Sinking Globalization

Keywords: globalization, World War I, 20th century

Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard University, asks:

"Could globalization collapse? It may seem unlikely today. Yet despite many warnings, people were shocked the last time globalization crumbled, with the onslaught of World War I. Like today, that period was marked by imperial overstretch, great-power rivalry, unstable alliances, rogue regimes, and terrorist organizations. And the world is no better prepared for calamity now."

"Ninety years ago this May, the German submarine U-20 sank the Cunard liner Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. Nearly 1,200 people, including 128 Americans, lost their lives. Usually remembered for the damage it did to the image of imperial Germany in the United States, the sinking of the Lusitania also symbolized the end of the first age of globalization.

From around 1870 until World War I, the world economy thrived in ways that look familiar today. The mobility of commodities, capital, and labor reached record levels; the sea-lanes and telegraphs across the Atlantic had never been busier, as capital and migrants traveled west and raw materials and manufactures traveled east. In relation to output, exports of both merchandise and capital reached volumes not seen again until the 1980s. Total emigration from Europe between 1880 and 1910 was in excess of 25 million. People spoke euphorically of 'the annihilation of distance.'

Then, between 1914 and 1918, a horrendous war stopped all of this, sinking globalization. Nearly 13 million tons of shipping were sent to the bottom of the ocean by German submarine attacks. International trade, investment, and migration all collapsed. Moreover, the attempt to resuscitate the world economy after the war's end failed. The global economy effectively disintegrated with the onset of the Great Depression and, after that, with an even bigger world war, in which astonishingly high proportions of production went toward perpetrating destruction.

It may seem excessively pessimistic to worry that this scenario could somehow repeat itself--that our age of globalization could collapse just as our grandparents' did. But it is worth bearing in mind that, despite numerous warnings issued in the early twentieth century about the catastrophic consequences of a war among the European great powers, many people--not least investors, a generally well-informed class--were taken completely by surprise by the outbreak of World War I. The possibility is as real today as it was in 1915 that globalization, like the Lusitania, could be sunk.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

The last age of globalization resembled the current one in numerous ways. It was characterized by relatively free trade, limited restrictions on migration, and hardly any regulation of capital flows. Inflation was low. A wave of technological innovation was revolutionizing the communications and energy sectors; the world first discovered the joys of the telephone, the radio, the internal combustion engine, and paved roads. The U.S. economy was the biggest in the world, and the development of its massive internal market had become the principal source of business innovation. China was opening up, raising all kinds of expectations in the West, and Russia was growing rapidly.

World War I wrecked all of this. Global markets were disrupted and disconnected, first by economic warfare, then by postwar protectionism. Prices went haywire: a number of major economies (Germany's among them) suffered from both hyperinflation and steep deflation in the space of a decade. The technological advances of the 1900s petered out: innovation hit a plateau, and stagnating consumption discouraged the development of even existing technologies such as ..."

Link
Source: Foreign Affairs

Discuss:
AlwaysOn
Existential Risks - tribe.net

See also:
The Coming Energy Crisis or Peak Oil
The Global War of the 21st Century
Existential Risks

Blogs:
Globalization - Technorati
That 1914 Feel - Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler

Opinion:
Globalist

IBM computing algorithm thinks like an animal

Keywords: IBM, artificial intelligence, algorithm, thinking, vertebrate

"A mathematical model that mimics the behavior of the brain's neocortal minicolumns could one day lead to robots that can 'see' like humans and/or make appropriate decisions when bombarded with sensory information.

The mathematical model created at IBM simulates the behavior of 500,000 minicolumns connected by 400 million connections. With it, 'we were able to demonstrate self-organization' and behavior similar to that seen in the real world, according to Charles Peck of IBM's Biometaphorical Computing team."

