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This is one of the first things I came across while surfing the web back in high school.

Of course it doesn't really promote Satanism, but whatever, close enough :)

It is arguable that it is a meme ... "Meme (pron. meem): A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic."

• Mutual Organ Donation Society
• Mutual Organ Donation Society

I don't know if this is an urban legend or not, but I had heard that petroleum is actually more valuable as a lubricant than as a fuel, because we can't yet create synthetic lubricants which are as good as the real thing. The danger is that all of our machines may literally grind to a halt when we run out of oil, even if the machines themselves are solar/nuclear/etc powered.

True and false. There ARE in fact things we can put together out of carbon which are superior to any petroleum-based lubricant. Unfortunately, no one has done so commercially. This is mostly because it's expensive. You can see pictures of buckyballs here. CMU has a buckyball project. So does SUNY. You could make your own fullerenes. There are a number of fullerene-related patents.

That last page produces the real gem: this patent is for a "Magnetic recording medium comprising a solid lubrication layer of fullerene carbon having an alkyl or allyl chain". The abstract reads:

A magnetic disk has a magnetic medium or a protection film, and a solid lubrication film formed on the medium or the protection film and consisting of a fullerene C60, C 70 or C84 and an alkyl or allyl-chained fullerene. The lubrication film provides the disk with high mechanical durability and high linear recording density.

There are further supporting references. The Buckyball: An Excruciatingly Researched Report (which gives its references at the bottom) contains this quote:

A fully fluorinated buckyball would create the slickest molecular lubricant known to man, C60F60. The uses for a molecular lubricant are boundless, limited only by our imagination.

Of course, I don't know that anyone's actually assembled such a molecule. I located an article called Just Rolling Along which discusses tungsten disulfide, which is similar to buckyballs. It is, however, expensive to produce, and difficult to make in quantity; This is what we're waiting for. Incidentally, I did find one article that gave hope for this, under the heading "Cheap Buckyballs". Amusingly enough (to me) the anchor tag is named "cheapballs". I guess when you're hopped up on this much sugar all kinds of things are funny. If anyone has access to the text of "Journal of Organic Chemistry, March 8" perhaps they could help out here.

So in summary, there ARE better lubricants than those cracked from crude. They are not, however, currently on the market, as they are expensive and time-consuming to produce. However, science marches on, and we'll solve this problem, too.

It makes decisions based on programming. So let's say that it cuts too close to another car for whatever reason, and in the collision the driver of the other car dies. Is the programmer liable?

No. If Windows 2000 crashes, causing a company thousands of dollars in downtime etc, do they call up microsoft and sue the specific programer who caused the bug?

After all, he is the one who effectively made the decision to cut that close to the other car.

How? Cutting to close to the car could be a bug, you dont say that a programmer decided to crash the system when they write something with a bug in it.

This quote is slightly off-topic, but its a good example. (The paper itself is not really relevant to the topic, but you can find it here.)

It may be difficult to get used to dealing with a volatile distributed entity. Suppose your robot made some really stupid mistake. You are mad at it. The robot explains that the action was caused by a temporary condition in the experimental semantic subnetwork and suggests to present to you a hundred-terabyte volume of incremental archives, memory snapshots and audit trails from numerous servers involved in the making of the unfortunate decision, containing a partial description of the state of the relevant parts of the system at the time. If you can even find the culprit, it's non-material, distributed, and long gone. Now, what do you kick ?

If you think nature is "static", you should look at how many people it kills every year due to various new creations. Nature itself is filled with self-replicating, mutating, DNA sharing organisms. And in case you haven't noticed it, most of them view you as LUNCH. Yes, you do have defenses, but those defenses fail every year for millions of people.

For more info, see my post regarding "Ye Are Gods", from the Sept. 24, 2000 Extropy Institute archives.

If you think nature is "static", you should look at how many people it kills every year due to various new creations. Nature itself is filled with self-replicating, mutating, DNA sharing organisms. And in case you haven't noticed it, most of them view you as LUNCH. Yes, you do have defenses, but those defenses fail every year for millions of people.

For more info, see my post regarding "Ye Are Gods", from the Sept. 24, 2000 Extropy Institute archives.

