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Now Colin McGinn wants future machine intelligence to look like the genuine article, the real thing, the sterling silver standard, us. But new technologies lead in new directions. Once stone pillars and plastic were allowed to do their own thing, they made possible buildings and household objects in forms no one had imagined before. Machine intelligence will eventually go so far beyond our control and understanding that we puzzle at it and wonder what in the world it is. Once we stop trying to make it look like us, it will show its own possibilities--and they will undoubtedly hold many a surprise. When autonymous, self-recreating, learning, and adapting forms of machine intelligence have become sufficiently complex, it really won't matter whether they have consciousness or not. It's their actions we will either wonder at or dread. We don't have to know that a lion is conscious to realize it is a sentient, self-powered, and self-motivated form of life around which we must watch our step very carefully. What will the roar and claws of an autonomously intelligent, adaptive robot built for war be like? Howard _______________________________ << http://www.wizdom.org.uk/TheVingeSingularity.shtml
>> <<Within thirty
years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.
Shortly after, Interesting idea,
but the end of the human era? no. the rise of multicellular beings did
not eliminate the proliferation of microbes. In fact when one looks
at sheer numbers, this is more the microbial era than the human century.
Nor did the rise of us multicellulars eliminate eukaryotic cells, trillions
of which live by joining together in the organized cooperatives called
you, me, and Verenor Vinge. One technology usually incorporates another
rather than replacing it. The same is likely to be true of biology and
of biology's newest toy, intelligence. Howard Bloom In a message dated 3/6/00 5:25:51 AM Eastern Standard Time, alex.burns writes: A provocative column and nice anecdote. I passed a flock of eleven baby ducklings on my way to the university email terminal hb: wonderful. I'd have loved to see the sight. and didn't catch even one. hb: Alex, have you been kidnapping birds again? Shame, shame. In answer to hb: Alex, you've hit it smack on the head. Pokemons and Sony's new electronic puppies. As Nikko Tinbergen demonstrated, supernormal stimuli--supercues--are more appealing to animals than the real thing. and we are animals with innumerable layers of cultural and cortical clothing. We, too, will take the supercues rather than the real thing sometimes. I wonder if I'd rather have the cat currently living with me or a future Sony battery operated model that recharges itself, sleeps on the bed purring when I want it to, and never sleeps on my head or sprawled across my feet--an best of all, never walks arrogantly past me when I call to it, ignoring me completely. Now that we are finally on the verge of realizing the great MIT dream of possessing thousands of micro-robots which all communicate with each other, I wonder what their silicon group mind will think, what new motivations it will grow, and how its collective feelings (should they develop such things) and mind will interface with us, the makers and purchasers of these strangely independent robot colonies. See story below. hb: having been
in this position through most of my childhood, as have many others in
this group, I can guarantee you it's no fun. It does, however, give
you unusual perspectives on life and the viciousness inherent in human
social groups. Considerations like keeping power usage to a minimum and keeping the components small enough to fit inside the five-centimeter framework provided more concrete restrictions to the group's eventual design. The group arrived at a bipedal caterpillar-like structure that could both slink along floors and rugged terrain as well as climb vertically on stairways and walls using its suction-cup feet. According to Tummala, the use of suction to climb walls, ceilings and even glass windows was unique to Michigan State's proposal. Dean Aslam, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is designing the suction cup feet--what he refers to as SRF's, short for "smart robotic foot." The SRF consists of a suction cup, a pressure sensor and a vacuum pump. The sensor, mounted inside the suction cup, will signal whether the pressure is at or below atmospheric pressure, if it is below, the motor in the vacuum pump will switch on, creating a vacuum within the cup. Other distinguishing features of the micro-robots include the use of diamond coatings and sensors. Diamond coatings result in reduced friction between components, thereby lengthening battery life, and can be applied to even the most difficult-to-reach places. Ranjan Mukherjee, associate professor of mechanical engineering, designs and builds the robot, while Ning Xi, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, creates the task-driven controller, which maintains stability of the robot, and commands the direction of movement. Sridhar Mahadevan, assistant professor in the computer science and engineering department, and John Weng, associate professor in the same department, will be assisting in the cognitive development of the robots. Mahadevan will be responsible for designing a hybrid task planner, which will provide the main software interface to control the robot. The planner comprises a high-level strategic module that can be given specific tasks, such as finding a window on the second floor of the building