By Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist
If scientists do find life on Mars, it may be possible to beam Martian DNA back to Earth, according to a new idea growing in popularity. If Martian bugs are found, the idea of “faxing” life from Mars is an enticing prospect, spurred on by scientist, Craig Venter, famous for his early sequencing of the human genome.
Venter proposes that researchers analyze Martian DNA on the Red Planet and then radio back that sequence to synthesize the DNA on Earth. He put forth the notion in a book published last year called “Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of the Digital Age.” [The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)]
QUOTATION(S): “…The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable…”
CITATION(S): “…If you plot the basic measures of the price to performance and capacity of information technologies (for example, computer instructions per second per constant dollar, bits of memory per dollar, or the total number of bits being moved around over the Internet), they follow remarkably smooth — and foreseeable — trajectories. This observation goes well beyond Moore’s Law (which says you can place twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit every two years); in the case of computation, it goes back to the 1890 American census, long before Gordon Moore was even born .… What’s predictable is that these measures grow exponentially, not linearly, though our intuition about the future is linear, which is hard-wired in our brains. This makes a remarkable difference. Thirty steps linearly gets you to 30, whereas 30 steps exponentially (2, 4, 8, 16…) gets you to a billion .… And it’s not just electronics and communications that follow this exponential course. It applies as well to health, medicine and its related field of biology. The Human Genome Project, for instance, saw the amount of genetic sequencing double and the cost of sequencing per base pair come down by half each year .… A computer that fit inside a building when I was a student now fits in my pocket, and is a thousand times more powerful despite being a million times less expensive .… In another quarter century, that capability will fit inside a red blood cell and will again be a billion times more powerful per dollar…”
NEWEST, PRACTICAL PRINCIPALS (TENETS) TO SEIZE SUSTAINABLE PROFESSIONAL, MANAGERIAL AND BUSINESS SUCCESS TENTES: (25) Correlate everything else with the ignored and unthinkable ‘else’ of everything else forever.
BOOK(S): The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. ISBN-13: 978–0316346627.
N.B.: Quotations, Citations and Success Tenets are by the Futuretronium Book.
Regards,
Mr. Andres Agostini Risk-Management Futurist and Success Consultant http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC
The complexity in biology is astounding. That is why biologists are thankful that model organisms, like the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, can be used to breakdown biological processes into simpler units.
C. elegans is a particular favourite. It grows in the exact same way from a single fertilised egg cell to 959 cells as an adult. Its body is transparent which has allowed scientists to map its growth and study internal changes to great detail.
In a paper published in Nature recently, En-Zhi Shen at the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing and colleagues have used C. elegans to make an intriguing discovery. Based on a process that occurs in each cell’s power house, mitochondria, they claim to be able to predict the lifespan of that organism.
In nature, electrons are found in pairs in orbit around the atom’s nucleus. A free radical is created when an atom has an unpaired electron whizzing around the nucleus. Inside mitochondria, there is formation of such free radicals called reactive oxygen species.
The mitochondria produces many types of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as by-products of the normal metabolic process, including superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and nitric oxide. These free radicals propelled by their unpaired electrons seek to find other molecules in the cells from whom they can steal an electron and thereby damage them. Thus, free radicals can damage DNA and stop proteins and lipids from performing their functions in the cell. This process of stealing electrons from functional molecules by reactive oxygen species and its resulting damage is known as oxidative stress.
Shen thought that if they were able to measure the amount of oxidative stress in the worms they may be able to predict how long they would live. Shen had previously discovered that the mitochondria in cells produce sudden short bursts of free radicals which could be counted.
When Shen studied C. elegans with added proteins that glow in the dark because of oxidative stress, she could detect levels of oxidative stress by measuring the flashes of light, termed mitoflash, emitted by proteins which detect free-radicals produced by the mitochondria. The more mitoflashes that happen within a certain window of time, the higher the amount of free radicals produced by the mitochondria.
Using the mitoflash method, an individual worm can be observed during the entirety of its 21-day lifespan. These worms are at the peak of their reproductive ability during the second and third day of their lives. Soon after this, the worms start their steady decline towards old age and by about the fifteenth day most of them are considered old.
Shen discovered that there were two periods in the lifespan of the worm when oxidative stress increased. The first was around the third day, when the worms are laying their eggs and the other was around the fifteenth day when the worms were old.
