Reviews

Paul Baraka’s Original Video and Music Intro to Singularity Weblog

by Socrates
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I was quite happy when a fan got in touch with me volunteering to produce an entirely original video and music intro for Singularity Weblog and Singularity 1 on 1. Little did I know that a couple of weeks later my happiness would turn into sheer ecstasy. Paul Baraka of Vision Mantra made an incredibly dynamic, totally original, very creative and captivating video and music intro while accurately capturing the best of what this blog is and aspires to be. I simply cannot stop watching the attached 22 second clip. For me, it works not only visually but also musically. Even if I close my eyes I still feel profoundly moved by the power of the soundtrack. How can you put so much energy and emotion in mere 22 seconds!? When I gave Paul keywords such as: singularity, artificial intelligence, exhilaration, [...]

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Aaron Sims’ Film Archetype: Your Memories Are Just A Glitch!

by Socrates
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Achetype: Your Memories Are Just A Glitch is a short 7 min science fiction film directed by Aaron Sims, starring Robert Joy (Land of the Dead, CSI: NY) and David Anders (Heroes, 24). About the Film: RL7 is an eight-foot tall combat robot that goes on the run after malfunctioning with vivid memories of once being human. As its creators and the military close in, RL7 battles its way to uncovering the shocking truth behind its mysterious visions and past. About the Filmmaker: Aaron Sims is a prominent creature/conceptual designer who has helped bring filmmakers’ visions to life for the past 25 years.  During his illustrious career, Aaron has worked with visionary directors such as Steven Spielberg, Zack Snyder & Martin Campbell on such projects as War of the Worlds, Sucker Punch, Green Lantern and many more. With the help The [...]

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The WWW Trilogy: Wake, Watch and Wonder Book Review

by Socrates
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A few months ago I was taking a ride on the Toronto subway and couldn’t help it but notice the posters for Robert J. Sawyer‘s novel WWW: Wake. The idea of a blind girl seeing the internet and connecting with an emerging virtual intelligence peaked my curiosity so I had to read the book. I thought it was so captivating and brilliant that I went ahead and got book 2 (WWW: Watch) and 3 (WWW: Wonder) as soon as I finished book 1. After finishing the complete trilogy I can honestly say that the story only gets better and better as one moves through the different parts. I recommend it highly because in contrast to the well-known Matrix or Terminator-type apocalyptic plots, the WWW trilogy explores a near-unique post-singularity scenario of peaceful coexistence between a super-smart artificial intelligence and humanity. This phenomenon [...]

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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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Robopocalypse: Daniel H. Wilson’s Novel To Become Steven Spielberg’s Film

by Socrates
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I was in the middle of scheduling an interview with Daniel H. Wilson‘s agent when I got a last minute acceptance to Singularity University. I had to delay our interview and rush to NASA’s Ames Campus in Mountain View, California. As soon as I was back home I got in touch again with Willson’s representative but, unfortunately, was told that Daniel was not doing any more interivews. Daniel H. Wilson is the author of The New York Times best selling science fiction novel Robopocalypse and a columnist and contributing editor for Popular Mechanics magazine. He has also written: How To Survive a Robot Uprising, How to Build a Robot Army, A Boy and His Bot and Where’s My Jetpack?. Robopocalypse is not only one of Amazon’s top books for 2011 but, most notably, Steven Spielberg is directing a film based on the novel, scheduled for release on July 4, 2013. I [...]

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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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100 Plus Book Review: Sonia Arrison on How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything

by Socrates
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A new book by Sonia Arrison called 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith, is making waves across the globe. I met Sonia at the Singularity University, where she is a founder and a trustee, and picked up a copy of her book there. The book is very well researched and deals with the most profound implications of life-extension and super-longevity. In the author’s own words, the main question is: “how long science will extend our lives and how that in turn will change our ecological, social, and religious worlds.” The foreword is written by Peter Thiel and in my opinion is so good that the reader has already gotten her money’s worth by the time she is finished reading the introduction. This is not to undermine the [...]

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Future Shock: Is this Orson Welles’ Film about the Technological Singularity?

by Socrates
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Future Shock is a 1972 documentary by Orson Welles. It is based on the 1970 Future Shock book by sociologist and futurist Alvin Toffler. The film begins with a cigar smoking Orson Welles who defines the term as follows: “Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time; a feeling that nothing is permanent anymore; it’s the reaction to changes that happen so fast that we can’t absorb them, it’s the premature arrival of the future. For those who are unprepared its effects can be pretty devastating.” Putting aside the strands of technophobia and the dystopian world that this 40 year old movie seems to depict, it is absolutely stunning how many things Toffler (and Welles) got right and how many more they are likely to get right. Let’s just look at some of the predictions [...]

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