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Jan 17, 2014

A Techno-Ramadan Proposal

Posted by in categories: education, philosophy, posthumanism

I don’t consider myself as someone with nostalgia for the past. Certainly the past is fascinating and worth studying – historically, archaeologically, astronomically, etc. – but I don’t consider it worth pursuing again, all while abandoning everything we’ve achieved thus far. I reach to the stars, though keep a distant memory of what I’ve learned in the past.

One of my fears, however, as we continue journeying into the exponentially brightening light of the future, is that we – as a global, interconnected community – lose sight of the reasoning why we’ve taken up the future rather than the past. I advocate abandoning neither the future, nor the past. Reason being because the past plays an important role in shaping our future. We lose sight of the past, we may just lose sight of our present and future.

While I fear I may be at err for quoting such a dooms-dayer publication, George Orwell’s famous book Nineteen Eighty Four teaches the lesson, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” Orwell is the last person I’d prefer learning lessons from, but in this respect he’s correct.

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Jan 17, 2014

Editor’s Blog Review: Singularity Rising by James D. Miller

Posted by in category: singularity
Peter Rothman - H+ Magazine
Screen Shot 2014-01-15 at 12.03.17 PM James D. Miller’s Singularity Rising is an interesting starter book for proto-transhumanists and will be a must have book for all transhumanists interested in rational and scientific approaches to transhumanism. Along with Singularity Hypotheses and The Transhumanist Reader, Singularity Rising will find a home as part of introductory courses on transhumanist ideas and transhumanism. H+ readers and others familiar with transhumanist and singularitarian scene will recognize the views presented here from publications of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI formerly known as the SIAI) and followers of Eliezer Yudkowsky and the LessWrong community.
If you are interested in this ultra-rational approach to transhumanism, Miller provides a concise, cogent, and relatively painless math free introduction to some of the primary ideas. However he can not even scratch the surface of the vast corpus that is available online here in the book format. The book is understandable and easy to read by anyone with a high school education even when it delves into ideas such as mathematical game theory analyses of social dilemmas. I might prefer that many people start with Miller over Kurzweil personally, however if you are a critic of this rationalist school of thought you will find some of this book rough going. And you will not find any surprises here; Miller is a fan of this approach and it shows throughout the book.

Jan 16, 2014

The Future of Spage-Age Management, Today!

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, ethics, existential risks, finance, food, fun, futurism, general relativity, genetics, geopolitics, government, habitats, hardware, health, human trajectories, information science, innovation, law, law enforcement, life extension, military, nanotechnology, neuroscience, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, open access, open source, philosophy, physics, policy, posthumanism, robotics/AI, science, scientific freedom, security, singularity, space, space travel, supercomputing, surveillance, sustainability, transhumanism, transparency, transportation, treaties

The Future of Spage-Age Management, Today! by Mr. Andres Agostini at http://lnkd.in/d7zExFi
T R A N S    7
This is an excerpt from the conclusion section o, “…The Future of Spage-Age Management, Today!..,” that discusses some management strategies. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

BEGINNING OF EXCERPT.

Mr. David Shaw’s question, “…Andres, from your work on the future which management skills need to be developed? Classically the management role is about planning, organizing, leading and controlling. With the changes coming in the future what’s your view on how this management mix needs to change and adapt?…” This question was posited on an Internet Forum, formulated by Mr. David Shaw (Peterborough, United Kingdom) at http://lnkd.in/ba6xX-K on October 09, 2013.

This P.O.V. addresses practical and structural solutions, not onerous quick fixes. THIS P.O.V. WILL BE COMMUNICATED UNAMBIGUOUSLY AND EMPHATICALLY.

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Jan 16, 2014

‘Sorry, Dave, I can’t let you do that’: Robots learn, network without humans

Posted by in categories: computing, human trajectories, information science, robotics/AI

HAL 9000, the intelligent computer from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’

A World Wide Web for robots just got more real as scientists ready to demo a project four years in the making: a cloud-based hive mind for robots to upload and download information and learn new tasks from each other, completely independent of humans.

