Internet Censorship Around The World Part 2: Afghanistan & Burma...

What do Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Burma, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Iran, and Egypt have in common?  They all have large Internet Censorship.

Internet Censorship Around The World Part 1 China...

In what countries is the Internet blocked or filtered?  Find out in this article.

Wikipedia Examined...

With 16,000,000 articles is the largest and most popular reference work on the Internet, being ranked the 7th largest website by Alexa.  It is a good thing?  It is worth reading?

Happy Halloween 2.0 - the Uncanny Valley

Ghosts and goblins not getting you in the mood for Halloween anymore? Jump into the uncanny valley!
Horror movies have been using it successfully for years, while human like robots and cgi can't crawl out of it (at least not yet). It is the uncanny valley and its a real spook show...

The term was first used by roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970. When he first started making his robots more human the reception by others was pleasant, but when he continued to improve on their human likeness the reception went sour as people were freaked out. He realized then that his robots had fallen into the "uncanny valley", and wouldn't escape until they achieved nearly perfect human likeness.

We will overcome this valley as good cgi is almost indistinguishable from real human footage today already. Getting our robots out of the valley is going to be a lot harder, but I'm sure they will get there sometime after they pass the Turing test. Horror fans will surely miss the valley, but don't fret, it will be back!

We will see the return of the uncanny valley in humans 2.0
Imagine looking into my iris to see a lens zooming in and out, or watching my knees bend backwards to run faster. These are possibilities we may see in future transhumanists, and to witness a human 2.0 today would surely appear uncanny. But will we still be freaked out or will it be the norm? Surely the bold ones to first adopt such changes will get ridiculed by luddites, but I'm sure the shock value is what some of them are looking for anyway. Today many people often modify their bodies with tattoos, piercings and even skull spiked implants to stand out from the crowd. In the future it will not just be a fashion statement but also a functional upgrade.

When we have transcended biology so far we aren't even recognizable as a biological being, the uncanny valley will disappear again. But by then, who knows what, if any, will be our standard of natural appearance. Surely by then our minds will have matured as much as our bodies.

3D projections On Buildings - Spectacular!

Spectacular examples of 3D projections on buildings.  Enjoy!

Barnes & Noble NOOKColor!...

Today, Barnes & Nobles introduced the NOOKColor ereader.  It has an IPS Display, similar to the iPad display.

Wisdom of the Crowds...

Can a large diversified group of people exhibit better knowledge of certain things than so called "experts?"

The Internet of Things or web 3.0?...

The Internet is only 14 years old.  It is still in its infancy.  It is about to include physical objects within its matrix.  This will change the world in a way we cannot imagine.  Are you ready?

Are Governments Immune From The Revelations of the Internet?...

The Internet is rooted in the sharing of information.  Like a small town of old, no one can keep secrets for long.  Everyone knows everything about each other.  Some governments, have sought to suppress this basic aspect of the Internet, by clamping down on the free sharing of ideas.  They have also sought to keep their secret information from leaking into it.  Will they succeed?

The Dark Side Of The Smart Electrical Grid...

Can something as innocent as a smart meter to measure your electricity usage and advise you as to then the rates are cheapest invade your privacy?

Where Is Your Online Information?...

On what server is your information?  Is it in this country?  It is safe?  If you are a corporation, could a foreign corporation gain access to your trade secrets or strategy?

What Is The Present State of Robotics? PREVIEW

How are advanced are we with robots?  How close are they in some areas to taking over the jobs of humans or at least to being able assistants?

Facebook Drops The Ball Again...

In a previous post, we spoke about Facebook's ineptitude, especially recently.  They have done it again.

Amazon Kindle Now Ahead of All Other eReaders...

In September, we had reviewed the different eReaders in the market and concluded that the Nook from Barnes & Noble had the slight lead in features.  This is NO longer true.  The Kindle is now ahead.

Do You Need A Smart Home?... PREVIEW

Homes have not basically changed in hundreds of years.  They have electricity and indoor plumbing but in many ways, they would be very familiar to our ancient ancestors.  It's time for a change!

