Rob Wile — Business Insider
Last week we told you how Texas Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) became the first sitting elected official in Washington to accept Bitcoin for his 2014 campaign against Sen. John Cornyn.
Dan Backer is going to make sure Stockman is not the last.
Written By: Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub
Even the most adamant techno-optimists among us must admit that new technologies can introduce hidden dangers: Fire, as the adage goes, can cook the dinner, but it can also burn the village down.
The most powerful example of unforeseen disadvantages stemming from technology is climate change. Should we attempt to fix a problem caused by technology, using more novel technology to hack the climate? The question has spurred heated debate.
By Sam Maggs — GeekOSystem
We’ve all seen the clip from James Cameron’s 1986 film Aliens, where Sigourney Weaver (as eternal badass Ellen Ripley) puts the smack-down on an alien queen while wearing a strength-enhancing exoskeleton. Looks like the folks over at Panasonic have seen it too, because they’ve manufactured their own version – and are going to start mass-production.
Dick Pelletier — IEET
What can we expect when machines surpass humans in intelligence; a point in time that futurists predict could become reality by 2045.
The concept for the Singularity goes something like this: researchers are convinced that technology will eventually supersede human intelligence creating an amazing world filled with ‘smart’ machines. These machines will not only defeat us in chess and games like Jeopardy, but will also drive cars, write books and replace humans in customer service, and one day, emulate consciousness.
In preparation for 2014, Gartner released a report outlining its top predictions for the next six years or so titled “Gartner Top Predictions 2014: Plan for a Disruptive, but Constructive Future”. The report makes some rather startling predictions about the future of our world, often veiled in elliptical phrases reminiscent of the Oracle at Delphi. As the title suggests, from now until 2020, we’ve got a bumpy road ahead of us thanks to such technologies as 3D printing.
While Gartner also focuses on The Internet of Things, digital business and smart machines in the report, it is 3D printing that makes it relevant to us at 3DPI. According to the report, 3D printing will have a huge impact on intellectual property, saying, “At least one major Western manufacturer will claim to have had intellectual property stolen for a mainstream product by thieves using 3D printers who will likely reside in those same Western markets, rather than in Asia, by 2015,” and, “The global automotive aftermarket parts, toy, IT and consumer product industries will report intellectual property theft worth at least $15 billion in 2016 due to 3D printing.” How to solve such a problem? The report’s author suggests that CEOs take a look at how to prevent forgeries via 3D printing and methods for consumers to ensure the validity of their goods.
By Andrew Couts — Digital Trends
The rise of Dogecoin and the soon-to-launch Coinye West (yes, it’s named after the rapper) made it seem as though almost anyone can create a Bitcoin competitor. Now, with the launch of a clever and simple tool, that is actually true.
Written By: Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub
In 2013, major automakers either forecasting self-driving technologies or announcing their own included Mercedes, BMW, Nissan, Volvo, Tesla—and now, you can add Ford into the mix. The Michigan automaker said they’re working with the University of Michigan and insurer, State Farm, to develop mostly driverless technology by 2025.
William Pentland, Contributor — Forbes
Considering that batteries are typically designed for maximum longevity, it may seem odd to learn that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is ramping up research into self-destructing batteries.
Odd or not, DARPA awarded a $4.7 million contract last week to SRI International, an independent research organization based in Menlo Park, CA CA -0.09%, to develop a transient power supply that, when triggered, becomes unobservable to the human eye.
by Ingrid Lunden — Tech Crunch
Gaming giant Zynga has started to accept the cryptocurrency as a payment option for those buying tokens for virtual goods on the web versions of FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows and CityVille. It makes Zynga the first major gaming company to accept Bitcoin.
Here’s a thought experiment inspired by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): Suppose in our search for beings in other galaxies, we come across a species that looks very much like us and can communicate with us reasonably well, so that it doesn’t take very long for them to understand what we’re about. In other words, they are definitely within our sphere of spontaneous sympathy. Moreover they even possess technologies that we consider relatively advanced, such as mobile phones. (After all, how else could we have recognised them as intelligent beings?) At the same time, however, they also tend to live half as long as we do – and for reasons that are quite obvious to us because they lack the sort of societal infrastructure that would enable them to live longer.
To be sure, these beings think that their lives are perfectly fine, aside from spates of internecine strife that seem to be fuelled by alien sources (perhaps the same aliens that enabled us to discover them). In any case, their culture is designed around the way they have conducted their lives for centuries. The question is whether we should violate Star Trek’s Prime Directive and substantially intervene to provide them with an infrastructure that would allow them to live longer and perhaps flourish in a way that would go beyond the sort of superficial trade relations that currently mark our maintenance of a ‘respectful’ distance from them. Here are some options:
1. No matter the cost to them or us, ‘civilising’ these aliens is an end worth pursuing in its own right – even if it ends up a gallant failure.
2. We can’t really afford much backlash from the natives, especially given that backups from Earth will not be forthcoming. So, we need to tread carefully, perhaps envisaging a long-term strategy of cultivating natives over several generations.
3. We commit to leaving the natives with some care packages and a time-limited run of advisors whose mission is to get them to use those packages as effectively as possible, so that eventually they can produce their contents for themselves.
4. We simply obey the Prime Directive and deal with them as free market traders without any particular concern for how they end up using whatever the both of us agree to have been a fair exchange of goods.
Now let us think about planet Earth, where we have the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – and not the Prime Directive – as our guiding normative principle. Clearly, (4) would be seen as a libertarian dys/utopia that would render the Declaration irrelevant (though it may well capture China’s current policy towards the Third World), whereas (3) would be seen as the default position of most development aid. I have advocated (2) as Imperialism 2.0, and of course classic Imperialism is captured by (1).
Just as the sixteenth century European conquistadors thought they were about to discover lands of great wealth and potential superiority to what they had experienced in their homelands, our own interstellar voyagers may be subject (occasionally at least) to a rude awakening, for which we need a policy. And perhaps considering such a policy might help us to think more clearly about the aliens on our own planet – i.e. those in need of ‘development’.