Comparisons to The Terminator’s Skynet began flooding in all the way back in 2011, when a breakthrough was made after researchers at the University of Technology in Munich, Zaragoza, Stuttgart, and Philips assembled in Eindhoven to form the Robo Earth project.

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Jan 16, 2014

NBA’s Sacramento Kings cash in on Bitcoin

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, entertainment

— CNN Money

sacramento kings action

Bitcoin just got another cheerleader.

The Sacramento Kings NBA team just became the first major professional sports franchise to accept Bitcoin, according to an announcement from payment processor BitPay.

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Jan 16, 2014

IHS Automotive Report Says ‘Not If, But When’ for Self-Driving Cars

Posted by in category: driverless cars

By Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub

BMW_driverless_car (1)

In Back to the Future, Doc Brown tells Marty McFly, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need…roads.” Where (or more precisely, when) were they going? Why, the year 2015. As you may have noticed, we’re nowhere near Mr. Fusion or flying cars.

Robot cars, however, are likely coming to a road near you inside the next decade. And according to a recent IHS Automotive study, 54 million of them will hit the streets worldwide by 2035, and nearly all autos will be driverless by 2050.

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Jan 16, 2014

3D Printing to Scan Your EEGs

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical

By — 3D Printing Industry

Headset open source brain scanningThe phrase “we want to lower the barrier of entry for brain-computer interfaces” may be the strongest indicator yet that you are, indeed, living in the future. In order to achieve that futuristic dream, Conor Russomanno and Joel Murphy have launched what’s become the infomercial of the 21st Century, a Kickstarter campaign. It’s called OpenBCI and it’s an open-source, 3D printable brain scanner.

OpenBCI is built around a 24-bit analog-to-digital converter called the ADS1299, from Texas Instruments, which measures EEG, as well as EMG (skeletal muscle) and ECG (heart) signals. It’s Arduino compatible, with designs and software all available on GitHub. After printing out the Spider Claw 3000 headset, you can connect the OpenBCI board from the campaign, along with electrodes to attach to your scalp, and begin measuring brain waves for a variety of uses. The software from OpenBCI is compatible with a number of different open source platforms, such as Processing, so that you can take the data and apply it to your own projects. 3D printing makes the OpenBCI even more accessible as it allows users with a variety of head shapes and sizes to print a headset tailored to their own head. Watch the Kickstarter video for a more detailed idea of how the OpenBCI project works:

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Jan 15, 2014

N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers

Posted by in categories: government, security, surveillance

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks. While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.

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Jan 13, 2014

The nanotechnology in your toothpaste

Posted by in category: nanotechnology

By Holly Cave, The Guardian

Brushing teeth via Shutterstock

There are three main toothpaste ingredients that may be made of nano-sized particles, so let’s brush up on the facts

The Consumer Products Inventory lists more than 1,600 products that are identified by the manufacturer as containing nanoparticles. So let’s take a look at what’s inside your household items. This week: toothpaste.

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Jan 13, 2014

Bitcoin Anonymity Upgrade Zerocoin To Become An Independent Cryptocurrency

Posted by in category: bitcoin

Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff

Screen Shot 2014-01-13 at 11.44.20 AMWhen a group of cryptographers launched Zerocoin last year, they hoped their cryptography project could upgrade Bitcoin to be as anonymous as its most privacy-focused users have always wanted it to be. Now, after six months of waiting in vain for their code to be adopted by the Bitcoin community, they’re taking a bolder approach: Creating their own cryptocurrency, with privacy baked in from the start.

At the Real World Crypto conference Monday in New York, Johns Hopkins cryptography professor Matthew Green announced the next phase in the evolution of Zerocoin: creating an alternative cryptocurrency with an infrastructure independent of Bitcoin. The new coins, which Green says will go into circulation in May in some sort of beta program, will have their own exchange rate with existing currencies, their own “miners” producing new coins, and their own public ledger of transactions known as the “blockchain,” just as Bitcoin does. But unlike Bitcoin, Zerocoin is designed to be spent and received without revealing any trace of a user’s identity.

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