The Journal for Biological & Health Innovation is accepting papers for peer review now. This journal is specific to Africa and our thoughts, theory, research, practice could have a huge impact on the expeditious development of the rest of the world technologically.
Greetings fellow travelers, please allow me to introduce myself; I’m Mike ‘Cyber Shaman’ Kawitzky, independent film maker and writer from Cape Town, South Africa, one of your media/art contributors/co-conspirators.
It’s a bit daunting posting to such an illustrious board, so let me try to imagine, with you; how to regard the present with nostalgia while looking look forward to the past, knowing that a millisecond away in the future exists thoughts to think; it’s the mode of neural text, reverse causality, non-locality and quantum entanglement, where the traveller is the journey into a world in transition; after 9/11, after the economic meltdown, after the oil spill, after the tsunami, after Fukushima, after 21st Century melancholia upholstered by anti-psychotic drugs help us forget ‘the good old days’; because it’s business as usual for the 1%; the rest continue downhill with no brakes. Can’t wait to see how it all works out.
Please excuse me, my time machine is waiting…
After studying tables of current life expectancy (life expectancy increase per decade, in years, based upon United States National Vital Statistics) I found embedded a virtually perfect Fibonacci sequence. A Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers as follows: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, …etc, where each number is the sum of the previous two. See here for more details on the Fibonacci sequence: http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/fibonac/index.asp
To my knowledge, this has not been described before. This is important because, based on my ideas regarding Global Brain acting as a catalyst for promoting extreme human lifespans (http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/03/04/indefinite-lifespans-a-n…l-brain/), it may help us predict with some accuracy any dramatic increases in life expectancy. For example, the model predicts that the current maximum lifespan of 110–120 years will be increased to 175 in the next 20–30 years.
In simple terms, the fact that life expectancy increases in a certain manner, and this manner obeys deep-routed and universal natural laws, indicates that it may be possible to:
1. Predict life expectancy in the near future. Based on the Fibonacci sequence,
a 90 year old today, can expect to live another 5 years
a 95 year old can expect to live another 8 years
a 103 year old can expect to live another 13 years, then…
a 116 year old can expect to live another 21 years
a 137 year old would expect to live another 34 years
a 171 year old would expect to live another 55 years
a 236 year old would expect to live another 89 years
a 325 year old can expect to live another 144 years,
and so on.
2. Question the presence of ageing and death in an ever-evolving intellectually sophisticated human (who is a valuable component of the Global Brain). Based on current facts, the Fibonacci sequence with regards to life expectancy ends abruptly when lifespan reaches the limit of approximately 120 years. Why is this so? Why should a naturally extending lifespan deviate from universal natural laws? Life expectancy should continue to increase as an individual manages to survive to a certain age. The presence of ageing and death could therefore be considered unnatural.
3. Support the notion that ‘you need to live long enough to live forever’ (see Kurzweil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage:_Live_Long_Enough_to_Live_Forever, and also De Grey’s ‘Longevity Escape Velocity’ suggestions http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html).
Continue reading “Life expectancy and Fibonacci: Nature has designed us to live indefinitely” »
ISDHuB — International Space Development Hub — Hangar One/Nasa Ames Research Park
An aspect of support for the 100 year star ship program
A.H.Sinclair 11/11/11
For the formulation of a 100 year star ship prospectus and for a comprehensive and compatible100 year world view which will advance both the sciences of space exploration and the issues of a planetary sustainability we suggest the following discussion as being alternative to the more isolate modes of inquiry:
Space is a hard sell these days. Aside from the persistent small community of die-hard space advocates and New Space entrepreneurs, the relevance of space to the society at large has generally declined since the grand achievements of the Space Race and even such great feats as the building of the ISS have garnered rather modest public attention. In recent years we have had more active astronauts than ever in history, yet few among the general public can name a single one. An appreciation of space science seems to have improved in recent years by virtue of the impressive visuals offered by orbital telescopes, space probes, and rovers. But the general public commitment to space development still dwindles in the face of mounting domestic issues. Most recently we have seen a drastic contraction of national space agencies in response to the current global economic turmoil. Programs are reduced, cut, or under looming threat. We hear pronouncements of deemphasis of costly manned space activity by the major national players in space development. The world leader in space, NASA, now drifts aimlessly, its premier launch system–controversial from the start, often dismissed as a boondoggle, and dragged along for far too long–finally succumbing to obsolescence without a replacement at-hand, leaving the agency dependent upon foreign nations and struggling for a semblance of direction and purpose. In this past few years, finding itself abandoned on both right and left sides of the political fence, it faced the very real possibility of being shut down altogether and now its partner DARPA talks of century-long space programs with no government involvement at all because the very idea of the US government having the coherence to accomplish anything that takes more than one electoral cycle to do has become implausible.