and taking a picture, and a lower-level tactical system, which will provide basic reflex behaviors such as avoiding obstacles. Mahadevan also studies the use of group behaviors to coordinate the actions of multiple robots and examines how the robots' performance can be improved through reinforcement learning. Weng applies the SHOSLIF technology that he and his students have developed to help the micro-robots "see" (through the use of micro-cameras) and to learn from those visual inputs. Weng also will investigate a new learning direction for robots, which he calls "developmental learning." Weng will be employing a developmental algorithm that allows the robot to learn as it experiences throughout its "life"--from "birth" through "adulthood"--in much the same way that humans learn. MSU is one of 11 schools in the country to receive a grant under this DARPA program. A finished product will be delivered to the Department of Defense in May 2001. _______________________________ _______________________________ << One of the most intriguing things I've learned from my mathematician husband is that, in the universe of numbers, there are greater & lesser infinities. Thus also in metaphoric infinity, don't you think? >> yes, very much, and that's the wonder of it. I often think infinity is simply a way of saying that something is bigger than we can comprehend. It is a way of blaming the limitations of our concepts and perceptions on something outside ourselves. Perhaps we are like those peoples who haven't developed numerical systems and hence can't count beyond six. Our upper limit is considerably higher than that of these primitives, yet we still are stopped by a strange ceiling which forces our minds to boggle and our computers to gag when a matter on which we're chewing tosses infinity into an equation. If this is true, then ahead of us somewhere ahead of us lies the creation of a system with which we may be able to count, name, and even manipulate those different things we now lump under the single name, the name of the unnamable infinities. Howard
Obviously, few of us would want to read Post-it® notes of cranks, bores, and verbose pontificators. uTOK ensures we do not -- it has an inbuilt software moderating system. Each note and note maker gets rated by other note makers and readers. Smart algorithms then extract from these ratings, a smart rating that sorts out the good raters from the bad. hb: is there an algorithm which can foil a well organized campaign for or against a website, book, etc.? People that write notes that get rated highly get their new ones rated highly. And the system digs deeper: people's rating of other ratings will depend upon how they are rated. Of course, uTOK has no independent criteria other than the hidden internal consistency with which raters rate other raters and their comments. But science does. And this makes uTOK a very interesting development if applied to papers in an open archive. hb: I'd still prefer a ranking by a personal Darwinian algorithm that reads my tastes and fetches the unconventional material I like. Imagine a science archive where people leave commentary notes on new papers - papers that have yet to receive an objective ISI citation impact ranking -- and guess what that will be. As time passes, impact values will become available and can in turn be used to rate commentators into the insightful and not. Another objective rating could come from status of university affiliation, society membership and established ISI paper citation. This will not necessarily disadvantage those without such objective measures of reputation due to the value raters change the weight given to other raters. A young Einstein that picks a dozen papers as central to the future of their subject and turns out right by their future citation rating gets their reputation rewarded. Likewise, a young Einstein that makes comments that interest FRS and Noble laureates. Without a human moderate, a new level of science commentary literature would emerge as the thousands of ratings create a self-quality control process. hb: again, sounds intriguing. Two points: (1) would a scientific uTOK emerge, and (2) how would it feedback upon the papers archived and the scientific quality control process. (1) Before we read a paper we know that it is limited - even the best paper can be improved -- they are written, after all, by humans. We want to know how well to trust what we have read: have the authors ignored important ideas, experimental problems, references etc? Have more important findings emerged since it was written? Hence, the success not only of commentary journals like Current Anthropology, Brain and Behaviour Sciences and Psycoloquy but the frequency use of commentary special issues in many journals. Moreover, with papers we judge important, we would like to contact people similarly impressed with them - scientific communication is about forming 'invisible colleges'. hb: darned good point. in fact, www sites like AOL are very much facilitators which allow the formation of new transnational and transcontinental subcultures based on common interests more precisely attuned to their members' needs than old style in-person mixing and matching make possible. The web makes it possible for social groups to take a giant leap forward in transcending geography. Transnational subcultures began in Greece in the sixth century BC, enabled by regular shipping connections between the Greek colonies spread from Spain and Italy in the west to the Black Sea coasts of Southern Russia in the east. They took another great