a different way of living

federico pistono points out two deficiencies of the current monetary system - a. inefficiency: he gives the example of the food supply. we currently produce enough food to feed 17-18 billion people, however, 2 of the total 7 billion people on the planet are undernourished. that is insane, b. debt slavery is a necessary artefact of the current design of the monetary system.

are there any change incentives for the plutocrats who created this mess - perhaps few given that they are untouchable. pistono suggests the rationale of positive externalities for them in a contended world of abundance. but then again - we do not understand the motivations of the few that control so much - what is logical for us may not hold their interest - it was benjamin disraeli who said "the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."

gamechanger - supercapacitors

supercapacitors have the capability to immediately ease the current choke point to massive renewables roll-out - battery tech. as this short film shows batteries are high storage + slow charge & discharge; capacitors are low storage + fast charge & discharge but graphene-based supercapacitors combine the best qualities of batteries and capacitors and are high storage + fast charge and discharge. if successfully industrialized (and they will be because they are cheap and easy to make) this can give us the super renewables smart grids we need for green power and transportation... 

electric vehicles - for entire countries

a better place is not an electric car company, they provide the batteries and their attendant charging/swapping infrastructure. israel, denmark and australia are trying out their model - it is compelling - batteries (fuel) are a tech play and get cheaper each year - expect the equivalent of $10 barrel of oil within 10 years. this kind of innovation will kill oil fast - and benefit everyone - perhaps the true value of better place is as a bridge to the point where battery tech doesn't need switching stations.

imagine marrying this with driverless tech - transportation can be solved within the decade. shai agassi points to china as a leader in electric transportation that is moving forward rapidly on developing the ecosystem for electric transportation - it's good to have an outsider (to the oil vested interests massed in the us and uk) that can yank us all out of the oil rut...

what's wrong with the news?

charles lewis confirms what most people suspect - that access to power is more limited now than ever before, inspite of all our 24/7 information technology - decision makers interface with the public only via public relations (which is what public news has become). increasingly, the reality of most people is stitched from pr, spin and advertising. to be discerning consumers of media filtering junk to develop an accurate - if at all that is possible - and independent perspective is the skill to have. technology enabled information profusion would prefer to delude - passive unquestioning consumers are good for business...

breakthrough "prize"

this is a good development even though my sense is that prizes promote secrecy - and competition - and prevent true broad-based collaboration - and cooperation - which is more essential to crack humanity's grand challenges. do we really need more celebrities? we need broad based support for the sciences, especially in critical areas.

in the future, essential corporations like google and ibm should begin to evolve and morph into public utilities while connecting their profit streams to global societal costs. what we need to take aim at is the corporate life form which is sociopathic and extractive by design and transform it into a collaborative expert organism that nourishes society. in any case, the breakthrough prizes are better than nothing:

The Silicon Valley aristocrats Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner have jointly established the most lucrative annual prize in the history of science to reward research into curing diseases and extending human life.

The newly created Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation on Wednesday announces the first 11 winners of an award intended to inject excitement into the sometimes lonely, underfunded quests to understand and combat cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other maladies.

Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook; Brin, who co-founded Google; and Milner, a venture capitalist, have dipped into their fortunes to sponsor awards worth $3m each, compared with a Nobel prize's monetary value of $1.1m. 

"With the mapping of the genome sequence there are expectations of significant progress in the next 10 or 20 years so I think the timing is really appropriate to create an incentive for the best scientific minds," Milner told the Guardian in an interview on the eve of the announcement.

brain activity project

obama has recently announced the brain activity project which promises to be a 10 year multi billion project to study brain activity. a recent new york times article discusses project approach:

The advent of new technology that allows scientists to identify firing neurons in the brain has led to numerous brain research projects around the world. Yet the brain remains one of the greatest scientific mysteries.

Composed of roughly 100 billion neurons that each electrically “spike” in response to outside stimuli, as well as in vast ensembles based on conscious and unconscious activity, the human brain is so complex that scientists have not yet found a way to record the activity of more than a small number of neurons at once, and in most cases that is done invasively with physical probes.

