Come join us at the 2011 Singularity Summit!

Several of us here at Future Tech will be going to this year’s Singularity Summit in New York City! It will be held in Manhattan on October 15-16. At least Rahul and I will be flying out for that weekend, which coincidentally happens to be our fall break. Although the registration price is a bit steep, I encourage everyone who can make it to come and meet some of the best people working on world-changing technologies today!

You can see the program of the conference here. Presenters include Stephen Wolfram (of Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica), Eliezer Yudkowsky (of Less Wrong, Overcoming Bias and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fame), as well as Michael Shermer (founder of Skeptic Magazine and professor at our own CGU). There are plenty of other amazing speakers whose details this margin is too small to contain. I heavily encourage you to register and attend!

Weekly Tech Summary 3

Big news:

First maps made of functional connections between single neurons and ganglial cells in the retina
These should enable us to better understand the neural computations underlying low-level vision, make retinal implants, etc. They were made with the use of a sensor technology allowing hundreds of neurons to be recorded simultaneously, at high speed.

Researchers report:

We’ve made adult stem cells that don’t age in culture
Previous efforts to use adult stem cells for medical applications have been hindered by the inability to grow more stem cells outside your body. This should make it possible for fewer stem cells to be extracted from your body, and then effectively used to help treat numerous illnesses.

Carnegie Mellon researchers unleash Never-Ending Language Learning system on the internet
It goes through the web attempting to ‘read’ facts from hundreds of millions of web pages and tries to improve its own reading competence. I’m glad to see that large-scale AI work is still being done, but perhaps I wouldn’t do it quite this way.

Cheap webcams can measure your pulse
A student has demonstrated that you can get accurate measurements from a cheap webcam, like the one in your laptop.

Researchers have produced a mobius strip out of DNA
Using DNA origami techniques they were able to demonstrate the versatility of our current nanotech capabilities. They hope to eventually apply this technology to the development of senors, nanolithography, drug delivery methods and nanoelectronics.

Industry reports:

AudioScope can ‘zoom in’ a single conversation in a crowded sports stadium
Using a circular array of 300 microphones physicist in a new startup company can hear individual conversations in a crowded sports stadium. They’ve been working with sports teams to test the technology out and the response has been positive. Check out the link for a video of the technology at work.

New Toshiba 3D TVs work without glasses
They demonstrated two models at a conference in Japan, one 20in (1280×720) and another 12in (466×350). The displays project nine different perspectives, and achieve a 3D effect within a 40 degree viewing angle in front of the display (also requiring people to be at a specific distance from the displays).

Tech CEOs tell the Obama how to save $1 trillion over the next 10 years
The Technology CEO council has submitted its report suggesting that the government should: consolidate its IT infrastructure, streamline its supply chains, reduce its energy use and move many of its services online.

NTT DoCoMo demos small, stylish augmented reality wearable displays for use with (Japanese) cellphones
The displays can be clipped onto glasses, and they’re being pitched for use in museums and other tourist attractions to help people navigate and display information about the outside world.

On the horizon:

EUCRIO now provides cryonics services to members of the EU
It will provide cryonics transportation services to members of the EU, and will start full operations on the first of November. Note that it won’t actually be storing any patients – only Alcor, Cryonics Institute and KrioRus do that.

New ‘electrofluidic’ display technology can merge low power (Kindle) and high fidelity (iPad) markets
Should be appearing in a few years, and would enable color images and video with the same power consumption as the Kindle’s digital ink screen.

Hackers can manipulate the powergrid to make money or cause blackouts
Information relayed between substations is not secure, and could be intercepted and modified to change power prices and possibly trigger circuit breakers and cause cascading blackouts.

Weekly Tech Summary 2

Big stuff:

Researchers find first potentially habitable exoplanet
Its current name is Gliese 581g and it is one of at least six planets in the system. It’s around 20 light years from us and orbits a small red dwarf star.

Researchers and industry news:

Quantum thermoelectric device could turn waste heat into electricity
Researchers at ASU have shown that you could use a thin polymer layer sandwiched between two electrodes and exposed heat flow to generate electricity. The simplicity and small size of the device could make it more economical than current alternatives.

Higher speed measurements of individual atoms now possible
IBM researchers have developed a new method of using scanning tunneling microscopes to record ultra high-speed electromagnetic properties of structures down to the size of individual atoms. This new technique should be useful for further research in quantum computing and high-density information storage.

