John K. Davis, Independent Distributor, SendOutCards

Skinny Security

Unlocking cars and activating devices securely could soon be a matter of simply touching them, thanks to a communications system that transmits data across the skin. In an August 4 article at NewScientist.com this new technology from German company Ident Technology is described. Here are a few words from the piece:

...the system operates at just 30 nanoamperes, making it entirely safe for people to use. The code transmitted by the electric signal allows cars to be unlocked, doors opened or other devices started... A credit-card-sized system should run for up to three years without a change of battery and could cost only a few dollars to make.

3 Laws Unsafe

In a news release from Atlanta, Georgia, the Singularity Institute made an announcement in anticipation of 20th Century Fox's July 16th release of I, Robot.

The essence of the statement is caputered in the title: “3 Laws Unsafe”. This link points to a website that explores the problems presented by Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, the principles intended for ensuring that robots help, but never harm, humans.

The Three Laws are widely known and are often taken seriously as reasonable solutions for guiding future AI. But are they truly reasonable? “3 Laws Unsafe” addresses this question.

Tyler Emerson, Executive Director of the Singularity Institute: “The release of I, Robot is a wonderful chance to engage more people about the perils and promise of strong AI research. The constraints portrayed in I, Robot appear extremely dangerous and excessively lacking as an approach to moral AI. The Institute’s detailed approach, by contrast, utilizes advanced technical research for creating a mind humane in nature.”

“3 Laws Unsafe” will include articles by respected authors, weekly poll questions, a blog for announcements and commentary related to I, Robot and the Three Laws, a free newsletter subscription, and a thorough reading list with books on relevant topics such as the ethics and future of AI, accelerating change, cognitive science and nanotechnology.

The Singularity Institute’s Advocacy Director, Michael Anissimov: “It is essential that more considerate thinkers get involved in dialogues of AI ethics and strategy. Although AI as a discipline has a dubious history of false starts, the accelerating growth of computing power and brain science knowledge will very likely result in its creation at some point. In the past few years, technologists such as Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy have been informing the public about this critical issue; but more awareness is now needed.”

Your Body's Power Grid

This is interesting. Microsoft has a patent on a new kind of network: Your body.

The software giant has received a U.S. patent for a "method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body." An application for the patent, No. 6,754, 472, was filed in 2000 and awarded this week.

Microsoft proposes linking portable devices such as watches and other wearable devices, keyboards, displays, and speakers using the conductivity of "a body of a living creature."

Considering Enhancement

This article is interesting: Strange food for thought. Here is a short excerpt:

"We're about to be handed a bunch of powerful new capabilities ... to refashion ourselves, improve ourselves," notes Martha Farah, a director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, in an e-mail. "We should always think through the ethical consequences of changing ourselves and our lives, for the individual and for society."

Print Me A New Shirt

A story in Wired this morning caught my eye. It seems a famous clothes designer has perfected a system that will easily port to computerized design and 3-D printing.

Normally, clothes are made by weaving thread or yarn into fabric, which is then snipped and stitched to create, say, a dress. The A-POC method requires no sewing. Thread goes into the loom, the dress comes out. Specifically, a flattened tube of material emerges that contains the finished shirt, skirt, or pants, which need only to be cut out along the faint outline already woven or knit into the fabric. Moreover, the material can be snipped anywhere without unraveling, a feature that allows for complete customization. A pair of scissors and a flirtatious spirit can turn a turtleneck into a plunging V-neck.

But the reporter also points out how the same technology could easily be used for many other products.

Any material that can be turned into a fiber can work in the A-POC process, which gives Miyake the opportunity to produce anything from shoes to portable shelters. The A-POC team already has developed a series of colorful beanbag-like chairs and sofas that will come to market this year. The studio is also interested in a new corn-based fiber that could be used to construct other types of furniture, and it recently developed a resin-linen blend that a University of Tokyo lab found to be as strong as steel.

A revolution is moving the world quickly toward molecular manufacturing and an economy turned upside down. What will it mean when anyone can have any material object for free? Food, clothes, transportation, spacecraft; any object made of molecules essentially free of cost, free of human labor, free to be created by anyone with a clever idea?

Speaker Suggestions?

The Institute for Accelerating Change (AIC) has been sponsoring a Futurist Salon in Los Angeles for awhile, not unlike the Futurist Salon here in San Diego. The LA group is developing a Futurist Dinner Series as a funding and networking opportunity for the IAC. The dinners will have one distinguished futurist sharing an intimate dinner with 10-20 interested guests. The speaker will give a short speech at the beginning of the evening and spend the rest of his or her time talking candidly with guests.

Jessica Richman, the leader of the San Diego Futurist Salon, and I have been in communication and we want to create a similar Futurist Dinner Series here in San Diego. The key to its success will be finding distinguished futurists who will join us for an evening of conversation. If you know of potential candidates in the San Diego area, please email me their contact information and a little information about their expertise or talent and we will see if a San Diego Futurist Dinner Series can be a happening thing.

The Correct Path

I am a fan of Larry Lessig's blog, but it is his recent short opinion piece in Wired that moved me to tears. It is unlikely to move you to the same degree, but his message is one that I have become evermore convinced is the essential missing priority that will be required if we are to survive the next few decades. It is my deepest prayer that humanity will embrace this way of thinking as soon as possible.

This is the core message:

If we can't defend against an attack, perhaps the rational response is to reduce the incentives to attack. Rather than designing space suits, maybe we should focus on ways to eliminate the reasons to annihilate us. Rather than stirring up a hornet's nest and then hiding behind a bush, maybe the solution is to avoid the causes of rage. Crazies, of course, can't be reasoned with. But we can reduce the incentives to become a crazy. We could reduce the reasonableness - from a certain perspective - for finding ways to destroy us.

And later, Larry warns: "Our present course of unilateral cowboyism will continue to produce generations of angry souls seeking revenge on us."

Amen.

Drexler Recommends Sanity

In an open letter at the Foresight Institute's website, K. Eric Drexler explains why you should care about molecular nanotechnology. He concludes, in part, with this:

Remarkably, in the U.S. today, the senior national leadership in nanoscale science and technology is in denial about the future of the field. Research is accordingly misdirected, and discussion of legitimate concerns has been distorted by official disinformation and politically motivated attacks.

New Economy

Yahoo! News quotes Bill Gates:

"Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free -- I'm not saying it will be absolutely free -- but in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor,"

Gates said this in reference to networked computers and advances in the speed of the Internet.

Nanotechnology will soon not only make any material object easily available with little or no human labor, but it will also provide the object at little or no cost. We need to be thinking about this new economy and preparing for the disruptions it will create.

Creating Life

A recent news article highlights statements from scientists who are on the verge of creating life--a not-so-subtle twist in the nanotechnology field.

More than 3.5 billion years after nature transformed non-living matter into living things, populating Earth with a cornucopia of animals and plants, scientists say they are finally ready to try their hand at creating life. If they succeed, humanity will enter a new age of "living technology," where harnessing the power of life to spontaneously adapt to complex situations could solve problems that now defy modern engineering.