I also mentioned wanting to get Daniel Wilson's book How To Survive a Robot Uprising (Tips on Defending Yourself During the Upcoming Rebellion .

Then, the other night, I saw another show on robotics (how in the hell do I keep stumbling across these cool, informative shows? Oh, and to those who say TV is useless - I beg to differ).

On this particular show on robotics, they did mention the future of humanity alongside robots, and they claimed that the humans that wanted to keep up/survive would have to be implemented with artificial parts, something the futurists like to call "transhumanism" - the mixture of biology and machinery.

Some of this is already done, with pacemakers and artificial limbs, and other parts of the body, but what the program was suggesting is much more drastic implementations, such as to the brain, involving silicon chips (such as the infamous RFID chips) and so forth.

Ok, I thought. So it boils down to adding robotic aspects to ourselves in order to best the technology - being like them, but also still having humanity. This is the answer! I thought.

But then today I saw an extremely disturbing episode of the sci-fi show Outer Limits.

Mind you, it is science FICTION.

And it was made in 1997.

But the fact is, it was the best damn episode of Outer Limits I had ever seen. Why?

The episode is called "Stream of Consciousness", and, in a nutshell, humanity is living within a futuristic society where everyone has implements on the side of their heads which interact with their brain in order to acquire all human data instantly, instead of having to read it/learn it.

The main character, however, is a human that had "brain damage" (he doesn't appear less intelligent) - so he wasn't able to have the implant, since he was very young.

But the disturbing part came when the "data stream" that all humans subscribed to started to give random humans a "virus" that caused information to be sought after/downloaded too fast for the brain to process - eventually killing the person.

So finally, the guy without the head implant has to go and find a written book that the data stream/computer had neglected to destroy (although it had neglected to destroy this copy) - in order to have his friend, a girl with an implant, read the book and spread the shutdown code to the whole system.

The problem was that, once all entwined together with this data stream, the stream itself was like a mass consciousness to all the people, and none of them would willfully destroy it (themselves!) Wow.

Basically, the question is this - if humans merge with technology as the transhumanists desire, would we doom ourselves to being vulnerable to something like a computer virus killing us?

A disturbing thought.

I'm just going to buy that fucking book, already.

Working with Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping point, Ray Kurzweil's Singularity and the Pareto Principle lead me to begin thinking about a pattern that presented itself. In an earlier post here and here I discussed how there had been many Singularities in history. It also lead me to talk about Pluralarites. Then it struck me there is an oscillation between Singularity and Plurality, giving us the Singularity Pluralarity Plot above. And the implications are interesting.

Any innovation follows the Singularity Pluralarity Plot as a complete life cycle. Kurzweil's singularity will be no exception. The first working AI will be the domain of specialists it will not be unleashed uncontrolled on humanity and it will have been accomplished after several incremental developments that will leave humanity more than prepared for it. The AI will then have to be molded into compatibility to a variety of purposes. After that it will have to be iterated until it is reliable. Once it is reliable then the true singularity happens: the cost benefit ratio is achieved and AI becomes accessible to the general public. The next step is availability on the global market. Finally, AI will have to be always on and pluralarity is achieved. AI will be ubiquitous and the next innovation will take place. The commoditized original AI will begin its descent and a new innovation in AI or a completely new technology will take its place and begin its ascent.

There will be social upheaval, but I don't think it will be as dramatic or as immediate as some think.  The anthropomorphization of AI will fade and it will just be considered another tool.

The first thing that occurred to me is that as there is a positive and negative infinity there is also a positive and negative zero. Whether the zero is positive or negative is determined by whether you approach it from positive values or negative values. The second thing that occurred to me is that a pluralarity to singularity transition is divisive while a pluralarity to singularity transition is multiplicative. The third thing that occurred to me is that it is possible to have a positive to negative transition. For example you could follow a positive singularity to positive pluralarity curve with a negative pluralarity to negative singularity curve which would ascend like a staircase. The fourth thing that became obvious is that on an exponential curve the Pareto Principle applies at both ends. It's like applying Lorentz transformations. Fifth, I am currently reading Peter Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship and have discovered that seizing opportunity, Entrepreneurship, requires recognizing whether you are approaching a Singularity or a Pluralarity while creating opportunity, Innovation, is making a Singularity or Pluralarity. The final thought that occurred to me is what are the implications of this knowledge on network design, physics, chemistry, biology, databases, complexity, simplicity, organization, history, anthropology, evolution, commoditization? I'll leave it there.

