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Google's 'Social' Gmail: Could It Really Work? Google's social networking component for Gmail will reportedly aggregate updates from friends into single tweet-like status... (Feb. 8, 2010) [Read more] Getting a Grip on Online Buzz Viralheat's new analytics package allows for in-depth analysis of discussions about their products on social media sites such... (Feb. 9, 2010) [Read more] An Early Warning System for Cancer A new screening tool developed by scientists in Denmark, comprising a microarray system that analyzes patients' blood, could... (Feb. 9, 2010) [Read more] Scientists identify first genetic variant linked to biological aging in humans The risk of age-associated diseases including heart disease and some types of cancers are more closely related to biological... (Feb. 7, 2010) [Read more] By tracking water molecules, physicists hope to unlock secrets of life Rockefeller University researchers have discovered how interaction between water molecules paves the way for understanding how... (Feb. 8, 2010) [Read more] U.S. Solar Market to Double in the Next Year The United States is likely to be the world's largest market for solar power in a few years and this year's solar installations... (Feb. 8, 2010) [Read more] Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal 'Synthetic Organisms,' Molecular Kill-Switch Included Darpa is investing $6 million in a project called BioDesign to develop creatures that are genetically engineered to bolster... (Feb. 5, 2010) [Read more] Parisian Love Google's superbowl TV ad dramatizes the personal meaning of Web searching. ... (Feb. 8, 2010) [Read more] Picture of the day Z. Hong Zhou at the University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues have shown that the RNA and proteins in the rabies and... (Jan. 30, 2010) [Read more] Found: Hawking's initials written into the universe The Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe (WMAP) team points out that if something as unlikely as Hawking's initials can be... (Feb. 7, 2010) [Read more] Unplugged: Goodbye cables, hello energy beams Wireless power transmission, resonant magnetic coupling, infrared lasers are three methods of charging home appliances... (Feb. 8, 2010) [Read more] Scientists make a leap in quantum computing Princeton University and UC Santa Barbara scientists have succeeded in trapping one or two individual electrons to form spin... (Feb. 5, 2010) [Read more] Quantum photosynthesis Physical chemist Gregory Scholes of the University of Toronto and his colleagues have observed that energy introduced to... (Feb. 3, 2010) [Read more] A telescope that sets its sights on cyber-crime Endgame Systems of Atlanta has come up with a system called the Internet telescope that can map the physical location of... (Feb. 4, 2010) [Read more] First germanium laser brings us closer to 'optical computers' MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical... (Feb. 4, 2010) [Read more] U.S. Scientists Given Access to Cloud Computing The National Science Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation have agreed to offer American scientific researchers free access... (Feb. 4, 2010) [Read more] NASA, GM team up to build robotic astronauts NASA and General Motors (GM) are developing humanoid robots that can work side-by-side with humans to help astronauts during... (Feb. 4, 2010) [Read more] 'Nanobubbles' kill cancer cells Rice University have discovered a new technique for targeting individual diseased cells and destroying them with exploding... (Feb. 4, 2010) [Read more] Siri: Your Personal Assistant for the Mobile Web Siri, a new iPhone app based on SRI International's ambitious CALO artificial intelligence project, transcribes spoken text and... (Feb. 4, 2010) [Read more] Stanford's robotic Audi to brave Pikes Peak without a driver A team of researchers at the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) plans to race an autonomous vehicle up the... (Feb. 3, 2010) [Read more] Is Amazon Building a Superkindle? Amazon has acquired Touchco, a New York start-up that was developing flexible, transparent, force-sensitive multitouch panels.... (Feb. 3, 2010) [Read more] Survival of the fittest theory: Darwinism's limits Darwinists say that evolution is explained by the selection of phenotypic traits (heritable biological properties) by... (Feb. 3, 2010) [Read more] Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy Masahiro Hotta at Tohoku University says he has developed a way to teleport energy by injecting quantum energy at one point in... (Feb. 3, 2010) [Read more] Brain Imaging Lets Vegetative Patient Communicate A patient thought to be in a vegetative state was able to correctly answer a series of yes or no questions, with responses... (Feb. 4, 2010) [Read more] The blurry lines of animated 'news' Taiwan-based Next Media has garnered millions of Web hits for its controversial animated news, using animators and actors in... (Feb. 2, 2010) [Read more] Multitouch 'Skin' Transforms Surfaces Into Interactive Screens A new large-format multi-touch technology launched today by DISPLAX will transform any non-conductive flat or curved surface,... (Feb. 2, 2010) [Read more] 