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On Genes, Memes, Bemes, and Conscious Things

July 4, 2010 by Martine Rothblatt

As human memory, personality, values, and other attributes are increasingly being captured in cybernetic form, they are becoming virtual entities of their own. These “bemes”–units of beingness–are analogous to memes (culturally transmissible ideas) and genes, but go far beyond them. Common sets of bemes will lead to a new “Beme Neural Architecture” (BNA), analogous to DNA. But while DNA expresses matter in a limited way, substrate-independent BNA expresses mind, and can replicate with a speed and flexibility far beyond DNA, extend our consciousness, and survive beyond our fragile DNA.… more

Topics: Biotech | Human Enhancement

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Is the Business Cycle In Your DNA?

July 4, 2010 by Howard Bloom

Why bankers are like bacteria.

From The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism by Howard Bloom, Prometheus Books, 2009, reprinted with permission

What has tumbled you and me into the pit of the Great Recession of 2008-2010? What causes boom and bust? Does economic catastrophe come from a perverse… more

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Communicating With The Universe

July 4, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica

Over the next million years, a descendant of the Internet will maintain contact with inhabited planets throughout our galaxy and begin to spread out into the larger universe, linking up countless new or existing civilizations into the Universenet, a network of ultimate intelligence.… more

Topics: Physics/Cosmology | Quantum

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Global Space Warfare Technologies: Influences, Trends, and the Road Ahead

July 4, 2010 by Matthew Hoey

The Starfire Optical Range (SOR) is a directed-energy facility based at Kirtland Air Force base in New Mexico. Many leaders in the arms control community as well as major news outlets have stated that SOR may be a directed-energy system that can disable space-based systems. The SOR is under the auspices of the Directed Energy Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), which is working on numerous space-warfare systems. (The United States Air Force/DOE)

Given how easily information can spread about the globe today, it is inevitable that space warfare technologies will proliferate. Once one country sets its sights on space domination, other countries are sure to follow, spurring a second arms race of sorts. The international community is in a race against time as technologies are evolving faster than ever before and will continue to accelerate exponentially in an almost biological fashion. If this process continues unabated, it will almost certainty result in the deterioration of peaceful collaborations, an increase in the creation of orbital debris, and the risk of an accidental or spasm nuclear event.… more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Nanotech | Quantum | Space | Survival/Defense

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Technology’s Promise: Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Society

July 4, 2010 by José Luis Cordeiro

Author: William Halal
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-10: 0230019544
ISBN-13: 9780230019546
Format: Hardcover, 256 pages

Technology’s Promise: Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Society brilliantly deals with the co-evolution of technology, business and society. It is a concise but complete “history of the future,”… more

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Who Will Rule the 21st Century?

May 25, 2008 by Jack Welch

Straight-line extrapolation shows that China and India, with their faster growth rates, will eventually catch up to the U.S. in terms of pure economic size. But America has a final competitive advantage: its confluence of bright, hungry entrepreneurs and flush, eager investors; and its stable, highly adaptable system.… more

Topics: Singularity/Futures

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Why Language Is All Thumbs

March 14, 2008 by Chip Walter

Toolmaking not only resulted in tools, but also the reconfiguration of our brains so they comprehended the world on the same terms as our toolmaking hands interacted with it. With mirror neurons, something entirely new entered the world: memes–a far more effective and speedy method for pooling knowledge and passing it around than the old genetic way.… more

Topics: AI/Robotics

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Openness and the Metaverse Singularity

November 7, 2007 by Jamais Cascio

The four worlds of the Metaverse Roadmap could also represent four pathways to a Singularity. But they also represent potential dangers. An “open-access Singularity” may be the answer. The people who have embraced the possibility of a singularity should be working at least as hard on making possible a global inclusion of interests as they do on making the singularity itself happen, says Jamais Cascio.… more

Topics: Singularity/Futures

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AI Meets the Metaverse: Teachable AI Agents Living in Virtual Worlds

October 18, 2007 by Ben Goertzel
Figure 1

Online virtual worlds have the power to accelerate and catalyze the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). As AGIs involved in this metaverse become progressively more intelligent from their interaction with the social network of human beings and reach human-level intelligence (the Singularity), they will already be part of the human social network. If we build them right and teach them right, they will greet us with open arms.… more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Quantum | Virtual/Augmented Reality

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Bootstrapping our way to an ageless future

September 19, 2007 by Aubrey de Grey
Book Cover

Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey expects many people alive today to live to 1000 years of age and to avoid age-related health problems even at that age. In this excerpt from his just-published, much-awaited book, Ending Aging, he explains how.… more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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The Age of Virtuous Machines

June 1, 2007 by J. Storrs Hall

In the “hard takeoff” scenario, a psychopathic AI suddenly emerges at a superhuman level, achieving universal dominance. Hall suggests an alternative: we’ve gotten better because we’ve become smarter, so AIs will evolve “unselfish genes” and hyperhuman morality. More honest, capable of deeper understanding, and free of our animal heritage and blindnesses, the children of our minds will grow better and wiser than us, and we will have a new friend and guide–if we work hard to earn the privilege of associating with them.… more

Topics: AI/Robotics

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Kinds of Minds

May 30, 2007 by J. Storrs Hall
Figure 15.1

In Beyond AI, published today, J. Storrs Hall offers “a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the human-machine civilization,” says Ray Kurzweil. In this first of three book excerpts, Hall suggests a classification of the different stages an AI might go through, from “hypohuman” (most existing AIs) to “hyperhuman” (similar to “superintelligence”).… more

Topics: AI/Robotics

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Press ignores bias in study of multivitamins and prostate cancer

May 24, 2007 by Ray Kurzweil, Terry Grossman

In a recent paper reporting on the National Cancer Institute study of multivitamin use and the risk of prostate cancer, the NCI authors cited several possible bias factors. An analysis by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman shows why the study’s biases should be considered before drawing conclusions.… more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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Richard A. Clark’s Breakpoint: the future of terrorism?

May 18, 2007 by Richard A. Clarke

Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke’s BREAKPOINT novel, set in the year 2012, is based on emerging technologies. “Globegrid,” a high-speed global network, links supercomputers worldwide. Combined with advanced AI software, it promises to reverse-engineer the brain, revolutionize genomics, enable medical breakthroughs, develop advanced human-machine interfaces, and allow for genetic alterations and even uploading consciousness. But it spurs a terrorist-fundamentalist Luddite backlash against transhumanists, as hackers take down the power grid, and destroy vital international data and telecom links, communications satellites, and biotech firms.… more

Topics: Survival/Defense

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Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III

April 17, 2007 by William B. Scott, Amara D. Angelica

Space Wars by Willliam Scott, Michael Coumatos, and William Birnes, Forge Books (April 17, 2007) describes how the first hours of World War III might play out in the year 2010. While fiction, it’s based on real-world military scenarios and technologies, dramatically highlighting the West’s vulnerability to destruction of its space-based commercial and military communications infrastructure.… more

Topics: Survival/Defense

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