leap forward in the age of St. Paul via the ease of sending letters--which is why St. Paul was able to quickly internationalize Christianity via his epistles. Then transnational subcultures slipped backward when the Roman Empire fell and the old sea lanes and land highways were cut by wandering tribes of barbarians. The transnational subculture took off again in roughly 1500 when the rudimentary postal system of the day allowed Erasmus Desiderius to pull together an international community of humanists. The Web has somehow given these transnational subcultures a vitality, a heartbeat, a warmth and immediacy which those of old never could achieve. Just think of all the people who make love online. This is a radical step forward in trans-geographic intimacy. js: Many scientists are isolated and at present have to attend conferences to form the required contacts. A strong motivation exists therefore for people to leave commentaries, and an equally one to read them. Such commentaries moreover would be worth reading: since the smart and self-generating rating system would reward only those that wrote readable, relevant and pertinent opinions, people would be strongly motivated to write just such contributions. (2). Such commentaries, of course, would not only be rated but so would the archived papers themselves. In turn this could feed upon prepublication referees and the prepublication quality control process. Suppose every published paper were tagged with markers as to who refereed them that enabled software access to their original rating of the paper. A smart rating system that could read their identities and prepublication scorings could retrospectively rate referee competence. Referees that at the prepublication stage that rated papers highly that later became highly rated, and vice versa, rated lowly those that later become poorly rated would acquire a good referee reputation, those that did not, a bad one. This would provide editors with an objective source of information as to who was and was not a good potential referee. Of course, no one knows how science communication will evolve. Maybe future communication will look much as it does today and uTOK like programs will have little relevance to science as present day newsgroups; but we should be aware that open archiving might go in directions presently unforeseen by its creators. hb: one of the very things which make the system intriguing--the unexpected directions could take. uTOK is based in Tel Aviv. It has 15+ employees. http://www.utok.com/docs/company/ http://www.utok.com/ hb: John, I'm downloading it now and will soon know what it does. thanks. Howard from John Skoyles
4/12/00
_______________________________
howbloom: hegel
traces history
gerryreinhartwaller:
but cats and dogs don't have words howbloom: yes, and
no fgf01: thanks to
gerry.
But the research
and development that will put this gizmo underneath your hairline is
literally making progress every day. Howard Bloom Bacteria can withstand the pressures of the deep earth and the deep sea. I suspect that when encysted and reengineered a bit, they could also tolerate the rigors of outer space. Our trick would be to build into them a morality that tells them not to harm human beings. Otherwise our creations could become the human-chewing gray goo Bill Joy has talked about. Meanwhile, it would be wise if we could build violence-aversion into humans as well. How we'll do that, I can't imagine, but that's another problem for another email. Leonard Adelman has hinted at a brilliant new challenge for the 21st century technology. We've mastered the gift of physics, the electron in the late 19th and early 20th century, he says. Now it's time to master the macromolecules presented to us by biology. I'm still waiting for the single-cell sized dna implant that gives me instant access to all the library material in the world and an instant storage system for all those terrific thoughts that disappear before we have time to type them up. We shall see. I strongly suspect I will not live to see the birth of this gizmo, but just think, if handled properly, it could change the way we do psychological and social science. Imagine the dna-implant that plugs us into the world wide web of the future and gives us facts the instant we realize we need them, stores our important thoughts, has intelligent agents that learn our tastes, remind us of bright ideas we've had in the past that relate to what we're pondering right now, bring us facts they anticipate we'll find interesting, and have strict privacy controls. If we manage to keep big brother out of our brains, psychological research might change dramatically. In exchange for access to the final data or some other perk, I make my brain available for a psychological research project. Ten thousand other volunteers and I can be studied in our natural environment. Our passions can be measured and weighed in crisis, in play, and in events of the everyday. It's ethology and mass psychology combined-finally really entering, measuring, and getting a new feel for the human mind. The dna chip might also provide a new tool for democracy. It's just a thought. But thanks to the multigenerational project we call technology, we're getting better at turning our thoughts into realities every day. Howard Retrieved March
