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White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

But What Would the End of Humanity Mean for Me? http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/but-what-d…me/361931/

This Is Your Brain on Gluten
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/this-is-yo…en/282550/

This Project Aims To Create Virtual Avatars Of Us All
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/this-project-aims-to-create-vir…-of-us-all

How Do We Build Ethical Robots?
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/how-do-we-build-ethical-robots

Americans Can Now Make Political Donations Using Bitcoin
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/americans-can-now-make-politica…feedburner

In silico: First steps towards a computer simulation of the human body
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/…40781.html

A Potent Source Of Genetic Variation In Cognitive Ability Has Just Been Discovered http://www.businessinsider.com/a-potent-source-of-genetic-va…2014-5

Nokia investing $100M in smart-car technology
http://www.cnet.com/news/nokia-investing-100m-in-smart-car-technology/

Ten things you need to know about the Internet of Things http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/09/the-intern…ed-to-know

Patented Hydrogen Engine Ready to Power the Future http://www.21stcentech.com/patented-hydrogen-engine-ready-power-future/

Money laundering, counterfeit money: possible solution http://www.datasciencecentral.com/forum/topics/money-launder…e-solution
5 Big Data Use Cases To Watch
http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/big-data-analytics/5…id/1251031

The White Swan Treatise at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

What to make of the film ‘Transcendence’? Show it in classrooms.


I recently saw the film Transcendence with a close friend. If you can get beyond Johnny Depp’s siliconised mugging of Marlon Brando and Rebecca Hall’s waddling through corridors of quantum computers, Transcendence provides much to think about. Even though Christopher Nolan of Inception fame was involved in the film’s production, the pyrotechnics are relatively subdued – at least by today’s standards. While this fact alone seems to have disappointed some viewers, it nevertheless enables you to focus on the dialogue and plot. The film is never boring, even though nothing about it is particularly brilliant. However, the film stays with you, and that’s a good sign. Mark Kermode at the Guardian was one of the few reviewers who did the film justice.

The main character, played by Depp, is ‘Will Caster’ (aka Ray Kurzweil, but perhaps also an allusion to Hans Castorp in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain). Caster is an artificial intelligence researcher based at Berkeley who, with his wife Evelyn Caster (played by Hall), are trying to devise an algorithm capable of integrating all of earth’s knowledge to solve all of its its problems. (Caster calls this ‘transcendence’ but admits in the film that he means ‘singularity’.) They are part of a network of researchers doing similar things. Although British actors like Hall and the key colleague Paul Bettany (sporting a strange Euro-English accent) are main players in this film, the film itself appears to transpire entirely within the borders of the United States. This is a bit curious, since a running assumption of the film is that if you suspect a malevolent consciousness uploaded to the internet, then you should shut the whole thing down. But in this film at least, ‘the whole thing’ is limited to American cyberspace.

Before turning to two more general issues concerning the film, which I believe may have led both critics and viewers to leave unsatisfied, let me draw attention to a couple of nice touches. First, the leader of the ‘Revolutionary Independence from Technology’ (RIFT), whose actions propel the film’s plot, explains that she used to be an advanced AI researcher who defected upon witnessing the endless screams of a Rhesus monkey while its entire brain was being digitally uploaded. Once I suspended my disbelief in the occurrence of such an event, I appreciate it as a clever plot device for showing how one might quickly convert from being radically pro- to anti-AI, perhaps presaging future real-world targets for animal rights activists. Second, I liked the way in which quantum computing was highlighted and represented in the film. Again, what we see is entirely speculative, yet it highlights the promise that one day it may be possible to read nature as pure information that can be assembled according to need to produce what one wants, thereby rendering our nanotechnology capacities virtually limitless. 3D printing may be seen as a toy version of this dream.

Now on to the two more general issues, which viewers might find as faults, but I think are better treated as what the Greeks called aporias (i.e. open questions):

(1) I think this film is best understood as taking place in an alternative future projected from when, say, Ray Kurzweil first proposed ‘the age of spiritual machines’ (i.e. 1999). This is not the future as projected in, say, Spielberg’s Minority Report, in which the world has become so ‘Jobs-ified’, that everything is touch screen-based. In fact, the one moment where a screen is very openly touched proves inconclusive (i.e. when, just after the upload, Evelyn impulsively responds to Will being on the other side of the interface). This is still a world very much governed by keyboards (hence the symbolic opening shot where a keyboard is used as a doorstop in the cyber-meltdown world). Even the World Wide Web doesn’t seem to have the prominence one might expect in a film where computer screens are featured so heavily. Why is this the case? Perhaps because the script had been kicking around for a while (which is true). This may also explain why in Evelyn’s pep talk to funders includes a line about Einstein saying something ‘nearly fifty years ago’. (Einstein died in 1955.) Or, for that matter, why the FBI agent (played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy) looks like something out of a 1970s TV detective series, the on-site military commander looks like George C. Scott and the great quantum computing mecca is located in a town that looks frozen in the 1950s. Perhaps we are seeing here the dawn of ‘steampunk’ for the late 20th century.

