Lifeboat Foundation

That, he said, will lead to new forms of expression, such as music, that will be as different from today’s communication as current human expression is from that of primates.

Asked how the U.S. and other countries would pay for a basic income, given existing large deficits, Kurzweil predicted that massive deflation would make goods much cheaper.

Separately: Kurzweil debuted a new Google project called “Talk to Books,” a new free tool that allows people to use their voice to ask a question and that will go find the best answers from hundreds of thousands of books. Unlike traditional search, it is based on semantics, not keywords.

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil: Universal Basic Income will arrive in the 2030s” »

We can’t wait to play around with this.

Space has suddenly become big in New Zealand, but Rocket Lab is just one example of what is starting to look like exponential growth in commercial activity. Business consultant and self-confessed space junkie Kevin Jenkins looks into how things are shaping up.

One space narrative is about disappointment. The 1950s and 1960s were about possibilities, and landing on the Moon seemed to prove that the science fiction of the 20th century really was just history written before it happened. But the promise of space seemed to peter out. The Apollo moon programme came to look more like a peak or end-point, rather than the trial run for Mars some in the space programme had hoped it would be.

After Apollo, “space” seemed to shift back to being more of a popular culture theme. For example, the famous song, album and movie Space is the Place is by one of my favourite jazz weirdos, Sun Ra, who was adamant he came from Saturn. Space became a dominant meme in pop and rock music too, as well as a mainstay in novels and films.

Continue reading “The space race: NZ’s push into a $320 billion market” »

Why should you care about the well-being of people half a globe away?

Kurzgesagt Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cRUQxz

Continue reading “A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place” »

Google believes you don’t have to be a virtuoso to make decent music as evident by their Chrome Music Lab initiative. If you’re not aware, Chrome Music Lab is, in Google’s own words, “a website that makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments.”

The latest of these experiments is Google’s “Song Maker” tool which, as the name suggests, allows you to create your own unique melodies quickly and easily from within your mobile or desktop browser. To use Song Maker, simply visit the official experiment page and begin “painting” notes on the large grid provided by Google.

Continue reading “Google’s new Song Maker tool lets you create original music right in your browser” »

What are the principles behind Homeopathy and does it work?

Kurzgesagt Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cRUQxz

Continue reading “Homeopathy Explained” »

Scientists from the University of Washington and Microsoft are improving their system for preserving digital data in strands of synthetic DNA — and they’re giving you the chance to participate.

The UW-Microsoft team laid out the method in a research paper published this week in Nature Biotechnology.

Continue reading “DNA data storage system is on the rise — find out how to store yours” »

“There’s no escape: the journey to a healthier society inevitably involves politics.”

Starting with these words, David Wood, Executive Director of Transpolitica and Chair of London Futurists, introduces his book “Transcending Politics: A Technoprogressive Roadmap to a Comprehensively Better Future”.

Continue reading “Transcending Politics Preview” »

#Transhumanism in the Sunday Times of London. 750,000 copies out today. My pres campaign in it briefly, as well as other transhumanists.

The new Netflix series Altered Carbon is set in a dystopian future where the super-rich can avail of technology that allows them to upload their consciousness to a new body every time they die, in effect giving them immortality.

It’s science fiction, of the kind previously explored in the novels of Philip K Dick and William Gibson, movies such as RoboCop and The Terminator, manga comics like Ghost in the Shell and even the Man-Machine album by German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk — but only until it comes to pass.

Continue reading “It’s transhuman life, but not as we know it” »