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Some people are conscious of their evolutionary psychology, you know. I have no conscious desire to be the tribal alpha-male with the biggest dick, and the biggest house, in order to attract the hottest baby-oven to bake my genes.

I'm usually happy-like-a-Buddist (minus any religion), largly because I "believe" that humanity will cease to exist -- either literally OR figuratively -- within this century. Thanks to accelerating technology, we'll eventually either destroy ourselves, or we'll be unrecognizably post-human.

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Unfortunately, I don't think the odds are that great for us, or other civilizations, being able to cope with increasingly destructive tech while still stuck with violent reptile-brains (especially if nanotech develops much earlier Intelligence Enhancement & AI). IMHO, the odds are 1 in 1,000 that we survive another 30 years. The odds'd be much better if us morons would seed an offworld, self-sustainable colony.

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If everyone uses the printable version, it would probably reduce the bandwith on the site as it doesn't contain the comments on the artice (of which makes up around 80% of the page) /articles/art0553.html?printable=1 . I managed to get the article on the first try and friends managed to on the second or third but very slowly, so keep trying (/ hammering the server :)

Then it will be made outright illegal, as its placed back on the 'controlled munitions' list.

Ray Kurzweil also thinks so .

Although I didn't RTFA, I can say that the Turing test is pretty useless for determining machine intelligence.

I've argued over at Kurzweil AI and AI-forum.org in several discussions for the need to analyze brain (biological or not) architecture to ultimately conclude if something is actually INTELLIGENT. The need for this comes from the many brute force and somewhat cleverly written chat bots like Alan that attempt to appear intelligent.

I hope everyone here will check out these two forums because there are lots of interesting topics that require the attention of the global nerd community. And there are plenty of wacko theories to smite too(especially on Kurzweil's site.)

They're actually tapping into the brain there, where the image reconstruction occurs. A deep-brain implant is somewhat less fun to think about than a nerve tap, but we'll have 'em in 30 years anyway.

This is becomes especially true for many people once the factual concept of the technological singularity sinks in. Suddenly the future appears much much closer, more incomprehensible, and far more shocking than most scifi can offer (by definition of Singularity).

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Very interesting - I don't suppose you could summarise how Loebner changed the rules after that?

I imagine Whalen's entry was based on CHAT, which I played with an older version of back in the early nineties when I was a psych undergrad at Carleton and was fortunate to know co-creator Andrew Patrick through the NCF. CHAT was/is a project at the Communications Research Centre of Industry Canada. You could reach it in those days from Hypertelnet (I think I was the first person to escape Maur the dragon alive ;).

Personally I think that natural language systems are a very important research area, both for regular human-machine interaction and AI (in fact, I believe these define a spectrum, but that's a WHOLE 'nuther discussion). Say you do manage to establish a Friendly AI along the lines of Lem's Golem (thanks to other posters for the links). How do you begin to communicate with it if you haven't already put work into natural language comprehension and Turing-like blackbox human seeming expression? It can't be infinitely intelligent, after all, and to start with it'll be more like (some barely imaginable Friendly AI version of) a child. It seems like people assume anything smart enough to be called "AI" will automatically understand how to make itself known to us. I don't see it that way.

Even though contests like the Loebner prize may not lead to "real" AI, they help develop useful adjuncts to it, as well as tools for more immediately useful machine interfaces. People get all amped about speech interfaces and such even for regular old computers; where do you think that work is going to magically spring from? It's a long hard incremental path.

Very interesting point. I wasn't familiar with the phrase Friendly AI, but it makes perfect sense. I'd rather have a friend than a slave.

The most interesting thing about Moore's Law, to me, is that it implies that technology advances at an exponential rate. If that's true, then there are some obvious, serious consequences ahead.

IBM announced recently that they will be producing a computer with roughly the same computing power as the human brain, possibly by 2005. That's a pretty significant milestone, if you think about it. Following through with Moore's Law, we should have a computer that is 1000 times more powerful than the human brain as soon as 2020... and a computer that is a million times more powerful than the human brain by 2035.

A million times more powerful than the human brain! What will we do with a computer that powerful? Or, maybe a better question is: What will a computer that powerful do with us?

Kurzweil has a lot of great articles on this sort of thing.

The need to have more than your neighbor leads back hundreds of thousands of years; to impress a potential mate, to look good for the tribe. It's pathetic.

That it is, but what's interesting is how a gift economy emerges when there's an abundance of resources - your success is then judged not by your material possessions but by how much you contribute to others. This is/was common among many cultures, including native americans, scientists, etc., but is gradually being "subverted" by greed in an exchange-based (capitalistic) economy. As humans increase in population exponentially, resources will only get more scarce (so greed is good for ME), until parallel exponential trends allow a return to economies of unimaginable abundance, and then, very shortly thereafter... Singularity.