So last night I was watching a fascinating show on the incredible advances that are being made in the robotics field, and it got me thinking about science fiction and robot-human relations. It both amused and bothered me that they were presenting all these technologies and scenarios and not even mentioning the implications that will be presented (they said "robots can do chores humans dislike" and I was thinking, "but what if the robots don't like these chores either, resent us, and wish to rebel?")

I read earlier today that the main thing developers think we have on the robots (and maybe always will?) is that they have no free will, and will not be installed with such.

Honda has ASIMO, which it calls "The World's Most Advanced Humanoid Robot" (on the show there were many examples of this type of technology and its current/future applications).

Ray Kurzweil thinks what he calls "the Singularity" (the point when humans transcend biology) will occur soon, and its arrival will herald all manner of strange new considerations for humanity.

I just read at Accelerating Future (among many other insightful posts) that since November, there has been work in Korea to draft a Robot Ethics Charter.

I am also curious to read Daniel Wilson's How To Survive a Robot Uprising (Tips on Defending Yourself During the Upcoming Rebellion (a funny book on a serious topic). Because in movies such as I, Robot this topic is explored. Even though Hollywood is much different from reality, our science fiction has always been a good forum for examining concepts, no matter how outlandish they may seem at the time.

Robotics and the future of artificial intelligence is going to have a huge impact on humanity, and we have to start thinking about these issues now, before they happen.

En 2050, nous changerons de corps à volonté et serons immortels, parole d'ingénieurs ! Des nanorobots circuleront dans notre sang et dans notre cerveau pour éliminer les toxines, corriger les erreurs de notre ADN, améliorer notre bien-être physique… Info ou intox ? Qu'en pensent les philosophes et les neurobiologistes ?

Lire la suite

http://www.telerama.fr/monde/envie-d-un-corps-tout-neuf-attendez-2050,32238.php

I have been doing some work on a new greater-than-social networking concept and was struggling with singularities and the term "religion". Instead of abiding by the conventional definitions of the term I decided to look into the roots of the word itself.

Broken down, religion means repeatedly binding oneself to what you rely upon. But what is it upon which we rely?

Religion when taken in its 13th century context was synonymous with "conscientiousness". But what did conscientiousness mean? I decided to dig deeper.

Conscientiousness means living according to conscience meticulously. Now we had the word conscience.

Science, as most of us understand, means "knowledge". But what does the prefix "con-" mean?

"Con-" as a prefix means "combined".

Therefore, in its unadulterated form "religion" means "repeatedly binding oneself to one's combined knowledge meticulously". Or in otherwords, "Observing all I know".

This is the true failure of most religions. They limit what they know to a few texts and deny any further expansion of knowledge. Judaism stops at the Old Testament. Christianity stops at the New Testament (No one comes to the Father except through me). Islam stops at the Koran (There will be no prophets after me).

In reality, all the wise men that have existed despite all their conviction were, are and will be wrong. There will always be more knowledge. And what each of us knows is unique to us because every human experience is unique. And no person's combined knowledge is the same as any other person's.

To homogenize ourselves by standardizing our conscience, standardizing our organization, standardizing our professions, standardizing our education, standardizing our climate and standardizing our terrain will ultimately lead to a singularity. And we have had countless singularities throughout history. We've just used other terms for them.

Facility was a series of singularities produced by the standardization of land from hunting ground, to farm, to storehouse, to factory, to palace, to temple. Chronology was a series of singularities produced by the standardization of time from herd migration, to growing season, to supply levels, to production cycle, to communication cycle, to cognition. Commodity was a series of singularities produced by standardization from sources, to seasons, to measures, to trades, to connections, to conscience. Industry was a series of singularities produced by the standardization of hunting practice, agricultural practice and accounting practice, trades practice, organizational practice and religious practice. Community was a series of singularities produced by the standardization of tribe, village, colony, city, state, empire. Conscience was a chain of singularities produced by the standardization of geographic worship, climactic worship, possession worship, trades worship, organization worship, combined knowledge worship.

We have always been in an age of exponentials. We have always been experiencing singularities. The outcome of any singularity is predictable: A new media is created and moves from Macro (Mainframe), to Meso (Mini), to Micro (Personal), to Nano (Portable). Literacy went through this evolution. The Gutenberg press went through this evolution. Telecom is going through this evolution. Transportation went through this evolution. Computers went through this evolution. The internet will go through this evolution. Artificial Intelligence will go through this evolution.

