quantum computers exponentially* for "guess and check" problems. It doesn't take many qubits to make them indispensable.

So it appears that the qubit capacity of quantum computers will be increasing exponentially (so their capability will be increasing double exponentially), and no doubt the size, price, and power consumption will be decreasing exponentially. That means that soon FedEx will finally be able to calculate the optimal delivery schedules and routes for their carriers. Soon conventional cryptography will be obsolete, and quantum cryptography will be necessary to protect information. Soon computers will be better at playing "mine sweeper" than people. Applications beyond these are an infant but deep and fruitful science. An entirely new skill set, quantum programming, will soon be an economic commodity. This is a skill that currently is taught only in a few lonely upper-division computer science courses, and mostly glazed over because it is difficult, confusing, and until soon, useless.

*You'll be seeing the word "exponential" a lot in this blog. Each time, one ought to take notice: it means that something is changing faster than you can comprehend! Every once in a while, you'll see "double exponential" which is like that, only sharp enough that the world might change completely in the space of a couple weeks.

First Post

2007-02-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

No Other Possibility is a phrase I first heard as a lyric in a track by Negativland, a Bay Area noise band. In their track, on the unavailable album "Big 10-8 place," it drove home the absolute compulsion inherant in a long ridiculous, impossible command issued to residents of San Francisco. As the monologue described the increasingly surreal journey of you, a resident of San Francisco, taking the journey became compulsory, as surely as you listened to the track.

I will use it to punctuate the ecstatic beauty of the infinite possibilities of free thought, constrained by the absolute determinism inherant in the exercise of choice. Mankind as a whole has an extraordinary breadth of choice in how the world becomes, and yet at every moment there is absolutely no other possibility.