Lifeboat Foundation

I am glad to see this article publish because it expresses well how technology and biological properties can be intertwined and advance collectively together. It will take this type of an approach to provide the foundation that is needed to enable the future visions that Kurzweil and others have shared around Singularity.

2 decades ago, Lucent experimented with the cells from fish to see how they could enable digital transmission through their experiments. They had some small successes; however, it never fully matured. Today, however, with Quantum we will finally see the advancements in technology, medicine, and science that many have only dreamed about or read from books or saw in movies.

Biological systems can explore every possible solution rapidly.

Continue reading “NP-complete problem solved with biological motors” »

This story reminds me of the building of ancient pyramids in Egypt as well as the building of ancient temples and cities in Mexico and India.

China has relocated 9K people to build their new giant telescope — in 2000 years from now the robots and Ray Kurzweil (who plans never to die) will be looking at the ancient telescope. And, Ray (the grand earth historian) can tell them all about the process and the reason why it was built.

The Chinese government plans to relocate some 9,000 people to make space for the world’s largest radio telescope. Photo: ChinaPhotoPress.

Continue reading “China relocating thousands to build record-size telescope” »

A video about how fast technological progress is going, how much technology has improved the world and the potential for technology to solve our most pressing challenges. Inspired in part by the book Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, and by the video “Shift Happens 3.0” (also known as “Did You Know”) by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

Among the things mentioned are developments and possibilities within information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The video also touches upon how several of these developments are exponential, but it does not get into the realm of technological singularity and the thoughts of people such as Ray Kurzweil, which is the topic of some of my other videos.

Continue reading “Did You Know? The Future Is Better Than You Think!” »

“I believe our civilization is going to be vastly more intelligent in the decades ahead,” Kurzweil told Time. “You can argue how we got here, but we are the species that goes beyond our limitations. We didn’t stay on the ground. We didn’t stay on the planet. Our species always transcends.”

The famous inventor and tech pundit shares a few words on why he thinks humans will soon live forever.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is holding a conference on the future of artificial intelligence that includes some of the field’s biggest names.

Among the keynote speakers at Saturday’s conference at the MIT Media Lab are author and futurist Ray Kurzweil and IBM Watson Vice President and CTO Rob High.

Panels will focus on the influence of AI in the workplace of the future and how to ensure a higher probability of positive outcomes in the field.

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Well, Tech has Ray Kurzweil as the industry’s favorite futurist; and Economists have William White as their goto futurist.

As financial markets reeled last week and fears of a fresh recession or even banking crisis sparked panic, White was more than willing to issue yet another prophecy of doom.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=MGbGVGgoSPo

An article on transhumanism in the Huff Post:

Future Transhumanist City — Image by Sam Howzit

Transhumanism–the international movement that aims to use science and technology to improve the human being–has been growing quickly in the last few years. Everywhere one looks, there seems to be more and more people embracing radical technology that is already dramatically changing lives. Ideas that seemed science fiction just a decade ago are now here.

Continue reading “Strategies for Growing the Transhumanism Movement” »

It’s that time of the year again when techno pundits are once again breathlessly telling us all about the technology and innovation trends that will be big in 2013. That’s great, but many of those predictions will be hopelessly wrong by the end of March. That’s why it’s so fascinating that Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading thinkers when it comes to the future of technology, has had such a strong track record in making predictions about technology for nearly two decades. In fact, of the 147 predictions that Kurzweil has made since the 1990’s, fully 115 of them have turned out to be correct, and another 12 have turned out to be “essentially correct” (off by a year or two), giving his predictions a stunning 86% accuracy rate. So how does he do it?

The fact is, Ray has a system and this system is called the Law of Accelerating Returns. In his new book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, Kurzweil points out that “every fundamental measure of information technology follows predictable and exponential trajectories.” The most famous of these trajectories, of course, has been the price/performance path of computing power over more than 100 years. Thanks to paradigms such as Moore’s Law, which reduces computing power to a problem of how many transistors you can cram on a chip, anyone can intuitively understand why computers are getting exponentially faster and cheaper over time.

The other famous exponential growth curve in our lifetime is the sheer amount of digital information available on the Internet. Kurzweil typically graphs this as “bits per second transmitted on the Internet.” That means the amount of information on the Internet is doubling approximately every 1.25 years. That’s why “Big Data” is such a buzzword these days — there’s a growing recognition that we’re losing track of all the information we’re putting up on the Internet, from Facebook status updates, to YouTube videos, to funny meme posts on Tumblr. In just a decade, we will have created more content than existed for thousands of years in humanity’s prior experience.

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Becoming immortal is one of mankind’s many quixotic notions that most people will relegate to the world of fantasy and science fiction. However, there is a subset of prominent scientists who believe that immortality is not only attainable, but it is something that will come to fruition in as little as 25 years. This idea is shared by men like Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil; Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk; and one of the most interesting presidential candidates outside of Donald Trump and Deez Nuts, Zoltan Istvan. All three men identify as trans-humanist, and for those who don’t know, trans-humanism is the idea that mankind will one day be able to transcend our biological limitations through the use of science and technology; not to mention, the movement has accumulated over 3 million supporters worldwide. So the question remains, with the multitude of prominent intellectuals who believe immortality is a tangible goal, just how will they go about achieving it? Well, the six answers below could possibly hold the key to everlasting life.

Number Six: Uploading Minds to Computers. Futurists believe that at some point in the near future we will be able to copy and scan all of the data that exists in our brains and upload the information into a computer. This will allow us to perpetually exist as incorporeal inhabitants of cyberspace. Of course, the idea of mind uploading is still purely science fiction, but if it ever becomes tangible, progeny could possibly live in a limitless world, that echoes notions expressed in the Matrix; minus the robot despots.

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