They then compared these finding using other worms who were engineered to have longer or shorter lifespans. Consistently, they found that worms with low amounts of mitoflashes during the third day of their lives lived longer compared to worms with higher mitoflashes. Interestingly, the number of mitoflashes on ninth day was not predictive of lifespan. Shen, therefore, thinks that oxidative stress levels of a worm during early life can determine how long they can live.
Telling age in a flash
Shen’s work improves on previous worm studies by hinting that free radicals produced by mitochondria especially in early life may be a central mechanism driving the decline during ageing.
Also, the results of this study agree with the free radical theory of ageing, which assumes that the diseases of ageing result due to the increasing inability of cells to repair damage caused by oxidative stress. This theory predicts that organisms that have long lives must lower their oxidative stress by producing more antioxidants.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in real life. Human beings live much longer lives in spite of producing much fewer antioxidants compared to rats, hamsters, mice and rabbits. And studies involving dietary supplementation of antioxidants show an inverse relationship between antioxidant levels and life span. The claim that oxidative stress in early life may be a predictor of lifespan may work in some worms but it will certainly be of no use in humans.
The authors do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations.
QUOTATION(S): “…Now, for the first time, we are observing the brain at work in a global manner with such clarity that we should be able to discover the overall programs behind its magnificent powers…”
AND
“…When Queen Victoria was in her prime, an Englishman, Charles Darwin, discovered a fundamental truth that shook mankind so severely that it remains today a matter of extreme distress and massive denial. Darwin realized that life on our planet is not the recent and fixed product of deity-mediated special creation, but has been constantly changing over a long span of time … The paleontologist who followed Darwin have taught us that time has no respect for species. Whole dynasties of life have been swept away and replaced with new ones. More than 65 million years ago, the world was filled with swift, deadly meat-eaters, including huge tyrannosaurs stalking elephant-sized horned dinosaurs and duck-billed herbivores. Flying pterosaurs were as big and heavy as sailplanes. Small, graceful, predaceous dinosaurs had binocular vision, big brains, and grasping hands. After 170 million years of successful evolution, they achieved the height of variation and power. Resplendent and numerous on the fertile Cretaceous plains, how could it be that within a few years they all would be gone forever? This chilling story suggests a ticking clock for humanity, as well; dare we think of our own extinction? There is ticking clock for humanity, and it may be mere seconds before midnight. TOMORROW IS UPON US, AND WHAT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN IN THE NEW DAY IS FAR, FAR STRANGER THAN MOST PEOPLE DARE TO THINK … Even Darwin did not realize how right he was, or how far evolution will take us. We should not fault Darwin for his lack of vision. Darwin lived in a time when the modern scientific revolution was just beginning. It was also a time of steam engines, gas lamps, and phrenology. Science, in our late 20th century sense, was still a few years away. Yet even today, few nonscientists have more than an inkling of how life evolved or how technologies such as the automobile, the light switch, or the airplane actually work … WE LIVE IN A HIGH-TECHNOLOGY WORLD, WITH LITTLE APPRECIATION FOR HOW THINGS GOT THE WAY THEY ARE…”
AND
“…Man, incurable futurist, is the only traditionalist animal…”
AND
“…A person’s world equates to the size his (her) own vocabulary…”
CITATION(S): “…Wealth is concentrated and portable. MIT faculty and alumni produce as much wealth as all but Twenty-Two Countries In The World…”
AND
“… [The human being] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty…”
AND
“…Yet the opportunities and challenges do not pause. The forces of change are in fact accelerating as technology, communications, and mobility link us in a blurring and buzzing globalizing world.… The image of this future became clearer when we and 40 executives and thought leaders closely examined five specific technology areas and explored their implications for society, business, and government. We examined biotechnology, cyber-technology, nanotechnology, ubiquitous sensing, and wild cards from science and technology. We asked the thought leaders to apply their projections in five crosscutting areas to identify the key technology convergences that would most affect or disrupt society in 2025: economy and wealth, energy and the environment, health and demographics, infrastructure, and governance .… We learned that the technologies were changing in ways that made traditional distinctions between disciplines and areas of science decreasingly relevant. Biotechnologists regularly describe nano-scale developments. Nanotechnologists apply insights from genome sequencing. Research is spread, enhanced, and stolen with cyber tools. Research will lead to carbon-free or carbon-neutral technologies that disrupt industries and policies. The blurring of boundaries between sciences are creating convergences. Breakthroughs across disciplines are stimulating accelerating insights and applications…”
