KurzweilAI.net Daily Newsletter

Monday July 19, 2010 Daily edition News and Blog Headlines Vibration-powered Generators Replace AA, AAA Batteries Bye-Bye Batteries: Radio Waves as a Low-Power Source Thought-Controlled Prosthetic Limb System to be Tested by Humans Embedded Technologies: Power From the People REX robotic exoskeleton gets wheelchair users back on their feet Google Buys Metaweb, the One Company That Could Revolutionize Google Search How to Prevent a Global Aging Crisis Latest News Vibration-powered Generators Replace AA, AAA Batteries July 19, 2010      Source Link: Tech-On Brother Industries Ltd. has developed small vibration-powered generators that can replace AA and AAA batteries in devices that do not always consume electricity and have a power consumption of about 100mW (a maximum for a normal remote). The battery-shaped case includes an electromagnetic induction generator and a 500mF double-layer capacitor. The average output of the AA-size generator is 10 to 180mW (frequency: 4-8Hz). Bye-Bye Batteries: Radio Waves as a Low-Power Source July 19, 2010      Source Link: New York Times Devices and systems are being developed that consume so little power that it can be drawn from ambient radio waves from radio and television stations, WiFi systems and other sources, reducing or even eliminating the need for batteries. Joshua R. Smith, a principal engineer at Intel's research center in Seattle has developed a device that collects enough power from ambient radio-frequency (RF) signals to produce about 50 microwatts of DC power — enough for many sensing and computing jobs. The power consumption of a typical solar-powered calculator, for example, is only about 5 microwatts, he said, and that of a typical digital thermometer with a liquid crystal display is one microwatt. A second device developed by Smith, powered by radio waves, collects… more Thought-Controlled Prosthetic Limb System to be Tested by Humans July 19, 2010      The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a contract for up to $34.5 million to The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., to manage the development and testing of the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) system on human subjects, using a brain-controlled interface. The MPL offers  22 degrees of motion, including independent movement of each finger, in a package that weighs about nine pounds (the weight of a natural limb). Providing nearly as much dexterity as a natural limb, the MPL is capable of unprecedented mechanical agility and is designed to respond to a user's thoughts. "We've developed the enabling technologies to create upper-extremity prosthetics that are more natural in appearance and use, a truly revolutionary advancement in prosthetics,"… more Embedded Technologies: Power From the People July 19, 2010      Source Link: Smithsonian Under a DARPA grant, MIT scientists are harnessing the body's movements to generate electrical power for bionic devices, using piezoelectric materials, which produce an electric current when subjected to mechanical pressure. Steven Feiner, professor of computer science at Columbia University, says by 2050 embedded devices will allow us to immerse ourselves in a sea of not just visual data, but also computer-generated sounds and sensations. REX robotic exoskeleton gets wheelchair users back on their feet July 19, 2010      Source Link: Gizmodo A robotic exoskeleton called REX puts wheelchair users back on their feet, enabling a person to stand, walk and go up and down stairs and slopes, controlling it with a joystick. REX users can stand up, walk, move sideways, turn around, go up and down steps, as well as walk on flat, hard surfaces including ramps and slopes. Sales are expected to commence in New Zealand by the end of 2010 and elsewhere by the middle of 2011. It is expected to cost about US$150,000. Google Buys Metaweb, the One Company That Could Revolutionize Google Search July 19, 2010      Source Link: Fast Company Google has acquired Metaweb, which maintains a database ("Freebase") of 12 million "entities" (persons, places, or things), and all the different ways they relate and you might refer to them. According to The Official Google Blog, Metaweb will allow Google to "improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone." Metaweb was founded by legendary computer scientist Danny Hillis. Metaweb's video (below) does a good job of explaining the concept. New Blog posts How to Prevent a Global Aging Crisis July 17, 2010 by David Despain A handful of forward-thinking biogerontologists has joined together to offer a new direction for aging intervention. Their commentary, published July 14 in Science Translational Medicine, presents the case for preventing what the scientists call an "unprecedented global aging crisis"—a sharp rise in the numbers of retired elderly in developing and industrialized nations across the world. From both a humane and economic standpoint, a world with too many sick elderly has grim consequences and outrageous costs. It's time to fund research for prevention, slowing, or even reversal of the biological damage caused by simply living, which manifests as age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Currently, senescence research receives only a slim morsel of the researching-funding pie. Of the entire National Institutes of Health $28 billion… more New Events BIOFAB 2010 Community Meeting Dates: Jul 19 — 20, 2010 Location: Emeryville, CA more... 2010 Stanford Media X Summer Institute 21st Century Conversations Dates: Jul 20 — 22, 2010 Location: Stanford, Califonia more... International Brain Research Organization Conference Dates: Jul 24 — 29, 2010 Location: Abuja, Nigeria more... Learning and The Brain: Summer Institute Dates: Aug 3 — 6, 2010 Location: Santa Barbara, California more... 2010 Cognitive Modeling Conference USA Dates: Aug 5 — 8, 2010 Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania more... CogSci 2010 – 32nd Annual Cognitive Science Conference Dates: Aug 11 — 14, 2010 Location: Portland, Oregon more... International Conference on SPATIAL COGNITION 2010 Dates: Aug 15 — 19, 2010 Location: Portland, Oregon more... ASIM 2010 Conference Dates: Aug 16 — 17, 2010 Location: San Francisco, California more... The Neurosciences in East Africa Conference Dates: Sep 7 — 10, 2010 Location: Nairobi, Kenya more... Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference 2010 Dates: Oct 1 — 1, 2010 Location: Salt Lake City, Utah more... New Books Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual (Human-Computer Interaction Series) author William Sims Bainbridge Amazon | Virtual worlds are persistent online computer-generated environments where people can interact, whether for work or play, in a manner comparable to the real world. The most popular current example is World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online game with eleven million subscribers. However, other virtual worlds, notably Second Life, are not games at all but internet-based collaboration contexts in which people can create virtual objects, simulated architecture, and working groups. This book brings together an international team of highly accomplished authors to examine the phenomena of virtual worlds, using a range of theories and methodologies to discover the principles that are making virtual worlds increasingly popular, and which are establishing them as a major sector of human-centred computing. Last Flesh: Life in the Transhuman Era author Christopher Dewdney Media Studies | Last Flesh has a decidedly optimistic tone, reminiscent of McLuhan's catholic embrace of human creativity and ingenuity. Like McLuhan, Dewdney harbours the poet's desire for sublime transcendence, and the evolution of human capacity.  As a poet, Dewdney has always been at home in the material world of science; in fact, much of his poetry attempts to integrate the documentary impulses of the sciences with the imaginative and transformative power of the poetic vision. He is thus concerned that we are entering a period of "growing scientific illiteracy, an age of superstition and dangerous credulity". He cites as an example a 1996 Gallop survey which "found that 49 percent of Canadians believe that antibiotics would be effective against viral illnesses such as colds and flu".… more The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? author David Brin Amazon | Science fiction writer Brin (The Uplift War) departs from technological fantasy to focus on the social and political ramifications of our information age. While addressing the technology-vs.-privacy debate, he offers an informed overview of the issues and a useful historical account of how current policies evolved. Also beneficial are his descriptions of the different viewpoints on encryption software, online anonymity, the Clipper Chip and techno-jargon. But when Brin opines on these topics, the book suffers from superficiality. He appends remarks to the end of each chapter as this: "When you've been invited to a really neat party, try to dance with the one who brought you." His main point–that information and criticism should flow unrestricted–is lost in a melange of armchair social science theory and… more Immortality: How Science Is Extending Your Life Span–and Changing The World author Ben Bova Amazon | The quest for human immortality is ongoing in science labs around the world, and the possibility is now closer to science fact than fiction, claims Bova, who as a veteran and prolific author of science books (Space Travel, etc.) and SF (Moonwar, etc.) might know. Bova admits that few scientists would agree with that claim but that scientists "are usually not the best predictors of their own futures." Again Bova lives up to his reputation of writing straightforward, understandable prose to explain recent scientific advances. We are entering the fourth era of medicine, he observes, one in which science is working on solving the riddle of aging. He leads readers through a tautological compendium of the mechanics of cellular life and death. Why do certain… more Forever For All: Moral Philosophy, Cryonics, and the Scientific Prospects for Immortality author R. Michael Perry Amazon | This book considers the problems of death and the hereafter and how these ages-old problems ought to be addressed in light of our continuing progress. A materialistic viewpoint of reality is assumed, denying the likelihood of supernatural or other superhuman assistance. Death, however, is not seen as inevitable or even irreversible; it is maintained that the problem can and should be addressed scientifically in all of its aspects. The book thus follows recent, immortalist thinking that places hopes in future advances in our understanding and technology. A functionalist, reductionist argument is developed for the possibility of resurrecting the dead through the eventual creation of replicas and related constructs. Meanwhile, it is urged, medical advances leading to the conquest of biological death should be pursued, along… more A Constitution of Direct Democracy : Pure Democracy and the Governance of the Future ~ Locally and Globally ~ author Michael Noah Mautner Amazon | In the coming decades, humanity faces profound decisions: democracy or totalitarianism; mass weapons or disarmament; religious freedom or fundamentalism; genetic modification, robots, space colonies, population growth and even biological immortality. Our decisions will control the future of humanity, even the future of all Life. How can we assure that these developments assure our survival and serve the human