Looking at a singularity from this perspective it becomes obvious that for every black hole of standardization there is a white hole of diversity beyond. It could be also said that Ray Kurzweil's singularity is actually Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point--a transition from scarcity to ubiquity. Kurzweil's mistake is the same or similar to Zeno's Paradox.

Imagine a series of professional AI's giving way to an explosion of amateur AI's.

Simply put, a tipping point is the transition point where benefit finally comes to exceed cost.

The old way of mate selection and reproduction worked well enough until humans developed super weapons but now with that physical possibility  clearly within our technical ability it now becomes possible for us to exterminate our own species. But as discussed earlier the policy of survive and outbreed your competition can not work permanently with a species possessing such abilities and such weapons. The problem becomes unsolvable when there is any group of people with the unlimited ability to breed without external restrictions. All species other than ourselves have outside limitations imposed upon them. Actually, we do too but they are only famine, homicide and birth control. Famine and homicide are the only usual external options at play but unfortunately they lead to boom and bust cycles and with super weapons now available these will be absolutely disastrous.

The other option is the one induced by human reason and control and it means that the vast majority of women would be limited to two children. This restriction would be imposed on every woman in the world. This new way of relating to the reproduction of the species is so different from all other plants, animals and in fact all other living things that these new human derived creatures might even be called a new life form. They are operating on a new set of operating principles from all other creatures which have gone before. To some degree domesticated plants and animals are already there, although they are not self controlled but rather they are controlled by outside forces. In this case it isn't natural forces but the controlling forces of humans. The humans would be controlling themselves and this is what makes them into a new species — in fact a new life form.

It is a self-imposed external restriction and that is what makes the creatures that come into being not just a new slightly modified human species but into a whole new life form. It can choose to reproduce not only what it likes in its present genome but can willfully decide upon a new direction to go. The law that is successful in creating and imposing these limitations upon humanity will over the next one hundred thousand years have profound and unknowable results. Because the direction of those changes will be thoughtfully considered the results should be even more desirable than those of that first conversation a hundred thousand years ago.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No
Derivative Works 3.0 License.

"Do we have the knowledge and the tools today to live forever? If all science and technology development suddenly stopped, the answer would have to be no. We do have the means to dramatically slow disease and the aging process far more than most people realize, but we do not yet have all the techniques we need to indefinitely extend human life. However, it is clear that far from halting, the pace of scientific and technological discovery is accelerating.

According to models that Ray has created, our paradigm-shift rate—the rate of technical progress—is doubling every decade, and the capability (price performance, capacity, and speed) of specific information technologies is doubling every year.4 So the answer to our question is actually a definitive yes—the knowledge exists, if aggressively applied, for you to slow aging and disease processes to such a degree that you can be in good health and good spirits when the more radical life-extending and life-enhancing technologies become available over the next couple of decades.

Longevity expert and gerontologist Aubrey de Grey uses the metaphor of maintaining a house to explain this key concept. How long does a house last? The answer obviously depends on how well you take care of it. If you do nothing, the roof will spring a leak before long, water and the elements will invade, and eventually the house will disintegrate. But if you proactively take care of the structure, repair all damage, confront all dangers, and rebuild or renovate parts from time to time using new materials and technologies, the life of the house can essentially be extended without limit." from Chapt 1 of Fantastic Voyage:Live Long Enough to live Forever by Ray Kurzweil & Terry Grossman M.D.

http://www.fantastic-voyage.net/Chapter1.htm

I always find Ray Kurzweil´s talks very intresting, he is a very smart man and I hope his predictions about the future comes true.

Anyway, as she was preparing to head off, one of our cats insisted on going through the door which leads from my office into my bindery. This is where the cat food is.

"She wants through."

"She wants owwwwt."

"Any door leads out, as far as a cat is concerned."

"Well, that door did once actually lead out, decades ago."

"She remembers."

"She can't remember."

"Nonetheless, the memory lingers."

* * * * * * *

Via TDG, a fascinating interview with Douglas Richard Hofstadter last year, now translated into English. I'd read his GEB some 25 years ago, and have more or less kept tabs on his work since. The interview was about his most recent book, and touched on a number of subjects of interest to me, including the nature of consciousness, writing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Singularity. It's long, but well worth the effort.