I, for one, would prefer we left these things behind ASAP, or at least refined mind and body, so as not to usurp our humanity for our primatism.

I'm with you on that.

It's my #1 fear that a very high percentage of all civilizations, including our own, destroy themselves with technology vastly more advanced than their own primitive biology can cope with (hence, my .sig).

(PS. I marked you as a /. friend because I want to associate myself with link-minded individuals. Damn evolutionary psychology! :-)

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You see, the automobile and aircraft belong to the set of all transportation - which is what you should be comparing computing to - so when one form of transportation seems to have hit a plateau, another form always picks up where the former left off. What you end up with is a series of overlapping S-curves which underlies the overall exponential increase in progress. It's this pattern which you should be aware of.

Legpower -> Horsepower -> Railroad -> Automobile -> Airplane -> Jetliner -> Chemical Rocket -> Ion Propulsion -> FTL. Speed and capability increasing exponentially...

Same with computing:

Electromechanical -> Relay -> Vacuum Tubes -> Transistor -> ICs -> building 3D circuits instead of 2D -> etc.

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I think a more interesting question is can a species evolve from being an animal, driven by instinct, to a civilised being living in harmony with it's environment and each other fast enough to not destroy itself?

That is the more interesting question, and it's one I think about several times a day (yes, really), but I still think about sex 10 times more often. :-)

And no, humans are no where near that point yet.

Don't be so sure. The Technological Singularity is only a few decades away. Evolution is exponential, and we're currently on the sharp knee of that curve after having been in the flatlands for millenia.

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I'll put $40 trillion on "The Law of Accelerating Returns", and laugh at you for putting your money on "Moores Law Has To Hit A Wall Dammit!!!!1!!!1" :-)

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On the other hand, it turns out that the general phenomenon of exponential growth in computation goes back at least a hundred years, and one can make a plausible case that it extends through the entire history of life on Earth. This "generalized Moore's Law" is much more robust than the transistor version.

Don't give up hope on that 1THz laptop just yet.

I live 70 years

I watch 5 movies per week (2 hours each)

one hour of high-definition movie is about 2 GB Then, in my entire life, I will consume something like 70 TB of data. Of course, maybe there will be 3D-surround immersion imaging devices... But eventually, we will be able to store locally all the information we can consume and produce. Storing more will be useless. Eventually, we will reach a point where more and better technology will be useless.

This reminds me something I read a long time ago: Knowledge Crash. Science progresses. It takes more and more time to reach the bleeding edge of science and improve on it. In the beginning of the century, you could write Nobel-prize class papers at 20. Now, you need to be a little bit older. Eventually, to improve on science, you will need a life-long study. And we will reach a point where human life will not be long enough to improve on humanity's knowledge. I know, teaching techniques improves over time, but even then, there will be a limit. The only way out will be a longer human life... or a limitless human life. But until Kurzweil's dream (read this too) become a reality, both technology and knowledge crashes are part of our future - and more technology will not be usefull anymore...

I wonder what kind of society we will live in then... and what being human will mean. :-)

It's frustrating that /. posts this sort of thing, but never touches on serious stuff dealing with the Singularity. Bah to the moderators.

For example, the Singularity Institute has a vast array of comp-sci-related interesting stuff about General Artifical Intelligence and its role in the Singularity. The institute and volunteers are working on Flare, a programming language for GAI development.

Then we have the Foresight Institute who have a bunch of scholarly, serious things to say about nanotechnology and its implications.

Just for starters, of course. Then we have a million other resources out there, such as:

KurzweilAI.net
Extropy Institute

at which one can learn about the Singularity and associated topics in context.

But no, we get trash like the spaceship guy. Bah, bah, bah. Reason

Ray Kurzweil was predicting this by 2005 I believe. ( I don't have the book handy ) His next milestone is about 2010 when this same power should be about $1000 bucks.

Hope he's right about the rest of it. I want to live in the Culture

Well - farmland and all that count too - rice fields, etc. So it does seem like a lot of space. Plus I dont think they count antartica since it is pretty much uninhabitable. I think this just further makes us realize how important it is for humans to start expanding into the universe in order to maintain the specis. A somewhat related article here

As Kurzweil points out in his response to Rodney Brooks: these experiences are delivered via systems such as neurotransmitters and endocrine glands, which are "relatively low bandwidth phenomena and are more easily modeled than neurons".

Even if all the "human" inputs are replaced or simulated -- you've still got an added problem of a new level of "hardware breakdowns" on whatever platform is running the simulation. Suddenly you've also got to deal with the various downtimes, pauses, glitches, etc., that will break the illusion of it being the same "mind" as in the original person.

And your point is what, exactly? Our biological "hardware" breaks down and suffers from down time on a regular basis, yet people's self-images don't seem to have suffered too badly as a result.

On the contrary, as he states explicitly in the first paragraph of The Virtual Thomas Edison and elsewhere, downloading minds will come first, and will lead to strong AI.