Link
Source: KurzweilAI.net

Discuss:
Cognitive Science - tribe.net

See also:
Confabulation: New Theory of Cognition
BlueGene/L doubles up - CTWatch Blog

News:
Artificial intelligence - Google News
Artificial intelligence - Yahoo News
Artificial intelligence - Topix.net

Blogs:
Robotic Nation Evidence
Artificial intelligence - Technorati

Ideas:
How to Program the Global Mind - Minding the Planet
CHI, a Collaborative Human Interpreter - Google Blogoscoped

Scenarios:
Robotic Nation - Marshall Brain

Thinkers:
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Ben Goertzel
Stormrider

Audio:
John Smart - Simulation, Agents and Accelerating Change - IT Conversations

Learn:
How Your Brain Works - HowStuffWorks
Brain and Cognitive Sciences - MIT OpenCourseWare
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - MIT OpenCourseWare

SXSW Interactive Festival

Keywords: SXSW, conference

Location:
Austin, Texas

Topics:
Link

Keynotes:
Link
Is the Future Getting Better Fast Enough? - WorldChanging

People:
Link

Media:
SXSW - Google News
SXSW - Yahoo News
SXSW - Topix.net

Blogs:
SXSW Interactive Community Blog
SXSW Baby!
SXSW - Technorati

Tags:
SXSW - Technorati

Photos:
SXSW - Flickr

Multimedia:
SXSW2005i : Video, Audio, Image and Text - Rocketboom
Steffen & Sterling -- On Video! - WorldChanging

See also:
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005

The Molecular Biology of Paradise

Keywords: molecular biology, nanotechnology, paradise, utopia, artificial intelligence, hedonistic imperative, transhumanism, technological singularity, quantum computer

"Try summoning up the most delightful fantasy you can imagine. Try and imagine, too, feeling more blissfully fulfilled in pursuing whatever you love and value than you've ever felt before.

Unfortunately it's quite futile. We run such simulations on legacy wetware. Even the most virile imagination glimpses only a shadow of the biological nirvana awaiting our descendants. For decoding the human genome allows happiness beyond the bounds of contemporary human experience to be genetically pre-programmed. In a post-Darwinian era of paradise-engineering, life on earth will be inconceivably good.

The Hedonistic Imperative predicts we are poised to explore a spectrum of outrageously beautiful states of consciousness. Potentially, states of consciousness far more sublime than today's fleeting 'peak experiences' can become part of the texture of everyday life. The advent of utopian biotechnology permits our genetically enriched descendants to be animated by gradients of immense well-being - in contrast to our animalistic mix of pleasure and pain. In the new reproductive era of 'designer babies', gradients of innate bliss can form the bedrock of invincible mental health.

Today, the prospect of paradise-engineering still sounds weird, Brave New Worldish - and perhaps 'unnatural. Yet the metabolic pathways underlying heavenly states of consciousness are neither more nor less 'natural' than any other patterns of matter and energy elsewhere in space-time. Knowledge of these (hitherto) genetically maladaptive forms of mental life has mostly been impossible to emotional primitives like us. This is because of the pressure of natural selection. Cruelly, any genetic blueprint for naturally 'angelic' minds [if evolved blindly via the mechanism of natural selection acting on random genetic variations] entails crossing dips in the evolutionary fitness-landscape. Such jumps are forbidden for reasons of neo-Darwinian theory. So truly beautiful minds never evolved; brutish Darwinian lifeforms were selected instead.

Fortunately, thanks to genetic-engineering, a spectrum of mental superhealth will soon become safely accessible. Better still, primordial-DNA-driven minds are destined to redesign themselves out of existence. An enriched neural architecture will then disclose modes of ecstatic bliss far more intense, diverse and exhilarating than a drug-naпve hunter-gatherer psyche can comprehend. Such magical kinds of happiness are only travestied, alas, by the dry textual placeholders found here. Such happiness is only travestied, too, by today's short-acting euphoriants or wirehead rodents.

For within a few generations, lifelong bliss that exceeds any fantasised Christian afterlife can become the genetically-coded basis of our existence. If we want our kids to enjoy mental superhealth - emotional, intellectual, and ethical - then we can design them a genetic makeup to ensure every moment of every day is a sublime revelation. Gradients of well-being way beyond our own lame 'peak experiences' can be their everyday norm of mental health.