(2) The film contains heavy Christian motifs, mainly surrounding Paul Bettany’s character, Max Waters, who turns out to be the only survivor of the core research team involved in uploading consciousness. He wears a cross around his neck, which pops up at several points in the film. Moreover, once Max is abducted by RIFT, he learns that his writings querying whether digital uploading enhances or obliterates humanity have been unwittingly inspirational. Max and Will can be contrasted in terms of where they stand in relation to the classic Faustian bargain: Max refuses what Will accepts (quite explicitly, in response to the person who turns out to be his assassin). At stake is whether our biblically privileged status as creatures entitles us to take the next step to outright deification, which in this case means merging with the source of all knowledge on the internet. To underscore the biblical dimension of dilemma, toward the end of the film, Max confronts Evelyn (Eve?) with the realization that she was the one who nudged Will toward this crisis. Yet, the film’s overall verdict on his Faustian fall is decidedly mixed. Once uploaded, Will does no permanent damage, despite the viewer’s expectations. On the contrary, like Jesus, he manages to cure the ill, and even when battling with the amassed powers of the US government and RIFT, he ends up not killing anyone. However, the viewer is led to think that Will 2.0 may have overstepped the line when he revealed his ability to monitor Evelyn’s thoughts. So the real transgression appears to lie in the violation of privacy. (The Snowdenistas would be pleased!) But the film leaves the future quite open, as what the viewer sees in the opening and final scenes looks more like the result of an extended blackout (and hints are given that some places have already begun the restore their ICT infrastructure) than anything resembling irreversible damage to life as we know it. One can read this as either a warning shot to greater damage ahead if we go down the ‘transcendence’ route, or that such a route might be worth pursuing if we get manage to sort out the ‘people issues’. Given that Max ends the film by eulogising Will and Evelyn’s attempts to benefit humanity, I read the film as cautiously optimistic about the prospects for ‘transcendence’, where the film’s plot is taken as offering a simulated trial run.

My own final judgement is that this film would be very good for classroom use to raise the entire range of issues surrounding what I have called ‘Humanity 2.0’.

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

This House’s “Bioconcrete” Turns Every Drop Of Rain Into Drinking Water http://www.fastcoexist.com/3030070/this-house-uses-bioconcre…king-water

Google Skunk Works May Tackle Energy and Agriculture http://www.21stcentech.com/google-skunk-works-tackle-agriculture/

Semi-synthetic bug extends ‘life’s alphabet’ http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27329583

But What Would the End of Humanity Mean for Me? http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/but-what-d…me/361931/

Molecular high-speed origami: Researchers elucidate important mechanism of protein folding http://phys.org/news/2014-05-molecular-high-speed-origam…rtant.html

Only 2% Of People Can Actually Multitask — This Test Will Tell You If You Are One Of Them http://www.businessinsider.com/multitasker-test-tells-you-if…z31I9DitM6

As AI Advances into ‘Deep Learning,’ are Robot Butlers on the Horizon? http://www.livescience.com/45482-robot-butlers-deep-learning.html

Scientists create new lifeform with added DNA base pair http://www.kurzweilai.net/scientists-create-new-lifeform-wit…-base-pair

GaitTrack app makes cellphone a medical monitor for heart and lung patients http://www.kurzweilai.net/gaittrack-app-makes-cellphone-a-me…g-patients

The White Swan Treatise at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

White Swan Graphics, Countermeassuring Every Unthinkable Black Swan, By Mr. Andres Agostini — Question: In Corporate Settings, Is There An Outright Countermeassuring White Swan To The Black Swan? Read at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/White-Swan

WHITE SWAN GRAPHICS BY MR. ANDRES AGOSTINI. — QUESTION: IN CORPORATE SETTINGS, IS THERE AN OUTRIGHT COUNTERMEASSURING WHITE SWAN TO THE BLACK SWAN? READ at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/White-Swan

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WHITE SWAN GRAPHICS BY MR. ANDRES AGOSTINI. — QUESTION: IN CORPORATE SETTINGS, IS THERE AN OUTRIGHT COUNTERMEASSURING WHITE SWAN TO THE BLACK SWAN? READ at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/White-Swan

Mr. Andres Agostini

Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador: https://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.andres.agostini

The White Swan Treatise at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

The « … The Human Race to the Future … » Worldwide Ambassador at http://amzn.to/19H3qf0 POINT OF CONTACT AND QUERY: www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini PROFESSIONAL SERVICE: http://ThisSuccess.wordpress.com

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

White Swan Graphic 1

Divestment in Unburnable Assets Begins at Stanford University http://www.21stcentech.com/divestment-unburnable-assets-begi…niversity/

Will Artificial Intelligence Destroy Us? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud8-sUovZMI&feature=youtu.be

First living thing with ‘alien’ DNA created in the lab: We are now officially playing God http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182119-first-living-thing…laying-god