The capacity for thought we have is an intensely complex combination of the neural processes of survival and reproduction, with all those billions of years behind it, plus the geologically recent development of a whole lot of extra cognitive juice in the frontal lobe department, plus a couple of million years of tweaking this wetware system in the context of social, tool-using behavior, plus several tens of thousands years of social behavior combined with the meta-social instruction of language, art, text and such...

Nevertheless, the processing speed of the human nervous system is effectively fixed. CPU processing speed is increasing exponentially. The lines on the graph will cross sooner than you think. As to what happens next, Vernor Vinge said it best: "Will there ever be a computer as smart as a human?" I think the correct answer is, "Well, yes. . . very briefly."

So where in hell do we get an estimate like "Strong AI by...?"

By estimating the processing power of the human nervous system, and extrapolating from trends in computer hardware. No matter where you estimate the first, it is effectively fixed, while the second is growing exponentially.

As far as I'm concerned science has barely framed the question of what that would mean... and only in qualitative terms at that.

I take it you don't accept repeatedly passing the Turing Test as a valid, objective indicator if intelligence?

extrapolate based on some law of technological development with far less than a century of statistical evidence

The trend underlying Moore's Law has remained constant for well over a century. Computing devices have been consistently multiplying in power (per unit of time) from the mechanical calculating devices used in the 1890 U.S. Census, to Turing's relay-based "Robinson" machine that cracked the Nazi enigma code ...

ANd how do you get from there to the process of downloading consciousness, despite the fact that there is not even an inkling of a glimmer of the slightest valid theory about how an active and continuously shifting neourochemical proccess of personality and intellectual template, stored memory and present cognition (not to even touch the primal, the emotional, the glandular, the spiritual) gets translated to something that can be interpreted by a machine or stored in a meaningful sense or caused to be active outside of a biological framework?

What evidence do you have for the claim that only biological systems can support consciousness in principle? We have cochlear implants and bionic eyes that let the deaf hear and the blind see.

The technology to interface with the nervous system is here today. Where exactly do you think the ever-accelerating trend of replacing biological components with nonbiological ones will stop, and why?

"Downloading" a brain is a lot more complicated than copying a harddrive. Even if we figure out how the brain works, and then figure out how this contributes to a mind (neither of which we are close to understanding at all), downloading a brain is just a duplication of you. You yourself wouldn't notice anything, but your copy's memories would depart from your at the point of the brain scan from which the copy is instigated.

Ugh, there are so many loose ends its hard to pick one to pull on. Someone mentioned before, but your body is more than just a bunch of neurons floating in fluid. Your mind, your person, your sanity rely on constant bodily feedback. Your mind isn't just the brain, its the entire nervous system, head to toe. (check out Antonio Damasio's books Decartes's Error and The Feeling of What Happens for a thrilling discussion of this).

George Dyson's book Darwin Among the Machines doesn't address the stupendously anthropocentric idea of human intelligence on silicon but does explore some possibilities behind the emergence of intelligent (not necessarily conscious) systems on their own.

I read Dyson's book after stumbling across it browsing at a bookstore, only to learn that he lived about 2 miles from me! I went down to his boat shop and introduced myself and have had a few chats with him. He talked about Kurzweil a little bit and he actually gave me a copy of The Age of Spiritual Machines. At the time I was a naive fanboy (as opposed to the seasoned fanboy I am now) and asked him if he could write something in the book (I had him sign the Darwin book earlier). He declined, asking me with the ever present Dyson eyesmile, "What am I supposed to say? Sorry this book isn't as good as mine?" It was very humble humor, don't read it wrong.

I read Spiritual Machines and enjoyed it, if for no other reason that it provided a fun exercise in saying "that's a nice idea, but it won't work for these reason..." It addresses a lot of concerns and the whole identity dissolution theme was rather interesting to play along with. Still, I don't think that his future is a likely one.

Bah, I'm just rambling. Short end to a long story: Kurzweil's ideas are fun to read and worth the time spent if you have time to kill, but are highly unlikely. Copying humans into computers is a much bigger problem than just raw clock speed, which is what he boils it down to.

Here's a link to a page about Kurzweilian Singularity. Its worth checking out if you haven't read any of this stuff before.

There's quite a good debate between Searle and Kurzweil in "Are We Spiritual Machines?". Kurzweil, along with Hofstadter, has done quite well in the popular arena with their ideas about AI arising from (inter alia) pattern matching as a basic behaviour, with intelligence emergent from sufficiently capable systems - the idea being first building the wheels, then the car, then learning how to drive. Clearly this differs from your approach, where getting from a to b, the equivalent of driving, is sufficient for most purposes (forgive me if I mischaracterise you, this seems to be the general idea behind chat type AI in general). Do you thing the emergent folks are wrong, or is there something to be gained from convergence between the 'chassis first' and the 'driver emulator' development approaches?

