Tag Archives: singularity

Nanobamamania!

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University of Michigan materials scientists boasted this month that they “fuse art, science, technology and politics.” DARPA and the National Science Foundation (i.e., you and I) helped pay for it. And this nanotech stuff ain’t cheap!

Photo: John Hart, University of Michigan

John Hart, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, made the mini-Barack Obama likenesses with his colleagues to raise awareness of nanotechnology and science.

Each one contains about 150 million carbon nanotubes stacked vertically like trees in a forest. A carbon nanotube is an extraordinarily strong hollow cylinder about 1/50,000th the width of a human hair.

“Developments like this are an excellent way to bring the concepts of nanotechnology to a broader audience,” said Hart, who made the portraits with his colleagues by working late on a Friday evening. “Also, we thought it would be fun.”

More nano-art here

Singularity setback: Google kills Lively?

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CC/Zoe Connolly

Not enough business. Photo: CC/Zoe Connolly

Reports of Lively’s death turn out not to have been exaggerated after all. After the fanfare, hoop-la, bell and whistles of the Second Life killer’s opening, Google have just announced that Lively is dead. Well, if not death, in the terminal stages and destined to limp on flaccidly until the end of the year.

Back in September, Lively’s project director, Kevin Hanna, it was at the Austin Game Developers Conference where he announced that, “Our user-base exceeded every number that we had put down. So, in that sense, our beta is more successful than most launched products.” Tragically, the “success” was simply the ability to generate enough curiosity for people to visit the world at least once. The “New Frontier” turned out to be little more than a side road with nothing at the end of it and bugger all to look at on the way.

via Second Life Herald: Google’s Lively is Dead – Requiem to be Announced Soon

2012: "Internet interrupted"

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The internet is doomed. But £96 billion can fix all that.

CC/Eliya Selhub

CC/Eliya Selhub

Nemertes Research reckons that 2012 could be a crunch year for the web, as the exaflood (my emphasis–mb) – an exponential explosion of online content resulting from new applications and video – causes slower responses and time outs, ultimately triggering an ‘innovation slowdown’.

via Internet needs £91bn to avoid ‘brownouts’ | News | TechRadar UK

Nemertes has made similar calls for governments to fund the growth of the net.

Behold the "living gel"

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<a href=Robots will soon have guts, just like people, thanks to scientists at Waseda University.

The Waseda scientists have produced a gel that contracts like human intestines, and without any need for external stimulus.

If you place a small cylinder atop the gel, If a small cylindrical object is placed on the gel, reads the university’s announcement, “the wave motion of the gel causes it to roll forward—like a miniature conveyor belt.”

"Big Blue" rebuttal: No transhumanists here

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IBM researcher defends Second Life, World of Warcraft, against Parallelnormal blog posts.

from Mark:

High-profile virtual worlders are trying to correct what they see as misrepresentations by Parallelnormal of their recent meetings and events.

One of them, Second Lifer “Dale Innis,” writes a comment blasting my comparison of real and virtual versions of New England, and my description of a conference about the convergence of reality with virtual reality.

“(You) drastically misread your sources about the WoW conference and the Extropia sims, and you seem to do the same thing in many places where Second Life is involved,” Innis writes.

Innis in real life (RL) is IBM researcher David M. Chess.

IBM has built inworld stores for big box retailers.

Chess is working to develop autonomic technologies, which are self-aware and can fix themselves.

Chess, speaking for himself, and not IBM, denies that Extropia and the World of Warcraft conference “are in fact about transhumanism.”

Yet the WoW conference was organized by a transhumanist, and one who views the world’s major religions as an obstacle to the advancement of his own beliefs.

And extropians, by their own definition, are transhumanists, real or imagined.

Little RASCALS stir up Second Life

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(Caution: Four-year-old Eddie might just tear your heart out. That’s because he’s built on an AI framework for the military. Images: RPI)

Cognitive scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute claim to have created a Second Life avatar with the reasoning skills of a four-year-old child.

The artificial child, “Eddie,” runs on an RPI supercomputer, and comes from a lab funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Selmer Bringsjord, leader of the RPI research team that created “Eddie,” says applications for the tyke might include “homeland defense.”

That’s because Eddie also goes by the name, “Edd.”

And Edd (below) is a baddass homeland security robot who looks like the villainous machine in the film, Robocop. Both Eddie and Edd are based on the Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Architecture for “Living” Systems, or RASCALS, an artificial life form platform created for military and intelligence operations.

Eddie’s supercomputing descendants will be much more capable of mimicking humans than he is.

“Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things.” – Bringsjord

The Pentagon and Homeland Security would then be free to use synthetic characters as spies inworld, for example. There they will able to operate undetected, and unhindered by the pangs of a truly human conscience.

Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Troy, N.Y. – Today’s video games and online virtual worlds give users the freedom to create characters in the digital domain that look and seem more human than ever before. But despite having your hair, your height, and your hazel eyes, your avatar is still little more than just a pretty face.

DNA scans and scams, backed by Google

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Your innermost “secrets,” stored to an online database? Genetic profiling firms promise insights, but deliver unfounded health scares.

For about US$1,000, Mountain View, Calif.-based 23andMe will tell you a thing or two about your genetic makeup.

Google, which collects as much intel as it possibly can about individuals, and has many close CIA ties, is one of the 23andMe’s backers.

23andMe analyzes saliva samples from its customers, to provide rudimentary information about your genetic predispositions to baldness, or developing prostate cancer.

More:

Google-funded firm launches DNA test in Europe | Technology | Reuters
The site does not currently make interpretations about a user’s risk for developing such diseases as cancers, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, though users could in some cases get help from experts to make some basic assessments.

But the service may prove controversial in countries like Britain, where some experts say DNA tests are often of little value and can trigger unnecessary health worries.

– Mark Baard