Overconfident to the extreme after recent very significant, yet still modest in the broad perspective, successes, the newest faction of the commercial space community, the New Space entrepreneurs, boast their readiness to pick up the slack, not quite cluing into the fact that the rope isn’t just dropped, it may be cut! Space industry has never been a very big industry despite the seemingly gigantic sticker prices of its hardware. The global space industry accounts for around 160 billion dollars annually. Soft drinks account for 350 billion. Coca Cola is bigger than NASA. Meanwhile, the lion’s share of commercial space service has always been for governments and the remaining largely telecommunications applications –after 50 years still the only proven way to make money in space- face slow decline as latency becomes increasingly critical to mainstream communications. The ‘grand convergence’ long anticipated in computing has now focused on the Internet which is steadily assimilating all forms of mainstream communication and media distribution. Despite a few service providers of last resort, satellites simply don’t work as a host for conventional Internet and physics precludes any solution to that. We owe recent surges in launch service demand more to war than anything else. Ultimately, we’re not looking at a privatization of national space systems. We’re looking at their outright obsolescence and an overall decline in the relevance of space activity of any sort short of science applications, which have no more need of astronauts than for manned submersibles and for the same reasons. The need for space services will not disappear but, as it stands now, has little likelihood of growth either–except on the back of war. Logically, what commercial space desperately needs is a program for the systematic cultivation of new applications the space agencies have never seriously pursued–new ways to make money there, particularly in an industrial context. And what do the mavericks of New Space have on offer in that context? Space tourism for the rich, during a time of global recession…
There is a great misconception today that the challenges of commercial space are merely technological problems waiting to be solved by that one new breakthrough propulsion technology that never materializes. But commercial air travel did not become ubiquitous by virtue of flight technology becoming miraculously cheap and powerful like microprocessors. It became ubiquitous by realizing markets of scale that supported aircraft of enormous size needing very large minimum operation economies of scale, where populations of millions in communities with well-heeled comfortable middle-classes are necessary to generate sufficient traffic to justify the existence of a single airport. A single A380 airliner costs almost as much as the development of a typical unmanned launch system. Air travel was never particularly successful in an industrial sense. Most stuff still moves around the world at the 20mph speed of ships. The New Deal and the remnant air support infrastructure of WWII were together probably more responsible for the modern airline industry than any engine or aircraft design–because they created the market. If it takes a population of millions to justify the existence of a single conventional airport for conventional airliners, what then a Pan-Am Orion?
For those who look to space as an insurance policy for life and the human civilization, this situation should be of much concern. Whether it be for averting the potential disasters of asteroid strikes or as a redoubt for some fraction of civilization in the event of any terrestrial disaster, a vast space-based infrastructure must be continually at-hand for such capability. Yet these kinds of threats do not themselves seem to have ever inspired sufficient concern in the general public or political leaders to demand such capability be established and maintained for its own sake. You cannot talk in public about such space contingencies and be taken remotely seriously. One could say we have been a bit too lucky as a civilization. There have been no small asteroid impacts in historic memory and few global existentially threatening events beyond those we human beings have created –and we’re very good at systematic denial of those. So this contingency capability relies on being incidental to other space development. That development has been inadequate for that to date, counting on future expansion that has never materialized. What then as we watch that development fizzle-out altogether? The essential cultural relevance of space development can be seen as crucial to the long-term survival of our species, and that’s in marked decline.
Abstract
American history teachers praise the educational value of Billy Joel’s 1980s song ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’. His song is a homage to the 40 years of historical headlines since his birth in 1949.
Which of Joel’s headlines will be considered the most important a millennium from now?
This column discusses five of the most important, and tries to make the case that three of them will become irrelevant, while one will be remembered for as long as the human race exists (one is uncertain). The five contenders are:
It would be helpful to discuss these theoretical concepts because there could be significant practical and existential implications.
The Global Brain (GB) is an emergent world-wide entity of distributed intelligence, facilitated by communication and the meaningful interconnections between millions of humans via technology (such as the internet).
For my purposes I take it to mean the expressive integration of all (or the majority) of human brains through technology and communication, a Metasystem Transition from the human brain to a global (Earth) brain. The GB is truly global not only in geographical terms but also in function.
It has been suggested that the GB has clear analogies with the human brain. For example, the basic unit of the human brain (HB) is the neuron, whereas the basic unit of the GB is the human brain. Whilst the HB is space-restricted within our cranium, the GB is constrained within this planet. The HB contains several regions that have specific functions themselves, but are also connected to the whole (e.g. occipital cortex for vision, temporal cortex for auditory function, thalamus etc.). The GB contains several regions that have specific functions themselves, but are connected to the whole (e.g. search engines, governments, etc.).