On this scenario, Post-Darwinian superminds will go on to rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign our whole global ecosystem, and abolish suffering and cruelty throughout the living world.

The abolitionist project has an overriding moral urgency. Yet it's just the beginning. The molecular biology of paradise may be closer than we think."

Link
Source: The Molecular Biology of Paradise
[via Robert Anton Wilson]

See also:
Confabulation: New Theory of Cognition
More Than Human - New Book by Ramez Naam
In Search of the Sixth Sense - Fast Company
Future Hi
Fundamental limitations on 21st century biotechnology - Singularity Watch

Audio:
John Smart - Simulation, Agents and Accelerating Change - IT Conversations

Scenarios:
Manna - Marshall Brain
Timeline of Future Technology and Social Change - J.R. Mooneyham
Timeline - Encyclopedia Galactica

Fiction:
The Diamond Age - Wikipedia
Greg Egan - Wikipedia
Postcyberpunk - Wikipedia

Learn:
How Cells Work - HowStuffWorks
How DNA Computers Will Work - HowStuffWorks
How Quantum Computers Will Work - HowStuffWorks
How Nanotechnology Will Work - HowStuffWorks
MIT OpenCourseWare

Our Media

Keywords: virtual community, multimedia

"Create. Share. Get noticed. That's what Ourmedia is about.

Ourmedia is a global community and learning center where you can gain visibility for your works of personal media. We'll host your media forever — for free.

Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio interviews, digital storytelling, children's tales, Flash animations, student films, mash-ups — all kinds of digital works have begun to flourish as the Internet rises up alongside big media as a place where we’ll gather to inform, entertain and astound each other.

Ourmedia is several things in one. We are:

* An open-source project built and staffed by volunteers
* A destination Web site that freely hosts grassroots video, audio, music, photos, text and public domain works
* A community space to share and discuss personal media
* A learning toolkit to help our members create rich and compelling works
* An archive so that these works can be preserved for the ages
* A clearinghouse that allows anyone to search for licensed video, audio or music, download it and remix it, with proper attribution. Legally."

Link
Source: Ourmedia.org

Founders:
Marc Canter
JD Lasica

Audio:
Ourmedia.org - IT Conversations

Video:
Network of the future - VloggerCon 05
Conference Sessions Online - VloggerCon 05

Discuss:
From Archive.org, Free Multimedia Hosting for Life - Slashdot
Social software intellectuals - tribe.net

Blogs:
Ourmedia - Technorati

Learn:
How E-learning Works - HowStuffWorks
How Virtual Offices Work - HowStuffWorks

O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005

Keywords: O'Reilly Media, conference

Location:
San Diego

Topics:
Link

People:
- Chris Anderson (Wired)
- Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com)
- Stewart Butterfield (Flickr)
- Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing)
- Mark Fletcher (Bloglines)
- Apostolos Gerasoulis (Ask Jeeves)
- Neil Gershenfeld (MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms)
- Danny Hillis (Applied Minds)
- Natalie Jeremijenko (Yale University)
- Kevin Kealy (AT&T Labs)
- Joe Kraus (JotSpot)
- Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law School)
- Nelson Minar (Google)
- Peter Norvig (Google)
- Richard F. Rashid (Microsoft Research)
- Joel Spolsky
- James Surowiecki (New Yorker)
- Ben Trott (Six Apart)
- Werner Vogels (Amazon.com)
- Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)
- Evan Williams (Odeo)
Link

Media:
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference Coverage
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference - Google News
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference - Yahoo News
ETech - Topix.net

Blogs:
ETech - Technorati
BloggingETech.com - etech.weblogsinc.com
Andrej Gregov

Tags:
Etech - Technorati

Photos:
Photos tagged with etech - Flickr

Audio:
O'Reilly Emerging Tech - IT Conversations
ETech 2005 - ThePodcastNetwork

See also:
SXSW Interactive Festival

Yahoo + Flickr = Yahoo! 360°

Keywords: Yahoo, Flickr

Yahoo has bought Flickr. Yahoo! 360° is coming...Caterina Fake announced:

"Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!! Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp."