Here I have a whole bunch of links to further information about wearable computers and "enhanced reality" for anyone interested:

• A Brief History Of Wearable Computing
• Affective Computing
• BBC News: Japan Eyes Wearable PC
• Charmed Technology
• CNET.com: 10 Technologies That Will Take Over - #8
• CNN: Excuse Me, Is That A Monitor On Your Head?
• CNN: MIT 'Cyborgs' Bridge Gap Between Man And Machine
• CNN: Turn On, Jack In, And Geek Out With Wearable PC
• CNN: Wearable Systems May Cut Labor, Save Time
• CNN: Xybernaut Now Has Linux For Wearable PCs
• CNN Poll: Do You Want A Wearable Computer?
• Computer For The 21st Century, The
• ComputerWorld: Wearable Computers - Digitally Attired
• Context-Aware Computing
• CTHEORY: Body Delirium
• DisplayWear Incorporated
• Extreme Computing
• Handykey, Inc. Wearable Computing Page
• Houston Chronicle: Future Phones Home, The
• ICBorg
• Intelligent Information Filters And Enhanced Reality, by Alexander Chislenko
• ISWC- International Symposium on Wearable Computers
• Marvin Elizondo's Wearable Computing Page
• MicroOptical
• MIT-IDEO Wearables Intro
• NetWork Fusion: Armani, Karan, Xybernaut? 02/01/999
• PBS: Scientific American Frontiers Transcripts - Inventing The Future (Aired Fall 1996)
• PC World News: Wearable PC To Debut At Comdex
• PopSci.com Headlines: CyberFashions
• Slashdot Articles: Wearable PCs Under Linux
• Smart Rooms
• TechWearable
• TekGear
• Wearable Computer
• Wearable Computing Intro Page
• Wearable Computing Portal
• Wearable Computing Resource Page
• WearableGear.com
• Wearables Central
• Wearables WebCrawler Search Engine
• Wearables Webring
• WearableTech Corp.
• Wired News: Annotated Reality
• Wired News: Intel Chips In On Future Devices
• Wired News: Waiting For Wearable Wearables
• Wraith Projects
• Xybernaut

Impossible means no one's done it yet.

http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/Nano.html

http://www.itri.loyola.edu/nanobase/

http://www.dvtech.com/pages/pages/Tec NANO.htm

Nanotechnology is very intersting. Hope you enjoy writing the paper. :-)

Thoughtful discussions (rather than the usual doom and gloom predictions) regarding the consequences of genetic engineering and technological progress in computers, AI, etc. may be found in the Extropy Institute's Mailing List. There are many years of discussions in the Archives.

Some additional sources of useful information include the The Transhumanist FAQ and the Journal of Transhumanism . The World Transhumanist Association is an umbrella organization for many regional transhumanist groups.

The people involved in these organizations actively discuss and investigate the many issues and concerns related to our future evolution as a species.

The problems mentioned by Bill Joy in his interview point out how poorly informed he is. Anyone who has been in the computer industry as long as he has, should know enough to "read the manual(s)" before offering uninformed opinions. The problems regarding nanotechnology run amok have been discussed for many years in the sci.nanotech newsgroups as well as at conferences for the Foresight Institute's Senior Associates. The basic solutions involve making "safe" (e.g. reviewed, open source) designs available while at the same time developing defenses against nanotech run amok. The Extropy Institute's Mailing List Archives, for example, contains recent discussions about encouraging the availability of "almost anything" manufacturing boxes (similar to Star Trek "replicators"), while discouraging the availability of "everything" boxes.

Diamondoid or saphire based molecularly assembled nanobots used in medical applications will greatly exceed the capabilities in of "biobots" built on existing genetic machines (DNA, enzymes, bacteria, cells, etc.) because they are stronger, can pack the "code" more densely, and can have more complex programs than the rather "ad hoc" designs that nature has provided us with. Most of the first volume of Nanomedicine is devoted to determining exactly what the physical limits will be on power, communication, mobility, etc. Most of the applications will be discussed in Volumes II and III.

Joy may be right that the technology poses a threat to the "human species", but that begs the question of "Why would you want to run on obsolete hardware?". Anyone who understands even a little astronomy knows that galactic hazards doom biological human forms to death at some point. Only those humans who choose to upload have any hope of living the trillion or so years that seems quite feasible. So while the hopes for biochemical humans are rather dismal even with Nanomedicine, the long term prospects for humanity, based on what nanotechnology allows are quite good indeed.

As far as nanotechnology background material goes, the best (nontechnical) source is Engines of Creation. Other references can be found in Eric Drexler's CV.

This issue has been explored since, like forever, in science fiction. There is now even a name for it: "The Singularity", coined by writer and mathematician Vernor Vinge. My gist of what it means is the point at which any and all "normal" humans will be unable to grasp, predict, or participate in, the further advancement of technology.

http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/naked_pics/

It's a conspiracy I tell you!

