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Jun 2, 2014

Glasses-free 3-D projector

Posted by in category: media & arts

Larry Hardesty | MIT News Office

Over the past three years, researchers in the Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab have steadily refined a design for a glasses-free, multiperspective, 3-D video screen, which they hope could provide a cheaper, more practical alternative to holographic video in the short term.

Now they’ve designed a projector that exploits the same technology, which they’ll unveil at this year’s Siggraph, the major conference in computer graphics. The projector can also improve the resolution and contrast of conventional video, which could make it an attractive transitional technology as content producers gradually learn to harness the potential of multiperspective 3-D.

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Jun 2, 2014

Ageing: The girls who never grow older

Posted by in category: life extension

By Virginia Hughes — BBC Future

(Getty Images)

Richard Walker has been trying to conquer ageing since he was a 26-year-old free-loving hippie. It was the 1960s, an era marked by youth: Vietnam War protests, psychedelic drugs, sexual revolutions. The young Walker relished the culture of exultation, of joie de vivre, and yet was also acutely aware of its passing. He was haunted by the knowledge that ageing would eventually steal away his vitality – that with each passing day his body was slightly less robust, slightly more decayed. One evening he went for a drive in his convertible and vowed that by his 40th birthday, he would find a cure for ageing.

Walker became a scientist to understand why he was mortal. “Certainly it wasn’t due to original sin and punishment by God, as I was taught by nuns in catechism,” he says. “No, it was the result of a biological process, and therefore is controlled by a mechanism that we can understand.”

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Jun 1, 2014

Is it possible to build an artificial superintelligence without fully replicating the human brain?

Posted by in categories: automation, computing, ethics, existential risks, futurism, hardware, human trajectories, neuroscience, robotics/AI, security

The technological singularity requires the creation of an artificial superintelligence (ASI). But does that ASI need to be modelled on the human brain, or is it even necessary to be able to fully replicate the human brain and consciousness digitally in order to design an ASI ?

Animal brains and computers don’t work the same way. Brains are massively parallel three-dimensional networks, while computers still process information in a very linear fashion, although millions of times faster than brains. Microprocessors can perform amazing calculations, far exceeding the speed and efficiency of the human brain using completely different patterns to process information. The drawback is that traditional chips are not good at processing massively parallel data, solving complex problems, or recognizing patterns.

Newly developed neuromorphic chips are modelling the massively parallel way the brain processes information using, among others, neural networks. Neuromorphic computers should ideally use optical technology, which can potentially process trillions of simultaneous calculations, making it possible to simulate a whole human brain.

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May 31, 2014

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini

Posted by in categories: education, engineering, finance, futurism

CORS  Large

White Paper — Market Research and Social Media in the 21st Century http://ciowhitepapers.com/owp/119/156

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May 31, 2014

Future Observatory, White Swan Update by Andres Agostini

Posted by in categories: futurism, innovation, physics, science, scientific freedom, singularity

FRAUD

What the future of work looks like http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2014/05/29/what-the-future-of-work-looks-like/

The first 21st Century Passenger Spacecraft – Dragon Version 2 is Unveiled http://www.21stcentech.com/21st-century-passenger-spacecraft…-unveiled/

Our Universe May Exist in a Multiverse, Cosmic Inflation Discovery Suggests http://www.space.com/25100-multiverse-cosmic-inflation-gravitational-waves.html

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May 31, 2014

Amazon Awarded Bitcoin-Related Cloud Computing Patent

Posted by in category: bitcoin

— Coin Desk

http://media.coindesk.com/2014/03/shutterstock_160699979.jpg

E-commerce giant Amazon has been awarded a bitcoin-related cloud computing patent that envisions the use of digital currencies as payment for cloud computing services on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amazon’s cloud is by far the biggest remote computing service on the market. Market research firm Gartner estimates AWS annual revenue at upwards of $3bn, and it believes Amazon’s cloud has five times the capacity of its next 14 rivals.

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May 31, 2014

Physicists use diamonds to reach quantum teleportation breakthrough

Posted by in category: quantum physics

BY Philip Palermo — Endgadget

Quantum teleportation promises a leap into the next great era of computing — but first we’ve got to get it working consistently. Scientists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft say they’ve managed to reliably teleport quantum info stored in one bit of diamond to another sitting three meters away (roughly 10 feet). Now, they want to go much farther.

The key with quantum teleportation is its ability to move quantum information (called a qubit) from one point to another without that information crossing the space between those two points. That’s thanks to a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, where the properties of a pair of particles are linked so tightly that they remain connected regardless of distance. In a research article published today in Science, the team described how they used quantum-entangled particles to consistently transmit data from one nitrogen-infused bit of diamond to another.