3-D scaffold provides clean, biodegradable structure for stem cell growth University of Washington researchers have built a three-dimensional scaffold out of a natural material, chitosan, that mimics... (Feb. 2, 2010) [Read more] Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything Turkish scientists have developed spray-on liquid glass that is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface... (Feb. 2, 2010) [Read more] Malleable Maps, Artistic Robots and Bubble Interfaces The Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '10) conference was held in Cambridge, MA, this week. Technologists and... (Jan. 29, 2010) [Read more] Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge Even as we are acquiring ever more extraordinary knowledge, we are storing it in ever more fragile and ephemeral forms. If our... (Feb. 2, 2010) [Read more] Smart grid could reduce emissions by 12 percent A smart electrical power grid could decrease annual electric energy use and utility-sector carbon emissions at least 12 percent... (Jan. 29, 2010) [Read more] Peering inside an artificial sun "Fusion ignition," a major milestone toward the harnessing of fusion power, is expected within the next year or two at the... (Jan. 29, 2010) [Read more] Researchers perform complete genomic sequencing of brain cancer cell line Researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have performed the first complete genomic sequencing of a brain... (Jan. 29, 2010) [Read more] Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism Apple eschews Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the "wisdom of the crowd" and product design philosophy steered by... (Jan. 29, 2010) [Read more] Smart Dust? Not Quite, but We're Getting There While smart dust* is not here yet, smaller, faster and cheaper technology has reached the point where sensors may soon as... (Jan. 30, 2010) [Read more] [Click here to check out all News items] Openness and the Metaverse Singularity By Jamais Cascio The four worlds of the Metaverse Roadmap could also represent four pathways to a Singularity. But they also represent potential dangers. An "open-access Singularity" may be the answer. The people who ... (November 7th 2007) What If the Singularity Does NOT Happen? By Vernor Vinge It's 2045 and nerds in old-folks homes are wandering around, scratching their heads, and asking plaintively, "But ... but, where's the Singularity?" Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge--who originated... (March 14th 2007) Foreword to The Intelligent Universe By Ray Kurzweil The explosive nature of exponential growth means it may only take a quarter of a millennium to go from sending messages on horseback to saturating the matter and energy in our solar system with sublim... (February 2nd 2007) [Click here to check out all The Singularity articles] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists By Richard A. Clarke Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke’s BREAKPOINT novel, set in the year 2012, is based on emerging technologies. "Globegrid," a high-speed global network, links supercomputers worldwide. Combi... (May 18th 2007) Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III By William B. Scott Space Wars by Willliam Scott, Michael Coumatos, and William Birnes, Forge Books (April 17, 2007) describes how the first hours of World War III might play out in the year 2010. While fiction, it's bas... (April 17th 2007) The Moon as backup drive for civilization By KurzweilAI.net Imaginative new ideas for using space to protect civilization against existential risks, such as killer asteroids, nuclear war, and global terrorism, are in the works. The public increasingly sees NAS... (September 24th 2006) [Click here to check out all Dangerous Futures articles] Why Language Is All Thumbs By Chip Walter Toolmaking not only resulted in tools, but also the reconfiguration of our brains so they comprehended the world on the same terms as our toolmaking hands interacted with it. With mirror neurons, some... (March 15th 2008) AI Meets the Metaverse: Teachable AI Agents Living in Virtual Worlds By Ben Goertzel Online virtual worlds have the power to accelerate and catalyze the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). As AGIs involved in this metaverse become progressively more intelligent from ... (October 18th 2007) The Age of Virtuous Machines By J. Storrs Hall In the "hard takeoff" scenario, a psychopathic AI suddenly emerges at a superhuman level, achieving universal dominance. Hall suggests an alternative: we've gotten better because we've become smarter,... (June 1st 2007) [Click here to check out all How to Build a Brain articles] Gelernter, Kurzweil debate machine consciousness By Rodney Brooks, Ray Kurzweil, and David Gelernter Are we limited to building super-intelligent robotic "zombies" or will it be possible and desirable for us to build conscious, creative, volitional, perhaps even "spiritual" machines? David Gelernter ... (December 6th 2006) Cyber Sapiens By Chip Walter ...We will no longer be Homo sapiens, but Cyber sapiens--a creature part digital and part biological that will have placed more distance between its DNA and the destinies they force upon us than