Link
Source: Flickr Blog

See also:
Yahoo - Technorati
Flickr - Technorati

Opinion:
Thoughts on Flickr and Yahoo - Jeremy Zawodny
The UnGoogle (Yes, Yahoo!) - Wired

Discuss:
Yahoo buys Flickr - Slashdot

Trends:
Web 2.0

Audio:
Web 2.0 - IT Conversations
My Yahoo - Gnomedex 4.0 - IT Conversations

3,500 Feeds

Keywords: RSS, web feed, news aggregator, blog

3,500 feeds in my Bloglines account! What's new? Highlights:

Audio:
The Podcast Network
CIO PodCast
RADIO Frontier Channel

Future:
Posthuman Blues
More Than Human

Health:
Dr. Joseph Mercola

Linguistics & Philosophy:
semantics etc.

Technology:
Cynthia L. Webb

Telecom:
Skype Journal

Economics:
Neuroeconomics

Design:
ReBang

People:
ERNAC - Geek O' the Week

Quantum:
The Quantum Pontiff
Quantum Algorithms

Weird:
Corpus Mmothra

See also:
David Sifry - Technorati
BlogPulse

Russian Oligarchs want Immortality

Keywords: Russia, oligarch, aging, life extension, longevity, rejuvenation, immortality

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti commentator Vladimir Simonov) - When life is good, it is especially bitter to admit that it will end some day. And this simple truth encourages nouveaux riches Russians, called oligarchs here, to spend through the nose on all kinds of rejuvenation procedures and on scientific research to create the "elixir of youth." The people who have everything you can dream about, from castles in Scotland to garages with a dozen Ferraris, want absolute, 100% joie de vivre in their own immortality.

One of such people is Vladimir Bryntsalov, the pharmaceutical king of Russia who plans to spend $2 million on setting up a personal rejuvenation laboratory. He has had a course of stem cell injections and feels no older than 20, though his biological age is about 60.

"My cheeks were deeply lined - now they are smooth as baby's," said Bryntsalov stroking his cheeks. "There were terrible scars on my body since childhood - they have smoothed over, vanished."

Stem cells are taken from the patient's fat layers under local anesthesia (autogenous transplant) or from aborted or miscarried human fetuses. In both cases, the substance is blended and put into an incubator, where the cells grow rapidly for several weeks, after which the precious substance is injected into the patient's vein. Or you can have facial injections, which are said to have miraculous effect.

This expensive treatment will cost you $10,000-20,000 in Moscow, depending on the length of the course. But members of the financial elite and ranking state officials are lining up at medical centers.

In many Western countries, such clinics would not even get the opportunity to open their doors. During a recent speech, President Bush denounced stem cell therapy as "godless." The U.S. administration and the governments of many other industrialized countries refuse to finance such research from the state budget and it is banned altogether in several countries. But more than a score of physicians openly practice this experimental method in Moscow.

The sale of eternal youth is nearly as profitable as the oil business. Doctor Alexander Teplyashin, one of the most fashionable rejuvenation specialists, has two clinics in downtown Moscow and on the elite Rublyovskoye Shosse (Highway). Their high-tech architecture would do honor to any European capital. Dr. Teplyashin has a long list of the rich who want to turn the clock back.

"I always tell my patients: Spend something on yourself, and not just on your planes and yachts," said Dr. Teplyashin.

This is not a problem for many oligarchs. More and more of them can have a private jet, a football club, and the not quite fantastic dream of immortality. Forbes reported recently that Russia has the world's second largest group of billionaires after the U.S. The personal income of 27 Russian citizens is above $1 billion (69 in the U.S.) and their aggregate assets are $90.6 billion.

The third man on Forbes Russian rich list is Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate worth $5.5 billion. He would not like to leave behind the results of his hard work when his final hour beckons. In a bid to put off this day, he gave $120,000 for research into "the youth elixir" at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Biology of Moscow State University. Professor Vladimir Skulachev, the Institute director and a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, received the money. His idea may not seem original but he has moved farther ahead in its implementation than many other researchers.