In discussing consciousness (which Hofstadter calls 'the soul' for reasons he explains), and the survival of shards of a given 'soul', the topic of writing and music comes up. Discussing how Chopin's music has enabled shards of the composer's soul to persist, Hofstadter makes this comment about his own desire to write:

I am not shooting at immortality through my books, no. Nor do I think Chopin was shooting at immortality through his music. That strikes me as a very selfish goal, and I don't think Chopin was particularly selfish. I would also say that I think that music comes much closer to capturing the essence of a composer's soul than do a writer's ideas capture the writer's soul. Perhaps some very emotional ideas that I express in my books can get across a bit of the essence of my soul to some readers, but I think that Chopin's music probably does a lot better job (and the same holds, of course, for many composers).

I personally don't have any thoughts about “shooting for immortality” when I write. I try to write simply in order to get ideas out there that I believe in and find fascinating, because I'd like to let other people be able share those ideas. But intellectual ideas alone, no matter how fascinating they are, are not enough to transmit a soul across brains. Perhaps, as I say, my autobiographical passages — at least some of them — get tiny shards of my soul across to some people.

Exactly.

* * * * * * *

In April, I wrote this:

I’ve written only briefly about my thoughts on the so-called Singularity - that moment when our technological abilities converge to create a new transcendent artificial intelligence which encompasses humanity in a collective awareness. As envisioned by the Singularity Institute and a number of Science Fiction authors, I think that it is too simple - too utopian. Life is more complex than that. Society develops and copes with change in odd and unpredictable ways, with good and bad and a whole lot in the middle.

Here's Hofstadter's take from the interview, in responding to a question about Ray Kurzweil's notion of achieving effective immortality by 'uploading' a personality into a machine hardware:

Well, the problem is that a soul by itself would go crazy; it has to live in a vastly complex world, and it has to cohabit that world with many other souls, commingling with them just as we do here on earth. To be sure, Kurzweil sees those things as no problem, either — we'll have virtual worlds galore, “up there” in Cyberheaven, and of course there will be souls by the barrelful all running on the same hardware. And Kurzweil sees the new software souls as intermingling in all sorts of unanticipated and unimaginable ways.

Well, to me, this “glorious” new world would be the end of humanity as we know it. If such a vision comes to pass, it certainly would spell the end of human life. Once again, I don't want to be there if such a vision should ever come to pass. But I doubt that it will come to pass for a very long time. How long? I just don't know. Centuries, at least. But I don't know. I'm not a futurologist in the least. But Kurzweil is far more “optimistic” (i.e., depressingly pessimistic, from my perspective) about the pace at which all these world-shaking changes will take place.

Interesting.

* * * * * * *

Lastly, the interview is about the central theme of I am a Strange Loop: that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon which stems from vast and subtle physical mechanisms in the brain. This is also the core 'meaning' of GEB, though that was often missed by readers and reviewers who got hung up on the ostensible themes, topics, and playfulness of that book. Hofstadter calls this emergent consciousness a self-referential hallucination, and it reflects much of his interest in cognitive science over the years.

[Mild spoilers ahead.]

In Communion of Dreams I played with this idea and a number of related ones, particularly pertaining to the character of Seth. It is also why I decided that I needed to introduce a whole new technology - based on the superfluid tholin-gel found on Titan, as the basis for the AI systems at the heart of the story. Because the gel is not human-manufactured, but rather something a bit mysterious. Likewise, the use of this material requires another sophisticated computer to 'boot it up', and then it itself is responsible for sustaining the energy matrix necessary for continued operation. At the culmination of the story, this 'self-referential hallucination' frees itself from its initial containment.

Why did I do this?

Partly in homage to Hofstedter (though you will find no mention of him in the book, as far as I recall). Partly because it plays with other ideas I have about the nature of reality. If we (conscious beings) are an emergent phenomenon, arising from physical activity, then it seems to me that physical things can be impressed with our consciousness. This is why I find his comments about shards of a soul existing beyond the life of the body of the person to be so intriguing.

So I spent some 130,000 words exploring that idea in Communion. Not overtly - not often anyway - but that is part of the subtext of what is going on in that book.

* * * * * * *

"Any door leads out, as far as a cat is concerned."

"Well, that door did once actually lead out, decades ago."

"She remembers."

"She can't remember."

