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In one of his lectures he talks about the future of our society, especially that related to genetic engineering and how the future of science will effect our evolution.

Evolution up to know, has proceeded slowly, about one bit of DNA changes every year. If we take it into our own hands (ignoring the moral implications and side effects) we could alter our own DNA at a far greater rate. Add that with the ability to predict what the changes will do, we can evolve at a far greater rate.

Our children will be better, faster, and stronger. I mean who initially would say no to "Sir, would you like me to remove the possibility of Downs Syndrome from your child"? Now replace Downs Syndrome with Diabetes or with Weak Minded or with Scrawny. You can see that it isn't that unreasonable or that far away.

Of course, when you put yourself in Stephen Hawking's shoes, a man who biology abandoned a long time ago, it makes perfect sense to imagine that intelligent humans can prevent the types of conditions that completely disable a person without the aid of a machine.

I think there are several conclusions you could come to:

1. The book (or mathematics) is wrong
2. The universe is not a deterministic system
3. Random numbers do not exist

I would lean towards 2 - aren't quantum processes such as radioactive decay non-deterministic? This seems to be a matter of opinion, even among great physicists. If, however you hold that the universe is deterministic, I suppose you would have to come to the conclusion that nothing is entirely random.

As a side not, noise does not imply non-determinism: gaussian white noise, for example, is entirely deterministic (depending on the above ;-) ), and is generated in a system where a large number of "random" events summed together contribute to the whole. For example chaotic movements of electrons in a hot conductor giving rise to electrical noise. In such a case, the noise is in practice unpredictable, so is treated as non-deterministic.

I do not know how serious "seriously impaired" is. But even a large keyboard may require too much mobility/flexibility to operate efficiently. While it does not seem from your post that her condition is as bad as Hawking's (ALS a.k.a. Lou Gherig's Disease (sp.?)), she may benefit from an interface similar to his.

According to this old write-up on Hawking's website, he uses a simple DOS interface. A cursor moves across the screen (through the letters?), and he stops it on the desired letter with a click of a button. Now, this could be improved upon easily if your grandmother has slightly more mobility, though it requires some reaction time. Add word-guessing software (and sentence guessing) that learns her most common words to help speed up text entry, as per the suggestions above. I envision a two button device... a hacked mouse for example... where the left button selects the letters from a scrolling cursor, and the right button selects the words that pop up as suggestions simultaneously.

A cursor scrolling through the letters, stopped on "G"... "A" was entered first:

A B C D E F G etc...

She enters: A G

Suggestions List: (pops up under the scrolling cursor, so she can continue to enter letters if she likes, as the suggestions narrow)

AGE

AGO

AGORAPHOBIA

- - - - - - - -

AGE COMES BEFORE BEAUTY.

AGED BEEF TASTES BETTER.

etc.

As she becomes accustomed to the software, you can gradually increase the scroll time through the letters; and, as she enters more and more text, the system will get better at guessing what she will say and rank the probable selections higher in the list. Also, depending on how many buttons she can use (2 is quite enough), you can add certain functions to combinations of clicks. For example, Hawking lacks an "undo" button. Here, you could make it 'right click - left click - right click' in relatively quick succession. Or, to switch to numbers and punctuation, you could program it so that she pressess both buttons simultaneously, or set it to another combo, etc.

Finally, a quick google shows a project working on open source (albeit VB) software to improve upon Hawking's interface while keeping in mind the poor mobility of ALS victims.

From the description, i immediatly thought of professor Hawking... He suffered from disability and reduce mobility like the one you describe...

You might want to check is web page

...Most stars will have burnt out in another 15 billion years or so, and the universe will be approaching a state of complete disorder, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But Freeman Dyson has shown that, despite this, life could adapt to the ever-decreasing supply of ordered energy, and therefore could, in principle, continue forever.

which referrs to freeman dyson's paper "Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe

...The general conlusion of the analysis is that an open universe need not evolve into a state of permanent quiescence. Life and communication can continue for ever, utilizing a finite store of energy, if the assumed scaling laws are valid.

so lets hope that those scaling laws hold up :D

(and yes, the kind of life he's referring to would be quite different than the kind that you and I are familiar with...)

Not only does God play dice, but...he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. - Stephen Hawking

Just wanted to correct that quote, since it's such a good one.

In answer to Einstein's quote of 'God does not play dice', Hawking said:

"Einstein was very unhappy about this apparent randomness in nature. His views were summed up in his famous phrase, 'God does not play dice'.

Thus it seems Einstein was doubly wrong when he said, God does not play dice. Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen."

Public Lectures - Does God Play Dice?

How about this:
Tim Berners-Lee - invented the web
Alan Turing - pioneer in computing
Stephen Hawking - international physics genius

...to name but a few. All British...
Not lessening the acheivements of the USA, but get some world perspective! This is exactly why so many Brits get pissed at so many Americans.
And Einstein (German) had a reasonably large involvement in the development of atom bomb physics.

His first A Brief History of Time goes into standard theoretical physics with some exploration about black holes, etc.

His most recent book The Universe in a Nutshell has lots of great explanations, in layman terms, of modern theory. He covers p-brans, M-theory, lots of relativity type material. I highly recommend this one.

Professor Hawking also has several lectures on his website that can give you information on more specific aspects of his research.

this material will give you enough background in theoretical physics to wax philosophical and impress your geek friends with talk of alternate universes and multiple dimension objects. At the very least it is interesting material.

The Illustrated Brief History of Time
The original version is cheaper, but the illustrations go along way to making concepts easy to grasp for someone with very little physics background.

