Foresight Update 23.39: All conference videos now posted - April 9, 2010
Discuss these news stories at http://foresight.org/nanodot.
We are happy to announce that all videos from Foresight 2010, our January conference, are now posted: http://www.vimeo.com/album/176287
There are 17 videos, so in case you'd like some guidance in getting started, consider starting with the top three talks as rated by conference participants:
Special thanks to Monica Anderson, Miron Cuperman, and TechZulu (Efren Toscano) for their work on this project.
If you enjoy the videos and have not yet joined Foresight or donated in 2010, we encourage you to chip in and help fund this work:
https://www.networkforgood.org/donation/MakeDonation.aspx?ORGID2=770119168
We hope to see you at the next Foresight Conference!
In this issue:
Foreseeing Future Technologies - Join Foresight
Events
Contact Foresight
This conference track is being chaired by a real computer scientist with a specialty in AI, so it should be more meaty than some popular discussions of this challenging topic…
Nanowerk reports:
Taking the patent land grab to a new level, the government of Greece today, April 1, filed a patent and trademark application for the term nanotechnology with the European Patent Office
…
For readers in countries that dont celebrate April 1: today is the day we play jokes on each other, including this story.
From David Cassel: The military is funding a project to create neural computing using memristors, a sophisticated circuit component which HP Labs describes as a stepping stone to "computers that can make decisions" and "appliances that learn from experience."…
Once again, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers has donated one free
pass to their Nanomanufacturing Conference to Foresight:
April 14-15, 2010 — SME Nanomanufacturing Conference
Hilton Phoenix East in Mesa, Arizona
This includes free admission to one of the pre-conference workshops on
April 13, including Understanding Nanotechnology, taught by Foresight
Senior Associate Tihamer "Tee" Toth-Fejel.
In the mailbag today: A new fiction book Beyond Guilty by Richard Brawer, who got help on it from Robert Freitas, winner of the 2009 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for Theory. Brawer wrote, "Robert A. Freitas Jr., Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, has graciously edited the references to nanomanufacturing and nanomedicine and has written the essay at the end of the novel about the progress being made in developing nanomedicine."
If you appreciate the mind-boggling abilities of today's nanoscale probes and microscopes, and/or want to move your career in the direction of nanotechnology, consider joining the Center for Probing the Nanoscale gang at Stanford's 6th Annual Nanoprobes Workshop on May 14, 2010. Registration accepted until May 7. Fees range from $100 for industry to free for college students and postdocs…
The March 2010 issue of IEEE Spectrum has an article on cryonics, a method of suspended animation, featuring Dr. Ralph Merkle. Ralph is described as a nanotechnology expert; apparently the issue went to press just before he was also named as a co-winner of the 2010 IEEE Haming Medal.
As a long-time IEEE member, I was not impressed with the article. Although there are plenty of quotes from Ralph, it gets some facts wrong
…
One way to reach molecular machine systems is to get really, really good at protein engineering.
If that's your goal, you'll want to be in Boston on May 17-21 for PEGS 2010, "the essential protein engineering summit"…
In case anyone wonders where I've gone, I'm resigning from Foresight for medical reasons (adhesive capsulitis — long and painful course of therapy) and to concentrate my few remaining neurons on my AI research…
The UK-based Institute of Physics (IOP) publishes, among other things, the journal Nanotechnology, one of the leading journals in the field, and has had special issues with papers from Foresight conferences gaoing back to the 90s.
It was thus somewhat surprising, yet gratifying, to find them submitting quite a strongly-worded critique of practices in climatology that echo some of the concerns I've mentioned here about the impact of the shennanigans on the credibility of science as a whole…
It's been snowing continuously here for about 2 days … As usual, people who disbelieve in global warming point at the record snow coverage extents this year and say they disprove it. As usual, people who are global warming supporters claim that global warming is causing the snow…
Whatever the reason, we're about 3 months of what it's doing right this minute from an ice age. I don't have a clue how likely this is to happen how soon, but looking at the last million years of climate, ice age is the normal condition of Earth and interglacials are few and far between.
We can only hope we've had the sense to develop real nanotech before we're back in one.
As far as I can tell, nobody talking about interstellar contact has a model even vaguely close to a reasonable analysis of the situation…
Reality is that any alien race out there with whom we have any kind of physical contact at all is virtually certain to have (a) full-fledged nanotech, and (b) hyperhuman AI. Given these capabilities, if they want to find Earth-like planets anywhere in the area of space they would have the physical capability of travelling to, they will find them…
Let's try to pull all the threads together, as futurists — which is the whole point here — and get some idea about when it might be reasonable to expect AI to show up…
I don't think we'll have a superintelligent AI by 2020; indeed, I don't think we'll even have one that can educate itself by reading Wikipedia. But I do think it's at least a 50% chance we'll have AIs that can learn something by a combination of imitation and careful verbal coaching.
Rob Freitas has a new paper up:
Robert A. Freitas Jr., "Diamond Trees (Tropostats): A Molecular Manufacturing Based System for Compositional Atmospheric Homeostasis," IMM Report 43, 10 February 2010
Abstract. The future technology of molecular manufacturing will enable long-term sequestration of atmospheric carbon in solid diamond products, along with sequestration of lesser masses of numerous air pollutants, yielding pristine air worldwide ~30 years after implementation
…
—Nanodot posts by Christine Peterson and J. Storrs Hall
Advancements in technologies such as nanotech, robotics, and biotech are promising to make major differences in our lives in the not-too-distant future, as the Industrial Revolution did to the agrarian world — to do for the physical world what the computer and Internet have done to the world of information.
Since 1986, the Foresight Institute has been in the forefront of a worldwide community of visionaries who work to help shape these possibilities into a positive, beneficial reality. If you would like to help us understand the potential of these technologies, and influence their direction, please consider becoming a member of the Foresight community. With your support, Foresight will continue to educate the general public on these technologies and what they will mean to our society.
To join:
http://foresight.org/members/index.html
Events
NanoManufacturing Conference & Exhibits
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
Looking to understand what nanotechnology means for you?
April 14-15, 2010
Hilton Phoenix East/Mesa, Mesa AZ USA
This conference will highlight the current, near-term, and future applications of nanotechnology and how they are transforming the way we manufacture products. Peer networking, information sharing, and technology exchange among the world's nanomanufacturing leaders will be a key feature of the event. Foresight members can use the "member" registration rate, and one free pass is available
Former Foresight president Dr. Josh Hall will chair a closing panel on Feynman's Pathway to Nanomanufacturing, with Foresight Senior Associates Tihamer Toth-Fejel and Steve Vetter.
Free pass to SME Nanomanufacturing Conference
Contact Foresight
The Foresight Institute Weekly News Digest has merged with Foresight Update and is emailed every week to 15,000 individuals in more than 125 countries. Foresight Institute is a member-supported organization. We offer membership levels appropriate to meet the needs and interests of individuals and companies. To find out more about membership, follow this link:
http://www.foresight.org/members/index.html
To join:
https://www.foresight.org/forms/php/donate.php
Past issues: http://www.foresight.org/publications/weekly.html
Earlier issues are here.
Foresight Institute
PO Box 61058
Palo Alto, CA 94306 USA
tel +1 650 289.0860
fax +1 650.289.0863
foresight@foresight.org
If you were forwarded this email from a friend and would like to subscribe yourself, please follow this link and sign up for our free electronic membership.
Thank you!
|