"Nonetheless, the memory lingers," I said, "impressed on the door itself. Maybe the cat understands that at a level we don't."

Jim Downey

(Related post at UTI.)

Photo credit: Dreamstime.com

We are just a few years away from the emergence of mainstream alternative energy- like solar power- that will be cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil happens to think so, and if his history of technological forecasting is any guide, we should probably believe him.

After my previous article challenged the doomsday projections coming from the man-made global warming movement, I thought it might be in context and balance things a little to share a positive look at the future.

Ray Kurzwell is a fascinating guy who's had a knack for predicting the path of technology based on his own extensive knowledge and contribution to the fields of science and tech. He was described by John Tierney in the New York Times this way:

“It may sound too good to be true, but even his critics acknowledge he’s not your ordinary sci-fi fantasist. He is a futurist with a track record and enough credibility for the National Academy of Engineering to publish his sunny forecast for solar energy. He makes his predictions using what he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns, a concept he illustrated at the festival with a history of his own inventions for the blind."

A brief stroll through Kurzweil's wiki is well worth the time for those unfamiliar with his work.

He recently shared his thoughts on the near-future at a science conference in New York, and I think his insight provides some real reasons for hope. I now offer you a little Kurzweil-flavored food for thought, compliments of The Daily Galaxy:

·    Within 5 years the exponential progress in nanoengineering will make Solar power cost-competitive with fossil fuels

·    Within 10 years we will have a pill that allows us all to eat whatever we feel like and never gain any unwanted weight

·    In 15 years, life expectancies will start rising faster than we age

·    In about 20 years 100% of our energy will come from clean and renewable sources, and a computer will pass the Turing Test by carrying on a conversation that is indistinguishable from a human’s.

Kurzweil believes that we're going to see this due to a rapid increase in the rate of technological advancement. As he sees it- we're now starting to move away from the slower portion of a curve, and up into a more vertical era that will see discoveries of this kind at an accelerated rate. While I don't believe everything that he projects or happens to believe, he is still interesting and certainly makes claims worth considering.

Now have a look at this: scientists have beefed up a Toyota Prius by adding a solar panel to the roof, resulting in a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. Here's more from the article at Rocky Mountain News:

The result: A spunky Prius that runs the initial 60 miles mostly on battery, adding up to a fuel mileage of 100 miles per gallon...

The lithium-ion battery, which can be recharged using a standard electrical outlet at home or even at the workplace, has a price tag of $40,000. And the solar panel on the roof cost $2,500.

All told, the car adds up to almost $70,000 - but as NREL says, it's only a unique research model at this point...

Detroit automakers are interested in NREL's research, Markel said, adding that the goal is to bring down cost. Xcel Energy, Colorado's biggest utility, also is keen about vehicle-to-grid technology, which would have car batteries supply excess electricity during hours of peak demand...

NREL says that light, plug-in hybrid vehicles could cut in half the demand for fuel, making it practical to use E-85 - a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Also, the fuel cost savings could amount to more than $500 per vehicle a year.

"I think high energy prices are here to stay, and to go even higher," said Bryant Gimlin, energy risk manager of Gray Oil & Gas, a diesel and gasoline wholesaler. "It will not only encourage new technologies such as plug-in hybrids but make them more price effective."

Of course, these two articles are a snow-cone compared to the iceberg of information that exists concerning alternative energy, fossil fuels, peak oil, resource wars and more. I highly recommend Fabius Maximus and The Oil Drum for those who are interested in great writing and research on these topics.

Everyone has heard the advice that says "don't worry about tomorrow; focus on today." One of the reasons why that is good advice is because the future will have resources available to it that don't even exist yet. Why not avoid a nervous look at tomorrow as seen through the murkiness of today's limitations? That's a very good and quite difficult thing to practice.

Al recente World Science Festival di New York, l'esperto futurologo Ray Kurzweil ha espressp alcune delle sue previsioni per il futuro prossimo: a sentire lui non c'è poi da preoccuparsi tanto.
Nel seguito una breve panoramica di alcuni futuri "miracoli" previsti da Kurzweil sulla base della curva esponenziale di sviluppo di scienze e tecnologie attuali:
Entro 5 anni, il progresso esponenziale nel nanoengineering renderà l'energia Solare economicamente competitiva o più vantaggiosa rispetto ai combustibili fossili;
Entro 10 anni, verrà sintetizzata una pillola che ci consentirà di mangiare tutto quello che ci piace senza ingrassare;
Entro 15 anni, l'aspettativa di vita crescerà molto più velocemente di quanto fatto sino ad ora;
Entro circa 20 anni tutta l'energia consumata sarà prodotta da fonti pulite e rinnovabili, e finalmente esisterà un Computer che riuscirà a superare il test di Turing sviluppando una conversazione nella quale risulterà indistinguibile da un umano.