21, 2002, from the World Wide Web Third, "If it is a convertible, it should not be a Cadillac or it should have two seats." The customer rattles off a list of 24 such conditions, and the salesman has to find the one car in stock that meets all the requirements. (Adleman and his team chose a problem they knew had exactly one solution.) The salesman will have to run through the customer's entire list for each of the million cars in turn -- a hopeless task, unless he can move and think at superhuman speed. This serial method is the way a digital electronic computer solves such a problem. In contrast, a DNA computer operates in parallel -- with countless molecules shimmying around together at once. This is equivalent to each car having a valet inside who will listen to the customer read his list over a PA system and will drive off the lot the moment his car fails one of the conditions. By the time the customer finishes his list, his dream car will be waiting alone on the lot. While the time needed to solve problems of this class (called "NP-complete problems") increases exponentially (2, 4, 8, 16 ... ) for serial computers, it increases only linearly (2, 4, 6, 8 ... ) for parallel computers. In principle, then, the DNA computer should outstrip the electronic computer on savagely complex combinatorial problems -- breaking encryption schemes, for example. Unfortunately, Adleman said, the DNA computer currently is too error-prone to achieve its great potential. "In the past century we've become really good at controlling electrons," he said. "It would take a breakthrough in the technology of working with large biomolecules like DNA for molecular computers to beat their electronic counterparts." Still, even if no one finds a way to beat electronic computers on very complex problems, Adleman said, DNA computers might find applications in other areas. "It's possible that we could use DNA computers to control chemical and biological systems in a way that's analogous to the way we use electronic computers to control electrical and mechanical systems," he said. Adelman suggested, for example, that such systems might someday be engineered into living cells, allowing them to run precise digital programs that would interact with their natural biochemical processes. "We've shown by these computations that biological molecules can be used for distinctly non-biological purposes," he said. "They are miraculous little machines. They store energy and information, they cut, paste and copy. They were built
by 3 billion years of evolution, and we're just beginning to tap their
potential to serve non-biological purposes. Nature has given us an incredible
toolbox, and we're starting to explore what we might build." Other
co-authors of the Science paper were Ravinderjit S. Braich, a post-doctoral
student; Cliff Johnson, a neurobiology Ph.D. graduate student and Paul
W.K. Rothemund, who received his Ph.D. and is now at Caltech. The research
was also supported by grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Administration, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science
Foundation. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena. Copyright © 1995-2002 ScienceDaily Magazine here's my suggestion. i wonder what yours would be: implant a small,
protein-based nanocomputer in the skull to expand the extracranial memory
of the brain. allow it to associate names with faces so you're never
stuck staring at someone you've known for years whose name suddenly
and embarrassingly refuses to materialize. equip the network into which
your cranial biochip taps with intelligent agents which learn your tastes
in data, anecdotes, ideas, visual scenes, etc. set up the biochip so
that the intelligent agents will converse with you about new ideas,
make suggestions of analytic techniques which you'd find of value or
facts which support or negate the case you are trying to make, teach
you new skills, tell you how to operate baffling new programs and equally
baffling new equipment, crack a relevant joke (or a surprisingly irrelevant
one now) and then, and generally turn your three pound glob of neurons
into a mind of vastly larger and more enjoyable proportions. i think you need to: 1) perform (me too); and 2) keep people at a distance. There's an intimacy void somewhere. you say no but I say yes. I want to find it and let it out. intimacy voids usually come from fear. you are amazonian in your fearlessness. (I like to be Odyssean, another way of courting adventures even if they skirt the rim of death.) But aim, everyone is insecure. i mean e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e. (me most of all.) I must tell you the story of Sylvia with the Red Hair. It's in How I Accidentally Started The Sixties. Do you have time to read an unpublished book that Timothy Leary liked? (in fact, it's probably what killed him.) Did I ever show you the Leary quote? "This is a monumental, epic, glorious literary achievement. "Every page, every paragraph, every sentence sparkles with captivating metaphors, delightful verbal concoctions, alchemical insights, philosophic whimsy, absurd illogicals, scientific comedy routines, relentless, non?stop waves of hilarity. "The comparisons to James Joyce are inevitable and undeniable. Finnegans's Wake wanders through the rock 'n roll sixties. "Wow! Whew! Wild! Wonderful!" Timothy Leary aa: Also, we're quite similar in other ways -- that we're both fixers... hb: yes, and I want to fix you. by all means feel free to fix me too. aa: although, I must say, you are remarkably unfucked up compared to most people with psych degrees. And then again, you're crazy, like me. But that's crazy in a good way. "Sane" people lack passion. hb: yup. I think I understand what you were saying about needing a Diane in your life in light of how hard it is to be alone if you're