Plus Ultra Technologies/30 steps

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

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.

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.

TechnoCalyps The Movie Part 2/3...

This is part two of the series on TechnoCalyps. Today we cover preparing for transhumanism.

The 10 year marine census revealed thousands of new species, but no signs of advanced technology...
Is this an unfair expectation since critical steps in our technical evolution such as fire and electricity seem impossible underwater?

No one seriously expected to find advanced intelligence, but the study with all its odd discoveries makes me wonder if advanced technologies could ever crawl out of the sea. The 1989 James Cameron film The Abyss depicts a vastly more advanced civilization living under our oceans, but how would they ever develop that technology?

One things for sure; electricity and water do not mix. Now we made it pretty far ourselves without electricity, but it is the electric computer which has bridged us to the 3 overlapping revolutions; genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics with AI (GNR). Is it possible to skip the revolution of electricity? There could be ways to circumnavigate it.

Charles Babbage was the first to invent the computer, long before the invention of electricity. His early model the Difference Engine No. 2 was an interesting counting machine but whether it was a computer or not is debatable. He later envisioned and designed a more advanced computer called the Analytic Engine.

While these Engines would be hard to create underwater I believe a determined enough inventor would create it. All the inventor would need is an opposable thumb of sorts.

The octopus has many opposable thumbs and an amazing way to communicate ideas by changing color, patterns and shape. In this film you can watch the octopus is capable of crude technology as it uses a coconut shell.

So there is a surprisingly high level of intelligence in this animal. It has amazingly opposable limbs. We just need come back in a couple 100 thousand years and see if they are on the edge of a technological singularity.

But lets argue that Babbage’s engine could only advance so far. That a paradigm shift to electric computing would have to happen or that civilization would stagnate. As a singularitarian I think stagnation is not an option. I believe these beings would either leave their aquatic environment in suits of some sort, explore and conduct experiments on dry ground, or perhaps create experiments in bubbles or vacuums created under water. All life continues to evolve, and the animal kingdom called Technology is probably the most common kingdom throughout the galaxy.

What Happens When a Social Site Goes Down?...

They have all done it - crashed. It seems to be part of the evolutionary stage we are in the development of the Internet. But, what happens, if anything, psychologically to people when their favorite site crashes? Do we know??

This is a new wonderful book which will be available October 5, 2010. It is tracing the origin of the greatest inventions of mankind.

TechnoCalyps The Movie Part 1/3...

This will be the first part of a three part series on the very frontiers of Technology. You will have to keep an open mind and be willing to accept the hardest thing people can accept - CHANGE! The movie is all the way at the end of the article.

Live Forever. Start Now.

Many of us singularitarians see radical life extension happening in our lifetimes. Life expectancy is increasing every year right now, but at the current rate its not enough to escape death... When we can add one year of life expectancy every year then we have arrived at the actuarial escape velocity. Some futurists including the World Future Society have predicted that we will arrive at the actuarial escape velocity by 2025.

Lets look to optimistic futurist Ray Kurzweil for inspiration. While there are currently no guarantees in health, he isn’t leaving anything to chance. At age 35 he was diagnosed with glucose intolerance, an early form of type II diabetes. He immediately implemented an aggressive regimen of supplements along with a healthy diet, low impact exercises, plenty of sleep and reduction of stress. Today he claims these have contributed to his biological age being diagnosed 10 years younger than his current chronological age, and with no signs of diabetes.

Ray Kurzweil and Doctor Terry Grossman published the fantastic book last year Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever. After reading this book almost a year ago I was inspired to make a few changes in my own life. While not quite as extreme as Kurzweil who takes 150 pills a day I take 10 pills a day. My regime is based on recommendations out of Transcend along with my 23andMe DNA profile which has located some potential pitfalls in my genes. I recommend everyone take a two-a-day multivitamin and a fish oil, plus calcium for women. For further supplementation you should consult your doctor, but do some research of you own. I can tell you from personal experience that not all doctors understand the historical exponential nature of medical technology and are more likely to take a defeatist attitude towards aging.

Ray Kuzweil and Dr Grossman also have a supplement website; RayandTerry.com. I find them to have the best resveratrol and phospatidylcholine, plus some great health information is freely avalable there too. Swallowing a few pills everyday is the easy part. The exercise, avoidance of stress, and strict diet parts are a little harder to maintain consistently, especially when life throws us a curveball.