Do We Need A Smart Grid For Our Electricity?...

How much do we depend on electricity?  Could we lose our electrical grid for 6 months??

Nanotechnology Part 3 World Transformation...

More on the most important and decisive technology of the 21st Century. Will it create economic world upheaval due to pricing of objects plummeting, while at the same time transforming our world completely?

How A Microchip Is Made....

AMD's amazing video on how a microchip is made A-Z.

Nanotechnology Part 2...

What products are being made using Nanotechnology right now? What is right around the corner?  What is still far in the future?

Why Apple Will Buy Facebook (If Facebook Says YES!)...

If Apple buys Facebook it would solve it's biggest problem - Apple's weakness in the Social Media Market.

Can We Multitask?...

Can humans really multitask?  Some say it is not possible.  Others talk of the new study on distraction. Others say that we can only multitask simple motor skills.  Find out.

Kevin Kelly & Steven Johnson at New York Public Library...

Here is an interview with Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson at the New York Public Library. It was presented by ForaTV.

Copyright and The Creative Commons...

Are excessive copyrights slowing down progress and innovation?  Some think so.

7 Companies That Rule Our Perceptions...

These are the seven media companies that control most of what you see, hear and maybe think.

The Tyranny of Cable & Satellite Television....

For years we have paid Comcast, DirectTV and all the others...is that time coming to an end??

What is 30steps?

If you take 30 steps linearly you get to thirty but if you take 30 steps exponentially you arrive at 1 Billion. This is exponential growth and this is how all information technology grows.
Thanks to technology life expectancy and IQ have been globally rising while war and poverty are globally declining. As we approach the knee of the curve the exponential nature of technology is starting to really become evident. Some confused individuals refuse to accept the benefits of technology and cling to the "good ol' days" myth. They are fueling a dangerous neo-Luddite movement. We at 30 Steps believe in a transparent soft takeoff to the technological singularity; which will more likely be accomplishable by public understanding of technology, its benefits, and the dangers of its suppression.
Our logo captures the 3 overlapping technological revolutions Ray Kurzweil refers to as GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics).

Botnets and Zombie Computers?....

Does your computer rise up at night and obey orders from some one else like a Zombie??

Cyber Warfare or Cyber Espionage?...

How much do we depend on electricity?  What if it was lost for 5 weeks in most of the nation?  Can this happen?

Dr. Smartphone Will See You Now, Health & Technology...

Your phone can check your blood pressure, heartbeat, weight, and general health?

60 Minutes History of the Cell Phone...

Amazing video produced by 60 Minutes on the History of the Cell Phone.

We're Going To Need A Lot More Emoticons

We can't imagine 4-dimensional space, we can't see the color infrared, neither do we have the sense or sonar, but we will via technology, and with these gains in perceptions our emotions will change too...


To set the stage for what I'm going to propose I will first give 3 examples of perceptions humans currently can not experience.

1. Computers can think in 4-dimensional space, we can't. The image below is sequential 3D slices or shadows of a 4D cube, or hypercube. Since we can not perceive or display 4-dimensional space the best representation we can do is slice a 4-dimensional object into 3D plains, much like slicing a 3D potato into what appears to be 2D slivers. This is how a hypercube would appear if it were to slide through our 3-dimensional space.

hypercube

2. We only have 5 sensory imputs : touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight. While a 6th sense or "3rd eye" is commonly fabled, we are generally limited to the basic five. Some animals however do have a 6th sense. Dolphins and bats have mastered the sense of sonar. Sharks have electroreception and can detect even the weakest electromagnetic fields given off by all living things. Humans are starting to gain sensory inputs via technology. Crude body modifications such as magnetic implants allow for detection of strong electromagnetic fields.