Light-activated muscle activation demonstrated in mice
Stanford researchers have been able to activate muscles in mouse legs with LEDs placed on the nerves controlling the muscles. The mice are genetically modified to have a kind of light receptor in some of their nerves. This kind of technology has previously been used to activate certain parts of mouse brains, but this kind of direct muscle control could eventually lead to big advances in biomechanics of human movement.

DoD funds research into methods to help rewire injured brains
Researchers are in the process of developing and testing a technology incorporating a brain-computer-brain interface that will help a brain get properly rewired after large injuries. It may help people who’ve had strokes, been in car crashes, or other accidents regain normal behavior and movement.

Nanostructured display technology should allow for smaller, more efficient displays
It should allow displays to be more efficient and reduce the size of possible pixels by 8 to 10 times, compared to current LEDs.

Raytheon releases their second-generation exoskeleton
It’s reduced its power consumption by 50% and is lighter, stronger and faster than the previous version. It should also be more resistant to environmental effects. Raytheon says it should be in use on the battlefield in 5 years or so.

Cool projects:

Google funds five projects to improve the lives of the largest number of people
The winners are Khan Academy (providing a free education to anyone through Youtube videos), FIRST (promoting science and engineering education through team competitions), Public Resource.org (making government more transparent by providing access to legal documents), Shweeb (making human-powered medium distance monorail systems), and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (which graduate-level math and science study in Africa).

NIH gives $40M of funding to the Human Connectome Project
The project will scan 1200 human brains over the next five years. They’ll also record behavioral and physiological data and release the results as a publicly viewable database. The hope is that this large concerted effort will give us a clearer picture of how different parts of the brain relate to each other, and how much variability we can expect in an individual brain’s features.

On the horizon:

China aims to make world’s biggest supercomputer
The US currently has 282 of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, but China’s got 24 but they’re pouring huge amounts of money into making more. Researchers predict that by 2020 we’ll have a supercomputer that can do 1 exaflops, which is a thousand times higher than any current supercomputer and a one million trillion floating point operations per second

Weekly Tech Summary

Big news:

FCC opens unused part of TV spectrum for broadband
This is some of the spectrum that was freed by changing TV signals from analog to digital. It’s the first time a major chunk of spectrum was made free for unlicensed use in about 20 years. It should lead to WiFi that can penetrate barriers more easily.

Researchers report:

Study finds 200 genes might make kids smart
Data was used from 4000 British kids. The effect size wasn’t mentioned, but they say any individual genetic difference doesn’t have a very large impact.

New technique can allow 750TB in CD form factor
Writing speed is a significant problem to overcome before disks this dense can be practical. Researchers have now shown that a new technique combining strong magnetic fields and lasers can write information as fast as one billion bits a second.

New sensor to detect small amounts of proteins
Nanotubes coated with protein-recognizing polymer have been shown to be effective in detecting the presence of specific proteins and discriminating between similar variants. These should be able to improve diagnosis for cancer and other illnesses.

Industry reports:

Experimental micro-projector can now do VGA resolution
The projector works by quickly scanning red, green and blue laser beams across a surface. It doesn’t use much power, and could eventually be used in cellphones.

Kawada Industries shows off ‘low cost’ humanoid robot in Japan
It will sell for $300K, and was demonstrated to be able to obey simple voice commands, stand on one foot, and of course walk autonomously. It should be available in January 2011 to industries and research institutes.

Biotech firm demonstrates cheap way to make acrylic acid using bacteria
Acrylic acid is used paints, diapers and adhesives. The new process should be cheaper and produce 75% less CO2 than current methods.

On the horizon:

Raman spectroscopy could be applied to disease diagnosis in a few years
The technique involves shining lasers through skin or enamel and analyzing the reflections from different kinds of tissues. This has already been experimentally applied to analysis of bones and teeth, giving more information on chemical composition than current x-ray methods.

Skylon spaceplane could carry people and payload into space in a decade
A UK team of engineers is developing a spaceplane that should be able to take off and land from a normal airport, and transport a 12 ton payload (or passengers) into space. They’re still far from building the actual plane, but they’ve made some fancy tech and still seem to be going strong, maybe getting government funding soon.

Invisibility Cloaks and Biases

A few months ago a video was launched showcasing a recent development on invisibility cloaks.  Like normal, the press ran wild.  “Dream No More – The Invisibility Cloak is Here”, lauded FutureofThings.com.  Other headlines included, “Invisibility Cloak Expected to Make a Grand Appearance!”, “Invisibility Cloak for Muggles in the Works” and my favorite, “Welcome to the Future!”

Modern media has long been enthusiastic about the arrival of purchasable invisibility.  Invisibility cloaks have been prominently featured in Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the James Bond series’.  In each case only one exists, it’s given to the main protagonist, and it is always used for good.