interest? This is best assured by the common wisdom rooted in human nature, which desires above all the shared needs of security, physical sustenance and dignity. Communal decisions distil this shared human wisdom from the diverse wishes of people. New information technologies allow public governance that reflects this shared wisdom. "The Constitution of Direct Democracy" describes the structure, fictional case studies and ethical principles of… more Seeding the Universe with Life: Securing Our Cosmological Future author Michael Noah Mautner Amazon | The future of life in the universe is an important subject of astrobiology. In this new popular science title, a well recognized researcher describes how we can seed new solar systems with microbial representatives of our family of organic life. The book also describes a life-centered astroethics that will motivate these missions. It describes the unity of all gene/protein life: a common ancestry, a special place in Nature, and a shared future. As part of this family, it is our purpose to safeguard and expand life in the universe. Professor Mautner pioneered research on the fertilities of extra-terrestrial materials in asteroids/meteorites. The results show that many microorganisms and even plants can grow on resources found commonly in space, which are basically similar to Earth materials.… more Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness author Roger Penrose Amazon | A leading critic of artificial intelligence research returns to the attack, attempting to lay the groundwork for an analysis of the true nature of intelligence. Building on his arguments in The Emperor's New Mind, Penrose (Mathematics/Oxford) begins by refuting the assertion that true intelligence can be attained–or even adequately simulated–by the strictly computational means to which current computers are ultimately limited. Much of his argument depends closely on the application of Gödel's Undecidability Theorem to Turing machines–deep waters for laypeople, although the fundamentals of his argument are accessible to readers without sophisticated mathematical training. Having disposed of the central tenets of current AI research, Penrose then turns to an even more fundamental question: the actual foundations in modern physics (i.e., relativity and quantum theory) of… more Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence author Hans Moravec Erin Rhodes | What happens to memory and experience when it becomes a commodity? Can the mind really be freed from the physicality of the brain – and of the body? Wouldn't multiple versions or copies of ourselves, and the prospect of immortality, cheapen the uniqueness of being human? Are consciousness, emotion, and intelligence particular only to humans (and perhaps other living things), or can they be instilled into a machine? Are these even relevant questions to be asking? Transmigration of the human mind into a machine is only one of many fantastical predictions Hans Moravec, a roboticist at Carnegie-Mellon University, makes in his book Mind Children. Moravec speculates that the end product of transmigration, where our "postbiological" evolution will ultimately lead us, is "a supercivilization,… more Great Mambo Chicken And The Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over The Edge author Ed Regis Amazon | Author of the delightful Who Got Einstein's Office?, Regis here presents a hilarious but nevertheless sympathetic look at practitioners of "fin-de-siecle hubristic mania." These are the scientific visionaries who are plotting "post-biological man," scheming to build giant space colony/stations to orbit around the Earth, use microscopic robots (nanotechnology) to resurrect humans frozen in liquid nitrogen, raise chickens in higher gravity fields and project human minds via energy beams to distant galaxies. Readers learn about artificial life, bioinfomatic bumblebees, human minds instilled in "bush robots" and how to enclose the Sun within a man-made sphere. In the future everything will be possible and humans will be able to redesign themselves and the universe to meet higher technical standards than mere nature has achieved. This is a… more Turning the Future Into Revenue: What Business and Individuals Need to Know to Shape Their Futures author Glen Hiemstra Amazon | In Turning the Future into Revenue, Glen Hiemstra, founder of Futurist.com and noted expert on emerging business opportunities, explores how our changing world will transform private enterprise and public policy. From shifting demographics to global warming to new energy policies, change is coming. Turning the Future into Revenue shows how these new realities can be turned into profitable new ventures. Some of the topics Hiemstra discusses include: - Five long-term trends you should be prepared for - Global warming and the urgent need for green business - Profiting from technology and energy trends - Predicting the future of your business or career - Hedging your bets on future business - Ten key practices of the future-oriented enterprise… more Technology's Promise: Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Society author William E. Halal Amazon | With the onset of a knowledge economy, modern nations are hard at work using ever more sophisticated information systems to power a "technology revolution" that is transforming our lives. This book is based on the work of the TechCast Project, conducted over the past decade at the George Washington University. Pooling the knowledge of 100 high-tech CEOs, scientists, engineers, academics, consultants, futurists, and other experts from around the world, the resulting book is the best forecast data ever assembled, covering the entire span of scientific and technological innovation. Masterminds: Genius, DNA, and the Quest to