Category Archives: The Brain

Vernor Vinge @ AC2005

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John Smart
founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation
kicked things off by talking about
the future, and future studies. This entire conference is
presenting a multidisciplinary view of the future, and the effects of
acceleration caused by the technological revolution. John primed
the pump with some interesting comments, and a quick review of the
speakers.

He then introduced the first speaker … someone who I have wanted to
hear speak for quite some time … Vernor Vinge. Vernor is given
credit for first using the term the “technological singularity”.
He immediately jumped into his presentation … the slides are here: Vernor Vinge @ AC2005

It was fun to hear his line of thinking about the Singularity, and
various types of growth curves. His slides contain a good set of
quotes and thoughts about possibility. What is so great is to
hear a speaker like this talking about the future, and some of the
inevitable future events … the development of creativity and intellect that surpasses present-day humans,
this *is* the Singularity … and the future of being human will evolve
into whole new dimensions. He talks about direct neural hook ups
of computers as inevitable in a way that makes you realize this is not
a question of if … but when.

He spent some time talking about the soft takeoff vs. hard takeoff scenarios. As he discussed soft takeoffs he highly recommended Accelerando as a great book exploring “soft takeoffs” as one possible scenario.   Amazing stuff.  He is a big thinker.

AC2005 … SAP Reception

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Last night was the AC2005 Tech Night reception up at SAP Labs in Palo
Alto, CA.  It was a great gathering with an amazing set of
demonstrations.  A lot of fun.  Some of the things that I
really enjoyed were:

  • Digital Identity – I got to meet Kaliya Hamlin – Identity Woman – in person.  She was at an Identity Commons booth, and I also spent time talking with Ajay Madhok – founder and CEO of AmSoft Systems – and saw his demonstration of using iNames with cell phones … some cool stuff.
  • New Space Technologies – I met Michael Mealing of Masten Space Systems. 
    They are working on re-useable low-cost launch vehicles for taking
    smaller payloads (one cubic meter) into space.  They are looking
    to do a first launch in 2007 … so not too far away.  It was fun
    to see that this type of thinking – and work towards making it a
    reality! – is becoming so commonplace today.
  • OpenCroquet – there was a great demo of the OpenCroquet system … something that I am going to go and check out more.
  • IMSmarter – these guys have a very cool couple of products with their IMSmarter and pbwiki
    products … both are consumer extensions of existing technologies with
    cool spins.  The IMSmarter application is unique is that they are
    leveraging the power of Internet “proxies” to insert themselves in the
    stream of communications to add enhanced services.
  • TroyWorks – Troy Gardner was there showing off some of his TroyWorks
    visual interfaces that were very cool.  I have some ideas that I
    am discussing with him … I really like what he is doing.
  • Tactical Iraqi – this was an amazing example of how learning tools are evolving.  Tactical Iraqi is a combination of traditional learning and gaming to rapidly teach Arabic to people.

The conference is starting … I’m looking forward to being blown away …

Accelerating Change 2005

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I’ll be going to my friends conference – Accelerating Change 2005
– again this year.  John Smart
has again put together a great
line-up of speakers and it looks like it’s going to be drinking from a
fire hose … I’ll be working to blog the event as best as
possible.  The Acceleration Studies Foundation
is John’s contribution to the world, and to
exploring the rapidly evolving world that we live in.

If you read through the Conference Schedule
you can get a good idea of the caliber of speakers.  If you want
to listen to last years conference for examples, go visit
ITConversations and browse through the Accelerating Change 2004 Archives.

I missed last years conference, and have to admit that some of these
ITConversations from last year just blow me away … I can’t wait for
next week.

Virtualization Commoditization

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I don’t believe that most people really see what is coming with
Virtualization … at multiple levels.  This plan by Microsoft,
IMHO, is common sense … and something that the Linux crowd really
will have to wake up to.  And I do not believe that Xen is it yet … not without full support for Microsoft operating systems.  Qemu is another interesting project that I have been following … they are also continuing to make advances.

With this plan by Microsoft – which I again believe is a great move –
it sounds like they will be expanding what they offer with Virtual PC … something that I use on a daily basis.  Microsoft will now be able to say “Hey … run Linux … as an APPLICATION on Windows!” 
So the installed base of Windows customers *will* be able to experience
the best of both worlds … they will maybe take a look at Linux by
running it on Windows.  They won’t have to give up Windows …
they keep Windows and get Linux too!

From what I understand, the Linux efforts for Xen will eventually be
able to compete as the next generation of processors are made available
from Intel and AMD.  As this next generation of CPUs hit, not only
will we see this advance in virtualization but these same processors
are going to be adding the multi-core, and multi-threaded capabilities
which will even further multiply the ability to virtualize operating
systems, and higher-layer abstractions.

Virtualization is starting become more of a commodity at the “hardware
virtualization” level … and more and more applications are being
written to the LAMP abstraction … another form of
virtualization.  This is all moving rapidly up the stack. 
It’s fun to watch.

