Lifeboat Foundation

Or: Relinquish your privacy if you want to live longer

At first, it may appear strange to suggest that living longer has something to do with using pseudonyms online. However, it is true. I am suggesting that people who are well known online, those who are hyper-connected, and those who facilitate others to have access to relevant and meaningful information, are more likely to live longer.

It works like this: Humans are continually evolving and adapting to their environment. Our current environment is one of technology, digital communication, intense information-sharing and hyper-connection. Within this society we are exposed to vast amounts of both trivial and relevant information, which reaches our brain and may alter our basic biology causing a series of beneficial cellular and molecular changes which promote healthy lifespan (http://benthamscience.com/journal/abstracts.php?journalID=ca...=122290").

Looking at this from a different perspective, it is known that agents which are useful to the collective are retained longer within the system (http://xxx.tau.ac.il/abs/1402.6910). This can be true of any agent (i.e. any autonomous actor) such as a computer node, a human neuron, or an entire human. In this case, humans are digitally connected to other humans within a higher entity called the Global Brain (http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/03/16/francis-heylighen-on-the…l-brain/). The more well-connected you are, and the more useful you are to the evolution of the Global Brain, the more likely it is that you will be retained by the system, i.e. you will live longer within this system.

Continue reading “Online anonymity, privacy, and longevity” »

I recently saw the film Transcendence with a close friend. If you can get beyond Johnny Depp’s siliconised mugging of Marlon Brando and Rebecca Hall’s waddling through corridors of quantum computers, Transcendence provides much to think about. Even though Christopher Nolan of Inception fame was involved in the film’s production, the pyrotechnics are relatively subdued – at least by today’s standards. While this fact alone seems to have disappointed some viewers, it nevertheless enables you to focus on the dialogue and plot. The film is never boring, even though nothing about it is particularly brilliant. However, the film stays with you, and that’s a good sign. Mark Kermode at the Guardian was one of the few reviewers who did the film justice.

The main character, played by Depp, is ‘Will Caster’ (aka Ray Kurzweil, but perhaps also an allusion to Hans Castorp in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain). Caster is an artificial intelligence researcher based at Berkeley who, with his wife Evelyn Caster (played by Hall), are trying to devise an algorithm capable of integrating all of earth’s knowledge to solve all of its its problems. (Caster calls this ‘transcendence’ but admits in the film that he means ‘singularity’.) They are part of a network of researchers doing similar things. Although British actors like Hall and the key colleague Paul Bettany (sporting a strange Euro-English accent) are main players in this film, the film itself appears to transpire entirely within the borders of the United States. This is a bit curious, since a running assumption of the film is that if you suspect a malevolent consciousness uploaded to the internet, then you should shut the whole thing down. But in this film at least, ‘the whole thing’ is limited to American cyberspace.

Before turning to two more general issues concerning the film, which I believe may have led both critics and viewers to leave unsatisfied, let me draw attention to a couple of nice touches. First, the leader of the ‘Revolutionary Independence from Technology’ (RIFT), whose actions propel the film’s plot, explains that she used to be an advanced AI researcher who defected upon witnessing the endless screams of a Rhesus monkey while its entire brain was being digitally uploaded. Once I suspended my disbelief in the occurrence of such an event, I appreciate it as a clever plot device for showing how one might quickly convert from being radically pro- to anti-AI, perhaps presaging future real-world targets for animal rights activists. Second, I liked the way in which quantum computing was highlighted and represented in the film. Again, what we see is entirely speculative, yet it highlights the promise that one day it may be possible to read nature as pure information that can be assembled according to need to produce what one wants, thereby rendering our nanotechnology capacities virtually limitless. 3D printing may be seen as a toy version of this dream.

Now on to the two more general issues, which viewers might find as faults, but I think are better treated as what the Greeks called aporias (i.e. open questions):

Continue reading “What to make of the film 'Transcendence'? Show it in classrooms.” »

Neal Ungerleider — Fast Company

Brazil is one of the biggest foreign markets around for Facebook and Google–and it’s one of the places where the NSA loves to snoop on the President’s email accounts. It’s also a place where the Internet landscape is diverging from the United States in a way that benefits ordinary digital citizens: On April 21, Brazil’s congress passed a legally binding “Internet Bill of Rights.”

The Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights, called the Marco Civil and signed by president Dilma Rousseff in Sao Paulo, guarantees net neutrality, regulates government surveillance on the Internet, and places limits on data companies can collect from Brazilian customers. In addition, Internet service providers won’t be held liable for content published by their customers and will be legally required to remove offensive material via court order. The legislation’s signing took place at a global Internet governance conference, NETMundial, in front of executives from Google and several other firms.