Rewrite Life author David Ewing Duncan Amazon | James Watson, J. Craig Venter, Francis Collins, Cynthia Kenyon . . . you may not know them, but you should. They are the masterminds of genetics and biotechnology who want you to live to be 150 years old, to regenerate your heart and brain, to create synthetic life. For better or worse, they are about to alter life on earth forever. Award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan tells the remarkable stories of cutting-edge bioscientists, revealing their quirky, uniquely fascinating, sometimes vaguely unsettling personas as a means to understand their science and the astonishing implications of their work. This book seamlessly combines myth, biography, scholarship, and wit that poses the all-important question: Can we actually trust these masterminds? The Next Big Thing Is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business author Jack Uldrich Amazon | Ever heard of self-cleaning floor tiles and windows? Or mirrors that won't fog up in the shower? What about army uniforms that can "monitor a soldier's health, detect and detoxify chemical agents, heat and cool the soldier… and independently generate power so the soldier can remain in constant communication with headquarters"? According to Uldrich, director of the Minnesota Office of Strategic and Long-Range Planning, and nuclear physicist and business consultant Newberry, if you haven't heard of these innovations already, you will – and soon. They're just a few products in development that were made possible by rapid advances in the field of nanotechnology. The authors explain, "Nanotechnology is, broadly speaking, the art and science of manipulating and rearranging individual atoms and molecules to create useful… more The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction author David Orrell Amazon | In the spirit of Freakonomics and A Short History of Progress, The Future of Everything is a compelling, elegantly written history of our future. For centuries, scientists have strived to predict the future. But to what extent have they succeeded? Can past events–Hurricane Katrina, the Internet stock bubble, the SARS outbreak–help us understand what will happen next? Will scientists ever really be able to forecast catastrophes, or will we always be at the mercy of Mother Nature, waiting for the next storm, epidemic, or economic crash to thunder through our lives? In The Future of Everything, David Orrell looks back at the history of forecasting, from the time of the oracle at Delphi to the rise of astrology to the advent of the… more The Long Tomorrow: How Advances in Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Postpone Aging author Michael R. Rose Amazon | Rose, an authority on gerontology, uses evolutionary biology to frame the problem of aging, contrasting the drive to reproduce in youth with the ability to survive into old age. In short, according to his research, the Victorians were right: sex is death. The evolutionary pressure of reproducing at an early age seems to have the side effect of causing early aging. Rose's explanation of his theory is so clear, it seems ridiculous that anyone could have conceived of another explanation. But whether this theory will ever be used to slow down human aging is unclear. Rose relates the progress of aging research in an autobiographical format. So, interspersed with experiments on long-lived fruit flies, there are almost voyeuristic glimpses into Rose's own life: the suicide… more More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement author Ramez Naam Amazon | Imagine a person severely disabled by a stroke who, with electrodes implanted in his brain, can type on a computer just by thinking of the letters. Or a man, blind for 20 years, driving a car around a parking lot via a camera hard-wired into his brain. Plots for science fiction? No, it's already happened, according to future technologies expert Naam. In an excellent and comprehensive survey, Naam investigates a wide swath of cutting-edge techniques that in a few years may be as common as plastic surgery. Genetic therapy for weight control isn't that far off–it's already being done with animals. Countless people who are blind, deaf or paralyzed will acquire the abilities that most people take for granted through advances in computer technology and… more Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age author Bill McKibben Amazon | In 1989, McKibben published The End of Nature, a gorgeously written and galvanizing book about the true cost of global warming, the destruction of the ozone layer and other man-made ills-the loss of wild nature and with it the priceless aspect of our humanity that evolved to listen to and heed it. Now McKibben applies the same passion, scholarship and free-ranging thought to a subject that even committed environmentalists have avoided. Here he tackles what it means to be human. Reporting from the frontiers of genetic research, nanotechnology and robotics, he explores that subtle moral and spiritual boundary that he calls the "enough point." Presenting an overview of what is or may soon be possible, McKibben contends that there is no boundary to human ambition… more Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life author Richard A. L. Jones Amazon | Enthusiasts look forward to a time when tiny machines reassemble matter and process information with unparalleled power and precision. But is their vision realistic? Where is the science heading? As nanotechnology (a new technology that many believe will transform society in the next on hundred years) rises higher in the news agenda and popular consciousness, there is a real need for a book which discusses clearly the science on which this technology will be based. While it is most easy to simply imagine these