For those who haven't read the book and are wondering whether it's worth the 1,000 page trek, there's a good review by Kurzweil. I went through about 100 pages of the book, waiting for the big, "so what." After reading Kurzweil's review, I think that "so what" will never happen, and he explains why.

Here is Sawyer's keynote address at a recent conference. He has a great grasp of the sci-fi landscape, and I'm interested in reading a few of his novels.

Here's an excellent review (both critical and favorable at the same time) of Wolfram's book by someone of similar stature and experience - AI pioneer and successful entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil:

Reflections on Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"

Well thought out review

Wolfram is looking at a piece of the puzzle, IMHO. Though his book seems to be a tour de force of applying specific cellular automata to generate all sorts of neat things, I don't see it as being particularly new. This is more a book to bring it to the attention of people in other fields who may be able to make use of it. Rather like Mandelbrot's The Fractal Geometry of Nature.

Ray Kurzweil, the inventor, AI theorist, and author of The Age of Spiritual Machines, has a long review of the book available here.

One of the key points of the review is that while Kurzweil agrees that certain levels of complexity can be achieved, higher levels of complexity are simply not derivable from cellular automaton, the generator of Wolfram's complexities.

To quote Kurzweil: There is a missing link here in how one gets from the interesting, but ultimately routine patterns of a cellular automaton to the complexity of persisting structures that demonstrate higher levels of intelligence. For example, these class 4 patterns are not capable of solving interesting problems, and no amount of iteration moves them closer to doing so.

He also thinks that due to technological progress being a double-exponential curve, we'll get something like 200 centuries of technical progress (at the current rate of progress) over the next 100 years. So, take it or leave it I guess. Would be nice.

I mean, if we did have photographic memories and could store what we see and hear and recall it perfectly, and communicate this to others perfectly, it would currently be illegal. And yet, that is what we already do with smaller amounts of information (e. g. speech). All these devices that we create to help us improve our information processing capability (writing, the abacus, sound recording, film, computers) are just extensions of our brains, and in the not too distant future, these capabilities will be built right into our minds (Kurzweil).

So like I said. This isn't really funny. Intellectual property really means controlling what we think.

Here's the first Kurzweil article I read concerning the Singularity:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?pr intable=1
Got some funky graphs to support the claim of logarithmic technological progress.
I like the idea. I'm ready.. sign me up for the whole package.

His name is Ray not John.

sorry to reply to myself but..
Btw, here is a link to his book that
preceeded 'Age of Spiritual Machines'

Full-Length book in Html Age of intelligent Machines

Who at /. wants to deny some lonely child the pleasure of having a machine as best friend? Like, we're worried about socialization? That's just so lame. By the time today's kids grow up robots really will be the best friends to have. Remember kids, humans carry much worse diseases than cooties ... and they're kinda dumb ... and they don't fully love and appreciate you.

For me this is closely related to a topic once brought up by Ray Kurzweil. It went something like: If we have nanobot swarms (atomic level robots in this case) that could actually create any physical item including furniture, clothing, even medicine, and which could instantly reproduce and repair themsleves, we would reach a new delema. Would these companies restrict the technology so that they could charge on the old model of one charge per instance (or in a companies IDEAL world, one charge per length of use, per functionality, etc). Keep in mind that after the first swarm its pretty much a free process, its all becomes IP! Would they really restrict the potential to clothe and feed and care for virtually everyone on the planet due to our (highly corrupt) concept of money (which is one of the few things in existance which doesnt obey the laws of balance. You can create money out of NOTHING, so what is it worth, really? Ask the Federal Reserve what THEY think. You think all your money is backed up by either cash OR gold? Nope. There is not enough "money" in existance to pay off all the debt created by the Fed. See here for further details) I think that the copy protected CDs Movies etc is the first real version of this scenario on a major scale. I dont think its nearly as critical tho - in my opinion, dont make it available to the public if you dont want them to use it change it, etc. Any other argument belies the fact that if its in bits you can copy it, and if the COMPUTER IS TURNEND ON, ITS INSECURE.

Now that the con artists on Wall Street are getting into what they call 'nanotech' and leading governments are starting to restrict basic science for fear of "terrorists", it's not surprising that the Foresight gollums and Greenpeace elves are starting a wary catfight. Each seems unsure about what the hell the other is talking about, but seems to see the other as a rival to take over the world and control "The Precious" AI and nanotech. It's hilarious.

Most highly recommended for amusement value are this rant from LSMcGill who claims among other things that "Ethical and moral debate is worthless" (which someone should tell Josh Storrs Hall) and that it's a choice between Foresight and bin Laden(this stuff must be easy if you can do it in a cave in the boonies while being carpet bombed!) and this unofficial stupid Al-Gore-like plan to take over the world by 'safely building a nice Bible type gardener God'. I nearly fell off my chair! Clearly these people are all on some kind of crack.

