Protected: INSPIRED ART | Spirited Machines: an interview with acclaimed high-tech artist David Bent
July 28, 2010
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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
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 monetary system, from capitalism, speculators, overpaid CEO’s and greed? Does it come from conspiracies of illuminati and of power-grabbing families? Does it happen because of mistakes at financial institutions like Citibank, Lehman Brothers, and AIG? Does it ooze from the wreckage of wrong-headed fiscal policies like those of Calvin Coolidge or George Bush?
Over three billion years ago, bacteria already had a cycle of boom and bust built into their DNA. The cycle of… more
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
Global Space Warfare Technologies: Influences, Trends, and the Road Ahead
July 4, 2010 by Matthew Hoey
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
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,” covering most scientific and technological fields, with specific scenarios until 2050 and with general ideas for the future of humanity.
This truly fascinating book by William Halal is a summary of his current research aided by an expert panel of about 100 futurists around the world. Halal was educated as an aerospace engineer who served as an Air Force officer, worked on the Apollo Program and in Silicon Valley, and has always been following… more
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
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
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
AI Meets the Metaverse: Teachable AI Agents Living in Virtual Worlds
October 18, 2007 by Ben Goertzel
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