But a group of nanotechnologists and neuroscientists say they believe that technologies are at hand to make it possible to observe and gain a more complete understanding of the brain, and to do it less intrusively.

In June in the journal Neuron, six leading scientists proposed pursuing a number of new approaches for mapping the brain.

this is a different methodology from the european hbp (human brain project) which is a bottom-up computational simulation of the brain. according to the article: 

Critics, however, say the simulation (of the european hbp) will be built on knowledge that is still theoretical, incomplete or inaccurate.

the american project promises to be based on observation and empirical evidence to build a "map" of brain activity and process. it will be exciting when the many different teams begin to pool findings and when these findings flow into ai application...

workers of the world - relax!

tricorder update

looks like scanadu is making real progress on the tricorder x-prize quest with a variety of simple devices:

excerpt from a fast company report:

The Scanadu SCOUT is incredibly easy to use--just raise the handheld device (connected by Bluetooth to a smartphone) to your temple, and wait 10 seconds for it to scan your vital signs, including temperature, ECG, SPO2, heart rate, breathing rate, and pulse transit time (that helps measure blood pressure). "It lets the consumer explore all the diagnostic possibilities of an emergency room," explains co-founder Walter De Brouwer, a Belgian futurist and entrepreneur who first prototyped a backpack-sized tricorder-like device in the late 1990s.

The device, which will retail for under $150, was surprisingly difficult to build. "It didn’t seem like a complex problem in the beginning," laughs De Brouwer. "I’ve done many scientific projects in my life, and this was the most difficult of them all. Basically you are up against a time budget and real estate which is very limited."

future profession - artist

in an abundant world enabled by technology, perhaps only one profession will exist - artist...

curating public space

i like the idea of rethinking the interfaces between the private and the public - to begin to not just focus on private temples of culture but facilitate a "leakage," an "erosion of the edges" to let beauty flow to a larger audience and to the public at large.

museums have to reach out to the larger context - new technology in building and learning will facilitate this more and more. what we need is the will to reach out...

the iron triangle

we can't expect any positive impacts of new technology as long as the iron triangle works to bring war to the world. the following documentary is a brilliant expose of the carlyle group - a private equity firm that is heavily involved in the defense (read "offence") business. some key points - a. what eisenhower called the "military industrial complex" is more aptly termed the "iron triangle" - a convergence of military, big business and politics - a sickening group of powerful individuals invested in war - "wartime is boomtime for business", b. senior leaders (particularly in the us and uk) around the world are profoundly invested in war industries as they are heavily government regulated ("you set up the policies. you leave office. you go into business. you exploit those policies") - conflicts of interest abound, c. a lot of players that form the iron triangle are hard to understand as they are privately held (like the carlyle group) - "it's like shadow boxing with a ghost," d. the iron triangle has the power to shape public thinking - they can easily make the case for war/military spending even when it is inessential, e. oil money (easy, plentiful and desperate to hold it's value) plays a major role in the global iron triangle.

until the iron triangle dissolves and the era of oil (elite energy) ends, it is clear that we cannot have a livable world...

battery breakthrough

nanotechnology now reports a breakthrough in battery technology at usc. energy storage technology is the achilles heel of plans to roll out renewables faster and in more applications. there is major evolution and in 5 years storage may no longer be a choke point:

Cheap, strong lithium-ion battery developed at USC. New design uses silicon nanoparticles to improve capacity and recharge more quickly.

The new batteries—which could be used in anything from cell phones to hybrid cars—hold three times as much energy as comparable graphite-based designs and recharge within 10 minutes. The design, currently under a provisional patent, could be commercially available within two to three years.

"It's an exciting research. It opens the door for the design of the next generation lithium-ion batteries," said Chongwu Zhou, professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, who led the team that developed the battery. Zhou worked with USC graduate students Mingyuan Ge, Jipeng Rong, Xin Fang and Anyi Zhang, as well as Yunhao Lu of Zhejiang University in China. Their research was published in Nano Research in January.

health future

i love vinod khosla's report entitled "20% doctors included - speculations and musings of a technology optimist". it gives us a picture of the future of healthcare that is rooted in current developments. let me begin with the summary he opens with:

1.   Healthcare today is often really the “practice of medicine” rather than the “science of medicine”. In the worst cases of the practice of medicine, doctors just take moderately educated shots in the dark when it comes to patient care. Physicians should be much more scientific and data-driven. That’s hard for the average physician to pull off without technology, because of the increasing amount of data and research released every year. Next-generation medicine will be the scientific arrival at diagnostic and treatment conclusions and real testing of what’s actually going on in your body. And, it will be much more personalized than your physician can provide. Data science will be key to this.