Also amusing are these heated exchanges between Dr. Frankenstein and Unabomber wannabes on kurzweilai.net and the thousands of amazing 'Also By Anonymous' posts at Greenpeace - takes a looong time to load (from Amsterdam) but well worth it!!!

Just read the anonymous post titles and you will feel exactly like you spent a week in a 'coffee house' over there! Better than a vacation in a crackhouse. Reality ranges from +0.95 to -3 on their own weird scale. Why not wade in wherever? Like slashdot anonymous folks are welcome but unlike slashdot they don't fall out of the list due to such silly stuff as scoring.

Enjoy!

I don't know if you have such a position (or if one would call it exactly a "Fellow"), but I'd like to be a sort-of Soros Fellow based around New York City who is also an Information Technology staff member. Essentially, I'd like to wander around the Open Society Institute (as well as the larger Soros Foundations Network) and create and deploy "open source" technology for knowledge management and digital libraries (including open content) to help other Soros Foundations Network staff do their jobs better, while at the same time make available that technology outside the Soros Foundations Network under open source licenses (and integrate back in community generated improvements as well). I'd naturally be happy to instead be a more conventional Soros Fellow who just works on some Digital Library projects of my own design (I have a couple in mind) but I think helping with Soros Foundations Network's immediate knowledge management needs (or at least the subset shared by others) would serve as inspiration to create all sorts of wonderful things over the long term, which other foundations and other individuals might find of great usefulness -- and the hope is perhaps they might even improve on them a little in the process and share those improvements back to us.

While I know any foundation would not match private sector pay, what would interest me most in working with the Soros Foundations Network and get my full-time (plus some) devotion to it is if my employment agreement ensured all software I developed for the foundation could be released under an open source license of my choice or into the public domain. Also, I'd want to talk about open content licensing issues in regards to any large work undertaken in the digital library space. That would help me weave together various threads of my life into a whole cloth. Currently I work for six to eighteen months at a time doing proprietary work for clients, and then take some time to work on my own projects. In both cases I end up a little too isolated for being the most productive I could be.

Here is my perspective on the issues of our day and what I think I can help with at the foundation. You may find this of interest even if we do not work together in the future.

Due to continuing exponential growth of computer chip manufacturing capability (predicted by Moore's law), computers are predicted to be a million times bigger in capacity, faster in speed, or smaller in size (pick one at a time for a constant price) within the next couple of decades. However, exponential growth in technological capacity is also occurring in a variety of fields besides computing. Technologies for power generation, CAD/CAM, materials, nanotechnology, communications, positioning, robotics, artificial intelligence, transportation, biotechnology, and collaboration are all increasing on their own exponential curves. That growth is also interacting with the exponential changes in computing and the other fields in a synergetic way. Cars that drive themselves are just one example of a technology around the corner that will change the face of society -- something only made possible by several of these trends coming together. We are heading for an age of abundance (although the future is still far from assured given continuing risks from arms races in part driven also by technological imperatives). Raymond Kurzweil's latest web site makes the issues clear: http://www.kurzweilai.net/ And it also makes clear how there are both opportunities and dangers: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=2

When I audited a course in Soviet Politics [snipped] around 1984, one idea bounced around was that because the Soviet Union was highly centralized, if they did decide to switch to a democratic capitalist model, they could do it overnight. Yet, nothing was further from the truth when Gorbachev actually started Perestroika a few years later -- because old ways of doing things, old habits, old customs, old relationships, and old world views were slow to change. Now, fifteen years after the initiation of Perestroika, that area and its economy is still in disarray, and the people living there as well as their environment have suffered greatly as a result.

The same may well be true of Western society as we transition into this age of abundance made possible by all this technological advancement. In the age of the internet, many of the old competitive ways of doing things such as obtaining local benefits while passing on external costs no longer make much sense (if they ever did), yet the new ways are still forming, like the chaordic vision of organization advocated by Dee Hock. http://www.chaordic.org/ As we move into this age, "gift" economies may take center stage, such as the gift economy behind Linux and much of the interesting content on the internet. http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_12/barbroo k/ The realization is still slow to dawn that we as a society now know enough and have enough potential wealth to have plenty of each of nature, technology and society for everyone. Perhaps that was always true and we had just forgotten it.

Buckminster Fuller http://www.bfi.org/ brought this issue up decades ago as "Design Science", but such ideas are at odds with a lifetime of conditioning to believe in an economy of scarcity, and so they move very slowly. People are still caught in thinking we must choose between countryside, gadgetry, or humanity. We can have all of these things -- if we use the knowledge we already possess in a collaborative way to reconcile issues of self interest with the greater good through innovative practices. Perhaps not all conflicts can be resolved, but many of the basic life-support ones about adequate water, minimal food, clean air, decent shelter, livable communities, conserved biodiversity, and innovative education can. To do so requires that we include this upcoming transition to an age of abundance in our thinking about economic policy, foreign affairs, and domestic political issues. It also requires preserving the digital commons in terms of free access to basic information about the essentials of life (and how to make them). The OSCOMAK project http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak was a step in that direction, but I have not had enough time to develop it. I would hope I could continue to pursue it in some way in conjunction with the Soros Foundations Network, since for example such information might help developing nations bootstrap their economies.