The Universe in a Nutshell
This book is a follow up to A Brief History of Time with updated information. This book is illustrated as well.

Anyone interested in more info about Stephen Hawking can check out his website.

• Steven Hawking

Stephen Hawking would probably get annoyed if we asked him to do an interview and misspelled his name.

It looks like Dr Hawkings wheelchair computer runs on Windows using communication software from Words Plus. The software he runs is called "Equalizer" but it might be custom since it isn't listed as a product on their website.

Reminds me of the professor's chair.

But in order for it to be going relentlessly into chaos, we would have to assume that 15 billion years ago, the universe was at its most organized, no?

I do realize that entropy cannot apply to a subset of the closed system - my question was more related to whether or not the Universe can be determined to be a closed system.

Since people seem to like Hawking, here's a quote from him...

...the theory that the universe has existed forever is in serious difficulty with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law, states that disorder always increases with time. Like the argument about human progress, it indicates that there must have been a beginning. Otherwise, the universe would be in a state of complete disorder by now, and everything would be at the same temperature.

reference, and a good lecture here.

Unless you have a really weird voice activated unicycle for a chair...

You mean like this fellow?

Though, I think his chair is saliva activated...But no argument about how much of his brain he's using.

• • No. Perhaps he's happy the way he is. Perhaps ALS is what has defined him as he is today... would you risk losing him? Perhaps, without ALS, he'd be flipping burgers.

    Now you're just being silly. First of all, Hawkings was already a famous scientist long before the symptoms of ALS began to appear, Second, he isn't "happy the way he is" -- if you read about him, you'll find that he considered suicide when he first realized he had ALS, and in fact many people with ALS do kill themselves. Thirdly, there is no evidence that people with ALS are more intelligent than normal in general.

While I agree that he's being silly, perhaps flippant :-), with his remark about Hawking and burgers, there is this article to consider.

Hawking was not really a "famous scientist" when his ALS was discovered at 21. He had just started down the path and here he clearly states that his disease gave him the perspective to focus his life to the cause of Science. Curious that in this account he doesn't mention the suicide that you say he contemplated.

Also, you'll find from his own quotes that he tries to live without regrets.

I'm concerned that Science will one day cure all of our challenges. Eliminating the schizophrenia of Michaelangelo, the autism (?) of Einstein and the deafness of Beethoven. Apparently, from your disparagement of bioethicism, you aren't concerned with this or any consequence of technological advance.

Firstly, for a link of Stephen Hawkings publications , check out this pdf. Most of the publications listed are in scientific journals. Given that Hawking publishs in scientific journals, calling him a scientist is correct.

As for the rest of your post, I'm not sure that you properly understand what science is. In a nutshell, science can be described as a process for finding the best possible explaination for the observed world. All science requires assumptions. That the laws of physics are constant is a common one. As a chemist, all of my work requires an assumption that atoms exists (plus many other assumptions). As there is no evidence against this, the assumption is resonable, especially given that no completing theory can come close to explaining all of the observations in the chemical world.

There's a funny bit on Hawking's site where he describes his speech synthesizer.

He says, "One's voice is very important. If you have a slurred voice, people are likely to treat you as mentally deficient: Does he take sugar? This synthesiser is by far the best I have heard, because it varies the intonation, and doesn't speak like a Dalek. The only trouble is that it gives me an American accent."

hawking.org.uk to learn more on the interviewee

stephen hawking seems to buy into the anthropic principle, too! it's all way over my head, but i like how he introduces it: "One can make the Anthropic Principle precise, by using Bayes statistics. . ." :)

Or you could go straight to the source.

The problem with spacetime extrapolations like black holes, wormholes, etc... is that the physicists who come up with those theories have no clue as to the actual physical mechanisms that give rise to the phenomenon we abstractly refer to as spacetime curvature. They just know that things fall at a certain rate near massive bodies and that clocks slow down in a gravitational field. From that limited understanding, they feel they are knowledgeable enough to extrapolate all sorts of cockamamie and unfalsifiable theories that are only fit for star-trek episodes.

Kip "Wormhole" Thorne, Stephen Hawking & co claim that, according to their understanding of spacetime and relativity, it is possible to travel in time in principle. The amazing truth is that nothing can move in spacetime, by definition! Spacetime is frozen from the infinite past to the infinite future. So much so in fact that Sir Karl Popper compared Einstein's spacetime to "Parmenides' block universe" in which nothing ever changes. This says a lot about their supposed undertanding of spacetime, IMO. Time travel is pure crackpottery. If you are gullible enough to swallow physics from people who treat time travel as a worthy subject of physics, I've got a bridge to sell you.

General realativity, wormholes, space-time warping, etc. http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/warps.html.

-sd

Fix Steven Hawking? Or is his amazing intellect _caused_ by the fact his brains don't do much with his body?

Hawking was brilliant long before he came down with ALS. Though, you would still have to think it's kept him focused on physics instead of sex, drugs, and rock&roll, like some of his contemporaries.

• genetically modified food on every dinner table,
• (the SF nightmare of) genetically modified soldiers in every army,
• genetic therapy for a variety of illnesses (e.g, Genetic treatments to regrow severed spinal tissue),
• Genetic testing of babies for 'defects' (inc. heart disease, ALS, wrong sex, wrong hair color, too short, etc.)
• Gene splice designed bacteria generating otherwise rare hormones
• genetically engineered 'live' vaccines (harmless but carrying critical marker proteins to sensitize the body to the 'dangerous' target microbe)