AND
“…Knowledge is being created at such a rate that much of what we know will soon be obsolete .… The technological developments maturing between now and 2025 and the innovative ways they may be applied reflect an acceleration and shift that can seem both promising and challenging to decision makers. In the Industrial Age, developments in steam power, combustion engines, automobiles, aerospace, and telephony seemed slow to mature – their development and spread required large industrial infrastructures. In the Information Age, developments in bio, nano, cyber, and sensors are possible with a smaller and more differentiated infrastructure, and they are occurring simultaneously around the globe. Global information networks are increasing the pace of this technological innovation. This deeper, more widely spread development of knowledge is different from our recent past and portends further changes .… The convergences of bio, nano, cyber, sensors and wild card technologies are causing even greater acceleration of change. But at the same time, knowledge is being created at such a rate that much of what we know about these technologies and their application rapidly becomes obsolete as it is overtaken by newer discoveries. Our institutions will be challenged to respond to the combination of these technological changes and the many other drivers of change simultaneously. We expect many systems and institutions to be desynchronized by these changes and efforts to resynchronize them will add to the sense of disruption that many people feel .… Many thought leaders we worked with in this effort are highly optimistic. Nearly all who contributed to these findings see technological developments as promising, and as stimuli for new opportunities. At the same time, some cautioned about vulnerabilities and called for leadership and action to address these vulnerabilities before we feel their impact. This report serves as one input to decision makers who can aid us in adapting with the changes and creating our future…”
AND
“… In the mid-1980s a study by Shell suggested that the average corporate survival rate for large company was about half as long as that of a human being. Since then the pressures on firms have increased enormously from all directions ─ with the inevitable result that business life expectancy is reduced still further. Many studies look at the changing composition of key indices and draw attention to the demise of what were often major firms and in their time key innovators. For example, Foster and Kaplan point out that of the 500 companies originally making up the Standard & Poor 500 list in 1957, only 74 remained on the list through to 1977. Of the top 12 companies which make up the Dow Jones Index in 1900 only one ─ General Electric ─ survives today. Even apparently robust giants like IBM, GM or Kodak can suddenly display worrying sings of mortality, whilst for small firms the picture is often considerably worse since they lack the protection of a large resource base … Some firms have had to change dramatically to stay in business. For example, a company founded in the early nineteenth century, which had Wellington boots and toilet paper amongst its product range, is now one of the largest and most successful in the world of telecommunications business. Nokia began life as a lumber company, making the equipment and supplies needed to cut down forests in Finland. It moved through into paper and from there into the ‘paperless office’ world of IT ─ and from there into mobile telephones … Another mobile phone player ─ Vodafone Airtouch ─ grew to its huge size by merging with a firm called Mannesmann which, since its birth in 1870s, has been more commonly associated with the invention and production of steel tubes! TUI owns Thomsom (the travel group) in the UK, and is the largest European travel and tourism services company. Its origins, however, lie in the mines of old Prussia where it was established as a public sector state lead mining and smelting company!…”
NEWEST, PRACTICAL PRINCIPALS (TENETS) TO SEIZE SUSTAINABLE PROFESSIONAL, MANAGERIAL AND BUSINESS SUCCESS TENTES: (21) Step outside the boundaries of the framework’s system when seeking a problem’s solution. (22) Within zillion tiny bets, raise the ante and capture the documented learning through frenzy execution. (23) “…Moonshine…” and “…Skunks-work…” and “…Re-Imagineer…” it all, holding in your mind the motion-picture image that, regardless of the relevance of “…inputs…” and “…outputs,…”, entails that the highest relevance is within the sophistication within the THROUGHPUT.
BOOK(S): What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation… by Gary Hamel. ISBN-13: 978–1118120828.
N.B.: Quotations, Citations and Success Tenets are by the Futuretronium Book.