Centenarians are quite common today. My aunt just turned 99 a few days ago. She still walks unaided and is mentally alert. In the book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution Ronald Bailey explains how the first radical life extension revolution occurred; when humans first formed communities that cared for the elderly this allowed them to reach old age. Human beings and the animals we care for are the only life that experiences old age. The 2nd life extension revolution is dawning upon us now. Not just to age gracefully, but to stop and even reverse the aging process.

The top right image is available in poster or magnet form at Northern Sun

Saturday, October 2, 2010

iOS4, Android 2.2 and Rim Faceoff....

There was a time when the iPhone had no real competition. In some ways, that may be still be true. But Google is trying to change that. The battle of the mobile OSs starts here!

It's 20 light years away. It doesn't matter if it harbors life or not. Even if we could travel there at the speed of light, in 20 years biological life will be considered the boring type...
Ok, I'll admit, it is a bit interesting to me while I'm still made of flesh and bone, but I don't believe flesh will even make it to planet Mars let alone a planet 20 light years away.
Flesh made it to the moon, robots made it to mars, let the luddites be happy flesh made it that far. By the time we can send a flesh and body human being to Gliese 581g the idea of sending such a luddite construct will be absurd.
Soon after we have transcended biology we will be interested in finding other super intelligences that are also spreading throughout the universe, not just simple biological matter.
Epoch 6: The Universe Wake up - Patterns of matter and energy in the
universe become saturated with intelligent processes and knowledge.
-Ray Kurzweil The Singularity is Near
Today Gliese 581g can makes headlines. By the time we get there it will be just another planet, unless something transcends beyond it.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Mozilla Seabird "Concept Phone"...

Here is an excellent concept phone by famed designer Billy May. Do you like it? Read about it!

Most people do not understand how Google finds what they want. Here's how.

You would think that we would know the exact size of the Internet seeing that computers are so exact. In truth, it is a mystery and may always remain so.

Facebook and Skype a marriage made in heaven?

What does Skype get from this deal? What does Facebook get?

All technology feeds on human beings...
The human body as all life is in a transient stage of evolution, a gruelingly slow pace while technology's evolution blazes on. This becomes very evident when we look at our digestive process. Cooking is a technology which aids our digestive tract, similar to the Bacteroides, Eschericia Coli, and Streptococcus living in our gut, but on the down side we are loosing nutrients in process of cooking. Todays farming methods allow us to grow more foods, but over farmed fields yield less nutrient rich plants. Preservatives allow us to transport and store food for long periods of time, but ingestion of preservatives can be harmful. Our bodies and brains have evolved nicely because of cooking technology, but the stated pitfalls still remain in our transient state.
Technology is all around us, living off us, just like all the microscopic organisms living on our skin and inside of us, but not parasitically, rather a symbiotic relationship. Technology and humans are a pair of mutualistic organisms evolving in harmony.
In the year 2010 take the humans out of technology and technology dies. It currently can't continue to evolve or even live without us. But just like us, technology is in a transient state of evolution. Evolutionary algorithms are the start of technology bearing its own children, children designed smarter than its parent(s). Today's technology is working in collaboration with us to improve and reproduce.

Now try to take the technology out of the humans, it is impossible. Technology is what separates human from animal, and while technology is not growing independent of us, it is gaining more control of us. As it becomes more and more imbedded into us, biology will continue to fade into oblivion as technical body parts will far outweigh their biological inspirations. Attempting to fight off this technological takeover would be self defeating, just as killing off the Bacteroides living inside your digestive tract would be catastrophic.
Technology is doing more than keeping us healthy; it's bringing us closer, enriching us, sustaining us. We will continue this mutualistic relationship with technology. I personally look forward to transcending into what makes us human after all.

Jeremiah Bilas

Nanotechnology Introduction...

For the world to advance to the next stage in technology things must get a lot smaller. This miniaturization will present unforeseen challenges to our society. Can something 1/25,400,000 of an inch destroy the race?

Singularity with Ray Kurzweil...

Ray Kurzweil speaking about Technological Singularity

Is technological progress occurring at such an ever increasing exponential rate that we will soon reach a technological tipping point? Will this be a good or a bad thing for humanity? Are we working towards domination by machines over humans??

Marshall McLuhan: End of the Book as We Know It...

Marshall McLuhan, Nick Denton from Gawker

The book has seen its heyday. Even text's role is changing. What will that mean to those who still like to read? What will it mean to those who don't? The book replaced by the vook??