singularity

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Sitting in a classroom, listening to students explain their approach to an assignment to develop an initiative to impact the lives of a billion people over ten years, one could be forgiven for taking it all with a grain of salt.

After all, student projects like this are usually peppered with holes, naive assumptions, and unrealistic goals.

But here at Singularity University, things are a little different. This group project, which aims to flip the car sharing movement on its head and bring affordable transportation to the masses, started less than two weeks ago but has already … Read more

Steve Guttenberg, the Audiophiliac, joins the show today to talk about the coming "singularity."

For those of you not from the future, the "singularity" is a concept from Raymond Kurzweil's book "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology." According to him, human beings will eventually live forever because of nano-machines that will repair our bodies and miracle drugs. That's about as deep as the show gets today. Again, you don't really want us to be discussing the ever-increasing amounts of entropy in the universe.

Steve is generally disappointed with the quality of the sound systems at the New York auto show. You'd expect that a $200,000 Bentley would have pretty great speakers, but you'd be wrong.

Also on today's show, we've got more Twitter stories: 1) Justin is attempting to bring back the $5-dollar Italian BMT from Subway with the world's first Twitition (that's Twitter + petition); 2) Post Secret meets Twitter with SecretTweet.com. Honestly, it's one of the most depressing Web sites ever. Kind of like a not-funny fmylife.com.

Finally, it's the weekend, so we know you have the time. Be sure to send in your call backs! We need them!

The "Singularity" is that postulated point in time when technological progress, led by machine intelligences designing their own replacements at an ever-increasing rate, becomes so rapid that we mere humans can no longer comprehend or control it.

It's a popular concept in science fiction. Some people believe that this point will eventually be reached in the real world. I think that those people are drastically underestimating the other limits to progress, such as bandwidth limits for data gathering, the difficulty of comprehension, and the inverse relationship of speed to reliability in data analysis.

They're also confusing … Read more

While we inadvertently promote a chain restaurant's free luncheon, we also talk a lot about space. Which annoys Brian Cooley to no end. We talk about Google Mars, and contacting the ISS and the NASA-sponsored Singularity university. But he gets his revenge when he announces the retirement of the inventor of the BMW-butt.

Google Earth adds Mars roving http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10154741-52.html

Google privacy counsel facing criminal charges http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F02%2F02%2F2337207 https://www.privacyassociation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1745&Itemid=228… Read more

Starting this summer, some of the world's leading thinkers in exponentially growing technologies will be gathering annually at NASA Ames Research Center, in the heart of Silicon Valley, for 10 weeks of discussions on how to change the future. And you could join them.

The gatherings will be part of what is known as Singularity University, a brand-new academic institution co-founded by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, X Prize chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, and former Yahoo Brickhouse head Salim Ismail, and anyone can apply.

Singularity University is less a traditional university and more an institution that will feature … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--I hope Intel warned the Luddites and pessimists away at the door, because the chipmaker had a lot of bullish statements Thursday about its belief that computers will become smarter than humans.

At the Intel Developer Forum here, Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner showed off a number of technologies in computing, robotics, and communication that he cited as evidence that Ray Kurzweil's concept of "singularity," when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence, is impending. Demonstrations spotlighted the wireless transmission of electrical power, dextrous robots with new sensory abilities, a direct interface to the brain, programmable materials that can be used for shape-shifting devices such as resizable cell phones, and silicon photonics that enables chips to communicate with photons rather than electrons.

"We're making steady progress toward Ray Kurtzweil's singularity," Rattner said.

Intel of course remains at its heart a chipmaker, and Rattner began with a brief tour, assisted by Mike Garner, senior technologist for Intel's emerging materials group, of various successors to the current complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process used to make processors. Future ideas that pack ever more computing capacity into a given volume include spintronics, quantum computing, carbon nanotubes.

Long live CMOS And CMOS itself still has some legs, Rattner said, with recent progress shrinking the size of circuitry elements to their current size of 45 nanometers, or billionths of a meter.

"When will silicon run out of gas? Can it fuel this exponential growth for 40 years to come?" Rattner asked. "We got very close to the limit at 45 nanometers. We were able to innovate our way out of what seemed an unsolvable problem...We've got some challenges ahead of us. It looks like 32 nanometers is on track, but you go beyond that and it looks a little bit iffy."

… Read more

Yes, Microsoft is pursuing a different type of operating system, which goes by the name of Midori. And, no, it's not the next version of Windows.

The Midori subject has gotten a great deal of attention in recent days, with the fires only fanned by the fact that Microsoft has refused to say anything about Midori beyond confirming that it is an "incubation project" within the company. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley noted its existence in her Microsoft 2.0 book, while more recently SDTimes posted a bunch of details on Midori based on internal documents.

From … Read more

Science decided to recreate the perfect film star. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Currently on display at the London Science Museum is a thing, no, a person, no, a perthing called Heart Robot.

Like the finest human diva, Heart Robot responds instantly to coddling, cuddling and the attentions of an ever-loving agent.

Heart Robot has a heart that breathes, a belly that beats and skin that responds to every movement, touch and shriek.

Its visible signs of happiness include limp limbs, lowered eyelids, a slowed heartbeat and relaxed breathing.

(Those of you who think these … Read more

There was plenty of TechFest coverage last week, but we have a couple more bits to add to the mix.

Up now are several videos from last week, including highlights of a walk-around I did with Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer.

There was a lot last week--from Micropedia, to the much-touted WorldWide Telescope to a new operating system called Singularity. To make it easier to find it all, check out this roundup of all our print and video coverage.

Also worth checking out is a video that colleague Kara Tsuboi did looking at some image-editing software … Read more