Regards,
Mr. Andres Agostini Risk-Management Futurist and Success Consultant http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC
QUOTATION(S): “…The forces shaping your future are digital [and mathematical], and you need to understand them…” AND “…You can’t understand the knot without understanding the strands, but in the future, the strands need not remain tied up in the same way as they are today…” AND “…ALL CHILDREN ARE BORN GENIUSES; 9,999 OUT OF EVERY 10,000 ARE SWIFTLY, INADVERTENTLY DEGENIUNIZED BY GROWNUPS…” AND “…Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020 .… We appear to be programmed with the idea that there are ‘things’ outside of our self, and some are conscious, and some are not .… We are beginning to see intimations of this in the implantation of computer devices into the human body…” AND “…People are always [and wrongfully] assuming that everything that is going to be invented must have been invented already. But it hasn’t…”
CITATION(S): “…We have the Internet that we have today because the Internet of yesterday did not focus on the today of yesterday…” AND “…Legal scholars can debate whether copyright law mandates a future of ‘authorized use only’ for digital information. The answer may not matter much, because that future is coming to pass through the technologies of digital rights management and trusted systems…” AND “…Can we envision the future transcontinental flights, where books, music, images, and videos are automatically extracted, sampled, mixed, and remixed; fed into massive automated reasoning engines; assimilated into the core software of every personal computer and every cell phone ─ and thousands of other things for which the words don’t even exist yet?…” AND “…Governments of the Industrial World, your weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You have no so sovereignty where we gather .… We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity … In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits .… [Y]ou are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace…”
NEWEST, PRACTICAL PRINCIPALS (TENETS) TO SEIZE SUSTAINABLE PROFESSIONAL, MANAGERIAL AND BUSINESS SUCCESS TENTES: (18) Foster momentum by creating virtuous cycles that build credibility and by avoiding getting caught in vicious cycles that harm credibility. (19) Institute coalitions that translate into swifter organizational adjustments to the inevitable streams of change in personnel and environment. BOOK(S): A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink (ISBN-13: 978–1594481710).
N.B.: Quotations, Citations and Success Tenets are by the Futuretronium Book.
THE OMNISCIENT TRUTH ABOUT OUTER-SPACE INTELLIGENCE AND WHAT THE OFFICIAL ESTABLISHMENT HAS TO DECLARE ABOUT IT! BY MR. ANDRES AGOSTINI.
I have the glory to have read every book by Dr. Raymond Kurzweil with the sole exception of “Transcend.”
Dr. Kurzweil is an engineer graduate from grandiose M.I.T. (the technological avant-garde within the Ivy League universities).
Beyond his many inventions, patents, and scientific breakthroughs and discoveries, please remember that Ray holds 19 doctoral degrees among many other amenities.
I exactly relish the way he exercises his mind. And instead of fighting sourly against his contrarians, he kindly and respectfully invites them to lavishly publish the opposing views on books and blogs.
Ray is a pervasive sage by any known or unknown measure. He is now the Chief Engineer Officer at Google and the Chairman of the Singularity University (founded by him with the institutional backing of NASA and Google).
We all like the Founding Fathers, especially Jefferson and Franklin. But tons of Americans and others seem to frequently and prevalently ignore this Hi-Tech Founding Father.
Within his duties at Google, he is embarked into the greatest scientific advancement in order to transform any illness or biological cause of death (natural death) into a superseded cure (outright state of well-being), radically.
HE IS INTO STRINGENT R&D&I TO MAKE HUMAN DEATH A THING OF THE PAST.
I also argue that he will be auspiciously fighting against challenges and problems in order to systemically and systematically reverse-engineer biology and the human brain with the utter purpose of seizing the correct software templates for Strongest Quantum Supercomputing.
In “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” (ISBN-13: 978–0143037880) book, Ray argues that most extraterrestrial beings might, just might, exhibit a grayish look because they are the trans-exobiologicals stemming from [outer-space and infinitely beyond] advanced exobiological civilizations.
Trans-exobiologicals are exobiologicals who have transcended their own exobiology.
Having said that and since the advent of his landmark book (I wish all fact-driven books were written like this canonical marvel), he has given many interviews and speeches about The Technological Singularity.
As a process of that, one day Ray ended up giving a seminal keynote to the upper management and scientists at SETI Institute. SETI, an American Organization, stands for Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Conversely, the about one-hour talk was about the Technological Singularity and the Law of Accelerating Returns as it posited by Ray himself.
