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Dec 26, 2013
Bitcoin paradise
Posted by Seb in categories: bitcoin, economics, geopolitics, government, human trajectories
by J.M.P. — The Economist
A GROUP of self-described anarchists, libertarians and Ron Paul supporters fleeing the crumbling world economic system have founded Galt’s Gulch, a community in Chile inspired by Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”—and with an economy based entirely on Bitcoin. Or that’s the goal, anyway.
“Our farm workers and suppliers still want to get paid in pesos,” Ken Johnson, the project’s founder and managing partner, explains. “But Bitcoin as the John Galt coin? Why shouldn’t it be?”
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Dec 26, 2013
The fork on the road for hom*o Futura
Posted by Steve Fuller in categories: biological, ethics, evolution, futurism, genetics, hom*o sapiens, philosophy, posthumanism, science, transhumanism
To think about the existential prospects that lie ahead for Humanity 2.0, or hom*o futura, imagine yourself in 1900 faced with two investment opportunities for the future of personal human transport: on the one hand, a specially bred – that is, genetically modified – horse; on the other, a mass-produced automobile. Which prospect would you pursue?
The horse has been long a reliable mode of transport, whose strengths and weaknesses are well known. A faster horse may require greater skill to handle and more feed that produces more manure. But your society is already equipped to deal with those consequences. In contrast, the automobile is a new technology, albeit one that has already shown that it can equal and even surpass the horse in terms of speed and durability under a variety of conditions. However, the automobile brings its own distinctive cost-benefit calculus, as its future improvement would very likely involve both greater enclosure of the traveller and greater pollution of the environment. In the long term, the traveller’s relationship to nature would probably need to change quite drastically for the automobile to become dominant.
It is too bad that the state of genetic knowledge was not sufficiently advanced in 1900 to turn this into a real choice. Instead the horse easily appeared a less attractive long-term bet, as it was generally presumed that the upper limits of the creature’s performance had been already reached. In that case, the indefinite continuation of horse-drawn personal transport could only be defended by those who had a principled objection to mechanical transport, a position perhaps grounded in a nostalgic view of humanity’s oneness with nature. But even these people could not deny the proven effectiveness of ships and trains as machines of mass conveyance. In short, the horse was doomed. The market for personal transport underwent what Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’. Henry Ford effectively made it worthwhile for consumers to reorganize their value priorities in a way that quickly resulted in the automobile, rather than the horse, setting the standard of personal transport.
The twenty-first century may offer us a choice rather like that of our hypothetical 1900 decision between horse and car. But now the choice would be between two different ways of continuing the human condition – alternative vehicles, as it were, to convey our existence. One involves genetically modifying ourselves and the other involves transcending the bodies of our birth altogether. These two options represent the two rather opposing directions in which contemporary transhumanism is heading.
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Dec 26, 2013
The first 3D printed organ — a liver — is expected in 2014
Posted by Seb in categories: 3D printing, bioprinting, biotech/medical, human trajectories, life extension
By Lucas Mearian — Computerworld
Computerworld - Approximately 18 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant. But that may change someday sooner than you think — thanks to 3D printing.
Advances in the 3D printing of human tissue have moved fast enough that San Diego-based bio-printing company Organovo now expects to unveil the world’s first printed organ — a human liver — next year.
Like other forms of 3D printing, bio-printing lays down layer after layer of material — in this case, live cells — to form a solid physical entity — in this case, human tissue. The major stumbling block in creating tissue continues to be manufacturing the vascular system needed to provide it with life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients.
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Dec 25, 2013
Edible Batteries Could Power Smart Pills and Medical Devices
Posted by Seb in category: biotech/medical
Written By: Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub
Medicine is more an art than a science, doctors are the first to admit, not just because so much remains unknown about the human body, but also because patients often fail to provide relevant details or follow the doctor’s orders. Which explains the strong appeal of digitizing pills so that they register when the patient takes them and including Internet-enabled medical sensors in medical devices.
But how can we safely power electronic technology inside the body? A number of researchers are aggressively seeking answers to that question. For instance, Singularity Hub has covered an electronic pill that, when activated by stomach acid, generates enough power to signal an external device that then registers that the pill has been taken.