News.Com: Microsoft ‘hypervisor’ plan takes shape.
Bob Muglia, senior vice president in the Windows Server Division, said
at Microsoft’s Tech Ed conference here that the software will be “built
directly in Windows and will allow companies to virtualize multiple
operating systems. [Tomalak’s Realm]

Entering a dark age of innovation?

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My friend Dave Cline sent me this link to a New Scientist article titled Entering a dark age of innovation.
As I have been following this space of accelerating change for some
time now, I have to say that I am not in agreement with much of the
analysis presented by Jonathan Huebner. The best comment that I
saw was by Ray Kurzweil who stated:

But artificial intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil – who formulated the
aforementioned law – thinks Huebner has got it all wrong. “He uses an arbitrary
list of about 7000 events that have no basis as a measure of innovation. If one
uses arbitrary measures, the results will not be meaningful.”

I believe that it goes even beyond this … his measurements using
population make a gross assumption about segmentations in
population. He seems to feel that raw numbers on global
population growth should somehow be mirrored by innovation. This,
IMHO, confuses the genetic basis of equality in human design, with the
environment and community within which to create what would be
recognized as “modern innovation”. With so much third world
population growth, I do not believe that you can expect to see a
proportional amount of “modern” innovation.

I am constantly reminded by this when I watch Link TV and see programs like this one about Peanuts … and the fact that in this country a simple peanut sheller can make a huge difference in their life. Likewise in this program, River of Sand,
I was amazing to be reminded of the daily life of these people … and
is Huebner trying to say that they are expected to create their
proportional amount of measureable innovation??

I believe that what we are seeing is more of what is called the “great
divide” … the “haves and have nots” … the continuing division of
those who are leveraging the tools of the modern world, and those who
have little immediate requirement or ability to access them.

As I was reminded this last weekend, all people are “created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” For a
huge portion of the worlds population this has nothing to do with
modern innovation.

Next-gen Augmented Reality

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This is something that Ray Kurzweil can only love to see. This is
a facinating article that talks about a patent that Sony filed … but
the coolest thing is that it is all about neural stimulation from
outside of the skull. If you can cause neural stimulation, then
you can cause neural activity … which a human can now “experience” as
though it were a real experience. This is a huge step forward in
the next generation of augmented reality. Don’t try to stimulate
the senses … just go directly to the brain!

Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix.
Sony has patented a device that fires pulses of ultrasound at the head
to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating
“sensory experiences” ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds.

It could allow for movies and compute… [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

A good anti-phishing solution

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I really liked the idea behind this solution being developed by Bank of America for anti-phishing. 
It’s really the simplicity that I like.  In short, it allows a
bank of America customer to customize the web page for their on-line
services … with a picture of image of their choice.  So now,
when a customer goes to log into the Bank of America site, they can
verify that the image is the one that they picked!

I know that there is still the general phishing scam that can be sent
out indicating that “Oh yeah … we had big problems with your server,
and your image can not be shown!” … or “Uh … we lost your image,
please log in and set your image again!” … but this is a very good
start.

The idea of customizing the page … to maybe even allow the customer
to choose among different types of customization … will allow users
to easily notice the differences in the web site, and then identify
potential phishing scams.

Simple … and a good start.

More on Health Supplements

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I did some research this weekend looking into “alpha-lipoic acid” and exacty what it is.  It was interesting to search Google and then start reading through the links.

One of the first links that I found linked to the Berkeley Wellness Letter web site.  This article had some interesting information that brought up another key supplement – carnitine.

One of the best-known proponents of ALA is Dr. Bruce Ames, professor of
molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has
helped develop and study an ALA supplement called Juvenon, which has been
patented by UC Berkeley. Juvenon, in addition, contains another promising
compound, acetyl-L-carnitine, which is also involved in energy production in the
mitochondria. Ames and his colleagues have found that high doses of these
compounds, in combination, enable elderly rats to function like younger ones. Of
course, the same results may not occur in humans. Human studies are just getting
started.

This led me to search more on this combination of supplements, and I found this article:  Four powerhouse nutrients. 
It’s a facinating article that explains what is now known about the
various compounds that interact within cells to produce energy.

So in my search for a source of alpha-lipoic acid, I could not find it
at Costco … yet.  I was, however able to find it at GNC … in both plain alpha-lipoic acid, and also coupled with carnitine.

Time to head over to GNC …

Learning more about the brain

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I am constantly amazed at the progress we are making with knowledge of
the brain.  I am so glad that there are ways that we can continue
to experiment and learn.  This article
was amazing to me … that we are actually learning about the effects
of various drugs, and finding ways to alter and effect the neural
wiring of the brain.  The brain-damaged firefighter – Donald Herbert – has now started to interact with his family nearly 10 years after an accident left him in a coma.

It is amazing what we have been able to do … and what might be coming
in the future … as we continue to more fully develop our knowledge
about the human brain.