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Dec 13, 2014

Confessional in the Palm of Your Hand

Posted by in category: privacy

By Rachel Metz — MIT Technology Review

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“I want to quit Google,” the message on my iPhone read. “It’s boring here.”

Posted by an anonymous user in San Francisco to the confessional app Secret, the message quickly gained attention; after four days, it had received 78 comments, ranging from “just means you’re not on the right project” to “I quit Google, and it was one of the best decisions of my life.” At times, the original poster chimed in, saying things like: “I’ve been there a long time. Many jobs. The company no longer values initiative, and promotion is very slow.”

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Dec 12, 2014

Civilization: Beyond Earth and the ultra-cool technologies of tomorrow

Posted by in categories: entertainment, futurism

By Colin Campbell — Polygon

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Firaxis’ strategy game Civilization: Beyond Earth, shows humankind populating new worlds. Set in a not-too distant future, the game demands that players choose and invest in technologies to ease their path.

Much research went into the technology choices utilized in the game, due to be released on Windows PC on Oct. 24. While previous Civilization games have charted technological progress in the past, Beyond Earth is a matter of conjecture and futures studies.

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Dec 11, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (December 12, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (December 12, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn

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FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Tracking microdoses of carcinogens as they move through the body http://www.kurzweilai.net/tracking-microdoses-of-carcinogens…h-the-body

THE DES MOINES REGISTER: Iowa to launch smartphone driver’s license http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2014/12…/20114979/

PHYS.ORG: Baby steps towards molecular robots https://lnkd.in/eMTHWUx

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (December 12, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn” »

Dec 11, 2014

FM2030: Are You A Transhuman?

Posted by in categories: lifeboat, science, transhumanism

FMQuote4_creativity

This archive file was compiled from audio of a discussion futurist FM 2030 held at the University of California, February 6th, 1994. In this discussion 2030 laid out an overview of his ‘transhuman’ philosophy and held a back and forth with other people present in the discussion. Discussion and debate included items such as the value of researching ‘indefinite lifespan’ technologies directly as opposed to (or in addition to) more traditional approaches, such as researching cures for specific diseases.
The excerpts in this archive file present a sort of thesis of FM 2030’s transhuman ideas.

About FM 2030: FM 2030 was at various points in his life, an Iranian Olympic basketball player, a diplomat, a university teacher, and a corporate consultant. He developed his views on transhumanism in the 1960s and evolved them over the next thirty-something years. He was placed in cryonic suspension July 8th, 2000. For more information about FM 2030, view the GPA Archive File: ‘Introduction to FM 2030′ or visit some of the following links:

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Dec 11, 2014

Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They’re Being Automated

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Written by Jason Koebler — Motherboard

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Remember when a majority of new tech jobs were going to India and China? Well, increasingly, those jobs are going away altogether. Outsourcing, it turns out, is in the early stages of being automated.

This morning, news broke that Yahoo would be laying off at least 400 workers in its Indian office, and back in February, IBM cut roughly 2,000 jobs there. Cisco has been considering cuts in India as well.

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Dec 10, 2014

Here comes the future: We’re making robots that feel!

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Excerpted from “The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us” by Diane AckermanSalon.com

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Hod Lipson is the only man I know whose first name means “splendor” in Hebrew and a V-shaped wooden trough for carrying bricks over one shoulder in English. The paradox suits him physically and mentally. He looks strong and solid enough to carry a hod full of bricks, but he would be the first to suggest that the bricks might not resemble any you’ve ever known. They might even saunter, reinvent themselves, refuse to be stacked, devise their own mortar, fight back, explore, breed more of their kind, and boast a nimble curiosity about the world. Splendor can be bricklike, if graced by complexity.

His lab building at Cornell University is home to many a skunk-works project in computer sciences or engineering, including some of DARPA’s famous design competitions (agile robots to clean up toxic disasters, superhero exoskeletons for soldiers, etc.). Nearby, two futuristic DARPA Challenge cars have been left like play-worn toys a few steps from a display case of antique engineering marvels and an elevator that’s old and slow as a butter churn.

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Dec 9, 2014

Blitzkrieg Foresight! — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn.

Posted by in category: futurism

Blitzkrieg Foresight!

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Let us stop the universal guesswork to make decisions by ignoramuses of supine ignorance, beginning with the elitist “…intellectuals…”, specially those postdoctorals from the Ivy-league and Oxbridge.

You do not make (throughput to output) decisions to be instituted in the past, but in the Continual Present, whose Continuum is hugely connected to the Future.

ALL CONTAINED HERE IS A VERY BRIEF LITERAL EXCERPT OF ANDRES AGOSTINI’S WHITE SWAN BOOK:

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Dec 9, 2014

Sam Chaltain: The Singularity is Coming. What Should Schools Be Doing About It?

Posted by in categories: education, singularity

Sam Chaltain — NEPC

Whenever I want to get a feel for the national mood, I look to Hollywood – and the films it thinks we’ll pay to see. In the post-911 malaise, there was the dystopian world of The Dark Knight. In the era of extended male adolescence, there’s just about anything from Judd Apatow. And now, in the shadow of the Technological Singularity, there are a slew of movies about humankind’s desire to transcend the biological limits of body and brain.

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Dec 8, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (December 09, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (December 09, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn

INTRO

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Wireless brain sensor-transmitter could unchain neuroscience from cables http://www.kurzweilai.net/wireless-brain-sensor-transmitter-…rom-cables

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Australian researchers set new world record in solar-energy efficiency http://www.kurzweilai.net/australian-researchers-set-new-wor…efficiency

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Spray-on solar sensors for random surfaces http://lnkd.in/e_9vjFR

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (December 09, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn” »

Dec 8, 2014

Movie Review: ‘Automata’

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

by — SF Movie Review

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At the brink of human destruction, with almost all of the Earth’s population killed by a massive increase in solar storms, one city remains. It’s humanity’s last gasp, complete with artificial cloud cover created and managed by the primitive Automata Pilgrim 7000 robots. Millions of them. All working to keep the last vestige of humanity alive.

In a nod to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, the millions of robots in this dismal future world are ruled by two unalterable, built-in security protocols: Robots are prohibited from harming any form of life and Robots cannot alter themselves or any other robots. But what if they started modifying themselves anyway?

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