2.   Technology makes up for human deficiencies and amplifies strengths – MDs and even other less trained medical professionals can do much more than they do now. By 2025 more data-driven, automated healthcare will displace up to 80% of physicians’ diagnostic and prescription work. It will AMPLIFY physicians by arming them with more complete, synthesized, and up-to-date research data, all leading to better patient outcomes. Computers are much better than people at organizing and recalling information. They have larger and less corruptible memories, remember more complex information much more quickly and completely, and make far fewer mistakes than a hot shot MD from Harvard. Contrary to popular opinion, they’re also better at integrating and balancing considerations of patient symptoms, history, demeanor, environmental factors, and population management guidelines than the average physician.

3.   The healthcare transition will start incrementally and develop slowly in sophistication, much like a great MD who starts with seven years of med school and then spends a decade training with the best practitioners by watching, learning, and experiencing. Expect many laughing-stock attempts by “toddler MD computer systems” early in their evolution and learning. These systems will grow with the help of the top MDs and AMPLIFY them so everyone can have the best, most researched care, not the average, overburdened, and rushed doctor the average person gets today!  In fact, the very best MDs will be an integral part of designing and building these advanced systems.

4.   The systems of 10-15 years from now (which is the time frame I am talking about) will overcome many of the short-term deficiencies of today’s technologies. By analogy, using today’s technology then would be like our carrying the multi-pound phones from 1987 (they were floor mounted cell phones with big handsets and heavy cords) in our pockets rather than iPhones. There will be point innovations that seem immaterial, but, when there are enough of them, they will integrate with each other and start to feel like a revolution. In the meantime, expect these early systems and tools to be the butt of jokes from many a writer or MD. Early printers, typically “dot matrix”, did not exactly cut it for business correspondence, let alone replace traditional means. Early medical systems will be used in non-critical roles or under physician supervision. Eventually, this shift in how healthcare is delivered will allow for less money to be spent on capital equipment, cutting health care costs. It will allow us to provide care to those who don’t have it now. And, it will prevent simple things from getting worse before being addressed.

5.   The human element of care, provided by humane humans, not rushed, overloaded MDs, will still be around. These people may have MDs anyway, but they won’t need ten or twenty years of medical school training. Or, when they have the training, they will become much better diagnosticians and caregivers. Beyond diagnosis and treatment, there are many things doctors do that won’t be replaced.

6.   The problem in healthcare is not with doctors, many of whom are accomplished, caring, honest, and compassionate providers. The problem is the incredible increase in complexity of the newly enabled data (some extrinsic), vast amounts of research, longitudinal health records, and histories without the self-reporting inaccuracies of the patient that allows for the much more integrative analysis that is now possible.  The problem is also the misalignment of incentives in medicine, where organizations try to maximize revenue (extra surgeries anyone?) at the expense of optimizing care. This is why innovation will most likely happen from the outside. It is also important to realize that I refer to the “AVERAGE GLOBAL doctor” or healthcare concern, not every doctor or company. The standards of performance in some parts of the world and in some parts of this country are very different than those in the best metropolitan hospitals in the United States. I also note that 50% of MD’s are below average though every doctor most people  know is above average!

a case for replacing doctors (in their current form) altogether is emerging, though - as you can see - he treads carefully on this issue. he goes on to mention several new start-ups that are actually beginning to create this new healthcare future:

