MemeBox FutureBlogger

Accelerating Change Meme Hits the National Stage

Alvis — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:33:44 +0000

If you think there’ve been dramatic changes in the world and in technology over the last ten years, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The race is on, and if you watched the Olympics, you know China’s going for the gold. – Mark Warner, last night at the DNC

The accelerating change meme finally hit the national stage last night at the Democratic National Convention when former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who earned his fortune in the cell phone industry, framed the current Presidential contest as a “race for the future” that “won’t be won with yesterday’s ideas”.

This marks the first time in recent memory that any candidate for national office, barring of course Future Blogger favorite Jack Uldrich , who incidentally has been calling for high profile politicians to start debating the future , has directly appealed to voters on a national level by articulating the fundamental concept of accelerating change that most everyone on this site takes for granted.

I had been biting my nails during and after the primaries, hoping that the future, science and punctuated change would at last become election issues. And now I am relieved that this meme has finally infected enough minds to enter the popular debate. Whether you’re a transhumanist, singularitarian, trans-systemist, neo-luddite, or anything else inbetween, it’s essential that we as a society begin to tackle the reality of runaway techno-info-social change, first by acknowledging its existence, if we are to control our collective destiny in any meaningful way.

Now, I’m not sure that Warner or Obama will be able to deliver on promises to begin building “100 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrid vehicles right here – with American technology and with American workers” in two years time, but it’s certainly not impossible. Such future-forward initiatives must be spearheaded by the likes of Presidential candidates like Obama and McCain lest another 4 years of opportunities pass us by as we journey deeper into the acceleration era.

Carpe Postremo.

Photo credit Mark Warner, CC 2.0 license.

Category: Government
Year: 2008
Tags: markwarner, obama, mccain, president, us

How Exactly Will Our System Get Smarter?

Alvis — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:55:38 +0000

A favorite debate topic for many futurists, humanists, advanced defense theorists, sci-fi authors and Future Bloggers is the nature of future terrestrial intelligence increase. As change accelerates, how how exactly will we and/or the system around us get smarter?

The most popular scenario by far is Artificial General Intelligence , aka AI that equals or surpasses that of humanity, probably because it is the most immediately relatable and due to the fact that so much money is being poured into AGI research. In fact, some researchers are predicting a breakthrough in the field in just 5-10 years.

But there are a variety of other scenarios that could either outcompete this paradigm or conspire with it to accelerate intelligence in our system. These include human-based, alien-based, deeply systemic, or even exo-systemic possibilities.

Applying your particular brand of intelligence, which of the following do you think is the most optimal path to intelligence increase in the acceleration era? (Survey at end of post)

AGI: Human-generated machine intelligence such as in the films 2001: A Space Odyssey and A.I..

Individual Intelligence Amplification: Individual humans that grow vastly smarter due to hard, biological and/or soft cognitive upgrades, such as Bean in Ender’s Game.

Social Intelligence Amplification: A group or humanity as a whole collectively grows smarter, thus taking on the stewardship role for our Earth and species.

Biological Intelligence Amplification: One, more or all of the other species on Earth evolve or emerge, aided or automatically, the foremost intelligence on the planet. This could be viewed as a Gaiian awakening.

Alien Contact: Through efforts like SETI or those of the aliens themselves, we come into contact with some extra-terrestrial intelligence based in our universe that either stewards us or gives us a nice boost, a la the Vulcans in Star Trek, although this would likely be considerably more extreme.

Category: Technology
Year: Beyond
Tags: intelligence, iq, ai, strongai, ia, artificialintelligence, intelligenceamplification

Moon Architecture, Dubai 2050 & DNA Manipulation

Alvis — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:33:57 +0000

The Future Scanner Daily Top 5 serves to highlight 5 of the best scans submitted to the Future Scanner during the last 24 hours.