Avvallando la credibilità di quanto afferma, il New York Times sottolinea che in passato Kurzweil ha sempre dimostrato estrema cura per i dettagli e si è sempre dimostrato profetico: “Potrebbe suonare troppo bello per essere vero, ma contrariamente alle critiche che riceve, non è uno che scherza: si tratta di un futurologo con un'altissima credibilità anche presso la National Academy of Engineering, che ha pubblicato le sue previsioni sul Solare.
Nel 1976 ha previsto l'avvento di dispositivi per scannerizzare e leggere testi.
Nel 1980 ha previsto l'esplosiva crescita del web 10 anni dopo, e un computer campione di scacchi 20 anni dopo."
Vent'anni fa ha previsto che "nei primi anni del 21° secolo" persone prive di vista potessero leggere testi ovunque utilizzando un dispositivo portatile.

Insomma, ci sarebbe quasi da crederci quando una persona così attenta e rigorosa fa previsioni del genere."Certi aspetti della tecnologia seguono traiettorie formidabili", nota Kurzweil.
Se avrà ragione, il futuro sarà più "roseo e verde" di quanto immaginiamo, e nuove incredibili prospettive si apriranno davanti a noi.

So, it was in light of this background that I read with interest the latest US Dept. of Energy announcement. This is, by the way, the same government agency that runs massive research labs such as Sandia and Lawrence Livermore, and also runs the US Nuclear Program (civilian and military). Their IBM-designed, AMD-powered, Cell-processor based supercomputer, the Roadrunner, has officially achieved a petaflop. This is a thousand trillion calculations per second. In other words, pretty darn fast. What we have not heard is whether the supercomputer suddenly precipitated the Singularity and started singing Nusrat Fateh Ali qawwalis... (because that's what any highly intelligent sentient being would do).

So there we are, at a petaflop, but no Joy yet (Yes, pun intended for those who get it ;-)) Why is this? well, I can give you my 2 cents. I think getting the hardware to a particular computational ability is the smaller issue. The real issue is what you're going to run on it that will even have a hope of achieving sentience. That's where we're lagging behind seriously. Yeah, there's interesting stuff happening with neural networks but we're not even remotely close to a general purpose intelligence, much less self-awareness. Software is where its at. Arguably, if you had the software, a set@home like project would be able to scavenge enough computation from the Internet to create a bigger-than-human-brain computer.

So who's working on the software? The usual suspects. AI labs at MIT, Stanford and elsewhere, but it almost seems like someone needs to try a radically different approach. Quit the same-old, same-old and go for a new framework and a fundamentally new model. I have some ideas, but I'm not sharing. Till the next one.

And before I forget check out the DoE release...

DOE supercomputer broke the petaflop barrier, conference acknowledges

By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews
June 9, 2008, 6:58 PM

Though unofficial news leaked this morning, this afternoon, independent sources are acknowledging a new fact: A computer made with IBM Cell and AMD Opteron processors can process a thousand trillion operations per second.

This afternoon, the itinerary of the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden was officially altered to make way for a special panel, acknowledging what the US Department of Energy had announced a few hours earlier: Its Roadrunner supercomputer, built by IBM as a unique hybrid of Cell BE and AMD Opteron processors, has recorded an official throughput speed above one quadrillion floating point operations per second -- one petaflop.

Su IEEE Spectrum, la rivista del prestigioso Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, c'e' uno special report sulla "singolarità". Al confine tra fantascienza (Gibson, Dick), fedi e tecnologie. Tutto da leggere.

Click here to see more of Ray's charts and to download the Excel spreadsheet detailing yearly U.S. expenditures on education from 1900 through 2002.

Play, think...
J.R. Atwood 

Order The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology from Amazon for $11.02

Don't have Amazon Kindle? You can always purchase it from here
Or if you prefer to read the Print editions instead, you can get it from here

Other Kindle Books of Interest
Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human
More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement
Our Posthuman Future
Accelerando