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The Law of Accelerating Returns - 0 views

www.kurzweilai.net/...art0134.html

k kurzweil singularity

shared by Mike Wesch on 08 May 08 - Cached

Can the pace of technological progress continue to speed up indefinitely? Is there not a point where humans are unable to think fast enough to keep up with it? With regard to unenhanced humans, clearly so. But what would a thousand scientists, each a thousand times more intelligent than human scientists today, and each operating a thousand times faster than contemporary humans (because the information processing in their primarily nonbiological brains is faster) accomplish? One year would be like a millennium. What would they come up with?
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Downloading the Human Brain
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This, then, is the Singularity. The Singularity is technological change so rapid and so profound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.
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Needless to say, the Singularity will transform all aspects of our lives, social, sexual, and economic,
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Some prominent dates from this analysis include the following: We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2023. We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for one cent around the year 2037. We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2049. We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for one cent around the year 2059.
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Well, for one thing, they would come up with technology to become even more intelligent (because their intelligence is no longer of fixed capacity).
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A Thought Experiment
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By 2030, going to a web site will mean entering a full immersion virtual reality environment.
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Brain implants based on massively distributed intelligent nanobots will ultimately expand our memories a trillion fold, and otherwise vastly improve all of our sensory, pattern recognition, and cognitive abilities.
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And in the same way that biological self-replication gone awry (i.e., cancer) results in biological destruction, a defect in the mechanism curtailing nanobot self-replication would endanger all physical entities, biological or otherwise.
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A related question is "is death desirable?"
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Plan to Stick Around
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Clever Critters: 8 Best Non-Human Tool Users | Wired Science from Wired.com - 0 views

blog.wired.com/...animaltools.html

animals tools humans video

shared by Mike Wesch on 27 Jan 09 - Cached

THE END(S) OF ETHNOGRAPHY: Social/Cultural Anthropology's Signature Form of Producing K... - 0 views

www.blackwell-synergy.com/...j.1548-1360.2008.00001.x

anthropology ethnography

shared by Adam Bohannon on 04 Apr 08 - Cached

Adam Bohannon on 04 Apr 08

Today's investment in and calls for public anthropology are one symptom of the profound rupture and reorganization of the research agendas of social/cultural anthropology as it moved away from the four-field organization of anthropology into an alignment with certain humanities-driven, energetically interdisciplinary appropriations of the concerns of the social sciences in the name of "theory." In anthropology, this story can most cogently be told by focusing on what happened to its central professional culture of method: what ethnography looks like today and the conditions of research, encompassing fieldwork, that produce it. This article is an examination of this reorganization of social/cultural anthropology, which has left the center of the discipline intellectually weak relative to the vitality of its diverse interdisciplinary and even nonacademic engagements. It asks whether this post-1980s reorganized social/cultural anthropology might rediscover and reunite with some of its historic core associations (four-field as well as topical) in the new terrains of research and partnerships on the peripheries of its old disciplinary center.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Today's investment in and calls for public anthropology are one symptom of the profound rupture and reorganization of the research agendas of social/cultural anthropology as it moved away from the four-field organization of anthropology into an alignment with certain humanities-driven, energetically interdisciplinary appropriations of the concerns of the social sciences in the name of "theory." In anthropology, this story can most cogently be told by focusing on what happened to its central professional culture of method: what ethnography looks like today and the conditions of research, encompassing fieldwork, that produce it. This article is an examination of this reorganization of social/cultural anthropology, which has left the center of the discipline intellectually weak relative to the vitality of its diverse interdisciplinary and even nonacademic engagements. It asks whether this post-1980s reorganized social/cultural anthropology might rediscover and reunite with some of its historic core associations (four-field as well as topical) in the new terrains of research and partnerships on the peripheries of its old disciplinary center.</div>

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Meeting The Other (How to Learn about Humanity) - 0 views

www.promatriarchy.net/index.php

anthropology humanity maybury-lewis

shared by Adam Bohannon on 15 May 08 - Cached

Anthropology and Human Rights: Between Silence and Violence - 0 views

www3.interscience.wiley.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/...abstract

anthropology humanrights violence aids hiv

shared by Adam Bohannon on 10 Mar 09 - No Cached

Smarty Plants: Inside the World's Only Plant-Intelligence Lab - 0 views

www.wired.com/...veggie_intelligence

deadair

shared by Matthew Schuler on 24 Jan 08 - Cached

"If you define intelligence as the capacity to solve problems, plants have a lot to teach us," says Mancuso, dressed in harmonizing shades of his favorite color: green. "Not only are they 'smart' in how they grow, adapt and thrive, they do it without neuroses. Intelligence isn't only about having a brain."
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plants have a lot to contribute in fields as disparate as robotics and telecommunications. For instance, current projects at the LINV include a plant-inspired robot in development for the European Space Agency. The "plantoid" might be used to explore the Martian soil by dropping mechanical "pods" capable of communicating with a central "stem," which would send data back to Earth.
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Mancuso decided to use the controversial term "plant neurobiology" to reinforce the idea that plants have biochemistry, cell biology and electrophysiology similar to the human nervous system.
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In addition to studies on the effects of music on vineyards, the center's researchers have also published papers on gravity sensing, plant synapses and long-distance signal transmission in trees.
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"Plants communicate via chemical substances," Mancuso says. "They have a specific and fairly extensive vocabulary to convey alarms, health and a host of other things. We just have sound waves broken down into various languages, I don't see how we could bridge the gap."
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