intense -- understand that on a personal level. That need for communion with another person burns a hole in me. Most of the time, I try to live with it. Sometimes it gets a little deep and dark. hb: before di arrived I was getting suicidal again. i have to tell you the story of the suicide attempt, the three days in a corpse state, and the resurrection, complete with, i am not kidding you, stigmata. it's an amazing story with a lot of lessons buried in its details. aa: Also, it's hard if you're the fixer...because sometimes you wish on a bad day or in a tough moment that somebody would come along scrape you off the sidewalk and put you back in the flowerpot, hb: lord, do i envy your gift for imagery. amy, that's what i'm here for, so use me. call when you've got problems--between 7pm and 12am is best. Then, at 12:30, like clockwork, I call Di. aa: but...people get used to you (me) being the strong one all the time...so we're generally left to do the scraping for ourselves. hb: i've had some remarkable experiences this last year in the infantilizing department--letting go and letting the other person take over for ten or fifteen very intense moments, then reversing the roles again and being on top. di is remarkable in her ability to duet in things of this nature (and here we ARE talking sex--and its emotions, which can be beyond primal). aa: I can do it...but the the need to have someone do it for you -- it's the idea of community I read in your work --an o remake relationships and the way we live in the world...to stop clinging to the idea of the nuclear family as something healthy and viable (I call this the antique gold standard...which disintegrates when exposed to air)...and replace the nuclear family with communities of people...more like the hunter-gatherer bands...as ways to raise kids and simply to be less isolated than we are in this societal structure. aa: as you know, that was my notion too. communities of mutual feeling and complementary emotion and thought is part of what Global Brain's about. with cyberspace as a connective medium, this is the age for it. the trick is to create a bonding that's as solid as that we have with people we've known since we were five. my only way to achieve that bond has been through sex--which is probably why my closest friends are women. the sex doesn't need to happen more than two or three times (or does it? in my experience a relationship lasts about 3.5 months and then continues for quite a while before the bonding is there.) however at this point i've gone monogamous, so there must be some other way to create the bond. eating together should do it, thanks to the wonders of cholecystokinin, one of the two great bonding hormones. we should have a meal together--a tricky proposition since I eat dinner at 2 am. the other great bonding hormone is oxytocin--but that only surges when a woman is suckling, at least so far as the current research goes. No way can we exchange the use of nipples without getting sexual. so food will have to do it. aa: People sneer at cell phones as isolating devices; hb: how can they? they are the penultimate social connectors. the next step is an intelligent protein chip implant that gives us access to any info we need--like the name of the person we've just remet and barely remember plus his life story, or the name of that general from the Pelopennesian Wars who's on the tip of our tongue--let's us park in computer memory those stray thoughts we know will disappear in an instant but seem brilliant at the time, and lets us dial up other folks and communicate with them simply by thinking about it. just think, even if you're like me and can't hum a lick but can create wonderful pieces of music or art in your mind, you'll be able to communicate the tune--orchestrated just the way you hear it--to someone your thought-communicating with. It'll change the nature of art, music, film, and literature more profoundly than the invention of the pen, the flute, and the piano. and what will people say about it? that it's dehumanizing. that it's playing god with nature. Of course it has to have absolute privacy features so others can only pluck from your mind what you want to put on public display. No government peeking. But, yes, if you want Amazon.com to be able to suss out your needs and suggest just the item you didn't realize you need but will do the trick magnificently, that's fine. As long as you can opt in or out--put up the privacy shield and shut down the access of others. Ah, social connection. We dould imagine hugs, Amy. I could send some to you and you could send a few to me. better yet, di and I could spend the nights together even if we're asleep. yes, the future will be better. and we'll owe the research, development, manufacture, and low prices of these gizmos once they've gone past the luxury phase to multinational corporations in a capitalist economy hopefully transformed by the notions of business as self revelatiion and secular salvation. aa: I see them in a different way -- that people's lust for community is so great that they have an obsessive need to be "connected" to other people hb: yes, yes, yes. the old technologies for this were television and radio, which gave off massive dollops of social cues and made us feel we weren't alone. but those are pallid stuff compared to the real thing--cell phone communication with actual, live humans. real life has all the stuff of plots, and so do the relationships we nurture via phone contat. they have their introduction of characters, their dilemmas, conflicts, competitions, antagonisms, affections, loyalties, and