The Google, Apple and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks who worry the race for human attention has created a world of perpetual distraction that could ultimately end in disaster.
Google & tesla send puerto rico hi-tech aid
Virgin Islands with everything from solar power grids to Wi-Fi balloons.
Last year, we reported that Microsoft and Facebook were teaming up to build a massive undersea cable that would cross the Atlantic, connecting Virginia Beach to the northern city of Bilbao in Spain. Last week, Microsoft announced that the cable, called Marea, is complete.
Marea, which means “tide” in Spanish, lies over 17,000 feet below the Atlantic Ocean’s surface and is around 4,000 miles long. It weighs 10.25 million pounds. The data rates (which let’s face it, that’s what we’re all really interested in) are equally staggering: Marea can transmit at a rate of 160 terabits/second. And it was finished in less than two years.
What’s really interesting about Marea, though, is that it has an open design. This means that Microsoft and Facebook are trying to make the cable as future proof as possible. It can evolve as technology changes and demands increase for more data and higher speeds. Its flexibility means that upgrading the cable and its equipment to be compatible with newer technology will be easier.
I did a new interview on #transhumanism for some journalism students at Germany’s Technical University of Dortmund. It’s in English:
Mechanical bodyparts are very common nowadays – a lot of humans have a hip replacement or a pacemaker. Technology helps saving our lives rather often. Some people want to take this a lot further – a philosophical and scientific movement called Transhumanism. Zoltan Istvan Gyurko is one of the most famous Transhumanists, he even ran for president in 2016. In this interview, he talks about his first experiences with Transhumanism, immortality and the future of humanity.
By Marie-Louise Timcke und Paul Klur
Why is Transhumanism important for our society nowadays?
Zoltan Istvan: Well, Transhumanism is perhaps the most important subject matter that we have actually existing in society at the moment. Because humankind has been moving forward very slowly developing science and technology. But in ways that haven’t really rudimentary changed the human being. But all of a sudden, since the invention of the microchip, humanity is changing dramatically because of data, because of the internet, because of computers, because of smartphones. And what we have seen is almost nothing compared to what we’re going to see over the next ten or twenty years. Transhumanism is the field that wants to use science and technology to modify the human being and realise this kind of digitization of the actual self. But most importantly, the next ten years are going to be completely disruptive to whatever we thought it meant to be human beings.
Researchers from Wits University have linked a brain directly to the internet. Data gathered from this project could help fuel the next steps in machine learning and brain-computer interfaces.
A team of researchers at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa have made a major breakthrough in the field of biomedical engineering. According to a release published on Medical Express, for the first time ever, researchers have devised a way of connecting the human brain to the internet in real time. It’s been dubbed the “Brainternet” project, and it essentially turns the brain “…into an Internet of Things (IoT) node on the World Wide Web.”
When one thinks of Mark Twain, one thinks of folksy wit, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and the Mississippi River. Twain’s work immortalized the rapidly changing United States of the 1800s. But in his personal life, Twain often preferred the future to nostalgia, supporting women’s suffrage and civil rights, and frequently being contemptuous of what he considered to be the absurd and corrupt values of the past. He harbored a long running fascination with technology and new gadgets, and frequently invested in the latter — albeit with spotty success, at best. But Twain cemented his becoming an honorary futurist via his long friendship with inventor and Mad-scientist archetype Nikola Tesla.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., July 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Strathspey Crown LLC, a lifestyle healthcare company focused in ophthalmology, medical aesthetic and elective technologies and procedures, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued U.S. Patent No. 9,662,199 covering an implantable intraocular lens with an optic (including accommodating, multifocal and phakic configurations), a camera and an LED display, and a communications module that wirelessly transmit and receive information from an external device (e.g. PDA).
Robert Edward Grant, Founder and Chairman of Strathspey Crown LLC commented, “Video cameras are now a standard feature of smart phone technology and wearable cameras have become popularized by companies like Google and Snap in recent years. This patent represents a significant step forward in the rapidly growing sector of human cyborg technology. The eye, as a transparent medium for light, is ideal for advanced and rechargeable implantables that enable video capture of all of life’s experiences. Our broader vision is to develop ground-breaking medical-grade ocular smart implantables that integrate cellular, WIFI and 802.11 transmissions in an elegant cognitive interface that we believe will enhance human intelligence, augment perceived reality, and digitally capture experiences and individual memories. We look forward to several continuations and expansions on this important intellectual property portfolio.”
Grant further commented, “Although Samsung, Sony and Google have all recently filed patent applications related to the same field, Strathspey Crown is thus far the only company to hold an issued patent in this promising ocular smart implant category. Our first camera-integrated acrylic IOLs will be completed in 2018, upon which we plan to pursue an FDA Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) and subsequent Pre-Market Approval (PMA) and related clinical trial.”
For the unwary, ICOs represent an even bigger risk, as uncertainty about how they should be regulated means most lack even basic protection of securities laws that governed the dotcom IPOs. As pure digital events, the online fundraisings are also exposed to familiar internet frauds, from phishing scams used to rip off the unwary to the hacking of the underlying software underpinning the new ventures — the fate that befell the first prominent ICO last year, for a company called the DAO.
Flood of initial coin offerings is aimed at bypassing Google and Amazon, but sceptics fear a bubble.