Moon Base Architecture
- Scanned by AJ0111

Europe Seeks to Harvest African Sun
- Scanned by jvarden

Dubai 2050
- Scanned by AJ0111

Consortium develops method to manipulate DNA
- Scanned by martymcfly

The Digital Home of 2013
- Scanned by SwankyJ

Category: Other
Year: General

Can We Outrace the Fourth Turning?

Alvis — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:23:24 +0000

Are we due for a massive cyclical U.S. crisis that finally spurs institutional change? A regular revolution not tied to the accelerating curves driving so much growth and innovation?

In large nations big spurts of institutional change tend to occur every four generations (roughly every 88 years, 1 generation = 22 years) when economic resources trapped by out-dated, inefficient systems are shifted over to efficient new systems once societies reach a cyclical tipping point for change. Generational theorists Strauss and Howe call this tipping point a fourth turning, a point in time where social power shifts to the generations too young to have witnessed the previous correction. They liken this pattern to a forest growth cycle: 1) new saplings take root, 2) the forest grows tall, 3) dead branches fall and choke off new species, 4) lightning strikes, the brambles burn and new saplings are free to grow—repeat.

As seen widely in biology, this sort of change is called Punctuated Equilibrium, which contrasts with the gradual evolution that many scientists intuitively believed to be true but ultimately was not supported by research nor the fossil record. Similarly, the historical record shows that the United States has regularly experienced punctuated social crises, aka fourth turnings, stretching all the way back to its roots in England. And just like all of the scientists that deny punctuated evolution/development, there is a huge % of the population that does not intuitively believe another fourth turning will occur because they have not encountered the historical evidence and are used to a relatively stable socio-economic situation. (Ironically, this blindness seems to be built into the very fabric of our social system and may result in more efficient growth when looked at from the broader context of inter-meshed life systems on our planet.)

Like it or not, cyclical crises pegged to human generations are real and should be considered when evaluating the future, right alongside accelerating change. So the questions we need to ask are 1) “When will the next fourth turning begin?”, 2) “Are there any dynamics that might break or trump the pattern of punctuated national change every 88 years?”

A Likely Fourth Turning Scenario

79 years ago, on October 24, 1929, the Great Wall Street Crash sparked the Great Depression and the last U.S. fourth turning. What followed was the New Deal Era, WWII, the transformation of most U.S. socio-economic sectors and ultimately the birth of what we now refer to as “The American Dream”.

79 years later the U.S. economy is facing a variety of problems that could spark a down-turn and a new fourth turning. (cont.)

Category: Economics
Year: General
Tags: geration, generations, fourthturning, generationaldynamics, peakoil, strausshowe, strauss, howe

Google's Vint Cerf Predicts Video Downloads Will Soon Replace Streaming

Alvis — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Google’s Vint Cerf, the man that many refer to as the father of the internet, says that widening bandwidth and data transfer speeds will soon allow video downloading to rival, then replace, video streaming as the primary mode of online video consumption.

“What I’m foreseeing frankly is that video will be used in download mode more than it will be used in streaming mode as time goes on,” predicts Cerf, “A gigabit per second would let you download an hour’s worth of video in 16 seconds, kind of like what happens with iPod where you can download music faster than you could listen to it.”

Check out his interview on Beet.tv here:

“I anticipate that a lot of video that people will watch will have been downloaded and then played back whenever they want it, sort of Tivo style,” says Cerf.

What will this all mean for the consumer and Cerf’s behemoth employer? (cont.)

Category: The Web
Year: General
Tags: vintcerf, vintoncerf, google, video, online

How Smart Will Humans Be in 2020?

Alvis — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:03:58 +0000

How smart will humans become as change accelerates through 2020?

Futurists and sci-fi authors often present scenarios in which humans interact with discrete artificial intelligence (like a robot or software program that talks to us), but far less frequently offer visions of runaway human intelligence enhancement (people made smarter by advances in communication, science & technology) and the resulting cultural and behavioral changes. The most interesting of these I’ve encountered include the rapid-time expanding-shrinking problem-solving networks in Vinge’s Rainbows End, Stephenson’s Metaverse idea, Hesse’s Glass Bead Game concept, Cascio’s participatory Panopticon, the increasingly smart mobs envisioned by Howard Rheingold, some of examples listed in the ASF’s Metaverse Roadmap, and what Richard Florida calls The Rise of the Creative Class . But though each of these are important visions in their own right, I remain a bit surprised at the overall lack of speculation re: what it might be like for humans to gradually bootstrap their intelligence over the coming years.