ZocDoc - allows patients to check in for an appointment and provide basic information ahead of time.
AliveCor - makes an iPhone case to take an ECG after every workout. 
CellScope - which produces low-cost iPhone attachments for imaging skin moles, rashes, ear infections, and (in the future) your retina or throat.
SkinVision - uses the fractal nature of patterns in a skin image to determine more accurately than most general physicians whether you have skin cancer.
Eyenetra - makes a device that can give you an eye test and fit you for eyeglasses at little cost or hassle.
Adamant - is a very risky startup that’s attempting to produce a chip that can detect hundreds of gases in your breath. If you’re asthmatic, it can measure the level of nitrous oxide and predict whether you’re at risk of having an attack. If you’re diabetic and have ketones in your breath, it can detect that too and tell you that your body is undergoing ketosis. It can detect if you have lung cancer and even tell you what type of lung cancer. It will even detect whether you’re burning fat or sugars during exercise, because each results in different component concentrations in your breath. This little chip will do all this inexpensively, for far less than a big, expensive CT scanner that’ll just tell you that you have a nodule in your lungs but can’t tell you what kind of lung cancer you have. Eventually, you won’t have a doctor stare at you and tell you that you look well; instead, your doctor will be able to look at the levels of hundreds of compounds in your breath and know whether you’re well.
Ginger.io - determines patients’ mental health based on a variety of metrics. It can monitor your rate of emailing, tweeting, texting, and calling to gauge your social activity. Using motion sensors and your phone’s GPS, it can even know if you’re hiding in your bedroom, eating in your kitchen, or just staying in bed. By watching for changes in your behavior, it can tell how you’re doing far better than a psychiatrist could possibly determine and actually calls your psychiatrist if you’re in the danger zone of an episode. For example, detecting a behavioral pattern change that’s indicative of bipolar disorder could help us prevent shooting sprees of the type we’ve seen recently.
Proteus - is helping address drug non-compliance, one of the biggest problems in medicine. They’ve designed a clever system that combines a pill sensor, a body patch, and a mobile app. They attach a tiny, ingestible sensor to pills that gets activated by stomach acids. When a patient takes the pill, the sensor sends a signal to the body patch, which then relays the signal to the app. This system will allow caregivers to remotely monitor patient adherence by individual, time-stamped pill consumption events. This is a far better solution than having your doctor base a diagnosis on the one-time blood test done in the clinic. 

Empatica - uses sensors on patients’ wrists to measure bio-signals that correlate with emotion. Imagine having a continuous and, more importantly, accurate and objective measurement of your emotions for a month instead of only the latest, biased description that you might give (or forget to give) to your hurried physician.  

AirStrip Technologies - provides real-time vital signs to physicians’ mobile devices. 

Sotera Wireless - provides a battery-powered mobile device for monitoring vital signs. 

Agile Diagnosis/Lifecom - are improving clinical decision-making by providing decision trees with probability-based outcomes for physicians at the point of care. These and other startups are forcing us to rethink healthcare from diagnostics to treatment. 

dr. daniel kraft's talk - appended below - reinforces and animates khosla's views. khosla, kraft and other people connected with the cutting edge of medicine are alerting us to myriad new technologies - but as they all say - the real advantages will flow from their convergence. development - maturation - convergence - maturation will take at least a decade. the era of systems medicine begins in 2020...

ai > human doctor

as per a recent indiana university study, researchers found the following:

consider how these gaps will only widen given the nearly limitless learning potential of ai systems and an exponential rate of positive change. quoting from the gigaom piece on it:

A pair of Indiana University researchers has found that a pair of predictive modeling techniques can make significantly better decisions about patients’ treatments than can doctors acting alone. How much better? They claim a better than 50 percent reduction in costs and more than 40 percent better patient outcomes.

The idea behind the research, carried out by Casey Bennett and Kris Hauser, is simple and gets to the core of why so many people care so much about data in the first place: If doctors can consider what’s actually happening and likely to happen instead of relying on intuition, they should be able to make better decisions.