tiny machines as scaled-down versions of the macroscopic machines we are all familiar with, the way things behave on small scales is quite different to the way they behave on large scales. Engineering on the nanoscale will use very different principles… more Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future author James Hughes Amazon | In the next fifty years, life spans will extend well beyond a century. Our senses and cognition will be enhanced. We will have greater control over our emotions and memory. Our bodies and brains will be surrounded by and merged with computer power. The limits of the human body will be transcended as technologies such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering converge and accelerate. With them, we will redesign ourselves and our children into varieties of posthumanity. This prospect is understandably terrifying to many. A loose coalition of groups-including religious conservatives, disability rights and environmental activists-has emerged to oppose the use of genetics to enhance human beings. And with the appointment of conservative philosopher Leon Kass, an opponent of in-vitro fertilization, stem cell… more Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution author Francis Fukuyama Amazon | Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man; Trust) is no stranger to controversial theses, and here he advances two: that there are sound nonreligious reasons to put limits on biotechnology, and that such limits can be enforced. Fukuyama argues that "the most significant threat" from biotechnology is "the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a 'posthuman' stage of history." The most obvious way that might happen is through the achievement of genetically engineered "designer babies," but he presents other, imminent routes as well: research on the genetic basis of behavior; neuropharmacology, which has already begun to reshape human behavior through drugs like Prozac and Ritalin; and the prolongation of life, to the extent that society might come… more Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution author Ronald Bailey Amazon | A positive, optimistic, and convincing case that the biotechnology revolution will improve our lives and the future of our children. The 21st century will undoubtedly witness unprecedented advances in understanding the mechanisms of the human body and in developing biotechnology. With the mapping of the human genome, the pace of discovery is now on the fast track. By the middle of the century we can expect that the rapid progress in biology and biotechnology will utterly transform human life. What was once the stuff of science fiction may now be within reach in the not-too-distant future: 20-to-40-year leaps in average life spans, enhanced human bodies, drugs and therapies to boost memory and speed up mental processing, and a genetic science that allows parents to ensure… more Annihilation from Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations author Fred Charles Iklé Powells | In this eloquent and impassioned book, defense expert Fred Iklé predicts a revolution in national security that few strategists have grasped; fewer still are mindful of its historic roots. We are preoccupied with suicide bombers, jihadist terrorists, and rogue nations producing nuclear weapons, but these menaces are merely distant thunder that foretells the gathering storm. It is the dark side of technological progress that explains this emerging crisis. Globalization guarantees the spread of new technologies, whether beneficial or destructive, and this proliferation reaches beyond North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states. Our greatest threat is a cunning tyrant gaining possession of a few weapons of mass destruction. His purpose would not be to destroy landmarks, hijack airplanes, or attack railroad stations. He would annihilate… more Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind author Hans Moravec Amazon | Here come the free-roaming robot vacuum cleaners, self-driving cars, robot chess champions, robots that fly and swim. If these machine intelligences already tooling around or on the drawing boards leave you blasé, consider this: Robotics pioneer Moravec predicts that if the present exponential growth rate of computing power continues, super-robots that perceive, intuit, adapt, think and even simulate feelings much like human beings will be buildable before 2050. Mixing broad speculations and practical suggestions for speeding up robotics research and development, Moravec, a founder of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, picks up where he left off in Mind Children (in which he suggested the uploading of human minds to software). In this new mind-bending futurist scenario, he predicts that advanced robots will perform all essential… more The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed By Rapidly Advancing Technologies author Damien Broderick Amazon | Is technological change advancing so rapidly that we can no longer chart its progress? Are we careening ever closer to the point that scientists have dubbed "the singularity," the moment when the pace of innovation will lead to changes so profound that attempting to envision the future becomes an impossible dream? According to Broderick (The Last Mortal Generation; Theory and Its Discontents), the answer is a resounding and enthusiastic yes. As he points out, the rate of scientific change has increased ("spiked") with exponential rapidity over the past 500 years; everyday machines such as personal computers already have microprocessing capacities that far surpass anything originally predicted when they were first invented. Virtual reality applications are routinely used in the operating room, while cloning has entered… more