Given the deluge of brain-enhancing, capability-extending new technologies and ideas soon to be made widely available and affordable, it’d be great to see more thinkers, writers, and bloggers venture into the territory of plausible near-term culture and Intelligence Amplification (IA). Supported by a large body of consistent, powerful growth trends and near-term predictions (check them out on the Future Scanner), a wide range of social scenarios could be generated, many of which would be interesting, entertaining and ultimately valuable to people working to navigate the future (aka, everyone). In particular, I’d love to see/read simulations in which the most plausible near-term intelligence enhancing technologies and software are combined into believable slice-of-life vignettes.

What follows is a list of some powerful trends and technologies (some broad, some specific, many related to information and communication) that forward-thinkers might consider when developing scenarios for how human culture and social cognition will change as we approach 2020:

Drivers of Near-Term Intelligence Growth

WIDENING BANDWIDTH: Faster internet connections, pervasive WiFi – perhaps syndicated through people’s mobile devices.

GROWING GLOBAL INFORMATION: The amount of preserved digital data is growing exponentially as we capture more information about everything around us.

EVOLVING SOCIAL MEDIA: New media structures on a wider and more fluid web are evolving to better organize and process data. Portals like Wikipedia, Digg, Facebook, Medium, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Predictify are just the first in a long wave of innovation that promises to convert massive information into knowledge more efficiently.

VIDEO-to-VIDEO CHAT: Expect most cell phones to enable video-to-video chat by 2012 or so. (cont.)

Category: Culture
Year: 2020
Tags: scenarios, scanario, 2020, social, intelligence, iq

David Houle's Three Forces of the Shift Age

Alvis — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:08:00 +0000

I’ve been digging futurist David Houle’s new short video collection on YouTube, mostly because he succeeds at succinctly describing a variety of more or less complex forces. These are useful clips that I can show folks like my mom to help convey certain tricky concepts, much like the great acceleration primer that Jack Uldrich recently posted.

In particular, I found compelling Houle’s three 1-minute videos on the forces driving what he calls the Shift Age. Not only do they serve as a basic roadmap to the change ahead of us, they nicely convey the transformation of consciousness that will accompany this shift.

Houle’s first video describes a trend that he labels the “Flow to Global” which focuses on the notion that we are “beginning to develop a global conscience” and that “everything is reorganizing around global[ism]”.

Houle’s second post addresses the “Flow to the Individual”, an increase in choice that makes us “much more powerful as individuals than at any other time in human history”.

(cont.)

Category: Economics
Year: General
Tags: houle, davidhoule, shift, shiftage, video, youtube, globalization

Accelerating Deception and Memetic Evolution

Alvis — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:28:00 +0000

Jamais Cascio at Open the Future is on to something big with a new concept he calls the Participatory Decepticon, the yang to the yin that is the Participatory Panopticon. The general idea is that we’re beginning to see instances of modified/corrupted video content that can greatly benefit the deceiver via a spike of monetizable attention.

“Such a deception wouldn’t stand for very long, but would almost certainly last long enough set off a wave of furious blog posts and mainstream media attention,” argues Cascio, citing political videos as an example.

Having been burned by fake news like the iphone face-to-face talk photos and having seen many a critical thinker hoodwinked by April Fool’s blog posts I certainly agree that this Decepticon is in its nascency. The corruption, camoflaging, variation seems to indicate a new type of evolutionary internet-based memetic/temetic/content mechanism at work. The fact that deliberate content “mutation” has economic upside, as seen in the increase of April Fool’s spoofs, indicates that more brains will take advantage of the opportunity, especially as the value of human attention continues to rise. Thus, certain deceptive content packets will replicate and proliferate much more quickly thanks to the fluid content economy enable by the internet .