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The White Swan’s Beyond Eureka and Sputnik Moments: How To Fundamentally Cope With Corporate Litmus Tests and With The Permanent Impact of the Dramatic Highly Improbable And Succeed and Prevail Through Transformative and Integrative Risk Management! [TREATISE EXCERPT]. By © Copyright 2013, 2014 Mr. Andres Agostini — All Rights Reserved Worldwide — « www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini AND www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini » — The Lifeboat Foundation Global Chief Consulting Officer and Partner, Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador —

(An Independent, Solemn, Most-Thorough and Copyrighted Answer. Independence, solemnity, thoroughness, completeness, detail, granularity of details, accuracy and rigor, hereunder, will be then redefined by several orders of nonlinear magnitude and without a fail).

[TREATISE EXCERPT].

To Nora, my mother, who rendered me with the definitiveness to seek the thoughts and seek the forethoughts to outsmart any impending demand and other developments. To Francisco, my father: No one who has taught me better. There is no one I regard most highly. It is my greatest fortune to be his son. He endowed me with the Agostini family’s charter, “…Study and, when grown up, you will neither be the tyrants’ toy, nor the passions’ servile slave…” I never enjoyed a “…Mom…”, but considerably enjoyed a gargantuan courageous Mother, Father, Grandparents and Forbears.

Continue reading “The White Swan's Beyond Eureka and Sputnik Moments! [TREATISE EXCERPT] By Mr. Andres Agostini at www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini” »

FEBRUARY 08/2014 LIST OF UPDATES. By Mr. Andres Agostini at The Future of Scientific Management, Today! At http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

MITRE-Harvard nanocomputer may point the way to future computer miniaturization
http://www.kurzweilai.net/mitre-harvard-nanocomputer-may-poi…turization

New form of graphene allows electrons to behave like photons
http://www.kurzweilai.net/new-form-of-graphene-allows-electr…ke-photons

The first flexible, transparent, and conductive material
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-first-flexible-transparent-and-conductive-material

Adidas Says Under Armour Infringed Its Wearable-Tech Patents
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-05/adid…ch-patents

Continue reading “The Future of Scientific Management, Today!” »

FEBRUARY 07/2014 LIST OF UPDATES. By Mr. Andres Agostini at The Future of Scientific Management, Today! At http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

The Ryno Microcycle is a Sci-Fi Inspired Single Wheeler
http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles…eeler.aspx

Rigged rules mean economic growth increasingly “winner takes all” for rich elites all over world
http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2014-01&#…ich-elites

Economist Debates: Democracy economist.com
http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/196

Behavioral Economics Gives The Advertising Industry A Nudge In The Right Direction
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnowrid/2014/02/05/behavioural…direction/

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FEBRUARY 06/2014 UPDATES [LIST]. By Mr. Andres Agostini at The Future of Scientific Management, Today! At http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

Faraway Planets May Be Far Better for Life http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/superhabitable-planets/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sciam/space+%28Topic:+Space%29

Six Trends That Will Shape Consumer Behavior This Year http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2014/02/04/six-trend…this-year/

Continue reading “The Future of Scientific Management, Today!” »

FEBRUARY 05/2014 UPDATES [LIST]. By Mr. Andres Agostini at www.Future-Observatory.blogspot.com

Do autistic brains create more information at rest or do they have weaker connectivity — or both?
http://www.kurzweilai.net/do-autistic-brains-create-more-inf…ty-or-both

‘Electronic tongue’ identifies brands of beer with 81.9% accuracy
http://www.kurzweilai.net/electronic-tongue-identifies-brand…9-accuracy

Bodily maps of emotions
http://www.kurzweilai.net/bodily-maps-of-emotions

Antibiotic ‘smart bomb’ can target specific strains of bacteria
http://www.kurzweilai.net/antibiotic-smart-bomb-can-target-s…f-bacteria

Continue reading “The Future Observatory” »

FEBRUARY 04/2014 UPDATES. By Mr. Andres Agostini at www.Future-Observatory.blogspot.com

Lockheed Uses Robot Arm To Build F-35s
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/lockheed-uses-robot…SOC&dom=fb

New Method of Creating Stem Cells is a “Game Changer”
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/01/30/new-met…u7rhLTSmHd

The Future of Skunkworks Management to Impossible Business Enterprises
http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

Was There A Beginning Of Time And Will There Be An End Of Time?
http://www.messagetoeagle.com/timeslowingdown.php?utm_source…u7yMbTSmHd

Continue reading “The Future Observatory” »