Bill Joy
Bill Joy is rumored to be working on solutions to the possible
extinction of humanity. He first discussed the end of mankind in the
April 2000 Wired magazine article "Why the future doesn't need us". This article can be read at
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
Bill Joy, who is the inventor of the Unix word processor vi and
cofounder of Sun Microsystems, has not publically talked about our
possible extinction since 2001 but it looks like he is ready to tackle
the problem after thinking about it for four years.
Stay tuned for more details!
Richard Branson
Richard Branson has launched Virgin Galactic which will offer
five-passenger suborbital flights starting in 2008. The Virgin Galactic
vehicles will be based on Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne which completed two
successful suborbital flights in a week in October 2004, winning the $10
million Ansari X-Prize. Tickets are expected to be approximately
$210,000 each. You can learn more at http://www.virgingalactic.com
Eric Klien, president of Lifeboat Foundation, met with Richard Branson
in September 2002 to discuss the prospects of humanity surviving this
century. Richard Branson receives quarterly updates on our progress.
Nanotechnology Funding
Nanotechnology is now the largest federally funded science initiative
since the U.S. decided to put a man on the moon. In 2004, the American
government spent $1.6 billion on it, well over twice as much as it did
on the Human Genome Project at its peak. More impressively, a total
amount of $8.6 billion was spent by all governments and corporations in
2004. You can learn more at
http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?s...=3494722
The original Lifeboat Foundation estimate that one hundred billion
dollars would be spent on nanotechnology before it was ready to be
weaponized in 2020 seems to be rather low. It now looks like about one
trillion dollars will be spent in order to develop nanotechnology to the
point where it can be used to create a doomsday weapon in 2020.
Iran Wants a Doomsday Weapon
Top Iranian hardliner Ali Larijani announced that he was joining the presidential race to become Iran's next president. One of his pledges was to support nanotechnology to enable Iran to become a regional power. He also pledged to invest in biotechnology and nuclear technology as well. You can learn more at http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleVi...0Affairs