What excites me about working with the Soros Foundations Network is that I would be involved with people who care about such things, and we could all be working to make similar things happen together, all made possible by far-sighted gifts from George Soros.

As the Soros Foundations Network moves forward, I would like to play a role helping articulate a vision and strategy that balances these three aspects (nature, technology, society) amidst the upcoming potential of prosperity made possible by advanced information systems and other products of the exponential growth of technology. I would also like to help create the information systems that the foundations network itself uses for internal communications, internal education, and external communications. These systems could be built using an open source collaborative model allowing the Soros Foundations Network's own needs for knowledge management to create another gift for humanity in terms of freely available tools for collaboration and knowledge management, leveraging the work of existing collaborative communities where possible, and adding to them where there are special needs.

For example, why shouldn't each on-the-go Soros Foundations Network staffer have (if they desire) a belt-worn wearable computer and tri-band cell phone to keep them in touch with the network's digital library from anywhere in the world? The hardware exists pretty much off-the-shelf for this http://www.xybernaut.com/ and will only continue to get better. The software is still something to be wrestled with though, and that is a challenge I would relish. Similarly, why shouldn't the Soros Foundations Network have a situation room with hundreds of display screens monitoring world issues, the progress of grants, and the initiatives of other foundations? Again, the relatively affordable hardware for such a room exists now off-the-shelf -- the software is the main issue. http://www.unigraf.fi/PAGES/multiscr/videowall.htm These are the sorts of things I would like to create for the Soros Foundations Network and, if done primarily as open source, for the world.

The internet also makes possible a fine grained sort of collaboration which was never practical before (such as through using threaded email lists or discussion sites like http://www.slashdot.org/ ). Such collaborations might help in advancing the Open Society Institute's mission. Yet such collaborations produce new legal issues (or, more correctly, put new twists on old ones). There is a related paper my wife and I wrote that talks about clear licensing as a way to promote collaboration which I will be presenting for the SSI Conference on Space Manufacturing in Princeton the beginning of next week. I'd be happy to send a copy after the conference is over if it is of any interest. It touches on some of the broader non-technical issues that directly effect how IT can be used for the common good.

Unfortunately, it seems many non-profits (including schools) see the internet as a potential profit center for selling information (whether that is realistic is a different issue). To that end they prevent others from making derived works from their materials (as a byproduct of restricting copying to create artificial scarcity), which in turn limits fine-grained collaboration to improve technical artifacts. So, there is much to be worked through here in terms of the bigger picture.

While large corporations can play a role in developing such technology (just wave money in front of them), they aren't exactly going to be out front cheer leading and inventing the open source information tools an open society needs (since there are many other short-term profitable things they can focus on, typically involving financing by people with proprietary interests in information management). Yet, as individuals, many of the people in such organizations would love to work on such projects and could make convincing pitches to management if given half a chance and a shred of economic justification. And many other individuals outside such organizations will give freely of their spare time to help make such efforts happen.

Leading by example is almost always a good idea. As Alan Kay said, "the best way to predict the future is to invent it". If we are to have an open society, we need to invent open technology to go with it. Somebody has to make that technology. This is an area the Soros Foundations Network can play a leadership role while at the same time helping achieve its other goals through open source efforts.

I don't know if you have such a position (or if one would call it exactly a "Fellow"), but I'd like to be a sort-of Soros Fellow based around New York City who is also an Information Technology staff member. Essentially, I'd like to wander around the Open Society Institute (as well as the larger Soros Foundations Network) and create and deploy "open source" technology for knowledge management and digital libraries (including open content) to help other Soros Foundations Network staff do their jobs better, while at the same time make available that technology outside the Soros Foundations Network under open source licenses (and integrate back in community generated improvements as well). I'd naturally be happy to instead be a more conventional Soros Fellow who just works on some Digital Library projects of my own design (I have a couple in mind) but I think helping with Soros Foundations Network's immediate knowledge management needs (or at least the subset shared by others) would serve as inspiration to create all sorts of wonderful things over the long term, which other foundations and other individuals might find of great usefulness -- and the hope is perhaps they might even improve on them a little in the process and share those improvements back to us.

While I know any foundation would not match private sector pay, what would interest me most in working with the Soros Foundations Network and get my full-time (plus some) devotion to it is if my employment agreement ensured all software I developed for the foundation could be released under an open source license of my choice or into the public domain. Also, I'd want to talk about open content licensing issues in regards to any large work undertaken in the digital library space. That would help me weave together various threads of my life into a whole cloth. Currently I work for six to eighteen months at a time doing proprietary work for clients, and then take some time to work on my own projects. In both cases I end up a little too isolated for being the most productive I could be.