Aging is a biological program where oxygen is the main killer of cells, said Skulachev. And any program can be turned off. The idea is to create a powerful antioxidant to protect the organism from destruction. The Deripaska grant and months of brainstorming seem to have brought Skulachev's group to a sensational discovery. There is a tube in the professor's fridge filled to a third with a sticky amber-colored substance. It isthe miracle elixir that may turn some Russians into Peter Pan.

"No, I did not promise eternal life to Deripaska," said the professor modestly. "Well, his name may go down in the history of science for giving substantial sums to unique research." According to Skulachev, the task is to "check the hypothesis of aging and the possibility of prolonging life."

So far, the elixir is being checked on mice, and the result will become clear in a year. The professor needs another $500,000 for the next five years of research, and his team hopes Mr. Deripaska's enthusiasm will not ebb.

The Science of Longevity foundation, created by Russia's most exclusive family club, Monolith, is very enthusiastic. Its members are the cream of the country's financial elite and, not surprisingly, they would like to prolong the benefits of the post-communism era into eternity. The foundation's board, whose trustees are Yuri Osipov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yuri Pokrovsky, president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and ex-Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko, has called on Russian scientists to take part in a competition "for the best program of prolonging human life." The board has received over 300 proposals and projects.

Russian society, a third of which lives below the poverty line, is divided on the need for immortal oligarchs. Mikhail Rechkin, an expert on the paranormal, thinks that Russia does not need eternally young oligarchs. "There is a gulf between the rich and the poor in the country," he said. "And so, the rich will not be allowed to live eternally. There will be a revolution."

Valery Polyakov, a cosmonaut and adviser to the director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, is not so outspoken: "Deripaska did well to invest in research. Maybe this will help scientists find ways to prolong life not only for oligarchs but also for other people. The oligarchs should not think about eternal life but about creating a good name for themselves and cleansing themselves of their dirty deeds."

The patients of the Russian Dr. Faust have a somewhat primitive notion of immortality. "I want to live longer so as to earn more money," one of them said in the surgery for stem cells transplant.

These people will have to hear and understand yet the prayer of Russia's oldest citizen, Pasikhat Dzhukavleva, a Chechen who turned 124 amid the explosions and ruination of Grozny. "I have had a good life but I have lived too long. I am tired of living. Forgive me for that."

Link
Source: Russian Information Agency Novosti

See also:
Living Forever?
More Than Human - New Book by Ramez Naam
Immortality - Google News
Immortality - Yahoo News
Immortality - Topix.net
Immortality - Technorati

Opinion:
Fundamental limitations on 21st century biotechnology - Singularity Watch
Is There Life after Death? - Future Hi

Audio:
The Long Now Foundation: library

Discuss:
Immortality Institute
KurzweilAI.net
Betterhumans

Learn:
Biology - MIT OpenCourseWare
Health Sciences and Technology - MIT OpenCourseWare
Biological Engineering Division - MIT OpenCourseWare
How Stem Cells Work - HowStuffWorks
How Cancer Works - HowStuffWorks
How Cryonics Works - HowStuffWorks

More Than Human - New Book by Ramez Naam

Keywords: future, biotechnology, transhumanism, technological singularity

"More Than Human is about our growing power to alter our minds, bodies, and lifespans through technology - the power to redefine our species - a power we can choose to fear, or to embrace.

In 1990, a professor at the University of Colorado discovered that changing a single gene doubles the lifespan of tiny nematode worms.

In 1999, researchers searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease genetically engineered a strain of mice that can learn things five times as quickly as their normal kin – super-intelligent mice.

In 2002, scientists looking for ways to help paralyzed patients implanted electrodes into the brain of an owl monkey and trained it to move a robot arm 600 miles away just by thinking about it.