One might call this “accelerating deception”, which seems like a logical counterpart to the exponential information growth.

If we view memes and temes as more or less alive, as Susan Blackmore (one of the most important minds in information theory right now) argues and I tend to concur, then what’s happening is these little virtual organisms (in concert with humans, for now) are developing new survival and reproduction strategies.

At the same time, humans are benefiting from the increasingly rapid release of content variations. – Yes, there is a silver lining. (cont.)

Category: The Web
Year: General
Tags: cascio, jamaiscascio, openthefuture, deception, lies, particapatorydecepticon

10 Massive Reality TV Shows for the Near-Future

Alvis — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:25:00 +0000

Alvis Brigis is a former reality television producer and story editor whose credits include Motormouth (VH1), The Simple Life 2 (FOX), Making the Band 3 (MTV), and House of Boateng (Sundance). This is Part 2 of a series envisioning the future of the genre.

As I discussed in my last post on future tv programming that incorporates virtual worlds, reality TV is one of the many art forms due to experience incredible change as we enter the acceleration era. The genre is particularly well-suited to respond to new technology because it that was recently enabled by dropping technology costs and responds quickly to market forces.

That being the case, I’d like to explore just how BIG reality programming can get considering the proliferation of high-quality digital recording devices like the iPhone (the new better 3G version will start at just $199), the rise of social media media structures (YouTube, Digg, MemeBox), the advent of online participatory editing, the near-term potential of 3G and WiMax communication webs, new camera POV possibilities such as aerial micro-drones, and the steady progress we are making in digital storage and battery life/weight.

Ultimately, these are the same technologies that will enable widespread life-logging, surveillance and an emerging participatory panopticon. But along the way they will make for some kick-ass, ground-breaking reality television.

Here’s my Top 10 list of future MASSIVE reality TV shows that I’d love to kill some precious time watching:

1. THE PROTEST: The world’s largest and most dramatic political protests are examined inside-out as real-time footage captured on handhelds and by aerial drones is crowd-sourced and quickly edited online. As viewers watch the most popular cuts they can click on a frame to directly access the live feeds of their favorite broadcasters.

2. MANHUNT: 10 professional soldiers, law enforcement agents, and reformed criminals stage a fictional prison break then attempt to elude a public manhunt on 10,000 acres in rural Montana. Watch from afar or come test your tracking skills for a shot at $1,000,000.

3. THE REAL WAR: A reality show that actually makes a difference in the lives of the persecuted masses, The Real War brings transprency and accountability conflict situations in unstable regions. Sponsored by the UN and private donors, the program is edited by a panel of international observers. (cont.)

Category: Social Media
Year: General
Tags: realitytv, realitytelevision, reality, participatorypanopticon, surveillance

Might Temetics Be the Answer?

Alvis — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:41:34 +0000

Memetic scientist and The Meme Machine author Susan Blackmore is pushing a powerful new meme called a “teme”.

“Earth now has three replicators – genes (the basis of life), memes (the basis of human culture) and temes (the basis of technology),” asserts Blackmore, “I argue that the information copied by books, phones, computers and the Internet is the beginning of this third replicator and consequent new evolutionary process.”

The concept is important because it bridges the gap between ideas and technology and lays the foundation for more formalized understanding of what technology is and how it operates.

Here’s her recent TED presentation on the topic:

What’s the future significance? Blackmore happens to think that as we automate temetic processes we could be creating a computational system that ultimately usurps us.

“At the moment temes still need us, but if teme machines became self-replicating then we humans would be redundant and they could carry on without us. ... If anything of our civilisation is to survive then either we have to ensure that climate change and environmental degradation do not kill us off, or self-replicating teme machines must appear before this happens.”