In order to prove out their hypothesis, the researchers worked with “clinical data, demographics and other information on over 6,700 patients who had major clinical depression diagnoses, of which about 65 to 70 percent had co-occurring chronic physical disorders like diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.” They built a model using Markov decision processes — which predict the probabilities of future events based on those immediately preceding them — and dynamic decision networks — which extend the Markov processes by considering the specific features of those events in order to determine the probabilities. Essentially, their model considers the specifics of a patient’s current state and then determines the best action to effect the best possible outcome.

it is only a matter of time that ai will largely replace the human doctor who has corruptible, limited memory and a whole host of human biases that ai does not. i expect empathy providers armed with ai's as the preferred mode of healthcare delivery in a 10-15 year time horizon...

jab-free glucose monitoring

progress sometimes comes in tiny steps. consider non-invasive glucose monitoring technology that is now available (the monitors have approval in europe but are awaiting fda clearance in the us). imagine the convenience this brings to diabetes patients who have to draw blood frequently to measure blood glucose levels. this opens the door to other kinds of non-invasive blood monitoring - will incumbent interests (that are invested hugely in blood testing) allow this major disruption to happen without a fight. i hope that good sense prevails...

elite control

this is the first rigorous study i've seen that speaks to the issue of elite control. it clearly shows that there is a tightly connected core that exercises global control of capital. the world is by no means a level playing field - there are powerful positive network externality effects at work - the more capital you have the easier it is to garner even more of it. the study identifies the core of control to lie with financial institutions in the us and uk - this should explain a lot. what we need now is a clearer identification of this "core" - more specifically the individual actors involved and their motivations. the following videos touch on the lives of the minions that serve this core - there is less public information about the true owners though - i'm sure what little we can know of them is through their exercise of public relations. clearly greed and lust for power combined with serious sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies are defining characteristics of the "elite" underneath the veneer of nobility and superior intelligence...

the hr guidance to elite financial institutions from their "owners" should make for interesting research - i'm sure they actively look for smart psychopaths willing to do anything for money...

dr. watson

watson, ibm's first cognitive computer is in the process of graduating from medical school - more specifically from memorial sloan kettering (msk) in oncology. it is being readied for prime time. in this article, eweek discusses the developments. some excerpts follow:

Watson voraciously digests information for later use when called upon by users. MSK fed Watson gobs of data on the complexities of cancer and the explosion of genetic research that has set the stage for the computing system to assist doctors and nurses in changing care practices for many cancer patients with highly specialized treatments based on their personal genetic tumor type. At the same time, WellPoint has been applying Watson to a utilization management pilot program with participation from provider offices to streamline the review processes between a patients' physician and their health plan, potentially speeding approvals from utilization management professionals, reducing waste and helping ensure evidence-based care is provided.

To date, Watson has ingested more than 600,000 pieces of medical evidence, 2 million pages of text from 42 medical journals and clinical trials in the area of oncology research. Watson has the power to sift through 1.5 million patient records representing decades of cancer treatment history, such as medical records and patient outcomes, and provide to physicians evidence-based treatment options all in a matter of seconds.

"The commercialization of IBM Watson is a historic milestone that will impact the entire health care industry, said Daniel Kraft, M.D., executive director of FutureMed. "Physicians are faced with ever-increasing amounts of medical data and increased demands to improve outcomes. IBM is delivering on a vision to apply technology and innovation to health care by creating solutions that will transform our ability to improve diagnosis and treatment and to enhance quality of care for our patients."

The first commercially developed Watson-based cognitive computing solutions are:

1. Interactive Care Insights for Oncology is a first-of-its-kind Watson-based private cloud that is expected to assist medical professionals and researchers by helping identify individualized treatment options for patients with cancer, starting with lung cancer. The Maine Center for Cancer Medicine (MCCM) and WESTMED Medical Group are the first two early adopters of the capability. Their oncologists will begin testing the product and providing feedback to WellPoint, IBM and Memorial Sloan-Kettering to improve usability. 

2. Interactive Care Guide and Interactive Care Reviewer is the first Watson-based cognitive system that is expected to accelerate accepted testing and treatment by shortening pre-authorization approval time. This means that patients are moving forward with the first crucial step toward treatment more quickly.