Over the last decade researchers looking for ways to help the sick and injured have stumbled onto techniques that enhance healthy animals – making them stronger, faster, smarter, longer-lived, even connecting their minds to robots and computers. Now science is on the verge of applying this knowledge to healthy men and women. The same research that could cure Alzheimer’s is leading to drugs and genetic techniques that could boost human intelligence. The techniques being developed to stave off heart disease and cancer have the potential to halt or even reverse human aging.

More Than Human takes the reader into the labs where this is happening to understand the science of human enhancement. It also steps back to look at the big picture. How will these technologies affect society? What will they do to the economy, to politics, and to human identity? What social policies should we enact to regulate, restrict, or encourage the use of these technologies?

Ultimately More Than Human concludes that we should embrace, rather than fear, the power to alter ourselves - that in the hands of millions of individuals and families, it stands to benefit society more than to harm it."

Link
Source: More Than Human

Amazon.com
More Than Human : Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement

See also:
Ramez Naam - Google Search
More Than Human - Technorati
Ramez Naam - Technorati
Existential Risks

Discuss:
Cognitive Science - tribe.net
Biogeeks - tribe.net

Interview:
NuSapiens Exclusive: Interview with Ramez Naam - NuSapiens
Ramez Naam In Conversation with R.U. Sirius - NeoFiles

Audio:
Accelerating Change 2004 - IT Conversations
The Long Now Foundation: library

Scenarios:
Timeline of Future Technology and Social Change - J.R. Mooneyham
The World in 2020 - Guardian
Chronicle of the Future - Times
Book of the Future - BBC
Visions of the 21st Century - Time
Views of the Future - BT
Robotic Nation - Marshall Brain
The Anglosphere Challenge - James C. Bennett
Time 2026 - Time
The Artilect War - Hugo de Garis
Lexicon of the Future - Accelerating Future
The Information Age - Encyclopedia Galactica

Learn:
How Designer Children Will Work - HowStuffWorks
Biological Engineering Division - MIT OpenCourseWare
Science, Technology, and Society - MIT OpenCourseWare

Fiction:
The Matrix - Wikipedia
Cyberpunk - Wikipedia
Ghost in the Shell - Wikipedia

Confabulation: New Theory of Cognition

Keywords: cognitive science, artificial intelligence, cognition, mind, brain, consciousness

"A leading expert in artificial intelligence and neural networks argues that cognition in humans and many animals occurs in a very different, non-algorithmic and less complex way than has been widely assumed until now."

"The Hecht-Nielsen theory posits that all aspects of cognition – seeing, hearing, understanding, planning and so on – are carried out using a single type of knowledge (antecedent support) and a single information processing operation called ‘confabulation’ which is carried out between the brain’s cerebral cortex and thalamus. The scientist’s theory hypothesizes that confabulation is the only information processing operation used in cognition. The theory also explains the cognitive mechanism by which behaviors (thoughts and movements) are launched, moment by moment, throughout the day."

Link
Source: PhysOrg
[via Nova Spivack]

See also:
The Global Consciousness Project
The Pentagon's Robotic Army
Brain Waves - Corante

Discuss:
Cognitive Science - tribe.net

Audio:
Dr. Peter Whybrow - IT Conversations

Learn:
How Your Brain Works - HowStuffWorks
Brain and Cognitive Sciences - MIT OpenCourseWare

Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover

Keywords: Earth, extinction, evolution, life

"With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years."

Link
Source: SF Gate
[via Posthuman Blues]

See also:
Existential Risks
Are We Alone?

Discuss:
Existential Risks - tribe.net

Learn:
How Evolution Works - HowStuffWorks

The 2005 Fast 50

Keywords: business, award, innovation

"Fast is a state of mind.

If you're fast, you don't accept the status quo. You plan for your moment to shine and when it comes -- pow! -- run for daylight and don't look back. Being fast is taking on an impossible task and bit by bit making it work. It's imagining a better world (or even one that smells like chocolate). Here are the winners of Fast Company's fourth annual global readers' challenge -- every one of them an innovator, dreamer, and doer. Just what did you accomplish in 2004?"

