And The Singularity Just Keeps Getting Closer

We've blogged about the Singularity before here and there, thinking it was far off in the future BUT thought-based communication is already being developed: The U.S. Army is developing a technology known as 'synthetic telepathy' that would allow someone to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. (Does anyone remember Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?) The concept is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an EEG (electroencephalograph).

For details and to read on, click here.

Saving Your Self: Backing Up Your Mind Files

As many of you know, the idea behind the Singularity is that someday we will be able upload our consciousness to machines; although we are at least a couple of decades away from that, Lifenaut.com is a project that starts the process -- a place to back up your mind files -- a digital self storage place, if you will.

Check out the cool video:




And look for our podcast soon interviewing Bruce Duncan about what they hope to achieve.

The Very Model of a Singularitarian

We've blogged briefly about the Singularity before, but with it getting more and more attention in the media, it has even merited a video parody! So, with apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan, enjoy this version of A Model Singularitarian:



Coming soon -- The Very Model of Modern Bio-Ethicist!

The Singularity and Machines of Loving Grace

For those of you who are interested in the Singularity (the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence) here is a very interesting NPR podcast about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and a portion of an unreservedly optimistic poem by Richard Brautigan quoted in the podcast:

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Food for thought, indeed.