Dr. Kris emphasized the potential for Watson to help personalize cancer treatments.
"Over the past year, we at Memorial Sloan-Kettering have worked with an IBM team to train Watson to help assist medical professionals in choosing treatments for lung and breast cancers," Kris said. "We are sharing our knowledge and expertise in oncology to help Watson learn everything it can about cancer care and how Memorial Sloan-Kettering's experts use medical information and their experience in personalized cancer treatments."

to give you a sense of the rate at which the watson system is improving, the article states: 

In the two years since it beat human opponents at "Jeopardy," Watson has gained a 240 percent improvement in system performance, reduced the system's physical requirements by 75 percent and can now be run on a single Power 750 server, IBM said.

i suspect that we will need only a small fraction of the human doctors we currently have within 10 years - this will bring about a vast improvement in healthcare. healthcare abundance is of critical importance. i believe we are moving in that direction...

post-mortem of the crisis

the following programs show what we are up against in the climb to an abundant world. the financial system is operationalized by markets and markets require scarcity to "discover" a feasible price. in the absence of real scarcities, false scarcities are created (e.g. diamonds, world food supply)...

the thinkers in this documentary make several interesting points that are worth repeating: a. over time debt burdens have been shifted from banks to states and governments to common people, b. states respond to financial institutions but not to ordinary people, c. most people use the abstract term "system" as they do not understand the actors that truly govern our lives. we must get to know these people - especially what their motivations are - and move our understanding from "system" -> "actors", d. this time is truly an inflexion point as we face a "network of crises", e. we have moved from curiosity-driven science to economics-driven science (techno-science). we wish to know what we can productize and sell, f. the crisis is being "rebranded" away from any culpability of specific actors (banks, corporations, regulators) towards more abstract ideas of national identity and individual agency, g. the one thing that de-legitimizes any action is violence. governments always try to provoke violence, h. the crisis has been used to improve the power and profits of the financial institutions (successfully socializing losses while privatizing profits), i. common people strongly feel that nobody represents their interests, j. there is - on a hopeful note - a feeling of "we go slow because we go far" - this crisis is just a beginning...

as this program very clearly shows, the police infrastructure of the world serves the financial elite and works on a "usual suspects" model of justice...

cyber-utopia?

julian assange makes an excellent point - pervasive surveillance allows the elite to lift off from it's people; to disconnect; to be able to predict and thereby control an orwellian totalitarian construct...

i think yevgeny morozov has important things to say. as he points out - a lot of techno-utopianism is about gadgets and their capability and less about the human condition. just as the internet empowers people with information; it empowers powerful organizations (e.g. governments and corporations) far more. another interesting thought is that digital media virtualizes dissent - so instead of doing something real about oppression, people go online and tweet instead - this makes societal dissonance more manageable for the authorities.

clearly, alongside the rise of technology, we need to be vigilant about poverty, human rights, human autonomy and strict checks on the power of organizations. all authority must loop back to the most common people - as long as there is elitism, there will be dissonance...

trailer - the pirate bay

this promises to be an excellent film. it is also distributed via creative commons - everyone should see it. we all need a world where all human knowledge is part of our creative commons...

wiki-leaks : impact analysis

this excellent piece by the bbc dissects the impact of wikileaks. to me it shows three things: a. there are good people on every side, b. technology is enabling lateral power by allowing the world a glimpse into highly secret/elite worlds, and c. it's hard to be the hegemon in a connected world:

this two part analysis is also an instructive primer on geo-politics. the world has clearly become a dirty place - sunshine/openness is the only effective disinfectant. with greater information and connectedness we will graduate to what jeremy rifkin terms "biospheric consciousness" from a selfish "national consciousness".

neuroscience applied

what is it about neuroscience that it throws up some of the most brilliant, lucid thinkers. here are some videos that talk about 3 most advanced initiatives built around applying brain science to human activity. watch for some of these key people: dharmendra modha, henry markram and jeff hawkins - each one coming to the issue of reverse engineering the human brain from a different direction...

cognitive computing is led by ibm (everyone has heard about ibm's watson and the jeopardy challenge). this is the most applied project informed by neuroscience. their endeavor is to build computer systems that are derived from the design and functioning of the human brain - hence "cognitive". the project is led by dharmendra modha.