Category: Technology
Year: General
Tags: meme, teme, memes, temes, susanblackmore

The Singularity Frankenstein

Alvis — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:17:54 +0000

When exploring the possible futures ahead of us one sooner or later encounters The Singularity memeplex, a concept with multiple meanings that people now generally associate with exponentialist Ray Kurzweil’s definition, “technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history”. He and others argue this will come about as the result of human-trumping or super-human-enabling artificial intelligence that fundamentally transforms our system and ourselves.

While the notion of a big-ass capital-S singularity is a very important concept, especially for future interested noobs attempting to comprehend the general ramifications of runaway technology growth, I agree with the likes of Eliezer Yudkowsky that it’s become a most un-scientific mash-up of several different schools of little-s singularity thought, something he appropriately calls “Singularity paste”.

The result is a huggable yet identity-torn memetic Frankenstein far more reminiscent of spirituality structures than of the scientific method which fundamentally violates the cardinal commandment of rigorous futures studies: Thou shalt not worship one single future, but the myriad possible futures ahead of us. (Note the plural. There’s solid reasoning behind it.)

Thus, it should come as absolutely no surprise when blogs like Wired Science label the Singularity a faith, thinkers such as Ted Modis call it a myth, and sci-fi authors including Warren Ellis dub it a religion. Such competent voices are being forced into adopting a contrary position to a Big-S singularity because it’s difficult for them to find the logical middle ground that they would naturally occupy. (cont.)

Category: Social Media
Year: General
Tags: singularity, thesingularity, singularities

Microsoft CEO Ballmer: Print Media Dead in 10 Years

Alvis — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:51:31 +0000

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has joined the ranks of those predicting the near-term demise of print media.

In a recent Washington Post interview (see below), Ballmer forecasts that, “In the next 10 the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down, in my opinion.”

“There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, magazines that are delivered in paper form – everything get delivered in electronic form,” he claims.

The reasoning behind this vision is rooted Ballmer’s belief that “advertising, community and content [will] all kind of blend”, resulting in a world in which we’re “going to have incredible pieces of software that run out in the internet that know all about the publishers that want to sell ads, all about the advertisers that want to buy ads and all about the users who want to consume content and advertising; and it sort of algorithmically puts them together … and it gets smarter and smarter at delivering the right ad at the right place at the right time. That’s a big business, we think.”

Personally, I am in full agreement with this scenario, though I do think that while they will seriously dwindle, some forms of traditional print will still be around in 2018. But I think Ballmer is spot-on in his argument that newspapers and magazines will certainly be hard pressed to continue their traditional existence(s).

(via Tech Crunch)

Category: Business & Work
Year: 2018
Tags: ballmer, print, pintmedia, newspapers

Here Comes Video-to-Video Mobile Chat (Update: or does it?)

Alvis — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:22:14 +0000

Leaked photos of the new 3G Apple iPhone reveal that it’s very sleek and, best of all, supports video-to-video calling. If rumors of serious subsidies in the neighborhood of the -$200 range prove correct, then we could have a mobile video-to-video revolution on our hands the second half of this year, certainly by the holiday season.

Although it’s gotten increasing silly to wait for next-gen technologies, I sure am psyched that I bypassed the first iteration(s) of the iPhone for the 3G version, which is widely expected to be released June 9th.

Update: It looks as though this 3G iPhone photo may well be a FAKE, in which case we’ll have to wait a few more months or even a year before we get video-to-video. I dig the joke and feel thoroughly sheeeepish at having taken the bait. It did seem plausible, though I did pause, for a split second, when considering the bandwidth requirements.

Prediction: Such believable fake-outs, in the tradition of google’s April Fool’s jokes, will become far more prevalent as we enter the knee of the curve and crafty designers take advantage of the viral opportunities.

Category: Technology
Year: 2008
Tags: apple, iphone, 3giphone, videochat, videotovideo, mobile

John Naisbitt Hates the "Change" Meme

Alvis — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:41:53 +0000

John Naisbitt, author of the popular MegaTrends (1982) and MegaTrends 2000 (1990), hates the word “change”.