Even when science fiction uses invisibility for “evil”, it isn’t that bad.  The main examples of villainous invisibility are The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, and the movie Predator.  The Invisible Man is more a tragic hero than a super villain, and was eventually adapted as a protagonist in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore.  When the Predator is eventually faced with Aliens in the Alien vs. Predator series, it also becomes a leading protagonist.  So the invisibility cloak not only makes you invisible, but it comes with the added benefit of making you moral as well.

The general public also seems to perceive these cloaking devices as singular items that only title characters use.  But in real life there is no protagonist; instead the main character is the one making a speculation.  You can tell this from the comments online to a YouTube video showing an invisibility cloak demonstration:

“Nice soo I can sneak in to anyones bathroom XD”

“It would be funny to “haunt” someone”

“I’d be the Robin Hood of casinos”

Fewer people seem concerned about having someone go into their bathroom, or about themselves getting haunted, or about their houses getting looted.  They seem quite optimistic.

But can one honestly believe that if invented, the government would even allow invisibility cloaks to be released to the public?  That perhaps the negative externalities could be compensated for in some sort of “pervert tax”?

We can try to imagine a world in which they would.

It’s the year 2040.  When Apple releases the iCloak, there will be no protagonist to give it to.  You will not get one because it will be too expensive. Three distinct groups of people will have access instead.

1)   The government. This group already has had it for a while, and uses it to spy on you.

2)   Rich old white men.  These people will play around with it for a while, and eventually come to spy on you.

3)   People desperate enough to spend their life savings on an invisibility cloak.  These people are really, really creepy.  They will not only spy on you, but take videos and mess with you as well.

So maybe when the iCloak 3.0 is made affordable, you’ll be able to return the favor.  But by that point the only visible people left to spy on are those too poor to even afford this version.  Eventually we will all be hovered to watch one 60-year-old beggar pee.

Welcome to the future!

Invisibility enthusiasts may be surprised to learn that we already have some type of “invisibility cloak”.  If an invisibility cloak is simply device that allows one to spy on people without being seen, then it’s called a video camera.

Video cameras have had the opposite problem.  They’ve been seen as the quintessential threat against privacy, the material representation of everything George Orwell hated.  When a new technological development occurs with video cameras, headlines read “Video Surveillance Catches up with Orwell’s 1984” (The Daily of UW), and “Big Brother is Watching your House” (London Today).  Surveillance state governments aren’t the only ones to use video cameras; so do super villains.  Horror movies have tapped into the paranoia that video cameras trigger; they were prominently featured in the movies Captivity, House of Wax, and the Saw Series.

So while people internalize invisibility cloaks to their use only, they consider video cameras to be available to everybody around them instead.

Perhaps headlines should read “Video Breakthrough Gives Individuals Defense from Government”.  Recently we have begun seeing cases of video cameras being used by civilians to catch government officials and police doing controversial acts, a reversal of the role Western Culture was expecting.  The government of Iran may have used a few security cams to prepare for protests, but a more impactful use of them was the filming of the killing of protester Neda Agha-Soltan, which went viral and created an outrage against the establishment.

This leads us to the question: why do we as a society seem to pick some technologies to internalize and others to do everything but internalize?  Perhaps it is due to “follow the leader” syndrome, where a few beginning stories make the distinction and everyone else follows.  But it is also likely that the authors of these stories had the same biases that future writers did.

This internal/external dichotomy shows up throughout other societal perceptions and expectations.  Guns are a great example, because a split in their perception is a leading factor in the great polarization in the legalization debate.  Those arguing against firearms often complain about their use by criminals, seeing them as objects of other people.  Meanwhile the gun rights advocates make arguments of individual ownership.  One side discusses guns as objects to internalize, but the other views them as being used by “everyone else”.

So for now, we should figure out what we need to plan for and rationally go about futurism policy instead of relying on media trends and biases.  Because time bombs are worst when they’re invisible.

Type with your feet

Four of us went to UIST last weekend to present the “Heelblazer,” a foot typing system using Microsoft’s pressure-sensitive keyboard. Here’s what we came up with.

Greg won’t let me post a link called “link”, so here’s a proper link.

Rethinking incentives

Some American corporations act as if that the more you pay someone to do a task, the more productive and creative that person will be. However, scientific evidence shows this not true. In this TED talk Dan Pink claims that “autonomy, mastery and purpose” motivate people to work creatively, while money incentives actually decrease performance for intellectually challenging tasks.

Dan Pink on motivation

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