any o... (October 26th 2006) Why We Can Be Confident of Turing Test Capability Within a Quarter Century By Ray Kurzweil The advent of strong AI (exceeding human intelligence) is the most important transformation this century will see, and it will happen within 25 years, says Ray Kurzweil, who will present this paper at... (July 13th 2006) [Click here to check out all Will Machines Become Conscious? articles] Bootstrapping our way to an ageless future By Aubrey de Grey Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey expects many people alive today to live to 1000 years of age and to avoid age-related health problems even at that age. In this excerpt from his just-published,... (September 19th 2007) Press ignores bias in study of multivitamins and prostate cancer By Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman In a recent paper reporting on the National Cancer Institute study of multivitamin use and the risk of prostate cancer, the NCI authors cited several possible bias factors. An analysis by Ray Kurzweil... (May 25th 2007) Strategic Sustainable Brain By Natasha Vita-More The human brain faces a challenging future. To cope with accelerating nanotech- and biotech-based developments in an increasingly complex world, compete with emerging superintelligence, and maintain i... (March 31st 2006) [Click here to check out all Living Forever articles] How to Build a Virtual Human By Peter Plantec Virtual Humans is the first book with instructions on designing a "V-human," or synthetic person. Using the programs on the included CD, you can create animated computer characters who can speak, dial... (October 20th 2003) Remarks about Tod Machover In Presenting the 2003 Ray Kurzweil Award of Technology in Music By Ray Kurzweil Ray Kurzweil presented the 2003 Ray Kurzweil Award of Technology in Music to Tod Machover at the Fourth Annual Telluride Tech Festival (August 8-10, 2003). The award was in recognition of Machover's p... (August 11th 2003) Glitches Reloaded By Peter B. Lloyd In Matrix Reloaded, how can Neo fly and use telekinesis if the Matrix is supposed to a physics simulation? Peter Lloyd decodes this and other technical enigmas--reverse-engineering the design of the M... (June 2nd 2003) [Click here to check out all Virtual Realities articles] Who Will Rule the 21st Century? By Jack Welch Straight-line extrapolation shows that China and India, with their faster growth rates, will eventually catch up to the U.S. in terms of pure economic size. But America has a final competitive advanta... (May 25th 2008) EGOGRAM 2007 By Sir Arthur C. Clarke The Golden Age of space travel is still ahead of us. Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will gain access to the orbital realm -- and then, to the Moon and beyond, says Sir Arthur, 89.... (February 7th 2007) I'm Confident About Energy, the Environment, Longevity, and Wealth; I'm Optimistic (But Not Necessarily Confident) Of the Avoidance Of Existential Downsides; And I'm Hopeful (But Not Necessarily Optimistic) About a Repeat Of 9-11 (Or Worse) By Ray Kurzweil Ray Kurzweil responds to John Brockman's The Edge Annual Question - 2007: WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY? ... (February 4th 2007) [Click here to check out all Visions of the Future articles] Response to 'The Singularity Is Always Near' By Ray Kurzweil In "The Singularity Is Always Near," an essay in The Technium, an online "book in progress," author Kevin Kelly critiques arguments on exponential growth made in Ray Kurzweil's book, The Singularity I... (May 4th 2006) Wolfram and Kurzweil Roundtable Discussion By Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Wolfram "The most dramatic possibility is the universe started from a simple initial condition that had some simple geometrical symmetry. It might be the case that if we turn our telescope off to the west, an... (February 24th 2006) Ray Kurzweil Responds to Richard Eckersley By Ray Kurzweil "Eckersley bases his romanticized idea of ancient life on communication and the relationships fostered by communication. But much of modern technology is directed at just this basic human need."... (February 3rd 2006) [Click here to check out all Point/Counterpoint articles] Engines of Creation 2.0: Molecular Engineering: An Approach to the Development of General Capabilities for Molecular Manipulation By K. Eric Drexler Developing the ability to design protein molecules will make it possible to construct molecular machines. These can then build second-generation machines that can perform extremely general synthesis o... (March 20th 2007) Engines of Creation 2.0: Advice To Aspiring Nanotechnologists By K. Eric Drexler It makes no practical sense to try to build a molecular assembler today. But we can build enabling technologies today, including protein engineering, general macromolecular engineering, and micromanip... (March 15th 2007) Engines of Creation 2.0: Letter From Author By K. Eric Drexler Engines of Creation in 1986 inspired an explosion of interest in nanotechnology. Version 2.0 updates this classic book, including new concepts for molecular manufacturing and new uses for nanotech, s... (March 15th 2007) [Click here to check out all Nanotechnology articles]