“Because we are so bombarded by information about change we think that everything is changing, which is not true,” argues Naisbitt.

He supports this sentiment/analysis by arguing that “we human beings use the internet to do what we’ve always done” and that the underlying market forces driving human behavior have not fundamentally changed in at least 40 years that only “superficial” changes are occurring.

Check out the video here:

While I do agree that market behavior, aka the invisible hand, is a general constant (which we generally underestimate or forget about) because it seems to be a fundamental law of life systems here on Earth, having been around since the first amoeba was brought to life in the water vapor, hydrogen gas, ammonia and methane soup, I find Naisbitt’s argument that the change seen in the last 40 years, the change we’re experiencing, and the change we’ll see in the near-future is nothing but trivial, a bit naive and curmudgeonly. (cont.)

Category: Technology
Year: General
Tags: naisbitt, johnnaisbitt, megatrends

Musical Furniture Heralds New Era of Recreational I/O Products

Alvis — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:53:00 +0000

When form meets function in an elegant manner the new whole can more than equal the sum of the components. That was the second thing that popped into my head upon seeing the new interactive drum table created by a company called Musical Furnishings.

The first was that I want one of these tables to bang on, ASAP! (Hint, hint, future present givers.)

Take a look for yourself:

As far as future relevance, a compelling drum table allows me to imagine just how interactive ALL furniture, and physical objects in general, will eventually become. As sensors get smaller, the whole world will become an interactive I/O device. Throw in some augmented reality, huge content (sound, visual, 3d) databases, and haptics and all of a sudden our concept of reality is challenged.

Interactive everything. Here it comes.

Category: Culture
Year: General
Tags: drumtable, percussion, drums, musicalfurniture

10 Future Reality TV Shows Set in Virtual Worlds

Alvis — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:41:20 +0000

The genre known as reality television sprang into existence thanks to a drop in camera costs and increased digital storage, editing and effects capabilities. Now, as we enter the acceleration era, consistently dropping technology costs and new software capabilities will enable a radical transformation in in the sorts of reality shows we see on broadcast television and on YouTube.

One particularly potent reality TV catalyst will be nascent virtual worlds technologies like Second Life, Multiverse and There which will not only make possible high-end machinima (animation via virtual world action capture, which is already taking off), but also totally new, ultimately genre-busting, broadcast worthy physical/digital behavior.

Back when I lived in LA and worked in reality television and at the same time encountered virtual worlds for the first time, I would often image the amazing reality shows that will soon be possible as production technologies and practices evolve. For your enjoyment and as a demonstration of just how crazy television programming is about to get, here’s my current top 10 list of future virtual world enabled reality TV shows that I’d love to see developed:

1. U-BOAT: 25 contestants live aboard a submarine set and engage in the historical experience of a lifetime. They must quickly learn to navigate the craft through a virtual ocean simulation and a string of dramatic WWII battle scenarios. To both the contestants and the viewer at home it looks and feels as if these modern day Americans are actually piloting the submarine and narrowly staving off infamous Nazi U-Boat fleet.

2. THE BOARD ROOM: The new flagship marketing vehicle for Milton Bradley is an augmented reality game show that allows contestants to literally step right onto their favorite all-time board games. To the audience at home, it resembles The Price is Right in game structure, but visually looks like the participants have jumped into a Tron-like world with their favorite games all around them.

3. REQUIEM: Each episode of Requiem features one near-death person (young, old, terminal, famous, interesting, compelling life story) as they leave behind a 3-D “plot” of land for the world. Each individual is given the opportunity to create a 3-D world in which they deposit memories, images and descriptions of loved ones, candid descriptions of historic and historical events, favorite memories, renderings of their dreams, final farewells, and warnings to society. (cont.)

Category: Culture
Year: General
Tags: realitytv, tv, realitytelevision, television, futureofrealitytv

The Future of Social Media is Not All Open

Alvis — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:15:00 +0000

Notorious VC Fred Wilson has strong opinions about the future of social media.