Link
Source: Fast Company

See also:
Global Business Influentials - CNN
The 2005 Wired Rave Awards

Existential Risks

Keywords: existential risk, 21st century, end of the world, technological singularity

"Because of accelerating technological progress, humankind may be rapidly approaching a critical phase in its history. In addition to well-known threats such as a nuclear holocaust, the prospects of radically transforming technologies like nanotech systems and machine intelligence present us with unprecedented opportunities and risks. Our future, and whether we will have a future at all, may well be determined by how we deal with these challenges.

This tribe is an open forum for a general discussion of human extinction scenarios - a discussion of all possible risks, their viability or implausibility, and what we can do to avoid them. Contributing tribe members are highly encouraged to read Nick Bostrom's essay, 'Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards' which can be found at http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html."

Link
Source: Existential Risks - tribe.net

See also:
Are We Alone?

Audio:
The Long Now Foundation: library

Scenarios:
Save the world - J.R. Mooneyham
Timeline of Future Technology and Social Change - J.R. Mooneyham
The World in 2020 - Guardian
Chronicle of the Future - Times
Book of the Future - BBC
Visions of the 21st Century - Time
Views of the Future - BT
Robotic Nation - Marshall Brain
The Anglosphere Challenge - James C. Bennett
Time 2026 - Time
The Artilect War - Hugo de Garis
Lexicon of the Future - Accelerating Future
The Information Age - Encyclopedia Galactica

The Global Consciousness Project

Keywords: consciousness, noosphere, mind, brain, quantum mechanics, mathematics

"The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international and multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others. This website introduces methods and technology and empirical results in one section, and presents interpretations and applications in another.

We have been collecting data from a global network of random event generators since August, 1998. The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years. The data are transmitted over the internet to a server in Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis.

The purpose of this project is to examine subtle correlations that appear to to reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world."

Link
Source: Princeton University
[via Red Nova]

See also:
Can This Black Box See Into the Future? - Red Nova
Brain Waves

Audio:
Brian Greene - IT Conversations

Learn:
How Your Brain Works - HowStuffWorks
Brain and Cognitive Sciences - MIT OpenCourseWare
Mathematics - MIT OpenCourseWare
Physics - MIT OpenCourseWare

Are We Alone?

Keywords: Kardashev scale, UFO, SETI, Fermi paradox, astrobiology, cosmology, dark energy, military flying saucers, stealth technology, crop circles

"For decades there have been sightings of UFOs by millions and millions of people. It is a mystery that only science can solve, and yet the phenomenon remains largely unexamined."

"This two-hour primetime special reports on the entire scope of the UFO experience — from the first famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 to the present day. The program draws on interviews with police officers, pilots, military personnel, scientists and ordinary citizens who give extraordinary accounts of encounters with the unexplained. Also included are the voices of professional skeptics about UFOs, including scientists who are leading the search for life forms beyond Earth elsewhere in the universe."

Link
Source: ABC News

See also:
Space.com
UFO - Google News
UFO - Yahoo News
UFO - Topix.net
UFO - Technorati

Facts:
UFOs - BBC

Opinion:
The UFO Challenge - Stanton Friedman
UFOs: Challenge to SETI Specialists - Stanton Friedman
I Believe in UFOs - Chris Pirillo
Posthuman Blues
Exopolitics

Discuss:
Fermi Paradox - tribe.net
Space - Slashdot

Video:
Out Of The Blue

Audio:
The Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence: Necessarily a Long-term Strategy - The Long Now Foundation
Simon Singh - IT Conversations

Speculation:
The Enterprise Mission

Scenarios:
Behold the rise and fall of alien civilizations - J.R. Mooneyham

Learn:
How UFOs Work - HowStuffWorks
How SETI Works - HowStuffWorks
How Stealth Bombers Work - HowStuffWorks
Aeronautics and Astronautics - MIT OpenCourseWare
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences - MIT OpenCourseWare
Physics - MIT OpenCourseWare

Fiction:
2001: A Space Odyssey - Wikipedia
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - Wikipedia
The War of the Worlds - Wikipedia
Uplift Universe - Wikipedia
Contact - Wikipedia