Here is my perspective on the issues of our day and what I think I can help with at the foundation. You may find this of interest even if we do not work together in the future.

Due to continuing exponential growth of computer chip manufacturing capability (predicted by Moore's law), computers are predicted to be a million times bigger in capacity, faster in speed, or smaller in size (pick one at a time for a constant price) within the next couple of decades. However, exponential growth in technological capacity is also occurring in a variety of fields besides computing. Technologies for power generation, CAD/CAM, materials, nanotechnology, communications, positioning, robotics, artificial intelligence, transportation, biotechnology, and collaboration are all increasing on their own exponential curves. That growth is also interacting with the exponential changes in computing and the other fields in a synergetic way. Cars that drive themselves are just one example of a technology around the corner that will change the face of society -- something only made possible by several of these trends coming together. We are heading for an age of abundance (although the future is still far from assured given continuing risks from arms races in part driven also by technological imperatives). Raymond Kurzweil's latest web site makes the issues clear: http://www.kurzweilai.net/ And it also makes clear how there are both opportunities and dangers: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=2

When I audited a course in Soviet Politics [snipped] around 1984, one idea bounced around was that because the Soviet Union was highly centralized, if they did decide to switch to a democratic capitalist model, they could do it overnight. Yet, nothing was further from the truth when Gorbachev actually started Perestroika a few years later -- because old ways of doing things, old habits, old customs, old relationships, and old world views were slow to change. Now, fifteen years after the initiation of Perestroika, that area and its economy is still in disarray, and the people living there as well as their environment have suffered greatly as a result.

The same may well be true of Western society as we transition into this age of abundance made possible by all this technological advancement. In the age of the internet, many of the old competitive ways of doing things such as obtaining local benefits while passing on external costs no longer make much sense (if they ever did), yet the new ways are still forming, like the chaordic vision of organization advocated by Dee Hock. http://www.chaordic.org/ As we move into this age, "gift" economies may take center stage, such as the gift economy behind Linux and much of the interesting content on the internet. http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_12/barbroo k/ The realization is still slow to dawn that we as a society now know enough and have enough potential wealth to have plenty of each of nature, technology and society for everyone. Perhaps that was always true and we had just forgotten it.

Buckminster Fuller http://www.bfi.org/ brought this issue up decades ago as "Design Science", but such ideas are at odds with a lifetime of conditioning to believe in an economy of scarcity, and so they move very slowly. People are still caught in thinking we must choose between countryside, gadgetry, or humanity. We can have all of these things -- if we use the knowledge we already possess in a collaborative way to reconcile issues of self interest with the greater good through innovative practices. Perhaps not all conflicts can be resolved, but many of the basic life-support ones about adequate water, minimal food, clean air, decent shelter, livable communities, conserved biodiversity, and innovative education can. To do so requires that we include this upcoming transition to an age of abundance in our thinking about economic policy, foreign affairs, and domestic political issues. It also requires preserving the digital commons in terms of free access to basic information about the essentials of life (and how to make them). The OSCOMAK project http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak was a step in that direction, but I have not had enough time to develop it. I would hope I could continue to pursue it in some way in conjunction with the Soros Foundations Network, since for example such information might help developing nations bootstrap their economies.

What excites me about working with the Soros Foundations Network is that I would be involved with people who care about such things, and we could all be working to make similar things happen together, all made possible by far-sighted gifts from George Soros.

As the Soros Foundations Network moves forward, I would like to play a role helping articulate a vision and strategy that balances these three aspects (nature, technology, society) amidst the upcoming potential of prosperity made possible by advanced information systems and other products of the exponential growth of technology. I would also like to help create the information systems that the foundations network itself uses for internal communications, internal education, and external communications. These systems could be built using an open source collaborative model allowing the Soros Foundations Network's own needs for knowledge management to create another gift for humanity in terms of freely available tools for collaboration and knowledge management, leveraging the work of existing collaborative communities where possible, and adding to them where there are special needs.

For example, why shouldn't each on-the-go Soros Foundations Network staffer have (if they desire) a belt-worn wearable computer and tri-band cell phone to keep them in touch with the network's digital library from anywhere in the world? The hardware exists pretty much off-the-shelf for this http://www.xybernaut.com/ and will only continue to get better. The software is still something to be wrestled with though, and that is a challenge I would relish. Similarly, why shouldn't the Soros Foundations Network have a situation room with hundreds of display screens monitoring world issues, the progress of grants, and the initiatives of other foundations? Again, the relatively affordable hardware for such a room exists now off-the-shelf -- the software is the main issue. http://www.unigraf.fi/PAGES/multiscr/videowall.htm These are the sorts of things I would like to create for the Soros Foundations Network and, if done primarily as open source, for the world.