“I believe that we are headed to a world in which everyone will share their lives with the rest of the world via the Internet. That is social media. It’s a huge movement and we are at the start of it,” he recently proclaimed on his blog.

Over the years I’ve heard many futurists express similar sentiments about the direction of our species, arguing that the benefits of ubiquitous life-streaming, transparency, and the sharing of all information are so powerful that they will trump people’s reluctance to open up their lives to the rest of the world. While I certainly agree that we are probably at the start of a whole open information movement and that pervasive sharing is a useful trend on which to base forward-looking extrapolations, I nevertheless find it highly unlikely that ALL people will choose to participate, especially over the next 20 years.

Considering that we co-exist in a complex environment in which different people with very different personalities, cultures and behaviors each compete for resources and control, betting on such a simple future seems to leave a great many other futures out of the mix. (cont.)

Category: Social Media
Year: General
Tags: socialmedia, media, opensource, open, lifelogging, wilson, fredwilson, avc

Nanotech Will Enable You to Hold Your Breath for Up to 4 Hours

Alvis — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:19:11 +0000

At the recent Low-Volume Manufacturers Association conference, Boris Fritz, a senior engineer technical specialist at Northrop Grumman, said he expects nanotechnology in our lifetime to enable small devices called respirocytes that permit us to hold our breath for up to 4 hours.

“What you do is replace about 10% of your blood with these respirocytes and then you would have literally 4 hours where you can hold your breath,” lays out Fritz, “So if you had a problem with your heart stopping you could just leisurely call the hospital and tell them ‘Well, i’ve had a heart attack, my heart is stopped’.”

Or another option, as Fritz points out, is that “you could go scuba diving without any gear.”

Check out the full Fritz interview by Dean Rotbart, Director of the Low-Volume Manufacturers Association, here. (Would have embedded the vid, but the youtube code is buggy.) (cont.)

Category: Technology
Year: Beyond
Tags: respirocytes, nano, nanotech, nanotechnology, northrop, grumman

Teleportals Go Social, Expect Them to "Expand"

Alvis — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:20:36 +0000

A social exhibit called the telectroscope allows crowds in London and New York to interact with one another through a video “tunnel”, aka a giant webcam.

Conceived by installation artist Paul St. George, the device is named after the first word used to describe the possibility of a 2-way television back in 1878 and is stylized to look like an invention by H.G. Wells.

Despite its relative simplicity, the exhibit is drawing considerable attention in both real life and through the blogosphere, indicating that it has struck a chord with the popular imagination.

As LED and OLED interfaces get cheaper and web connections get faster, we can expect such tele-portals to expand in size and resolution and to proliferate. Just imagine how fascinating the next generation of huge interactive windows to different cities, concerts, real-time news events, etc, will turn out to be, and what sorts of new behavior they will make possible. (cont.)

Category: The Web
Year: 2008
Tags: telectroscope, portal, teleportal, telepresence

Rising Oil Prices Fueling Broad Economic Disruption

Alvis — Thu, 29 May 2008 05:03:00 +0000

With crude oil hovering at an all-time high of $130/gallon people all over the globe are feeling the pain and starting to react in different ways.

Some are finally choosing to drive less frequently. CNN reports that “compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less—that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it ‘the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.’”

Others are increasingly making the switch to higher-mileage and hybrid vehicles.

In Europe, where environmental taxes roughly double the cost of gas, groups of French and British workers are demanding public assistance by staging protests .

A few particularly pinched and pro-active folks in rural regions are shifting around their work week and travel schedule. According to the Wall Street Journal “a handful of small towns and community colleges are switching to four-day workweeks in an effort to help employees cope with the rising gasoline prices, and could soon be joined by some larger local governments.”

And of course there are the enterprising individuals who’ve decided that enough is enough and that it’s time to take drilling for oil into their own hands.

This is just the beginning. (cont.)

Category: Energy
Year: General
Tags: oil, crude, crudeoil, 200oil, barrel, obama, hillary, mccain