Op Ed

Top 5 Tips for Applying to Singularity University

by Socrates
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Those of you who followed SingulatityWeblog.com last summer know that I was very fortunate to attend Singularity University on NASA’s campus in Mountainview, California. The 10 weeks I spent there were one of the most challenging yet inspiring periods of my life. I learned a lot about technology, leadership, entrepreneurship and about myself. I was inspired by meeting people such as futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil, space enthusiast and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, astronaut Dan Barry, Apple co-founder Steven Wozniak, and many others from across the globe. I had the unique opportunity to go inside the kitchen of technology, talk to some of the chefs and see what will likely be on the menu for the next decade or more. Since I came back I have been getting numerous emails from people interested in applying who are asking me to read [...]

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The Importance of Doubt, Asking Questions and Not Knowing

by Socrates
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Most of us are uncomfortable not knowing. Just think about it: Wouldn’t it be nice (and easy) if we knew the answers to all the important questions? Who am I? Is there a God? What is his name? What is the purpose of life? How do I live the good life? What is justice?… Knowing is much more comfortable (and easier) than not knowing. That is why most people convince themselves to be absolutely certain they know the answers. Yet, as Voltaire presciently noted “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” It is absurd to take things on faith, without doubting or testing them in any way, and go on preaching that you really do have the answers. It is absurd to be able to accomplish such an enormous feat simply by following orders and without any substantial struggle, [...]

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Our Grey Goo Future: Possibility and Probability

by CMStewart
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What is Grey Goo? Not necessarily grey, and not necessarily gooey, “grey goo” is both a nanotechnological substance which increases exponentially without practical limit, and a hypothetical scenario in which the mass of planet Earth – or the universe – is ecotophaged into self-replicating nanobots. Mathematician John von Neumann originally described macroscopic self-replicating robots. These replicators are sometimes called “von Neumann machines.” In turn, nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler coined the term “grey goo” in his book Engines of Creation. Drexler described the exponential growth and inherent limits of such highly specialized nanomachines: “…the first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four . . in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass [...]

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The Methuselah Generation: The Science of Living Forever

by Jake Anderson
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Imagine a world in which there are no limits on the human lifespan, no restrictions on our capacity for intelligent thought and exponential technological advancement, no barriers to our saturating the universe with consciousness. Imagine all the people, living for forever. Indeed, John Lennon might have gotten a kick out of imagining himself casually interfacing with artificial intelligence, nano-engineering solar panels in space, breathing molecularly cleansed air through bionic lungs…but if this is a reality you want to see, you’ll have to “live long enough to live forever”, as Terry Grossman and Ray Kurzweil claim in their book of the same title. What Grossman – the main subject of the forthcoming documentary The Methuselah Generation: The Science of Living Forever - means by this is bolstering your longevity enough to be able to utilize the tools and treatments of the biotechnological revolution. From there you will need survive [...]

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VPS.net is Dead. Long Live ZippyKid.com!

by Socrates
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A couple of weeks ago I moved Singularity Weblog to ZippyKid.com. Since my previous experience with VPS.net was so nightmarishly traumatic, I felt compelled to share a few thoughts on the companies and the process that I have had to deal with during the past year or two. My first blog host was BlueHost. Overall, I would say they did a very decent job while my blog was starting up and had little traffic. The problems started when traffic grew bigger than what their shared hosting could handle and the BlueHost technical support was simply beating around the bush rather than admitting they couldn’t handle it anymore.  Eventually, I figured out that I need to get a virtual private server and, following the recomendations of several high-profile bloggers, I signed up with VPS.net. I spent roughly about a year on [...]

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Will the “Geek Rapture” Nonsense Ever Stop?

by Singularity Utopia
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Recently I stumbled across an article about William Gibson’s Geek Rapture and Other Technological Musings. I’m not sure why alleged technological aficionados denigrate the Singularity but I often read about their hostility. It’s an odd situation where their notion of the Singularity is so provocative, so contentious.Some critics insist the Singularity constitutes a new religion for geeks, which is ironic because for me the Singularity is the opposite of religion. Instead of having faith in supernatural powers to create miracles, the Singularity is about having confidence in the powers of humans. Confidence in our human ability entails our skills in science and technology making our world a better place without Godly intervention. The Singularity makes Gods and religions redundant; it is the enlightenment of logic, intellectualism, the end of superstitions, prayers, and mystical incantations. If the Singularity must be categorised philosophically then it should [...]

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Do We Need to Have a “Future Day”?

by Nikki Olson
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“In thinking about how to get people interested in and excited about Transhumanist ideas explicitly, one idea I thought about was to create a holiday for the future. You think about all these holidays we have they are all about past events, but what if there were a holiday specifically oriented towards future events. So you could have many of them, you could have a ‘Singularity Day’, an ‘Artilect War Day’ for the future war, or simply a ‘Future Day’, to try and bring people together around the idea of creating a better future” The remarks above were made by Ben Goertzel during the question and answer period of last week’s H+ Leadership Summit (see the full video at the end of the article), a discussion held in virtual world Second Life on leadership and the realization of Transhumanist goals. Author [...]

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The Singularity Summit is Near!

by Socrates
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After spending 10 weeks of intense, near-exponential personal growth at Singularity University I was beginning to wonder if there is any way to sustain this trend? I mean, how can I manage to keep up with the bleeding edge in advanced technology if I am living in Toronto, Canada – far away from Silicon Valley and most other cradles of high-technology? Since I am unlikely to move my home anytime soon, I concluded that I need to continue taking a regular dosage of SU-type of anything-is-possible techno-optimism and keep meeting inspiring singularitarians that I can learn from. But this is a very rare opportunity some may say. How often do you get to see the most incredible scientists, entrepreneurs and technologists under one roof talking about “big picture” questions such as: the direction of the global economy, philosophy of mind, [...]

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