Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 11666

What the bleep is an exocortex and why should we care?

Ray Kurzweil

An exocortex can be accurately described as an external neocortex. Many people may have heard of the exocortex from Ray Kurzweil. The idea of an exocortex is actually a bit older than Ray Kurzweil’s description. As We May Think was the title of an essay by Vannevar Bush the famed inventor and in that essay he describes a machine which may be used to record the collective memory of mankind. It is the first known exocortex concept that I could find and he called this device the Memex.

The Memex would allow anyone to store all of the books and knowledge they gathered in their lifetime in a personal knowledge base. Unfortunately we still do not have a Memex device which allows us to store our own memories even though there are many centralized organizations which collect vast amounts of big data on our lives to put in central databases. Google could be said to be building an exocortex today but this exocortex is centralized and while we can use it as an external memory it conveniently has the feature (or bug) that allows our individual memories or thoughts to be searched. Maybe it’s time to build a decentralized exocortex which can allow the individual to own their own thoughts, own their own search, own their content, their data, and their digital selves?

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In a new study, researchers detail the culturing and transfecting of cells with genetic material on an array of carbon nanotubes, which appears to overcome the limitations of other gene editing technologies.

Gene editing techniques hold great promise. They allow targeted and specific edits of genes, and have nearly limitless possibilities in the field of medicine.

Which is not to say that they are perfect. These techniques still have a range of limitations, from precision to toxicity. But a new study shows that can be changed.

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Ralph Merkle, Robert Freitas and others have a theoretical design for a molecular mechanical computer that would be 100 billion times more energy efficient than the most energy efficient conventional green supercomputer. Removing the need for gears, clutches, switches, springs makes the design easier to build.

Existing designs for mechanical computing can be vastly improved upon in terms of the number of parts required to implement a complete computational system. Only two types of parts are required: Links, and rotary joints. Links are simply stiff, beam-like structures. Rotary joints are joints that allow rotational movement in a single plane.

Simple logic and conditional routing can be accomplished using only links and rotary joints, which are solidly connected at all times. No gears, clutches, switches, springs, or any other mechanisms are required. An actual system does not require linear slides.

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Air Force Research Laboratory is working on key technologies in hypersonic air vehicles, directed-energy weapons and autonomy, or human-machine teaming, that will be “game-changers”

Air Force Research Laboratory scientists and engineers have developed an unarmed “cruise missile-like vehicle” that reached five times the speed of sound in tests, and have explored pairing drones with combat fighters in latest realm of technological advances.

Pentagon futurists envision a third-offset strategy to leapfrog U.S. technological capabilities to stay ahead of Russia and China.

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Who says playing around is a waste of time?

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) said that’s exactly what they were doing when they discovered how to increase the tensile strength of nanowires that could be used to make lithium-ion batteries last virtually forever.

Researchers have pursued using nanowires in batteries for years because the filaments, thousands of times thinner than a human hair, are highly conductive and have a large surface area for the storage and transfer of electrons.

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