Continue reading “The Global Brain and its role in Human Immortality” »
This is an email to the Linux kernel mailing list, but it relates to futurism topics so I post a copy here as well.
———
Science doesn’t always proceed at the speed of thought. It often proceeds at sociological or even demographic speed. — John Tooby
Open Letter to the LKML;
If we were already talking to our computers, etc. as we should be, I wouldn’t feel a need to write this to you. Given current rates of adoption, Linux still seems a generation away from being the priceless piece of free software useful to every child and PhD. This army your kernel enables has millions of people, but they often lose to smaller proprietary armies, because they are working inefficiently. My mail one year ago (http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?p=272) listed the biggest workitems, but I realize now I should have focused on one. In a sentence, I have discovered that we need GC lingua franca(s). (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lingua%20franca)
Every Linux success builds momentum, but the desktop serves as a powerful daily reminder of the scientific tradition. Many software PhDs publish papers but not source, like Microsoft. I attended a human genomics conference and found that the biotech world is filled with proprietary software. IBM’s Jeopardy-playing Watson is proprietary, like Deep Blue was. This topic is not discussed in any of the news articles, as if the license does not matter. I find widespread fear of having ideas stolen in the software industry, and proprietary licenses encourage this. We need to get these paranoid programmers, hunched in the shadows, scribbled secrets clutched in their fists, working together, for any of them to succeed. Desktop world domination is not necessary, but it is sufficient to get robotic chaffeurs and butlers. Windows is not the biggest problem, it is the proprietary licensing model that has infected computing, and science.
I believe that death due to ageing is not an absolute necessity of human nature. From the evolutionary point of view, we age because nature withholds energy for somatic (bodily) repairs and diverts it to the germ-cells (in order to assure the survival and evolution of the DNA). This is necessary so that the DNA is able to develop and achieve higher complexity.
Although this was a valid scenario until recently, we have now evolved to such a degree that we can use our intellect to achieve further cognitive complexity by manipulating our environment. This makes it unnecessary for the DNA to evolve along the path of natural selection (which is a slow and cumbersome, ‘hit-and-miss’ process), and allows us to develop quickly and more efficiently by using our brain as a means for achieving higher complexity. As a consequence, death through ageing becomes an illogical and unnecessary process. Humans must live much longer than the current lifespan of 80–120 years, in order for a more efficient global evolutionary development to take place.
It is possible to estimate how long the above process will take to mature (see figure below). Consider that the creation of the DNA was approximately 2 billion years ago, the formation of a neuron (cell) several million years ago, that of an effective brain (Homo sapiens sapiens) 200 000 years ago, and the establishment of complex societies (Ancient Greece, Rome, China etc.) thousands of years ago. There is a logarithmic reduction of the time necessary to proceed to the next more complex step (a reduction by a factor of 100). This means that global integration (and thus indefinite lifespans) will be achieved in a matter of decades (and certainly less than a century), starting from the 1960s-1970s (when globalisation in communications, travel and science/technology started to became established). This leaves another maximum of 50 years before the full global integration becomes established.
Each step is associated with a higher level of complexity, and takes a fraction of the timein order to mature, compared to the previous one.
Continue reading “Human Biological Immortality in 50 years” »
The UK’s Observer just put out a set of predictions for the next 25 years (20 predictions for the next 25 years). I will react to each of them individually. More generally, however, these are the kinds of ideas that get headlines, but they don’t constitute good journalism. Scenario planning should be used in all predictive coverage. It is, to me, the most honest way to admit not knowing and documenting the uncertainties of the future—the best way to examine big issues through different lenses. Some of these predictions may well come to pass, but many will not. What this article fails to do, is inform the reader about the ways the predictions may vary from the best guess, and what the possible alternatives may be—and where they simply don’t know.
1. Geopolitics: ‘Rivals will take greater risks against the US’
This is a pretty non-predictive prediction. America’s rivals are already challenging its monetary policy, human rights stances, shipping channels and trade policies. The article states that the US will remain the world’s major power. It does not suggest that Globalization could fracture the world so much that regional powers huddle against the US in various places, essentially creating stagnation and a new localism that causes us to reinvent all economies. It also does not foresee anyone acting on the water rights, food, energy or nuclear proliferation. Any of those could set off major conflicts that completely disrupt our economic and political models, leading to major resets in assumptions about the future.
2. The UK economy: ‘The popular revolt against bankers will become impossible to resist’
Continue reading “My Reaction to The Observer's 20 predictions for the next 25 years” »