Cyborg Beetles Detect Nerve Gas http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/at-work/test-and-measurem…-nerve-gas

Carbon nanotube clothing could protect against chemical weapons of mass destruction
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182065-carbon-nanotube-cl…poison-gas

Astronomers create first realistic virtual universe http://www.kurzweilai.net/astronomers-create-first-realistic-virtual-universe

Brain ‘noise’ found to nurture synapses http://www.kurzweilai.net/brain-noise-found-to-nurture-synapses

Imaging the crystal edges of 2D molybdenum disulfide http://www.kurzweilai.net/edgy-look-at-2d-molybdenum-disulfide

The White Swan Treatise at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Lifeboat Foundation essays

An interesting activity that is relevant to Lifeboat concerns has been provided for us by the Foundational Questions Institute, styled FQXi. They recently ran an essay contest on the topic, “How should humanity steer the future?” This contest was announced to Lifeboat members. Fourteen of the 155 posted essays are written by Lifeboat members, and some are written by top scientists. The contest is closed to submissions, but we can still participate.

Members of the public are invited to read and rate essays on the FQXi website. Public ratings will not decide the winners, but they may guide official judges. Essay quality varies, and the best might make a real contribution, so FQXi could use help in finding which are best. Their diversity is also interesting, and might show us paths we could take, and perhaps paths to avoid.

Lifeboat members who submitted essays include James Blodgett, Frank Boehm, Angelika Domschke, James Dunn, Preston Estep, Bob Freeman, Giorgio Gaviraghi, Jacob Haqq-Misra, Orenda Urbano Hernández, Alexander Hoekstra, Ted Howard, Randal A. Koene, Alexander MacRae, Federico Pistono, Walter Putnam, and Tihamer Toth-Fejel.

The essays are posted at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/31422

Vote today!

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Extreme Swan and Ball

All The Wearables You Could Be Wearing Right Now http://www.fastcocreate.com/3030158/infographic-all-the-wear…-right-now

Why Algorithms Are The Next Star Designers http://www.fastcodesign.com/3029756/why-algorithms-are-the-next-star-designers

Scientists identify antibodies against deadly emerging respiratory disease http://www.dana-farber.org/Newsroom/News-Releases/Scientists…sease.aspx

Synthetic Genomics Turning Donor Pig Organs into Suitable Transplants http://www.21stcentech.com/synthetic-genomics-turning-donor-…ansplants/

For the Anti-Genetically Modified Movement This is Not Your Report http://www.21stcentech.com/anti-genetically-modified-movement-report/

“Evolving Notions of Personhood” http://biotroveinvestments.com/biotrove-podcasts/2014/5/4/ev…nald-glenn

Disease Outbreak Warnings Via Social Media Sought by U.S http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-11/disease-out…-u-s-.html

FirstNet CIO builds up his shop http://fcw.com/articles/2014/05/06/gwinn-firstnet-cio.aspx?s=fcwdaily_070514

Please read the entire piece at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Mr. Andres Agostini
The Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador at https://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.andres.agostini
The «… The Human Race to the Future …» Worldwide Ambassador at http://amzn.to/19H3qf0 AND at http://amzn.to/1cujxeG
POINT OF CONTACT AND QUERY: www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE: http://ThisSuccess.wordpress.com

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Extreme Swan and Ball

«… Quants …» AND «… Qualts …» at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/05/white-swan-qualts

Alibaba files $1-billion IPO in US at http://businesstech.co.za/news/internet/57025/alibaba-files-1-billion-ipo-in-us/

Three Strategies For Managing The Economy Of Access http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/05/02/economic…to-access/

‘Electronic blood’ could power computers http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/06/technology/enterprise/ibm-el…index.html

Facial recognition: is the technology taking away your identity? http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/04/facial-rec…CMP=twt_gu

Facebook Really Is Building The Metaverse http://www.fastcodesign.com/3030126/facebook-really-is-building-the-metaverse

Forget flexible: stretchy electronics will make devices truly wearable http://gigaom.com/2014/05/05/forget-flexible-stretchy-electr…=pulsenews

Magnetic Brain Stimulation May Trump Drugs For Severe Depression http://www.popsci.com/article/science/magnetic-brain-stimula…depression

Patent reform legislation will hurt the American inventor
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/204995-pat…z310HZaBUg

Three Strategies For Managing The Economy Of Access http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/05/02/economic…to-access/

Flexible Battery Could Unlock Wearable Electronics http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles…onics.aspx

Lockheed Martin and RedEye Team Up to Validate Satellite Design http://www.engineering.com/3DPrinting/3DPrintingArticles/Art…esign.aspx
Read the entire piece at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Mr. Andres Agostini
The Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador at https://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.andres.agostini
The «… The Human Race to the Future …» Worldwide Ambassador at http://amzn.to/19H3qf0 AND at http://amzn.to/1cujxeG
POINT OF CONTACT AND QUERY: www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE: http://ThisSuccess.wordpress.com