The internet also makes possible a fine grained sort of collaboration which was never practical before (such as through using threaded email lists or discussion sites like http://www.slashdot.org/ ). Such collaborations might help in advancing the Open Society Institute's mission. Yet such collaborations produce new legal issues (or, more correctly, put new twists on old ones). There is a related paper my wife and I wrote that talks about clear licensing as a way to promote collaboration which I will be presenting for the SSI Conference on Space Manufacturing in Princeton the beginning of next week. I'd be happy to send a copy after the conference is over if it is of any interest. It touches on some of the broader non-technical issues that directly effect how IT can be used for the common good.

Unfortunately, it seems many non-profits (including schools) see the internet as a potential profit center for selling information (whether that is realistic is a different issue). To that end they prevent others from making derived works from their materials (as a byproduct of restricting copying to create artificial scarcity), which in turn limits fine-grained collaboration to improve technical artifacts. So, there is much to be worked through here in terms of the bigger picture.

While large corporations can play a role in developing such technology (just wave money in front of them), they aren't exactly going to be out front cheer leading and inventing the open source information tools an open society needs (since there are many other short-term profitable things they can focus on, typically involving financing by people with proprietary interests in information management). Yet, as individuals, many of the people in such organizations would love to work on such projects and could make convincing pitches to management if given half a chance and a shred of economic justification. And many other individuals outside such organizations will give freely of their spare time to help make such efforts happen.

Leading by example is almost always a good idea. As Alan Kay said, "the best way to predict the future is to invent it". If we are to have an open society, we need to invent open technology to go with it. Somebody has to make that technology. This is an area the Soros Foundations Network can play a leadership role while at the same time helping achieve its other goals through open source efforts.

Well, this is a sigh of relief for the folks over at kurzweil's website (kurzweilai.net) Knowing you are going to live for ever must be a huge burden.

its been faster than every 18 months for a while... Moore's law is better expressed/replaced by The Law of Accelerating Returns

Mentifex, do you agree to some extent with [Raymond Kurzweil's] conception of the singlarity?

Yes, I suppose so, although I generally use the thoughts of Vernor Vinge on Technological Singularity as my prime reference on the coming arrival of a superintelligence.

A bunch of really hard-core Singularity fanatics are whipping up wild-eyed zeal for the Singularity on the http://sysopmind.com/archive-sl4/current -- Shock Level Four mailing list, although to me they seem like slackers and footdraggers who are not working hard enough on True AI, mainly for lack of an overall Theory of Mind or blueprint of what to do in AI.

One fellow in a recent SL4 Singularitarian FAQ message raised some very serious questions about how the Singularity could "go bad." IMHO, things are already going bad and the human race is ruining the lush, green planet Earth. Although I have created an Artificial Mind for others to copy and multiply the intelligence of, IMHO it is the problem of society as a whole to decide whether or not to continue with projects potentially leading to a Technological Singularity. My main interest is, How does the mind work? To find out, I have had to build an AI Mind. The rest is up to human civilization. Good-bye for now!

Three of today's greatest scientists all agree - we are looking at a future where humans become cyborgs or else risk being a loser in the game of evolution.

We will gradually turn into machines - because economics will force us to in order to compete successfully. Those who don't will likely become slaves of those who do. Those that decide to enhance their lifespan and abilities through the use of computer enhancements will survive and thrive in the future.

Kurzweil actually takes this thought out to the point where we are just software - our DNA - and therefore can transfer the essence of our being from machine to machine once the tech is fully developed.

I notice a lot of /.ers disagree. Hmm...who do I believe, the greatest thinkers of our time or a bunch of /.ers? Yep, the future looks pretty scary(or bright, depending on your POV).

There's a huge wealth of singularity-related material here on Ray Kurzweil's site, including Vinge's "The Technological Singularity". Also on the site is Ray's precis to his next book, called "The singularity is near." It expands on his earlier views of "the law of accelerating returns" from his last book "the age of spiritual machines".

There's a huge wealth of singularity-related material here on Ray Kurzweil's site, including Vinge's "The Technological Singularity". Also on the site is Ray's precis to his next book, called "The singularity is near." It expands on his earlier views of "the law of accelerating returns" from his last book "the age of spiritual machines".

There's a huge wealth of singularity-related material here on Ray Kurzweil's site, including Vinge's "The Technological Singularity". Also on the site is Ray's precis to his next book, called "The singularity is near." It expands on his earlier views of "the law of accelerating returns" from his last book "the age of spiritual machines".

hey jackass, why don't you look down the page some more?
you would have seen this.

did ray kurzweil just bogart this dude's idea for his new book?

did ray kurzweil just bogart this dude's idea for his new book?

Not so much a link as an address. But I digress...

You bothered to point out that the link was just the address....So, why didn't you post the link ?

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