the hbp or "human brain project" is based in lausanne, switzerland and just got $ 1.6 billion for the next 10 years to build an accurate computer simulation of the human brain. dubbed a "cern for neuroscience," it is the most comprehensive brain project in the world. a particular focus of this project is to fast track an understanding of the diseases of the brain by experimenting via accurate simulation. they are also interested in a whole range of applications of neuroscience like computing and robotics. henry markram leads this project - he is israeli and trained at the weizman institute for science and technology.

the above is an introduction to the state of the art in theoretical neuroscience - the primary concern of jeff hawkins. he started with the conundrum that there seemed to be a lot of experimental and descriptive data about the human brain but no real theory about how it works. this led him to found the redwood neuroscience institute and numenta, inc. where he leads efforts to build a theoretical understanding of the human brain and to bring this to application. note numenta's work to bring us "grok" a predictive analytics platform that sounds quite amazing.

mars settlement

mars one just got angel funding. they plan a settlement by 2023. they hope to fund it further by streaming the settlement process live - creating a media spectacle. how exciting!

smart machines and jobs

also, this ap article is a must read. an excerpt from it:

To better understand the impact of technology on jobs, The Associated Press analyzed employment data from 20 countries; and interviewed economists, technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, CEOs and workers who are competing with smarter machines.

The AP found that almost all the jobs disappearing are in industries that pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. Jobs that form the backbone of the middle class in developed countries in Europe, North America and Asia.

In the United States, half of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid middle-class wages, and the numbers are even more grim in the 17 European countries that use the euro as their currency. A total of 7.6 million midpay jobs disappeared in those countries from January 2008 through last June.

Those jobs are being replaced in many cases by machines and software that can do the same work better and cheaper.

"Everything that humans can do a machine can do," says Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston. "Things are happening that look like science fiction."

the pace of machine replacement for human jobs is accelerating. watson, the ibm supercomputer that beat jeopardy champions understands natural language. i suspect a massive rollout in health (a tricorder should become available in 5 years) and law. cognitive work will be more easily computer substitutable than work that requires movement - experts beware!

reference - huge collection of links regarding the question of mechanization/robotization

open source philosophy

the challenge is moving from a competitive to a cooperative midset. modern societies are brain washed to compete - all schooling, professions, entertainment (especially sports) emphasize competition. how do we wind down from our programming about competition - open source thinking is a beginning... mature 3-d printing will give the open source movement teeth.

trailer - google and the world brain

directed by ben lewis, this film is a must see and shows how a noble aim - i.e. building a world brain as envisaged by h.g. wells - can be subverted in the hands of a for-profit entity. of course - that the world brain must be free, accessible 24/7 by the entire world and not controlled by a private entity - is a natural corollary to this film...

driverless cars update

this spiegel online article quotes sebastian thrun (the leader of the google driverless car project) - timelining driverless cars into the consumer market within 5 years - i.e. 2018. it is also one of the best written pieces in the media about driverless cars. the project is obviously moving forward in leaps and bounds. moore's law is having a direct impact on the ability of onboard computers to synthesize information from car sensors into navigational facility.

a useful fragment from the article:

Self-driving cars, long dismissed as a utopian pipe dream, are rapidly reaching the stage where they will be ready for the market. "We're not talking about 20 years here, but more like five," says Sebastian Thrun, initiator and director of Google's project.

Five years until the first driverless cars hit the streets? It sounds like just any of the other science-fiction ideas that seem to percolate out of the manically creative world that is Google headquarters. But could it be that the company is about to show the automobile industry what the future of mobility looks like?

In truth, however, the real surprise here is something else entirely: Everything Google can do, carmakers already do as well -- they just don't talk about it as openly. In one European Union-funded research project, Volvo successfully drove a convoy of five vehicles that only had a human driver in the lead car. BMW recently sent a robotic car on a two-hour drive from Munich to Nuremberg. And Volkswagen and a research team from Stanford University have caused a stir with their driverless Audi sports car, which that has been zipping around US racetracks.

Although Google doesn't enjoy a monopoly on the field, its prominent position allows it to exert pressure on others and demonstrate the feasibility of the idea. The auto industry isn't missing the technology needed for the next revolution in mobility. It lacks the guts to put that technology on the market.