desires for love. Then they have their crises, their catachresies, and their denouements. We live drama. We are soap operas. And we feed onthe plankton of social contact. aa: -- even about the most mundane things. The medium IS the message. hb; if the medium is social connection then, yes, absolutely, you've just given the first definition of "the meaning is the message" that makes sense. aa: Anyway, enough rambling for now. Have much more to say, but the mundane awaits...must go for now. So happy to have you in my life. Stick around! hb: you, too. ") howard correspondence between Howard Bloom and JD Moyer: hb: Your musings are remarkable. I've been playing with the implications of an implantable, networked microprocessor since first writing a science fiction story about the notion back in 1970 or so. Just last night I was working out some of the ramifications--possibly about the same time you were writing the following. There's a snag to figuring out at what point intermeshed conscious brains produce a superconsciousness in which all participate but which no one brain controls. We don't know what allows for the emergence of consciousness in the several trillion smart, networked neural cells within the skull. why does consciousness flower when we're roughly three and not instantly at birth--or in the womb? what's present in the cranium at three that isn't when we slither free of the placenta? We haven't a clue. jdm: I do conceive of an eventual conscious/thinking superorganism, or society of superorganisms. Considering that we (humans) are already well down the road of cyborgification (enhancing our senses, manipulative abilities, communication channels), it seems plausible that AI enhancement of the human brain is not too far off (starting with sensory recording mechanisms, extra memory, arithmatic computations, etc. but moving on eventually to more complex functions such as data analysis, enhanced logic, prediction, etc.). Once the human brain is enhanced, it can be networked real time with other brains. Two or more humans can share a mind. I imagine that the sense of self, the "I" will slowly migrate away from the slower electro-chemical connections to the exponentially faster silicon/dna computer/quantum computer/whatever computer medium. Once this happens, there is the opportunity for a real thinking superorganism, a conscious "I" that influences/controls perhaps a hundred or a thousand human/cyborg minds and bodies. I realize that sounds very Star Trek hb: no--we already have "common-sense"--a common perception of what's right. we also have the collective opinions of a subculture, a nation, and even of the developed nations and underdeveloped nations. there's international (though not unanimous) consensus on what human rights are basic, for example. and we often seem to gain our voice when the newspaper or pundit of our choice says what we felt but hadn't previously put into words. In that sense, a media personality can act as the tongue (or typing fingers) for a multitude of us, summing up one of the competing streaks of opinion in the group mind. So further moves beyond the cell phone into hands-free telephony, then implanted telephony, implanted tele-thinkery, tele-dreamery, interpersonal tele-vision, etc. are probably only 30 or 40 years off. jdm: but I'm imagining that free will could co-exist hb: I suspect that all superorganismic forms feed off the free-will of their parts. Those give the whole its flexibility. Too much of it, and the whole would disintegrate. But then even we humans have far less free will than we imagine and probably a good deal more than absolute determinists believe. jdm: on the human individual level, while there would be this simultaneous sharing of mindspace with the "overmind." Just a wild speculation but it also seems like a not that unlikely progression of events. There is also the question of human/ai's migrating away from manifest reality to virtual/created/simulated reality, inhabiting virtually created worlds, hb: we've had these as long as we've had storytelling. novels and films advance a very old human practice of sharing meta-realities--artificial-but-shared realities. Remember all the pictures of sea serpents and beings with umbrella heads and dog-faces on maps of the world from the fourteenth century or so? These beasts existed in a shared virtual reality. The really big leap
forward will come when I can dream up a fantasy and share it directly
with you, bypassing language. Then what sci-fi authors predicted way
back in the '50s will finally spring into existence--folks who practice
the art of dreaming up fantasies complete with vivid visual and tactile
effects and plots, and who make their living by offering up mindprints
of what they've imagined to others. A process almost identical to that
already takes place today. It's called writing a book, writing a screenplay,
or directing a television show or a movie. jdm: not just to exchange
information but also to experience totally lifelike simulations of realspace
that would feel as real as anything, but would not be limited by the
constraints of physical reality (ie gravity, strict cause and effect,
being one place at a time, taking time to travel between two places,
etc.). hb: the film The Matrix is a good preview of what this will be
like. jdm: Obviously this virtual world couldn't exist without an infrastructure
to support it (of computers or other physical computational devices),
so this existence would be a cumulative level of reality, not a replacement
