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Nov 26, 2017
Japan is embracing nursing-care robots
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: health, robotics/AI
Japan leads the world in advanced robotics. Many of its firms see great potential in “carerobos” that look after the elderly. Over a quarter of the population is over 65, the highest proportion of any country in the OECD. Care workers are in desperately short supply, and many Japanese have a cultural affinity with robots.
AT SHINTOMI nursing home in Tokyo, men and women sit in a circle following exercise instructions before singing along to a famous children’s song, “Yuyake Koyake” (“The Glowing Sunset”).
Nov 26, 2017
What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
Posted by Ian Hale in category: neuroscience
Nov 25, 2017
DARPA Wants to Use Genetic Modification to Turn Plants into Spy Tech
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: genetics, military, robotics/AI, surveillance
DARPA has a new surveillance program in the works, and it doesn’t involve training human agents or AI operators. Instead, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense wants to genetically engineer plant-based sensors as battlefield spy tech.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the think-tank that’s under the U.S. Department of Defense, recently announced that it’s working on a new project that could change how pertinent information is gathered on the battlefield. The project, dubbed the Advanced Plant Technologies (APT) program, examines the possibility of turning plants into next-generation surveillance technology.
Nov 25, 2017
Iceland drafts emergency evacuation plans as volcano rumbles after centuries of inactivity
Posted by John Gallagher in category: futurism
Nov 25, 2017
New systems must be put in place that can detect missile containers
Posted by John Gallagher in categories: military, policy, space
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
We have recently seen evidence of how our national security was compromised by the Obama administration’s approval of the Uranium One deal that gave Russia 20 percent of our uranium reserves. We are now learning more about the serious security compromise at Port Canaveral and its adjacent military infrastructure.
The container port is not only close to U.S. Air Force facilities and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, but more importantly, it is adjacent to our strategic ballistic missile nuclear submarine base. A Nov. 2 Center for Security Policy updated “occasional paper” exposes this “perfect storm” of a threat tied to Russia’s Club-K container missile system.
Continue reading “New systems must be put in place that can detect missile containers” »
Nov 25, 2017
The jury’s still out on whether universal basic income will save us from job-stealing robots
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: biotech/medical, economics, Elon Musk, employment, government, robotics/AI, transhumanism
In this new Business Insider article, my ideas on peak labor and Universal Basic Income are pitted against MIT scientist Andrew McAfee. I’m excited to see my government shrinking Federal Land Dividend proposal getting out there. Story by journalist Dylan Love: http://www.businessinsider.com/will-universal-basic-income-s…?r=UK&IR=T #transhumanism #libertarian
Does free money change nothing or everything?
Universal basic income (UBI) is the hottest idea in social security since Franklin Roosevelt signed the New Deal in 1935, and it is fairly understood as free money given to citizens by their government. Though the idea traces its roots back to the 16th century as a “cure for theft,” UBI has gained new consideration and momentum these days, as high-profile techno-doomsayers like SpaceX founder Elon Musk point to it as an economic solution for big problems predicted to arrive soon.
Nov 25, 2017
MIT Team Wins Mars City Design Contest for ‘Redwood Forest’ Idea
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: habitats, space travel, sustainability
A team of engineers and architects from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has won the top prize for architecture in 2017’s international Mars City Design competition, which asks participants to design habitats that could one day be built on the Red Planet.
The competition, sponsored by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), is one of many that asks participants to come up with creative solutions to the problems these agencies anticipate in the journey to Mars.
Like other contests before it, the Mars City Design competition aims to solve the problem of building livable and sustainable spaces on the Red Planet, from either the limited cargo astronauts would be able to bring with them or indigenous Martian resources. [How Will a Human Mars Base Work? NASA’s Vision in Images].
Continue reading “MIT Team Wins Mars City Design Contest for ‘Redwood Forest’ Idea” »
Most new companies fail. What does it take for young entrepreneurs around the world to thrive in a startup hub?
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Nov 24, 2017
Futurism Interview with Steve Fuller on Elon Musk’s Attempt to Turn Humans into a Multi-Planetary Species
Posted by Steve Fuller in categories: Elon Musk, futurism, habitats, human trajectories, space travel
Chelsea Gohd, a reporter for Futurism, recently interviewed Steve Fuller on Elon Musk’s plans to turn humans into a multi-planetary species. Her report, including the details of Musk’s plans can be found here. What follows is the full interview, only part of which was published in the article:
1. Do you think human beings are capable of becoming a multi-planetary species?
Yes, in two senses, one trivial and one not so trivial. The trivial sense is that there is no reason why we couldn’t survive in other planets – perhaps located in other star systems – that have roughly the same environmental conditions as the Earth. We just need to find them! The not so trivial sense is that we may be able to ‘terraform’ various currently uninhabitable planets to make them more-or-less habitable by humans. This would require enormous infrastructure investments that could be quite risky, at least at the start. But if there’s enough planning, capital and political will, it too could be done.
2. What do you think of Elon Musk’s recent statements insisting that becoming multi-planetary is “insurance of life as we know it”
