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Archive for the ‘media & arts’ category: Page 70

Apr 21, 2018

How Music Generated

Posted by in categories: information science, internet, media & arts, robotics/AI

There is an enduring fear in the music industry that artificial intelligence will replace the artists we love, and end creativity as we know it.

As ridiculous as this claim may be, it’s grounded in concrete evidence. Last December, an AI-composed song populated several New Music Friday playlists on Spotify, with full support from Spotify execs. An entire startup ecosystem is emerging around services that give artists automated songwriting recommendations, or enable the average internet user to generate customized instrumental tracks at the click of a button.

But AI’s long-term impact on music creation isn’t so cut and dried. In fact, if we as an industry are already thinking so reductively and pessimistically about AI from the beginning, we’re sealing our own fates as slaves to the algorithm. Instead, if we take the long view on how technological innovation has made it progressively easier for artists to realize their creative visions, we can see AI’s genuine potential as a powerful tool and partner, rather than as a threat.

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Apr 13, 2018

Ray Kurzweil: Universal Basic Income will arrive in the 2030s

Posted by in categories: economics, media & arts, Ray Kurzweil

That, he said, will lead to new forms of expression, such as music, that will be as different from today’s communication as current human expression is from that of primates.

Asked how the U.S. and other countries would pay for a basic income, given existing large deficits, Kurzweil predicted that massive deflation would make goods much cheaper.

Separately: Kurzweil debuted a new Google project called “Talk to Books,” a new free tool that allows people to use their voice to ask a question and that will go find the best answers from hundreds of thousands of books. Unlike traditional search, it is based on semantics, not keywords.

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Apr 1, 2018

An app that lets you create 3D paintings in AR and leave them in the real world for people to find

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, media & arts

We can’t wait to play around with this.

Read more

Mar 23, 2018

The space race: NZ’s push into a $320 billion market

Posted by in categories: business, entertainment, media & arts, space travel

Space has suddenly become big in New Zealand, but Rocket Lab is just one example of what is starting to look like exponential growth in commercial activity. Business consultant and self-confessed space junkie Kevin Jenkins looks into how things are shaping up.

One space narrative is about disappointment. The 1950s and 1960s were about possibilities, and landing on the Moon seemed to prove that the science fiction of the 20th century really was just history written before it happened. But the promise of space seemed to peter out. The Apollo moon programme came to look more like a peak or end-point, rather than the trial run for Mars some in the space programme had hoped it would be.

After Apollo, “space” seemed to shift back to being more of a popular culture theme. For example, the famous song, album and movie Space is the Place is by one of my favourite jazz weirdos, Sun Ra, who was adamant he came from Saturn. Space became a dominant meme in pop and rock music too, as well as a mainstay in novels and films.

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Mar 20, 2018

A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place

Posted by in category: media & arts

Why should you care about the well-being of people half a globe away?

Kurzgesagt Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cRUQxz

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Mar 1, 2018

Google’s new Song Maker tool lets you create original music right in your browser

Posted by in category: media & arts

Google believes you don’t have to be a virtuoso to make decent music as evident by their Chrome Music Lab initiative. If you’re not aware, Chrome Music Lab is, in Google’s own words, “a website that makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments.”

The latest of these experiments is Google’s “Song Maker” tool which, as the name suggests, allows you to create your own unique melodies quickly and easily from within your mobile or desktop browser. To use Song Maker, simply visit the official experiment page and begin “painting” notes on the large grid provided by Google.

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Feb 24, 2018

Homeopathy Explained

Posted by in category: media & arts

What are the principles behind Homeopathy and does it work?

Kurzgesagt Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cRUQxz

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Feb 21, 2018

DNA data storage system is on the rise — find out how to store yours

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, media & arts

Scientists from the University of Washington and Microsoft are improving their system for preserving digital data in strands of synthetic DNA — and they’re giving you the chance to participate.

The UW-Microsoft team laid out the method in a research paper published this week in Nature Biotechnology.

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Feb 15, 2018

Transcending Politics Preview

Posted by in categories: media & arts, robotics/AI

“There’s no escape: the journey to a healthier society inevitably involves politics.”

Starting with these words, David Wood, Executive Director of Transpolitica and Chair of London Futurists, introduces his book “Transcending Politics: A Technoprogressive Roadmap to a Comprehensively Better Future”.

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Feb 11, 2018

It’s transhuman life, but not as we know it

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, life extension, media & arts, neuroscience, transhumanism

#Transhumanism in the Sunday Times of London. 750,000 copies out today. My pres campaign in it briefly, as well as other transhumanists.


The new Netflix series Altered Carbon is set in a dystopian future where the super-rich can avail of technology that allows them to upload their consciousness to a new body every time they die, in effect giving them immortality.

It’s science fiction, of the kind previously explored in the novels of Philip K Dick and William Gibson, movies such as RoboCop and The Terminator, manga comics like Ghost in the Shell and even the Man-Machine album by German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk — but only until it comes to pass.

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