Towards the end of the keynote, one or two SETI scientists told Ray that, as per their own research, they were considering as a probable and plausible scenario to be that extraterrestrials’ domicile was within the immeasurable limits of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
AS A CONSULTANT, MANAGER, STRATEGIST AND RESEARCHER, ANDRES WORKS AND HAS WORKED WITH INSTITUTIONS ─ AND THE RESPECTIVE EXECUTIVES OF SAID ORGANIZATIONS ─ SUCH AS:
► Toyota,
► Mitsubishi,
► World Bank,
► Shell,
► Statoil,
► Total,
► Exxon,
► Mobil,
► PDVSA, Citgo,
► GE,
► GMAC,
► TNT Express,
► AT&T
► GTE,
► Amoco,
► BP,
► Abbot Laboratories,
► World Health Organization,
► Ernst Young Consulting,
► SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation),
QUOTATION(S): “…All the notions we thought solid, all the values of civilized life, all that made for stability in international relations, all that made for regularity in the economy … in a word, all that tended happily to limit the uncertainty of the morrow, all that gave nations and individuals some confidence in the morrow … all this seems badly compromised. I have consulted all augurs I could find, of every species, and I have heard only vague words, contradictory prophecies, curiously feeble assurances. Never has humanity combined so much power with so much disorder, so much anxiety with so many playthings, so much knowledge with so much uncertainty…”
CITATION(S): “…There is nothing so big nor so crazy that one out of a million technological societies may not feel itself driven to do, provided it is physically possible…” AND “…That instability [between stasis and dynamism], or our awareness of it, heightened by the fluidity of contemporary life: by the ease with which ideas and messages, goods and people, cross borders; by technologies that seek to surpass the quickness of the human mind and overcome the constraints of the human body; by the ‘universal solvents’ of commerce and popular culture; by the dissolution or reformation of established institutions, particularly large corporations, and the rise of new ones; by the synthesis of East and West, of ancient and modern ─ by the combination and recombination of seemingly every artifact of human culture. Ours is a magnificently creative era. But the creativity produces change, and that change attracts enemies, philosophical as well as self-interested… With some exceptions, the enemies of the future aim their attacks not at creativity itself but at the dynamical processes through which it is carried. In our post ─ Cold War era, for instance, free markets are recognized as powerful forces for social cultural, and technological change ─ liberating in the eyes of some, threatening to others. The same is true for markets in ideas: for free speech and worldwide communication; for what John Stuart Mill called ‘experiments in living’; for scientific research, artistic expression, and technological innovation. All of these processes are shaping an unknown, and unknowable, future. Some people look at such diverse, decentralized, choice-driven systems and rejoice, even when they don’t like particular choices. Other recoil. In pursuit of stability and control, they seek to eliminate or curb these unruly, too-creative forces … Stasists and dynamists are thus divided not just by simple, short-term policy issues but by fundamental disagreements about the way the world works. They clash over the nature of progress and over its desirability: Does it require a plan to reach a specified goal? Or is it an unbounded process of exploration and discovery? Does the quest for improvement express destructive, nihilistic discontent, or the highest human qualities? Does progress depend on puritanical repression or a playful spirit? … Stasists and dynamists disagree about the limits and use of knowledge. Stasists demand that knowledge be articulated and easily shared. Dynamists, by contrast, appreciate dispersed, often tacit knowledge. They recognize the limits of human minds even as they celebrate learning … Those conflicts lead to very different beliefs about good institutions and rules: Stasists seek specifics to govern each new situation and keep things under control. Dynamicists want to limit universal rulemaking to broadly applicable and rarely changed principles, within which people can create and test countless combinations. Stasists want their detailed ruled to apply to everyone; dynamists prefer competing, nested rule sets … Such disagreements have political ramifications that go much deeper than the short-term business of campaigns and legislation. They affect our governing assumptions about how political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural systems work; what those systems should value; and what they mean .… These are not the comfortable old Cold War divisions of hawks and doves, egalitarians and individualists, left and right. Nor are they the one-dimensional labels of technophile and technophobe, optimist and pessimist, or libertarian and stasist that pundits sometimes grab to replace the old categories. They contain elements of those simpler classifications, but they are much richer, encompassing more aspects of life ─ more aspects of the emergent, complex future…”
NEWEST, PRACTICAL PRINCIPAL (TENETS) TO SEIZE PROFESSIONAL AND BUSINESS SUCCESS: (7) Reverse-engineering a gene and a bacterium or, better yet, the lucrative genome. (8) Guillotine the over-weighted status quo. (9) Learn how to add up ─ in your own brainy mind ─ colors, dimensions, aromas, encryptions, enigmas, phenomena, geometrical and amorphous in-motion shapes, methods, techniques, codes, written lines, symbols, contexts, locus, venues, semantic terms, magnitudes, longitudes, processes, tweets, “…knowledge-laden…” hunches and omniscient bliss, so forth. (10) Project your wisdom’s wealth onto communities of timeless-connected wikis.
