David McCormick

Taking Control Away From The Driver

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of robot driving. Humans are terrible drivers. And why should we be good at it? Controlling a vehicle on four wheels moving at 100 km/h among other similar vehicles, each of which can easily kill occupants or pedestrians due to their mass alone… why does anyone think the human nervous system is equipped for that?

Most people are not ready to allow robots to pilot their car because they think they’re safer. But there was a small milestone in taking away driver control in which the driver was unauthorized and clearly a danger. From ABC news:

The 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe roared away with officers in pursuit, but shortly after the suspect made a right turn, operators at General Motors Co.’s OnStar service sent a command that electronically disabled the gas pedal and the SUV gradually came to a halt.

The flustered thief got out and ran, but was quickly nabbed after he climbed several fences and fell into a backyard swimming pool, police said.
High-Speed Chase Ends When OnStar Halts Stolen SUV – ABC News

This reminds me of the scene in Minority Report (2002) when Tom Cruise’s character makes his first escape from his employer in a car. Very quickly, he gets an audio warning: “Vehicle destination reset to police headquarters.” This is exactly the behaviour we want when capturing a fleeing fugitive.

Thanks to BloggingTheSingularity.com for bringing this to my attention.

Ageing Stopped in Mice Livers

Scientists stop the ageing process › News in Science (ABC Science)

Scientists have stopped the ageing process in an entire organ for the first time, a study released today says.

Published in today’s online edition of Nature Medicine, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York City also say the older organs function as well as they did when the host animal was younger.

To summarize, one of the main ways that the liver loses performance with age is the buildup of junk proteins. In a young normal liver, these proteins are rounded up and transferred into sacs called lysosomes where they are broken down into harmless molecules. A chemical receptor on the lysosome enables this process.

As the liver ages, the receptors stop working well, and the toxic proteins don’t get digested. The liver slowly degenerates as the proteins build up.

This study created genetically modified mice with more copies of those receptors. Those mice had healthy livers into their old age (22-26 months).

An important side note is that this is not simply a liver problem. A build-up of toxic material is pronounced in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative disorders. If the same technique can be applied to the brain, it may be a major breakthrough for prevention of those disorders.

This study explores one of the 7 causes of ageing: Intracellular aggregates. You can read about the work of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) and the work of Aubrey de Gray on this page about Seven Deadly Things (and why there are only seven)

Chris Martenson’s Crash Course

I just finished watching one of the most informative slideshows I’ve ever seen. Through a series of short videos, I saw the simplest explanation of the economy and the reasons why we are headed for a catastrophe. Big catastrophe or small? I think it’ll be big because nobody is preparing for it. But even if you think it’ll be a small or short-term collapse, why wouldn’t you prepare?

Ready to learn everything you need to know about the economy in the shortest amount of time?

The Crash Course is a condensed online version of Chris Martenson’s “End of Money” seminar.

The Crash Course seeks to provide you with a baseline understanding of the economy so that you can better appreciate the risks that we all face.
Chris Martenson | The Crash Course

It is a 20-part series of short videos. But don’t let that scare you away. Each video is a little YouTube-like snippet with one key concept. So, it’s really easy to follow. And don’t worry that it’s economics and will be boring! Everything you do with your money and time is economics, so it’s a good idea to learn a bit about how it works.

It’s a crash course about Crashes. Guess what? Because of the housing bubble and the sub-prime crap, we are in a financial crash. It’s happening now. If you don’t understand what it might mean for you, you have to watch this series of videos.

Chips For Ubiquitous Computing

Industry group Ecma International recently announced a worldwide standard for the radio frequency (RF) technology that makes 60 GHz “multi-gigabit” data transfer possible. The specifications for this technology, which involves chips capable of sending RF signals in the 60 GHz range, are expected to be published as an ISO standard in 2009.

“We believe this new standard represents a major step forward,” said Joy Laskar, a member of the Ecma 60 GHz standards committee and director of the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) at Georgia Tech. “Consumers could see products capable of ultra-fast short-range data transfer within two or three years.”

He added that multi-gigabit technology could also help enable “viral communications.” Viral communications scenarios envision a future of decentralized, ubiquitous, wireless devices that aren’t directly connected to a central communications conduit. Instead, they cooperate with one another to both utilize and expand bandwidth and data availability.
GT | New Wireless 60 GHz Standard Promises Ultra-Fast Applications

This is exactly what is needed to eliminate those pesky ISPs. I see a future in which all devices worldwide can communicate without being funneled through communication companies. Each device constantly talks to the chips within a few meters of it. If the message is not for that device, it relays the packet on to all the other devices that it is near. This is how TCP/IP works. It creates a robust and fast network with each device as a node. Adding devices makes the network faster. In a funnel, more devices means slower traffic (like a road). More devices also makes the network more reliable. There will always be another path for your information to take if a bunch of devices get turned off. Not so with a funnel: pipe goes down, nobody talks.

