Lifeboat Foundation

To many people, the introduction of the first Macintosh computer and its graphical user interface in 1984 is viewed as the dawn of creative computing. But if you ask Dr. Nick Montfort, a poet, computer scientist, and assistant professor of Digital Media at MIT, he’ll offer a different direction and definition for creative computing and its origins.

Defining Creative

“Creative Computing was the name of a computer magazine that ran from 1974 through 1985. Even before micro-computing there was already this magazine extolling the capabilities of the computer to teach, to help people learn, help people explore and help them do different types of creative work, in literature, the arts, music and so on,” Montfort said.

“It was a time when people had a lot of hope that computing would enable people personally as artists and creators to do work. It was actually a different time than we’re in now. There are a few people working in those areas, but it’s not as widespread as hoped in the late 70’s or early 80s.”

Continue reading “Can Computers Be As Creative As A Human?” »

“AI is achievable, but it will take more than computer science and neuroscience to develop machines that think like people”

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A very interesting article about the state of funding for aging research and about Buck and ex Geron Mike West.

As I mentioned in last week’s letter, I traveled to San Francisco last Monday with my friend Patrick Cox, who writes our Transformational Technology Alert newsletter. We had dinner with Dr. Mike West of Biotime and then spent the next morning at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Pat and I decided we would jointly report on what we learned. He has already written his part, which was published last week. I am going to reproduce portions of that letter, which highlight the conversation with Brian Kennedy and his team at the Buck Institute, and then add my own thoughts about our conversation with Mike West the previous night.

(Note that I am excerpting Patrick’s paid letter, which includes comments on companies in his portfolio, rather than his free weekly Transformational Technologies Tech Digest service. We agreed that it was important to do so in this one case, given the huge significance of the research involved and the Buck Institute’s relationship to it.)

Continue reading “The ‘Age’ Age” »

We can build structures that resettle after quakes, and self-cooling homes – the trick is to 3D print custom building blocks, not whole buildings.

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On October 26, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum to explore the impact of robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning on the workforce and the provision of benefits traditionally supplied by—or in conjunction with—employers.

http://www.brookings.edu/events/2015/10/26-robotics-employme…efits-west

Continue reading “How robotics will affect the availability of employment and social benefits” »

Current medical treatment boils down to six words: Have disease, take pill, kill something. But physician Siddhartha Mukherjee points to a future of medicine that will transform the way we heal.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

Continue reading “Soon We’ll Cure Diseases With a Cell, Not a Pill | Siddhartha Mukherjee | TED Talks” »

China has announced that it will begin construction of the world’s largest particle collider in 2020. According to officials, the subterranean facility will be at least twice the size of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, and will endeavour to find out more about the mysterious Higgs boson.

The final concept design won’t be completed until the end of next year, so we don’t have many details to go on, but the collider is expected to smash protons and electrons together at seven times the energy levels of the LHC, generating millions of Higgs bosons in the process. Best of all, the facility will reportedly be available to the entire global scientific community.

“This is a machine for the world and by the world: not a Chinese one,” Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics at the China Academy of Sciences, told the government-controlled publication, China Daily, this week.

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China decides to end its decades-long policy of allowing couples to have only one child, increasing the number permitted to two.

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The air around the comet that Rosetta landed on has plenty of oxygen, scientists say, potentially changing our understanding of the beginnings of the solar system.

In current theories, oxygen shouldn’t be able to exist in high quantities, and should instead have combined with hydrogen and formed water. But oxygen is the fourth most common gas around the comet.

Professor Kathrin Altwegg, project leader for Rosetta’s Rosina mass spectrometer instrument, said: “We had never thought that oxygen could ‘survive’ for billions of years without combining with other substances.”

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