Searching For The Question

There will be those who say that this is just rhetoric. But if it is—and I say this as a missionary atheist—then it is an “in the beginning was the Word” kind of rhetoric  which creates the worlds drawn from the words. Making real what for others is not even imaginable. We need not fear [...]

Here’s day two: Singularity Summit 09 Day 2

Stephen Wolfram, author of the book A New Kind Of Science, creator of the Mathematica symbolic calculation software suit, and of the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine is a recent addition to the roster of speakers at the Singularity Summit in New York. In a recent webcast the audience in large numbers asked Stephen to comment [...]

  Whole Brain Emulation is going to create synthetic humans, if the functionalist point of view of neuroscience is right, by implementing their thought processes in forthcoming hardware, and software systems, which could arrive as early as the middle of this century. What are the rights of these uploads? How will their existence impact our [...]

Analyzing, and implementing specific brain functions, in order to complement, or substitute them when impaired has been possible for a long time. Hearing aids, or a simple pair of glasses are well accepted tools helping our senses, and our brain functions. There many leaps that researchers working in the field of neuroengineering want to be [...]

Bela Nagy is working at the Santa Fe Institute on a project called the Performance Curve Data Base, which collects datasets concerning the evolution of technology, including performance metrics, production volumes, and other economic indicators. Bela calls his approach Quantitative Futurism, and applies techniques of hindcasting, starting from a point in the past, with the [...]

On October 3-4, 2009, the Singularity Summit 09 is held in New York, and it promises to be a very stimulating event. Organized yearly by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Singinst), it is confronting for the first time an East Coast audience, after its past three editions in California. Invited by Singinst’s President, Michael [...]

Electronic text is not new, but the ebook has started to be seen as a new medium recently. The reason of this is the easy identification of ebooks through their unique reader devices. But is it right? When a new medium emerges, for a while it sits in a straddling position between carrying through the [...]

As new gadgets come out on the market, with more features, options, and possibilities for personal and professional use, I like to try them out when I can. Rather than doing it in parallel, and somewhat superficially, my preference when possible is to actually live with the devices sequentially for an extended period of time, [...]