Wednesday, November 26, 2003

The future of computing

The future of computing is...love! Yes, that's right! How to build computers that have emotions and could care about their users? Researchers at MIT's Media Lab have the answers. The Love Machine is coming...

What do you want to know about the emerging technologies? Your guide to the future is The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. "The future is uncertain but the path is clear."

What is the state of the supercomputers industry? The SC2003 conference could help you to learn more.

"SC2003 continues the 15-year Supercomputing Conference tradition of highlighting the most innovative developments in high-performance computing and networking. Bringing together scientists, engineers, researchers, educators, programmers, system administrators and managers, SC2003 in Phoenix will demonstrate how these developments are sparking new ideas and new industries, as well as rekindling older ones."

Monday, November 24, 2003

2003 Global Influentials

Who are they?

People:
Shai Agassi, Carlos Ghosn, Robert Iger, Aerin Lauder, James Murdoch, Mel Karmazin, Victor Li, Paul Otellini, Rex Tillerson, Shiro Tsuda

Companies:
SAP, McDonald's, Walt Disney, Viacom, Estee Lauder, Intel, PepsiCo, News Corporation

The usual suspects...

Link
Source: Time

Sunday, November 23, 2003

The Path to Posthumanity

I have the pleasure to introduce you The Path to Posthumanity.

"This is a nontechnical, 'popular' book, by AGIRI leader Dr. Ben Goertzel. It discusses a variety of topics in near-future science and technology, with a particular focus on computing and biotech. Artificial General Intelligence is a major theme of the book, but not the only one." You must read it!

Remember the classical Wired's wisdom: "Why the future doesn't need us?"

You must read this Bill Joy's essay!!! Read and think!!! The dangers are real and present.

"Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species."

Welcome to the 21st century, enjoy the Time's Visions of the 21st Century, a collection of essays, a food for your brain.

2039...The final day(s) of the human race..."A fictional but fairly realistic story describing the genesis of superintelligent, sentient AI and the final day(s) of the human race."

Artificial Intelligence: A Worst Case Scenario, by Ed Merta

Also see "The Artilect War", by Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis

"The book's main idea is that this century's global politics will be dominated by the 'species dominance' issue. 21st century technologies will enable the building of artilects (artificial intellects, artificial intelligences, massively intelligent machines) with 1040 components, using reversible, heatless, 3D, molecular scale, self assembling, one bit per atom, nanoteched, quantum computers, which may dwarf human intelligence levels by a factor of trillions of trillions and more.

The question that will dominate global politics this century will be whether humanity should or should not build these artilects. Those in favor of building them have been called 'Cosmists' in this book, due to their 'cosmic' perspective. Those opposed to building them have been called 'Terrans', as in 'terra', the earth, which is their perspective. The Cosmists will want to build artilects, amongst other reasons, because to them it will be a religion, a scientist's religion that is compatible with modern scientific knowledge."

"It is worrying about the possibility of a gigadeath 'artilect war' between the Terrans and the Cosmists, based indirectly on my own brain building work, that keeps me awake at night."

I just have no words...

Saturday, November 22, 2003

The Robotic Revolution

The robotic revolution is coming? The robotic world is our destiny? Marshall Brain, the founder of HowStuffWorks, has the answers. Check out Robotic Nation.

The world in 2014 will be pretty dystopian, according to this weblog from the future...
Wars, nukes, diseases...It's not funny...

The Science of the Matrix

"Most viewers of The Matrix consider the more fanciful elements--intelligent computers, downloading information into the human brain, virtual reality indistinguishable from real life--to be fun as science fiction, but quite remote from real life. Most viewers would be wrong. As renowned computer scientist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil explains, these elements are very feasible and are quite likely to be a reality within our lifetimes."

"The Matrix is set in a world one hundred years in the future, a world offering a seemingly miraculous array of technological marvels—sentient (if malevolent) programs, the ability to directly download capabilities into the human brain, and the creation of virtual realities indistinguishable from the real world. For most viewers these developments may appear to be pure science fiction:interesting to consider, but of little relevance to the world outside the movie theatre. But this view is shortsighted. In my view, these developments will become a reality within the next three to four decades." Go to the Ray Kurzweil's explanation.

See also Peter B. Lloyd's opinions about The Science of The Matrix , The Matrix Reloaded and the Slashdot's comments.

Interested in futurology? Views for the future is just for you! There are a lot of "forecasts of future social and technological developments".

Friday, November 21, 2003

Time 2026

"Rather than predict the future, we thought we'd bring you there."

"Predicting what the world is going to be like in 25 years has a lot more to do with science fiction than science. So we figured, who better to help us visualize this special, flip issue of the future than Bruce Sterling? He wrote such classic novels as Heavy Weather and Islands in the Net, as well as the recently published Zeitgeist. Sterling is one of the founding fathers of the cyberpunk movement, a literary trend that reinvigorated science-fiction writing in the mid- 1980s.
Our idea for this special section was simple: instead of collecting the usual essays from futurists about how life will be 25 years from now, we wanted to take our readers there, as if it really were January 2026."

Go to the 2026 year issue of Time Digital

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Bill Joy

"Sun refugee Bill Joy talks about greedy markets, reckless science, and runaway technology. On the plus side, there's still some good software out there." Is there any hope for us in the future? Don't miss this Wired's article!

The winners of the Webby Business Awards are known. Learn from the best web business practises!

The new Wired magazine was released. Are you a Philip K. Dick's fan?
Go to The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick

Also, The Great Library of Amazonia "120,000 fully searchable texts and counting … Jeff Bezos is building the world's biggest digital book archive. It's an info-age dream come true - and the best way to sell books ever."

Monday, November 17, 2003

What's next?

What's next? Interested in emerging technologies? Go to Usatoday's EMERGING TECHNOLOGY 2003

Sunday, November 16, 2003

What is the Matrix?

What is the Matrix? I just love the films, the animatrix, the soundtracks, the comics! There's a lot of comments about Matrix Revolutions here.

What's the the communications technologies future? Vodafone's Receiver has the right answer...Just read it!

China is the future, right?
The rapid spread of Internet cafes, wireless phones and online chat has given the Chinese unprecedented freedom of expression and access to "unofficial" information. But the government recently seized control of the Internet cafes and is making other moves to reign in those new freedoms.

Learn more about China's Internet Revolution

How to be smart on the web? BusinessWeek selected the top 50 smartest companies. More and more business operations are web based. There's no doubt that the future of business is on the web!

Convergence Defined ? "It's a ubiquitous buzzword, used to describe everything from corporate strategies to technological developments to job descriptions. But what does convergence really mean? From the new book, "Digital Journalism," a chapter by Northwestern University journalism professor Rich Gordon." Let's see