Yes, but Christians really do need to be monitored. They're nutters, and they hunt in packs.

www.infidels.org

www.lucifer.com

You're wrong. Ever hear of burden of proof? Occam's Razor? A load of power-hungry cultists writing the bible is much simpler than invoking the ineffable. I'm much more likely to beleive quantum physics than christian/muslim/hindu etc. doctrine. I have faith in nothing. Faith is belief without justification. The essence of faith is giving up your questioning, doubt and reason. I believe in some things, but only if they are not disproved.

The leap of _belief_ required to say the bible is not the word of the christian/jewish god is much smaller than that required to believe the bible is the word of that god. The christian god is no more valid than the roman pantheon, the irish pagan gods and nonhuman races, the egyptian gods. The silliest thing is - you christians are not even worshipping your *own* god - you're worshipping the jew's god. Most people in america are of european descent. You should be worshipping the roman gods, the celtic gods, or the norse gods, not some random (and bloodthirsty) god from a group of sheep farmers from a fault valley who'd been out in the desert too long.

www.infidels.org
www.lucifer.com
virus.lucifer.com

You're wrong. Ever hear of burden of proof? Occam's Razor? A load of power-hungry cultists writing the bible is much simpler than invoking the ineffable. I'm much more likely to beleive quantum physics than christian/muslim/hindu etc. doctrine. I have faith in nothing. Faith is belief without justification. The essence of faith is giving up your questioning, doubt and reason. I believe in some things, but only if they are not disproved.

The leap of _belief_ required to say the bible is not the word of the christian/jewish god is much smaller than that required to believe the bible is the word of that god. The christian god is no more valid than the roman pantheon, the irish pagan gods and nonhuman races, the egyptian gods. The silliest thing is - you christians are not even worshipping your *own* god - you're worshipping the jew's god. Most people in america are of european descent. You should be worshipping the roman gods, the celtic gods, or the norse gods, not some random (and bloodthirsty) god from a group of sheep farmers from a fault valley who'd been out in the desert too long.

www.infidels.org
www.lucifer.com
virus.lucifer.com

What puzzles me is how creationists can possibly think that christianity is true... There were equally valid religions before the chritianity/judaism/islam* block (*they're all pretty similar really). What makes christianity any more valid than the Roman Pantheon, or the Greek Pantheon, or Hindu, or Sumerian, or Aborigine, or Pagan Irish, or Mayan, or Egyptian, or any other of the innumerable religions that exist (many of which were popular when christianity was just a twinkling in a power-mad control-freak would-be priest's eye...) The basis of religion is unquestioning faith. That is to say, by definition, belief in the absence of proof. Science has no absolute truths - there are only theorems, that, if invalidated, are discarded. What has relgion done for us? millenia of stupid wars, suppresion of the social and intellectual development of the populace, etc, etc. What has science? Pretty much the entire modern world, good and bad - but you certainly wouldn't even be reading this without it. www.infidels.org www.lucifer.com

Yes, and I'm all for it! Actually, I think we need more of this sort of thing to raise the cyncism of the sheeple, so that humanity can throw off the self-imposed shackles of religion.

Religion's one big group delusion that is only around because it makes people feel better by giving them false hope.

www.infidels.org
www.lucifer.com

It is likely that much of what the NSA dose it treason.. That is to say it should be unlawful for the U.S. gov. to hide philosophy, theorey, or motivations from the public (during peacetime).. and it should never be able to prevent the development of things in the public sector. The NSA occasionally comes in and tells some mathematician to stop work on whatever he is working on and not to talk about it. This is wrong in so many ways.. All I can say is, if your thinking about working for the NSA, you should serious reconsider.. just imagine not being able to talk about what you do all day. That is not living.

Anywho, very few things piss me off quite as much as the though that the NSA developes things which could help us all and then sits on them.. that is treason.

Jeff

BTW> Not being able to talk about your life is even worse if you take memes or related ideas seriously (ala Church of Virus). The idea is that a very importent part of you is contained in the content of your thoughs (as opposed some metaphyiscal mumbo-jumbo) and communicating with other people is a kind of imortality (maybe the only kind you would want anyway). The point being it really sucks to dedicate most of your life to something that will sit in a box.

www.infidels.org

www.lucifer.com

virus.lucifer.com

www.infidels.org

www.lucifer.com

virus.lucifer.com