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Apr 23, 2014

Book Review: The Human Race to the Future by Daniel Berleant (2013) (A Lifeboat Foundation publication)

Posted by in categories: alien life, asteroid/comet impacts, biotech/medical, business, climatology, disruptive technology, driverless cars, drones, economics, education, energy, engineering, ethics, evolution, existential risks, food, futurism, genetics, government, habitats, hardware, health, homo sapiens, human trajectories, information science, innovation, life extension, lifeboat, nanotechnology, neuroscience, nuclear weapons, philosophy, policy, posthumanism, robotics/AI, science, scientific freedom, security, singularity, space, space travel, sustainability, transhumanism

From CLUBOF.INFO

The Human Race to the Future (2014 Edition) is the scientific Lifeboat Foundation think tank’s publication first made available in 2013, covering a number of dilemmas fundamental to the human future and of great interest to all readers. Daniel Berleant’s approach to popularizing science is more entertaining than a lot of other science writers, and this book contains many surprises and useful knowledge.

Some of the science covered in The Human Race to the Future, such as future ice ages and predictions of where natural evolution will take us next, is not immediately relevant in our lives and politics, but it is still presented to make fascinating reading. The rest of the science in the book is very linked to society’s immediate future, and deserves great consideration by commentators, activists and policymakers because it is only going to get more important as the world moves forward.

The book makes many warnings and calls for caution, but also makes an optimistic forecast about how society might look in the future. For example, It is “economically possible” to have a society where all the basics are free and all work is essentially optional (a way for people to turn their hobbies into a way of earning more possessions) (p. 6–7).

Continue reading “Book Review: The Human Race to the Future by Daniel Berleant (2013) (A Lifeboat Foundation publication)” »

Apr 23, 2014

Digging for answers: The “strong smell” of fraud from one Bitcoin miner maker

Posted by in category: bitcoin

Ars Technica

For many crypto-minded libertarians, Bitcoin is the future of money. But that dream hasn’t been helped much by the numerous high-profile legal cases involving the currency in recent years: The Bitcoin Savings and Trust hedge fund collapsed; uncertainty fueled the implosion of Mt. Gox, the currency’s largest exchange; and the high-profile Silk Road takedown is a treacherous story combining Bitcoin, drugs, and alleged murders.

For now, though, one company sits above all others when it comes to cultivating a new level of direct customer mistrust in the Bitcoin community: Butterfly Labs.

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Apr 23, 2014

Rapid-Fire, 3D Printing Process Builds 10 Homes In 24 Hours

Posted by in category: 3D printing

Leah Gonzalez — psfk

Rapid-Fire, 3D Printing Process Builds 10 Homes In 24 Hours

Winsun Decoration Design Engineering Co., a construction materials firm based in Suzhou, China, has built ten homes in a day using a giant 3D printer.

This isn’t the first time that a firm has used 3D-printing technology to build a house, but it seems to be the first time that a firm has done so in rapid fire time.

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Apr 23, 2014

With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

JESSE McKINLEY — NYTimes

EASTON, N.Y. — Something strange is happening at farms in upstate New York. The cows are milking themselves.

Desperate for reliable labor and buoyed by soaring prices, dairy operations across the state are charging into a brave new world of udder care: robotic milkers, which feed and milk cow after cow without the help of a single farmhand.

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Apr 22, 2014

White Swan Thinking!

Posted by in categories: ethics, finance, futurism, law, law enforcement, lifeboat, scientific freedom, security, singularity, supercomputing, surveillance, sustainability, transhumanism, transparency

new-5LINES OF PRACTICE THROUGH HIS EXECUTION AS ADVISER, ANALYST, PROFESSIONAL FUTUROLOGIST, FORESIGHT STRATEGIST, PUBLISHED AUTHOR, MENTOR, CEO AND C-LEVEL COACH, MANAGER, & RESEARCHER:

Mr. Andres Agostini is the Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador’s Professional at https://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.andres.agostini and

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Apr 22, 2014

Infinity — (White Swan Resources, News, Ideas and others that require serious White-Swanning).

Posted by in categories: futurism, geopolitics, government

Infinity — (White Swan Resources, News, Ideas and others that require serious White-Swanning).

Apr 22, 2014

Could Mind-reading Technology Become Harmful?

Posted by in categories: counterterrorism, cybercrime/malcode, ethics, government, law enforcement, neuroscience, security, singularity, transhumanism

From CLUBOF.INFO

The increasing detail at which human brains can be scanned is bringing the possibility of mind-reading appliances closer and closer. Such appliances, when complete, will be non-invasive and capable of responding to our thoughts as easily as they respond to keys on a keyboard. Indeed, as emphasized in the Lifeboat Foundation’s 2013 publication, The Human Race to the Future, there may soon be appliances that are operated by thought alone, and such technology may even replace our keyboards.
It is not premature to be concerned about possible negative outcomes from this, however positive the improvement in people’s lifestyles would be. In mind-reading appliances, there are two possible dangers that become immediately obvious.

Danger 1: “Thought police”

Brain-machine interfaces have many possibilities that deserve to be explored by science. However, there are also potentially dystopian threats presented by this technology. Even technologies like personal computers, which were seen as liberating to the individual and not aligned with powerful governments, have also become windows that regimes can use to spy on their citizens.

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Apr 21, 2014

Crisis In Physics

Posted by in categories: engineering, general relativity, particle physics, physics, science, space

The crisis in super symmetry physics is causing physicist to search for a new physics. Could this new physics be non-particle based? A physics closer to General Relativity than to either Quantum or String theories?

Apr 21, 2014

The Experiments that Started the Investigation Into Gravity Modification

Posted by in categories: defense, disruptive technology, engineering, general relativity, particle physics, physics, policy, space

The video blog shows 2 of the 400 experiments I conducted between September 1999 and at least April 2001, maybe later. I used various weight measuring scales, battery packs and power supplies. These experiments convinced me that something was a miss with contemporary physics, thus leading to my 12-year study into gravity modification.

This study has been published under the title “An Introduction to Gravity Modification, 2nd Edition”. It documents the new massless formula g=(tau)c^2, for gravitational, mechanical & electromagnetic accelerations; the discovery of Non Inertia (Ni) Fields and non-Gaussian photon probability, and the subsequent unification of photon shielding, transmission/cloaking, invisibility and resolution into a single phenomenon.

Apr 20, 2014

Network of 75 Million Neurons of the Mouse Brain Mapped for the First Time

Posted by in category: neuroscience

— Singularity Hub

axons
With improved visualization tools and souped-up computers to crunch the massive numbers involved in studying the 100 billion neurons in the human brain, many researchers, including the U.S. government, are trying to map the brain’s wiring, or “connectome.” Some researchers have dived right in to studying the massive human brain, but others see the mouse brain, with just 75 million neurons, as a more logical place to start.

A new atlas of study results related to the mouse connectome offers the equivalent of a highway map, with local roads to be filled in later. The atlas, described in a recent paper in Nature, represents more than four years of work undertaken at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a private nonprofit funded by a grant by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

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