Richard B. Hoover, Ph.D. NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center has discovered evidence of microfossils similar to terrestrial cyanobacteria in freshly fractured slices of the interior surfaces of two meteorites. He found that similar to trichomic cyanobacteria and other trichomic prokaryotes such as filamentous sulfur bacteria.
“The filaments have been observed to be embedded in freshly…
The just-released movie The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, is based on a 1954 science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, “The Adjustment Team.”
The plot is similar to Dark City, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Fringe, and other works suggesting the idea of a manufactured…
On Saturday, March 5, for the first time, a Singularity-related event will be held in Europe — at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, Italy.
Produced by Milan-based research institute iLabs (Wikipedia page here), the one-day, free iLabs Singularity Summit (not affiliated with the Singularity Institute’s…
An interview with Mark Stephen Meadows, author of We, Robot: Skywalker’s Hand, Blade Runners, Iron Man, Slutbots, and How Fiction Became Fact.
With We, Robot (Lyons Press, 2010), Mark Stephen Meadows explores the recent edges of robotic development in the context of some of our favorite fictional narratives.
It’s a smart, edgy read,
I’m giving ‘er all she’s got, Captain! — Scotty, as the Enterprise is being sucked into a black hole (the Singularity)
All she’s got is not good enough! — Kirk
If you must have this t-shirt then click here.
Time: Techland | Steven James Snyder, Techland’s resident movie geek, outlines the top 5 most underrated sci-fi movies of all time.
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Time: Techland
“I Am the Very Model of a Singularitarian” by and featuring Charlie Kam, to the tune of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s musical The Pirates of Penzance.
Source: Charlie Kam
According to Reuters: “From sci-fi cult film, to Twitter phenomenon to Detroit landmark-in-the-making. Plans for a statue honoring RoboCop, the half-man, half-machine crimefighter of the 1987 movie, are moving ahead after a group of artists and entrepreneurs in Detroit, Michigan raised more than $60,000 via Facebook and an online fund-raising site.”
Drasko Vucevic | An audio-visual collaboration between Drasko V, AudioAndroid, Yoko K., Yongsub Song and Yongchan Kim, presenting the idea of Singularity — “Machine’s Road Toward Singularity”: exponential growth in technology, radical changes in society, expectance and acceptance of technology.
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Drastic Music website
Does Watson have an unfair advantage over humans because it can signal its response instantly? It seemed that way in the three “Jeopardy!” TV shows this week, especially Wednesday night, as Watson proceeded to totally own the humans.
ADDED FEBRUARY 24, 2011:
My initial reaction to reading about IBM’s “Watson” supercomputer and software was a big fat ho-hum. “OK,” I figured, “a program that plays “Jeopardy!” may be impressive to Joe Blow in the street, but I’m an AI guru so I know pretty much exactly what kind of specialized trickery they’re using under…
Motherboard | Ray Kurzweil tells us about his vision of the Singularity — a point around 2045 when computers will acquire full-blown artificial intelligence and technology will infuse itself with biology. His theories have all sorts of supporters, detractors, and critics, but do you even remember what life was like before three-year-olds had cell
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Motherboard: Exploring the Culture of Technology website
PopTech | Designer Orlagh O’Brien asks, “What if we try to visually represent the emotions that are running through our body?” She gave a simple emotion-specific quiz to a group of 250 people. Asking respondents to describe five emotions — anger, joy, fear, sadness, and love — in drawings, colors, and words, O’Brien ended up with
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PopTech | Orlagh O'Brien
PopTech | Orlagh O’Brien helps us get in touch with our emotions
Emotionally}Vague
The making of visual effects for Cloverfield. In the second video: “Subway Parasites” segment from the Cloverfield DVD’s “Cloverfield Visual Effects” extra. This 2008 disaster/monster “mockumentary” was directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard.
The film follows six New Yorkers attending a party on the night that a…
Related:
Cloverfield website
In The Age of Intelligent Machines, which I wrote in the mid-1980s, I predicted that a computer would defeat the world chess champion by 1998. My estimate was based on the predictable exponential growth of computing power (an example of what I now call the “law of accelerating returns”) and my estimate of…
