The Finance Equation

A terrific article, courtesy kurzweilai.net/, offers an interesting and chilling premise:

Will corporations prevent the Singularity?

Given how unenlightened many companies are, the possibly of something like this happening is certainly not impossible though the web, and the connects it engenders, make this happenstance, IMHO, a remote possibility though other factors such as climate change, environment degration and resource depletion could do the deed without corporate assistance. With this in mind, Ben Goertzel's take on finance and the viability of companies in the future is both original and compelling when viewed through the lens of accelerating tech. 

"Yet my own intuition is that notions of money and economic exchange will become less relevant as intelligence exceeds the human level. I suspect the importance of money and economic exchange is an artifact of the current domain of relative material scarcity in which we find ourselves, and that once advanced technology (nanotech, femtotech, etc.) radically diminishes material scarcity, the importance of economic thinking will drastically decrease.

So that far from becoming dominant as in Accelerando, corporations will become increasingly irrelevant post-Singularity. But if they are smart enough to foresee this, they will probably try to prevent it."

Interestingly enough, the future of finance in the 24th century was intelligently discussed in First Contact when Lily was transported to the Enterprise in order to save her life. During her recovery, Picard explained to her how civilization functions in his time, something very different from Lily's tumultuous year of 2063 marking the end of the second dark age of man thanks to Zefram Cochran's invention of warp drive. Food for thought if you ask me. 

Forever Now

Cronozoom rocks. Time anyone? 13 billion years and counting, it's an interactive offering from Microrsoft Labs and US Berkley. Check it out, CZ is a time killer to the max but at least one can learn some really interesting stuff while doing the deed. :) Enjoy. 

Transition

Creating physical books as a viable business venture in today's connected world is finished, (Lavish art books remain the lone exception.) a topic BRT has talked about on numerous occasions in the past but the niggling doubt on when the transition would finally occur depended on a device able to render type and images at a resolution equivalent to the printed page in a form factor amenable to reading, something considered to be doable but remained, at the time, to be out of reach, until now. The new iPAD changes all of that and yes, I will get one because the impact of this device goes beyond imagination.

Note: Yours truly is NOT a fanboy of Apple although after seeing this, one never knows, do one? :)

Addendum: I got one. The guesstimate is correct. This is the first of a multitude of devices consigning print to the dustbin of history, a fact yours truly finds both sad and disquieting at the same time.

Catching Some Rays

Catching some rays, a term often used in the late 60's when one wanted to become a lizard and soak up the sun big time, now applies to solar energy whereby imitating how the cochlea works enables metamaterials to absorb light with unprecedented efficiency, an absolute requirement if solar is to become a prime driver in changing how we do business on planet earth.

"Fang compares the tapered structures to the cochlea of the inner ear, which responds to different frequencies of sound at different points along its narrowing structure. “Our ears separate different frequencies and gather them at different depths,” he says; similarly, the metamaterial wedges harvest photons at different depths."

But it gets better.

Fang says that by its nature, the material would be both a very efficient emitter and absorber of photons — so in addition to potential uses in new kinds of solar cells or infrared detectors, the material could be used for infrared-light emitting applications, such as devices for generating electricity from heat. In addition, the researchers say the principle can be scaled so that it could be used to capture or emit electromagnetic radiation at other wavelengths, such as microwave and terahertz frequencies. It could even be used to produce visible light with extremely low energy loss, creating a new kind of high-efficiency light bulb.

For 60 years, man has talked about the brave new world of tech and how it will change everything, a notion always viewed in the abstract, an event always consigned to the future. Well, that concept is forever gone, replaced by the fact tech is changing society in ways unable to be predicted at rates unimagined just a few years ago, something to consider as we move further into the future, don't you think?

Addendum: This terrific animation shows the inner workings of the cochlea and how it's design applies to the saw tooth way of building revolutionary solar tech, which shows, in direct fashion, how acute observation, combined with knowledge and a sense of play, leads to acts of creation that can change the world.

Beauty Is...

When looking at these wonderful pictures of earth from space, one readily sees nature's inherent beauty, something often forgotten when dealing with the uncertain vagaries of life. Enjoy.

Vorticity

Everybody knows the web is getting really congested, that traffic is predicted to rise 18 fold within the next 5 years, a fact  making everyone nervous as to how the net will be able to handle this increase without blowing up. Well, help is on the way in a form looking like this.

With the explosion of digital devices, radio waves have become increasingly congested—but scientists in Italy and Sweden may have found a way to eradicate the problem completely by making a few minor tweaks to the current technology.

The key lies in changing the shape of radio waves. Scientists discovered that when twisting waves into a spiral shape, existing frequencies could hold multiple data streams instead of just one. In theory, the new technique allows for an infinite number of channels to exist in any one fixed bandwidth.

“In a three-dimensional perspective, this phase twist looks like a fusillli-pasta-shaped beam, study author Fabrizio Tamburini told PhysOrg. “Each of these twisted beams can be independently generated, propagated and detected even in the very same frequency band, behaving as independent communication channels.”

Works for me.

Electronica

How wired we have become. This intense & very cool video, from White Com'Prod,
a French production company, says it all.

Key Words

The words contained in this word cloud is but a small sampling of words being analyzed by The Department of Homeland Security, the "wonderful" government agency given to us by "W", the most esteemed of presidents. Just go to Animal to see the entire list, which theoretically could indite us all given just how extensive the list truly is.

David Brin is right. We want the right to be left alone as privacy is forever gone and one must learn to live with it whether one likes it or not. 

His insightful quote says it all.

Switch: Do you think that the costs involved in maintaining personal privacy are greater (or could become greater), than any utility of maintaining privacy?


David Brin: Depends on whether you mean real privacy or illusory privacy. Many people want the subjective sensation of being left alone. They understand – and don't mind – that governments and corporations know all about them, as long as those forces are polite and don't rub it in. Other people are concerned about actually controlling what is known about them by others. This latter goal can be difficult, costly, and frustratingly impossible.


The third kind of privacy – the kind we may be able to achieve – comes from having an enforceable right to be left mostly alone. This can come only from protecting yourself by knowing more, rather than trying to prevent others from knowing.

And so it goes - KV

Rendered Speechless

The perfect device to control bloviators, whether they be in Congress or in any other discipline where one is deemed a pundit. :)

Imagine sitting around a conference table with several of your colleagues as you hold an important meeting. Now imagine your boss pulling out what looks like a radar gun for catching speeding motorists and aiming at any of you that speak too long, very nearly instantly causing whoever is speaking to start stuttering then mumbling and then to stop speaking at all.

Ah, the wonders of tech in controlling something needing to be controlled without question. 

Greed is Good

One of the all time greats, Wall Street, a movie showing that Greed is Good, also applies to how the rich deal with ethics and morality.

The upper class has a higher propensity for unethical behavior, being more likely to believe – as did Gordon Gekko in the movie "Wall Street" – that "greed is good," according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley.

But it gets better...

In two field studies on driving behavior, upper-class motorists were found to be four times more likely than the other drivers to cut off other vehicles at a busy four-way intersection and three times more likely to cut off a pedestrian waiting to enter a crosswalk. 


Another study found that upper-class participants presented with scenarios of unscrupulous behavior were more likely than the individuals in the other socio-economic classes to report replicating this type of behavior themselves.


Participants in the fourth study were assigned tasks in a laboratory where a jar of candy, reserved for visiting children, was on hand, and were invited to take a candy or two. Upper-class participants helped themselves to twice as much candy as did their counterparts in other classes.

Being entitled has it's perks, just ask the banksters in Wall Street to see why.