Lifeboat Foundation

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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Jordan Pearson — Motherboard

Impending technological change tends to elicit a Janus-faced reaction in people: part awe, part creeping sense of anxiety and terror. During the Industrial Revolution, Henry Ford called it the “the terror of the machine.” Today, it’s the looming advancements in artificial intelligence that promise to create programs with superhuman intelligence—the infamous singularity—that are starting to weigh on the public consciousness, as blockbuster ‘netsploitation flick Transcendence illustrates.

There’s a danger that sci-fi pulp like Transcendence is watering down the real risks of artificial intelligence in public discourse. But these threats are being taken very seriously by researchers who are studying the existential threat of AI on the human race.

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Matt Rocheleau — Boston.com

Each of the 4,500-plus undergraduates at MIT will soon get $100 in bitcoin as part of a project launched by a pair of students who announced today that they’ve raised a half million dollars to fund the effort.

Organizers said they hope to establish “an ecosystem for digital currencies” at the Cambridge campus that will allow professors and researchers to study how students use bitcoin as well as to promote other academic and entrepreneurial activity around bitcoin.

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Sam Machkovech — ars technica

Up until this point, the musical genre known as “drone rock” had been a weird, indie niche that consisted of slow, loud guitar noise. If machinists and programmers have their way, that description will need some major rewriting—but it’ll probably seem just as weird.

This week, a team at Philadelphia-based KMel Robotics, known for building airborne video recording solutions, turned their robot-making talents to creating a band. The company pre-programmed a six-aircraft ensemble to hover over instruments and strum or strike without any human interaction, other than the team’s initial strike of a “play” button.

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Louise Donovan — GQ
In 1969, the United States put two men on the moon. The mission required more than 3,500 IBM employees and the most sophisticated programs ever written. Today, though, a single Apple iPhone holds more computing power than any of the technology used on Apollo 11. That rapid advance can be explained by a pattern called Moore’s Law: every 18 months, the amount of transistors that it’s possible to fit on to a one–
inch-wide microchip doubles. In other words, the pace of change is geometric, not linear. That’s why a laptop bought today is not nine times better than one you could buy nine years ago, it’s 64 times better. The problem for innovators is that Moore’s Law will, in around 15 years’ time, hit a wall. There is a physical limit to how many transistors can be squeezed on to a chip.

In the short term, the chips themselves will evolve. The so-called “wonder material”, graphene could replace their silicon insides. Graphene conducts electricity at high speed and it reduces interference between tightly arranged transistors.

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I am so glad to have the new video for my Kick Starter project, Ground Zero of Interstellar Propulsion and covers briefly Gravity Modification aka Anti-Gravity, Interstellar Propulsion, UFOs, Laithwaite, Crisis In Physics

From CLUBOF.INFO

#YEStoIndependence? According to much of the negative commentary in the Scottish independence debate, scientific research in Scotland will be negatively affected by independence. However, Scottish contributions to science will in the long term receive more recognition if Scotland is an independent state.

Continue reading “Scotland to see more scientific progress if independent” »

How has your work, your life, your humanity, been improved by the promise of Big Data?

What apps and online media do you use to upload personal and other info?

Singularity has flopped – that is to say, this week Johnny Depp’s new film Transcendence did not bring in as much as Pirates of the Caribbean. Though there may not have been big box office heat, there is heat behind the film’s subject: Big Data! Sure we miss seeing our affable pirate chasing treasure, but hats off to Mr. Depp who removed his Keith Richards make-up to risk chasing what might be the mightiest challenge of our century.

Singularity, coined by mathematician John von Neumann, is a heady mathematical concept tested by biotech predictions. Made popular by math and music wunderkindt turned gray hair guru of an AI movement Ray Kurzweil, Singularity is said to signify the increasing rate at which artificial intelligence will supersede human intelligence like a jealous sibling. Followers of the Singularity movement (yes, with guru comes followers) envision the time of override in the not to distant future with projections set early as 2017 and 2030. At these times, the dynamics of technology are said to set about a change in our biology, our civilization and “perhaps” nature itself. Within our current reach, we see signs of empowered tech acting out in the current human brain mapping quest and brain-computer interface systems. More to the point, there is an ever increasing onslaught of Google Alerts annoucing biotech enhancements with wearable tech. Yes indeed, here comes the age of smart prosthetics and our own AI upload of medical and personal data to the internet. Suddenly all those Selfies seem more than mere narcissistic postings against the imposing backdrop of Big Data.

Continue reading “R U Ready to be Uploaded?” »

From CLUBOF.INFO

All religions have points of agreement concerning human toil and its relationship to the divine. This essay considers some of the Biblical and Hellenic parables of human origin, specifically the origins of human knowledge and instrumentality.

Here I want to present how knowledge and instrumentality are reported to originate with an act of mischief, specifically the theft of a divine artifact. My argument is that, although the possession of knowledge may be seen as a sin to be atoned for, the kind of atonement originally promoted may have simply been for us to apply our knowledge constructively in our lives. The concept of atoning for original sin (whether it is the Biblical or Hellenic sin) can then be justified with secular arguments. Everyone can agree that we retain the capacity for knowledge, and this means our atonement for the reported theft of such knowledge would simply rest with the use of the very same tool we reportedly stole.

The story of the titan Prometheus, from ancient Greek mythology, has been interpreted and reinterpreted many times. A great deal of writers and organizations have laid claim to the symbolism of Prometheus, including in modern times. [1] I would argue that too many writers diluted and over-explored the meaning of the parable by comparing everything to it, although this is not the focus of my essay. Greek mythology is notably weak on the subject of “good and evil” because it predates the Judeo-Christian propagation of their dualism, and this means most of the characters in Greek mythology can be defended or condemned without violating Hellenic theology. Prometheus as a mythic figure could be condemned from a Christian standpoint, because he seems strikingly similar to other scriptural characters engaged in a revolt against the divine. Yet the spirit of Prometheus and his theft has also been endorsed by people and organizations, such as the transhumanists who see him as an expression of the noblest human aspirations. [2]

Continue reading “Parables involving the Theft of Knowledge” »