BOOK(S): The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita. ISBN-13: 978–0812979770
Regards,
Mr. Andres Agostini Risk-Management Futurist and Success Consultant http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC
QUOTATION(S): “…The FUTURE is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed…” AND “…The future is called ‘perhaps,’ which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you…” AND “…I’m deglitched that the future is unsure. That’s the way it should be…”
CITATION(S): “…From Conventional Wisdom to Shocking Probability. Maybe someday, sooner or later, truly intelligent machines will be built. Until that time, speculation will abound. Much of that speculation is based on what might be called ‘Conventional Wisdom,’ the underlying assumptions and conventions we collectively share. We can list some of these assumptions as follows: The next century will be an extension of this one, with increasingly smarter machines being run by people and for people … Because the human mind is linked to a soul, cybernetic machines will never be fully self-aware like we are … If intelligent robots can be built, it will be a long time before they can be made to do what humans do, as well as humans do it. Perhaps centuries will be required … Even after intelligent robots are made, multitudes of humans will continue to exist on earth, and maybe even in space … Human minds and personal identities will never be able to merge with an electromechanical system … Even if it were possible, we humans would refuse to download our minds onto hardware, no matter how tempting and intelligent the new surroundings might be. We believe that cyberbeings will be emotionless, soulless, and humorless mechanical zombies ─ rather like ‘Star Trek’s’ Lt. Commander Data, a somewhat sad android pining for a humanity he will never achieve … No matter how smart they are, digital minds will never have the insight, intuition, and smooth savvy of the human mind. They will forever remain mentally inferior, and our faithful, self- maintaining servants … The robots will soon prove our mental and physical superiors. Self-generated enhancements will refine them beyond our control. They will enslave us all except, of course, for a renegade band of rebellious, young, good-looking, daring humans armed with battered, recycled surplus weapons, fearlessly following their craggy but wise leader into a fight for truth, justice, and the hominid way … THIS BOOK ARGUES THAT THE NEXT CENTURY WILL PROVE TO BE NOTHING LIKE THIS ONE, NOR ANY FORECAST SO FAR. COMPUTING POWER, NEUROSCIENCE, AND NANOTECHNOLOGIES ARE ADVANCING SO RAPIDLY THAT THEY WILL COMBINE TO PRODUCE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENTS SINCE THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ITSELF … WE MAINTAIN THAT THE HUMAN MIND AND CONSCIOUS THOUGHT ARE EXCLUSIVELY NATURAL AND PHYSICAL IN ORIGIN AND NATURE. ULTIMATELY, THEIR NATURES AND FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES ARE KNOWABLE AND CAN BE REPLICATED FOR THE PURPOSES OF PERSONAL IMMORTALITY…”
BOOK(S): Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier. ISBN-13: 978–0544002692
Regards,
Mr. Andres Agostini Risk-Management Futurist and Success Consultant http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC
uArm, A Mini Robotic Arm You Can Assemble and Control http://singularityhub.com/2014/01/28/uarm-a-mini-robotic-arm…d-control/ QUOTATION(S): “…It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring…” AND “…Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion…”
CITATION(S): “…HUMAN KNOWLEDGE IS DOUBLING EVERY TEN YEARS [AS PER THE 1998 STANDARDS].…COMPUTER POWER IS DOUBLING EVERY EIGHTEEN MONTHS. THE INTERNET IS DOUBLING EVERY YEAR. THE NUMBER OF DNA SEQUENCES WE CAN ANALYZE IS DOUBLING EVERY TWO YEARS…”
BOOK(S): Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku. ISBN-13: 978–0307473332
Regards,
Mr. Andres Agostini Risk-Management Futurist and Success Consultant http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC
PayPal Is Cracking Down on Bitcoin Sellers http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/05/idUS371088795720140205 QUOTATION(S): “…Change is hard. Change is hardest on those caught by surprise. Change is hardest on those who have difficulty changing too. But change is natural; change is not new; change is important…” AND “…Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition…”
CITATION: “…BEGINNING WITH THE AMOUNT OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE KNOWN WORLD AT THE TIME OF CHRIST, STUDIES HAVE ESTIMATED THAT THE FIRST DOUBLING OF THAT KNOWLEDGE TOOK PLACE ABOUT 1700 A.D. THE SECOND DOUBLING OCCURRED AROUND THE YEAR 1900. IT IS ESTIMATED TODAY THAT THE WORLD’S KNOWLEDGE BASE WILL DOUBLE AGAIN BY 2010 AND AGAIN AFTER THAT BY 2013…”
RECOMMENDED BOOK(S): Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier. ISBN-13: 978–1451654967
Regards,
Mr. Andres Agostini Risk-Management Futurist and Success Consultant http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC
If scientists do find life on Mars, it may be possible to beam Martian DNA back to Earth, according to a new idea growing in popularity. If Martian bugs are found, the idea of “faxing” life from Mars is an enticing prospect, spurred on by scientist, Craig Venter, famous for his early sequencing of the human genome.