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May 31, 2014

The Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador Mr. Andres Agostini’s own White Swan Update, Countermeassuring Every Unthinkable Black Swan, at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Posted by in category: futurism

The Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador Mr. Andres Agostini’s own White Swan Update, Countermeassuring Every Unthinkable Black Swan, at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

038

‘Nanodaisies’ deliver more powerful drug cocktail to cancer cells http://www.kurzweilai.net/nanodaisies-deliver-more-powerful-…ncer-cells
A research agenda for potential ecological risks of synthetic biology http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-research-agenda-for-potential-ec…ic-biology

How to make robots and self-driving cars think faster http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-make-robots-and-self-driving-cars-think-faster
Google’s self-driving car prototype: no steering wheel, brake, or accelerator http://www.kurzweilai.net/googles-self-driving-car-prototype…ccelerator
Can ‘Mixed Reality Living Spaces’ fix our overcrowded future? http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/26/5751336/virtual-reality-walls-bernando-schorr
Scientists achieve reliable quantum teleportation for first time http://www.cnet.com/news/scientists-achieve-reliable-quantum…irst-time/
DARPA unveils four ‘big’ cybersecurity projects http://washingtonexaminer.com/darpa-unveils-four-big-cyberse…le/2549057

Continue reading “The Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador Mr. Andres Agostini’s own White Swan Update, Countermeassuring Every Unthinkable Black Swan, at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan” »

May 30, 2014

SpaceX unveils first commercial capsule capable of manned flight

Posted by in category: space travel

By Jordan England-Nelson, Los Angeles Daily News
http://www.dailynews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/LA/20140529/NEWS/140529400/AR/0/AR-140529400.jpg&maxh=400&maxw=667
The long-awaited presentation by Elon Musk, SpaceX’s billionaire CEO and founder of Tesla Motors, showcased the 12-year-old company’s engineering prowess with the flair of an Apple product release party.

Starry-eyed engineers cheered and flashed their smartphone cameras inside SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory as Musk took the stage in a crushed velvet blazer and a boy-band mic strapped to his ear.

After a 10-second countdown, a curtain dropped behind Musk to reveal the gumdrop-shaped Dragon V2, a seven-passenger capsule that could begin shuttling astronauts to the ISS as early as 2017.

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May 30, 2014

TransEvolution (2014) by Daniel Estulin (@EstulinDaniel): Review

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, posthumanism, singularity, transhumanism

- @ClubOfINFOTransEvolution: The Coming Age of Human Deconstruction (2014) is an alarmist book by Daniel Estulin, a commentator on the secretive Bilderberg Group who is well-liked by many – in particular on conspiracy theorist forums. Essentially, this should be regarded as conspiracy theory material. My refutations of it are too many to cram into this review, so I will mainly focus on what the book itself says.

Daniel Estulin connects disparate events and sources to depict an elaborate conspiracy. The main starting claim of the book is a link between the 2005 Bilderberg Conference and the 2006 document Strategic Trends 2007–2036 prepared by the British government (p. 1–12). Estulin claims that the latter report’s predictions betray “Promethean” plans that represent “designs by the Bilderberg Group”.
The book makes the allegation that the economic pressure on the world today “is being done on purpose, absolutely on purpose. The reason is because our current corporate empire knows that “progress of humanity” means their imminent demise”. The “powers-that-be” destroy nation-states to maintain power, and “this is by design” (p. 13). Estulin decries international money flows and globalization, and promotes “physical economy” instead. To make a long story short, he describes the apparatus of globalization, integration, etc. as a clash between the nation-state and global oligarchy and frames this as a classic battle between good and evil respectively (p. 13–35). “The ideas of a nation-state republic and progress” are intrinsically connected (p. 34), Estulin argues, putting forward his preference for the old Jacobin ideological script of the Nineteenth Century rather than modern discourses on integration and communication.
In his preference for the nation-state, Estulin attacks the WTO’s record on free trade, and makes criticisms that are provisionally valid. However, he confuses the tendency for weaker nations to be exploited through free trade with a conspiracy against the nation-state. The WTO’s commitment to what it calls free trade, a commitment to “One World, One Market”, reflects “anti-nation-state intent”, Estulin argues (p. 37–38).
Although they attach too much agency to global “elites”, Estulin’s description of the way international trade on agriculture has been manipulated to disadvantage poor nations and advantage rich nations (p. 38–49) agrees with already powerful sociology theories of “free trade imperialism” and the larger humanitarian message of the alter-globalization movement. Estulin quotes William Engdahl’s The Seeds of Destruction at length to argue against the destructive local impacts of global agribusiness (p. 47–53).

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