the 5 human senses

3. Our eyes can only see in color. We only can see into the visible light spectrum which goes from violet to dark red. While ultra violet and infrared are just out of our spectrum many insects see into these spectrums of light; ultraviolet flowers attract certain insects, while other bugs see infrared as a night vision. Our technology can detect the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared night goggles, radiographs, radio receivers, microwave radar, and radiation detectors are all rather old technologies. Some have peered beyond the visible light spectrum using just their biological eyes. During World War II the army conducted successful tests by altering soldiers' diets so they could see infrared, however this project was dumped because of technological advances. Seeing ultraviolet is just scratching the surface, see the chart below.

electromagnetic spectrum

As technology advances and we transcend biology our abilities to perceive the world directly will expand. New sensory inputs and intelligence levels will go far beyond that of biology. How will these changes shape us, as we are able to think in multiple dimensions and sense the universe in unimaginable ways? Just as reptiles are only capable of primitive emotions such as fear, humans are only capable of the emotions which we have evolved up to. New emotions will be discovered as we transcend biology. Some people today will fail to understand this possibility and say that the known emotions are all encompassing. Those critics should look at a color wheel and try to imagine the missing colors. We can't even imagine 4 spacial dimensions, the dimensions of emotions that are yet to be discovered are even more unimaginable. This is the essence of the singularity.

Mind "uploading" or Substrates for Independent Minds...

Is it possible to transfer a complete human brain into a computer?  Can a working model be made of the entire human brain?  Some respected scientists think so and are actively working towards this goal. 

Publishers Are Migrating Online...

The publishing industry, especially newspapers have been declining for several years.  Their advertising income is down and their world is changing.  They are migrating online, the "paper" newspaper to be an oddity within 5 years.

Does Facebook Want To Be WORLDbook...

500,000,000 members worldwide who have an average of 139 friends, who spend a combined 700,000,000,000 minutes a month on the site, of which 50% of them log into a site with over 1,000,000 other websites integrated into it, ** Does this company POSE A THREAT to the established order?? Coming to a blog near you!

Battle of the Tablets...

Comparison of all the released and soon to be released tablets along with all the known features.  Coming to a blog near you.

What We Still Don't Know - movie

How similar is our very existence to a simple game invented in 1970? Srik Narayanan's documentary What We Still Don't Know draws startling comparisons which will shake you to your core. Is the universe we live in a large genetic algorithm designed to create something of interest? What are the limits of human intelligence and how will we surpass those limits? How could our universe be so "fine tuned"? What We Still Don't Know asks such hard questions and some of the answers are very hard to digest. Full movies is posted at the bottom on this blog. Sit back, open your mind, your might want to roll a joint of Spice for this one...


Martin Rees
Cosmologist and Astrophysicist
Brilliantly hosts What We Still Don't Know. Outspoken on the future of humanity he is "a concerned member of the human race".







John Conway
Mathmatician
Invented the Game of Life in 1970, a cellular automata with simple rules based on; life, death, and reproduction. Conway suggests our in our own universe complexity may arise out of a rather simple set of rules.








Nick Bostrom
Philosopher and Transhumanist
Has stated planets, life, and entire galaxies may be simulated and that it is very likely we are existing in such a simulation.






Michael Hofman
Nueroscientist
In studying the brains of primates he has concluded that the human brain has reached biological limits of intelligence, and that a larger brain would actually decrease in processing power.



Leonard Susskind
Theoretical Physicist
widely considered a father of string theory






Max Tegmark
Cosmologist
In his Ultimate Ensemble Theory of Everything he states ...self-aware substructures will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically "real" world.

What We Still Don't Know

The Echelon Network Is Listening?...

Echelon is a network designed to collect and analyze information being operated by 5 different countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States .

Is the iPAD an iFad??...

Is the iPad a fad?  Will things go back to normal after people get tired of them?  This is what some are saying in the media.  We shall examine this fad here today.

PlayBook Will Die By iPad's Sword...

WHY THE RIM PLAYBOOK WILL DIE BY THE IPAD'S SWORD.  EXPLANATION NOW AT A BLOG NEAR YOU.

TechnoCalyps The Movie Part 3/3...

This will be the third and final post on the film TechnoCalpys titled, The Digital Messiah.  The director named the movie combining two ideas - apocalypse and technology.