So, whether by this method or some other, I predict we’ll have chips in virtually everything by 2020. Some may not do much, just announce their serial number, but I hope that most of them will act as network nodes.

Holographic Universe Proof?

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.

If this doesn’t blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”
Our world may be a giant hologram – space – 15 January 2009 – New Scientist

There is a great book on this subject, and it’s not that new: Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. I borrowed it from a friend, read it over and over until it was ruined, then bought him a replacement, and bought myself another copy to keep on the shelf. You’ll think it’s a bunch of new-age quasi-science for a little while, but it all comes together without any twisting of the facts.

Readers should carefully note that nobody is saying that the world is an optical illusion. The theory is that the three dimensional reality that we inhabit (including all particles, not just light) works like a hologram. True holograms have many fascinating properties, and shouldn’t be thought of as mere tricks. Read the book for examples, there are too many to go into here (or read this excellent paper by the same author: The Universe as a Hologram).

If this theory stands up to further scrutiny, we may see many technological advances as a result. In the article quoted, they say that it will be on par with the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation… that it will clarify previous theories about the origin of the universe and lead to many new research opportunities. I think that the impact will be far bigger and more practical. Understanding the holographic nature of the universe will change how we manipulate atoms in nano-fabrication. It will open up new horizons for space travel by exploiting the deep structure of space-time. It may even give us clues to time travel.

Do I detect a Grand Unified Theory in the next 20 years? Maybe.

nanotech timeline

Based on miniaturization trends in the microprocessor industry, nanotech processes will be widespread at the earliest 2010, at the latest 2020.

This trend is probably the fact that Kurzweil based his statement “electronics will be in clothing and eyeglasses by 2010″ on.

Virtual reality web

Virtual reality, a 3d environment, is a high-order visualization of data on the web.  Just like web-browsers and other visualization tools, it will be mostly used by surfers and casual users for a more “immersive” experience.  Hackers do not use visual tools to accomplish their tasks.  They want fine control of commands at the lowest level, so hackers today use terminal windows and they write custom code in low-level languages.  Content that is filtered through multiple levels has a chance to be stopped/traced/tagged at each level of interpretation, so if any hacker is stupid enough to use a 3d environment to communicate or hack is going to be traced and killed easily.

That doesn’t even take into account the speed of transmission.  Any rendering of data requires a rendering engine to do so, be it 2d web browser or 3d virtual reality.  Even in next generation systems, there is always a lower level of text-commands that will send/receive faster than a rendering.  Therefore, if speed and responsiveness is an issue (which it must be for hackers), then using a 3d environment is simply inefficient.

Now, if the hacker’s progress is being monitored from the outside by collaborators (or eavesdroppers), they may want to use visualization tools to quickly understand/interpret what he is doing, since he will be inputting strange commands at lightning speeds.  Having a machine show a visualization of where he is and what he is accomplishing may be easier to track changes.

Also note that any expert user of the web is actually in many places at once, downloading one file from here, watching live updates from another site there, and actively hacking into a third system completely unrelated to the other two… so the idea of an avatar “being somewhere” is useless.

Developmental Spiral

Relative growth rates in computer systems are remarkably stable:

• memory outgrows processors
• processors outgrow wired bandwidth
• bandwidth outgrows wireless capabilities

So we expect:

1. New storage tech first and fastest
2. New processors and applications
3. New wired communication hardware and protocols
4. New wireless technology and improvements in transfer rates last and slowest

Predictions for 2057

The Discovery Channel’s ran a series on probably future scenarios. Their target date was 2057, so that’s what they called the show. Here are my brief notes from 2057 on discovery.com

The City

• 3d projections in thin air that interact with users
• cars that drive themselves
• 3d facial scan as part of standard ID to allow facial recognition software to analyze any 2d image (surveillance)
• holographic crystals for long term storage: can hold digital info or pictures

The Body

• Daily physicals at home (while sleeping or in shower)
• Bio-med clothing:  can report vital signs and medical history in the case of accident/incapacitation
• Suspended animation as life-saving procedure (emergency cryonics)
• Remote (robotic) surgery – enabling tele-surgery
• Problem for USA:  medical insurance

The World

• Space Elevator – best location is likely in the Pacific, mentioned 30 minute ride time
• Solar cells at over 50% covering roof of a house would power the house and sell 3x that amount back to the grid.
• Grids of laser-communications
• Problem for USA: oil-based economy