Tomorrow in San Jose, under the tagline “Opportunity, Risk, Leadership”, the 2008 Singularity Summit will explore the state of AGI research, and implementation, and discuss the visions of the leading thinkers of the field of accelerating technological change, and its impact on society.

The Summit is not going to be streamed live, but the videos from it should be soon online. In the meantime you can follow it on Twitter in realtime.

Today  was the day of the Emerging Technology Workshops, and tomorrow will be the day of the conference proper.

Probably this belief in being a shaper of worlds, the universe, and more, the multiverse, which had Bruce Sterling, one of the top practitioners of his art, summon up his Italian twin brother Bruno Argento. Bruce spoke about Bruno at other conferences already, but we have never met him. Bruno is actually more than Bruce’s twin brother. Bruno IS Bruce from an other Universe.

We have never met Bruno Argento, but this will soon change. Bruce can’t participate at a conference where he was invited to speak, and has asked Bruno to go instead! Tomorrow, as he visits our Universe at the ICOGRADA Design Week’s Multiverse conference in the Torino Design Capital Of The World event series, Bruno Argento will speak about all the issues concerning him.

I will be there!

I was speaking this week at SHiFT08 in Lisbon. This conference has been put together by a group of volunteers led by Pedro Custodio, with passion, joy, and a lot of creativity.

For smaller, and relatively isolated markets like Portugal, these are excellent, and very important opportunities to make sure that their startup culture is nurtured, and that the entrepreneurs behind them are put in touch with the ease, and the intensity needed with some of the protagonists of the changes sweeping through the larger web world.

 As in all democracies, the right to vote in elections is a fundamental one in the United States Of America as well. However, contrary to other countries with a more centralized approach, the rules for exercising this right in the USA are incredibly complicated, and cumbersome to follow. First of all, you have to be registered to vote. The state does not register you when you become of a voting age, but you have to do it on your own. When you move you residence, you have to register again. If you declared that you vote for a given party, in its primary election, and change your mind, you have to register again. Rules change with each state, and vary depending of the type of election. Etc., etc. It sounds very complicated, and it is.

More than half of the visitors of the English version of this website come from the US, so I am addressing these. Please, register to vote, and please go, and vote for the coming general elections for the President.

Currently about 30%, or almost 60 million people of the total having right to vote are not registered.

All elections matter: they are the way people can concretely demonstrate with democratic tools their positions. But the forthcoming US Presidential elections matter even more in my opinion than others have in the past.

When I was recently in Los Angeles I had the chance to meet and chat with Linda Pollack, an artist and activist, who has an installation called Habeas Index downtown, and who is also active in asking people to register. I went with her in Chinatown to see what happens when people are confronted with the question “Are you registered to vote?”

It was a very interesting experience. From young couples who didn’t seem to care, to old Chinese men who’d smile but didn’t even speak English, or Latinos who appeared to be afraid of the question, there were all kinds of reactions. Linda was able to register several people that afternoon, and she is going to continue her drive up until the deadline of a month before the elections.

Take also a look at David Brin’s arguments for getting people to vote, and getting the ‘ostriches’ raise their head from the sand.