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Dec 25, 2013
AI Day Will Replace Christmas as the Most Important Holiday in Less Than 25 Years
Posted by Seb in categories: human trajectories, posthumanism, robotics/AI, singularity
Zoltan Istvan — Huffington Post Visionary; Philosopher; Author of bestselling novel ‘The Transhumanist Wager’
For a few billion people around the world, Christmas is the most important and relished holiday of the year. It’s the day with the most gift-giving, the most family get-togethers, the most religious activities, and the most colorful fairy tales that children and adults almost universally embrace with sacred fervor. For many nations, no other day comes close to being as special. For this reason, it seems almost unimaginable that another day — especially an unknown one looming on the horizon — will soon unseat Christmas as the most important day in the world. Nonetheless, for humanity, the course is set. The birth of an artificial intelligence equal or greater than that of human intelligence is coming. It’s called AI Day. And once it arrives, it will rapidly usher in a new age.
For decades, the concept of a man-made intelligence matching or surpassing our own — technically called AGI (artificial general intelligence) or Strong AI — has been steeped in science fiction. Upon hearing the term AI, many people immediately think of the sentient computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece film 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, what most people fail to grasp is that once AI becomes self-aware and joins with the internet, it could grow its intelligence thousands of times in just mere days, perhaps hours. Frankly, it could quickly surpass all measurements of intelligence that humans are even capable of monitoring and recognizing.
“I think that Ray Kurzweil’s estimate that we will achieve human-level Artificial General Intelligence by around 2029 is a reasonable guesstimate,” says Dr. Ben Goertzel.
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Dec 25, 2013
From eatery to meetup, entrepreneurs increasingly accepting ‘bitcoins’ in India
Posted by Seb in categories: bitcoin, business
By Indu Nandakumar, ET Bureau
BANGALORE: Tarun Thadani, the proprietor of a vintage-themed pizza outlet in the posh Worli area of Mumbai
, thinks he is making history. On Saturday, his restaurant Kolonial announced that its patrons can pay in bitcoins instead of rupees, thus laying claim to the title of being India’s first eatery to accept the new-age currency. “Right now, people are a bit sceptical about bitcoins, but it’s going to become big. I am testing the waters,” said Thadani, 30, who is a bitcoin owner and a host to several bitcoin meetups at Kolonial.
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Dec 25, 2013
The Happiest Thought of Einstein’s Life is even Happier (A Christmas Carol)
Posted by Otto E. Rössler in categories: existential risks, particle physics
The Happiest Thought of Einstein’s Life is even Happier (A Christmas Carol)
Otto E. Rossler, Faculty of Science, University of Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
Abstract
Einstein’s happiest thought as he always said – weightlessness in free fall and hence usefulness of an imaginary rocketship for understanding gravity – has further implications if you look at it with the full attention of a child. Beside clock rate, size and mass and charge are miraculously transformed along, as every PET san confirms.
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Dec 23, 2013
It’s the 10th Anniversary of Battlestar Galactica. And it’s more relevant than ever.
Posted by Seb in categories: existential risks, human trajectories, robotics/AI
By Miles Brundage — Slate
Ten years ago this month, a reimagined version of the ’70s science fiction series Battlestar Galactica began as a three-hour miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel. (This was before the “Syfy” nonsense.) The critically acclaimed show ended up running for four seasons. Many articles and books have already been written about the enduring relevance of Battlestar Galactica’s religious and political themes—at least one of which, the dilemmas associated with a secretive national security state, is just as timely today as it was during the Bush administration.
But another key element of the show—the long-term societal risks associated with the development of intelligent machines—is even more relevant today than it was in 2003.
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Dec 23, 2013
Mustang 3D-prints engine… Wait, what?
Posted by Seb in categories: 3D printing, business, transportation
By Staff — Emirates 24|7
“One day, millions of car parts could be printed as quickly as newspapers and as 
easily as pushing a button on theoffice copy machine, saving months of development time and millions of dollars,” so starts a media statement Emirates 24|7 just received from Ford.
It got us interested, so we continued reading…
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Dec 23, 2013
Building Bitcoin use in South Florida and beyond
Posted by Seb in categories: bitcoin, economics
By Lance Dixon [emailprotected]
The U.S. Senate has deemed it legitimate. Detractors dismiss it as unstable and a vehicle for criminal trade. China has banned new deposits on its largest exchange.
Bitcoin, the international digital payment system and currency and one of the hottest technology and finance topics this past year, could become a widespread vehicle for trade, believe the leaders of a Miami group. To further that view, Miami International Bitcoin will be partcipating in the North American Bitcoin Conference slated for Miami Beach in January.
“The thing that’s really exciting about Bitcoin is that, here in South Florida, we have a half billion people to the south of us who do not have access to a banking system that works well, capital markets, credit — things that we take for granted,” said Charles Evans, business professor at Florida Atlantic University and one of the founders of Miami International Bitcoin.
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