— 3D Printing Industry
Two-thousand-and-fourteen is already looking like a great year for 3D creativity. Assembled 3D printers are coming out priced at under 500 euros, new low-cost high-quality 3D scanners are launching and, if that weren’t enough, the first SpaceGlasses are going to be delivered in July.
Rob Wile — Business Insider
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) is the outsider’s outsider — what other Texan would spend a freezing New Year’s hundreds of miles away in New York City?
But there he was last night at the launch event for the NYC Bitcoin Center, located just up the street from the New York Stock Exchange.
Posted in bitcoin, economics, geopolitics, government, human trajectories
by J.M.P. — The Economist
A GROUP of self-described anarchists, libertarians and Ron Paul supporters fleeing the crumbling world economic system have founded Galt’s Gulch, a community in Chile inspired by Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”—and with an economy based entirely on Bitcoin. Or that’s the goal, anyway.
“Our farm workers and suppliers still want to get paid in pesos,” Ken Johnson, the project’s founder and managing partner, explains. “But Bitcoin as the John Galt coin? Why shouldn’t it be?”
If the world economic system “goes sideways,” as Mr Johnson puts it, residents will retreat to their self-sufficient gated community, where they will enjoy a shooting range, equestrian facilities, and spa and fitness center. The 6,874-hectare site (pictured) also includes a 100-hectare farm, although it is not clear who will pick the lettuce when the world ends.
By Lucas Mearian — Computerworld
Computerworld - Approximately 18 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant. But that may change someday sooner than you think — thanks to 3D printing.
Advances in the 3D printing of human tissue have moved fast enough that San Diego-based bio-printing company Organovo now expects to unveil the world’s first printed organ — a human liver — next year.
Like other forms of 3D printing, bio-printing lays down layer after layer of material — in this case, live cells — to form a solid physical entity — in this case, human tissue. The major stumbling block in creating tissue continues to be manufacturing the vascular system needed to provide it with life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients.
Zoltan Istvan — Huffington Post Visionary; Philosopher; Author of bestselling novel ‘The Transhumanist Wager’
For a few billion people around the world, Christmas is the most important and relished holiday of the year. It’s the day with the most gift-giving, the most family get-togethers, the most religious activities, and the most colorful fairy tales that children and adults almost universally embrace with sacred fervor. For many nations, no other day comes close to being as special. For this reason, it seems almost unimaginable that another day — especially an unknown one looming on the horizon — will soon unseat Christmas as the most important day in the world. Nonetheless, for humanity, the course is set. The birth of an artificial intelligence equal or greater than that of human intelligence is coming. It’s called AI Day. And once it arrives, it will rapidly usher in a new age.
For decades, the concept of a man-made intelligence matching or surpassing our own — technically called AGI (artificial general intelligence) or Strong AI — has been steeped in science fiction. Upon hearing the term AI, many people immediately think of the sentient computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece film 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, what most people fail to grasp is that once AI becomes self-aware and joins with the internet, it could grow its intelligence thousands of times in just mere days, perhaps hours. Frankly, it could quickly surpass all measurements of intelligence that humans are even capable of monitoring and recognizing.
“I think that Ray Kurzweil’s estimate that we will achieve human-level Artificial General Intelligence by around 2029 is a reasonable guesstimate,” says Dr. Ben Goertzel.
By Miles Brundage — Slate
Ten years ago this month, a reimagined version of the ’70s science fiction series Battlestar Galactica began as a three-hour miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel. (This was before the “Syfy” nonsense.) The critically acclaimed show ended up running for four seasons. Many articles and books have already been written about the enduring relevance of Battlestar Galactica’s religious and political themes—at least one of which, the dilemmas associated with a secretive national security state, is just as timely today as it was during the Bush administration.
But another key element of the show—the long-term societal risks associated with the development of intelligent machines—is even more relevant today than it was in 2003.
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During writing a paper for the 100 Year Starship Symposium, I wished to convince the starship designers that they should acknowledge the dynamics of high-technology economy, which may be crucial for interstellar missions. Thus motivated, I have made a new calculation regarding infinity point, also known as the singularity. According to this most recent revision of the theory of infinity point, it turns out that we should expect Infinity Point by 2035 in the worst case. Here is how and why.
Mary (Missy) Cummings is Associate Professor at Duke University and Director of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Humans and Automation Laboratory.
In just the past two years, it seems as if drones are everywhere in the news. This technology has been around for more than 60 years, but has only recently captured both national and international attention. This is primarily because of the increasing use in the military, but also because of concerns that such technology will be turned on a country’s own citizens.
The average person thinks of a drone as a flying spy camera, loitering overhead waiting to spot a target and then possibly launching a weapon when that target is labeled as a threat. To be sure, this is indeed one mission of drones, typically of organizations like the CIA.
However, this is by far the least common mission. The vast majority of military drone missions today are data and image collection. Their ability to provide “situational awareness” to decision makers on the ground is unparalleled in military operations since drones can essentially conduct perch and stare missions nearly endlessly.
In post-apocalyptic North America, the Capitol composed of the elite and the rich, controls 12 Districts of Panem. Every year, two representatives from each district are chosen, one boy and one girl, to compete for food supply, thrown in the arena created by the Capitol to fight. Only can be the winner. They called it – Hunger Games
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Based on Suzanne Collins’ trilogy novel, “The Hunger Games” has created immense popularity among movie and novel enthusiasts. But for some, it has drawn fears and futuristic theories. They fear that Hunger Games can be our future predictive scenario. Who wouldn’t blink at an idea like this?
World hunger, in its basic definition, is the want and scarcity of food aggregated to the world level. Evidently, a disparity between human and food resources can cause unparalleled precondition – hunger revolution. Now, with a place ravaged by war, greed, statuses, and human right abuses, ask yourselves, “Are you the next Katniss and Peeta? Or are you part of the Capitol using food hoarding and killing as form of entertainment?”
Posted in entertainment, futurism, human trajectories, singularity