for the way humans live now. hb: all we need is the software and hardware
of a Pixar Animation Studios compressed to a protein-based microprocessor
with internet-style connectivity and rigid privacy controls inserted
surgically, tatooed on to some unobtrusive part of the skull, or worn
like a yarmulke. Then we can pick who and what we'd like to plug into--whether
it's a creative team or a friend on another continent. Howard
Peter In a message dated 97?07?07 12:50:04 EDT, you write: << there are many irreversibilities in the "work" that available energy does. >> Now you have me curious. What are these irreversibilities? Heat has been the primary form of entropic dissipation mentioned in this forum to date. And heat can power innumerable existing biological and technological machines. Feces have been mentioned once??and in a very real sense, the entire earth has been demonstrated to be made of feces?? biologically recycled stuff, most of which has come back to use at some time or another. Are we talking radiating neutrinos? Fly away electrons? Photons? The mass presumably being sucked into a black hole? All of these seem, in the scope of future time, usable. The power generated by black holes, for instance, is much like that of Niagara Falls. What an incredible resource when some inanimate, animate or technological system manages to harness it. As for the 1% of solar energy currently used by life, humans are working at turning much more to good use. Solar panels are now, I believe, approaching the 27% efficiency level. Considering that human technology is so young it would barely show up on a geological time line, that's pretty good??a technology in its infancy. If we don't blow ourselves to bits, give us another 35 thousand years and there's no telling what we might do. Thirty five thousand spins around the sun is geological small change indeed. Dinosaurs survived for roughly 5,000 times that slivered mill of time. Nor should we be so homocentric as to think that we are the only form of functional system gradually working its way toward utilization of such stuff as leakage from the sun. If not our sun, perhaps another one. Or is my evolutionary optimism somehow blinding me? Howard
mb: Yesterday members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir were handing out leaflets in Copenhagen, urging muslims to kill the jews, hb: yikes!!! The Jews are key because hatred of us, we Jews, is the one thing that unites an otherwise fragmented and quarreling Islamic imperium. mb: and now the goverment is talking about banning Hizb-ut-Tahrir. But lets talk about IF I HAD KNOWN...I think our premier-issue should contain two big features-stories, say about 10 -12 pages each, and the rest should be enquettes and petit-journalism of various sorts. hb: sounds good to me. I'd suggest we dive into the gender bending cultures in US high schools. Send a writer to Waco, Texas, where we have a guide ready to take us on a tour of a teen subculture that warps what we've always known as reality. If we need more, I've got a guide who can take us to similar subcultures 1,500 miles away at Vassar College. Alex, who'd make a good subculture diver for this? And how can I get whoever it is to spend an evening with me before and after the trips to Waco and Poughkeepsie to get the wetware spin on the thing? mb: Are you guys down with this? But what should the two features be about? Personally I think the issue "new kinds of drugs" is interesting - like in the story about Fukuyama, and I think it would be neat to follow this lead to the end of the road. What do you guys think? Lets begin scetching a dummy from page 1 through to page 48. hb: I'd suggest we go beyond drugs and look at all the biotech ways the human body and the human experience can be altered dramatically in the next 40 years. Do a roundup of interviews from Fukuyama to Kurzweil. Look for the seemingly psycho visionaries who have a handle on an emerging reality. Folks like Eric Dressler, who sounded nuts when he first made his predictions about nanotechnology in the 1980s. I didn't choose my body, did you? Why not have faces and forms that reflect who we are and what we want to achieve? Let brains begin to make bodies. Right now it's bodies that make--and then enslave--our brains. But what will the unintended consequences, the accidental shifts in social patterns, be? Howard ps Steven Johnson, the author who wrote the Fukuyama piece in the Washington Post, is due to come over here for a visit one of these days. He is amazing. ________ can whack every molecule in your body into a twisted, broken wreck? Not yet. >> Hmm...well, I knew that part...I wonder if anyone's doing research into that kind of thing, though. hb: here's the ultimate medical source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed I've checked it to see about research on radioactivity cures, and, frankly, my choice of searchwords didn't do the trick. Yes, I found radioactivity poisoning research. No, nothing on antidotes. but please go over to PubMed and try a few more word permutations and combinations. It's the source all of us in science use for biomedical stuff. cm: You'd think they would have started roughly ten minutes after the Manhattan Project got off work. Was just curious if you had any theories in that department, since the hundred year quarantine that would follow any kind of nuclear disaster (to say nothing of the "nuclear cloud" that would bop around the planet) is a real drag. If you were to play future Super-scientist for just a moment, what do you think the key would be? hb: remove humans
from the human body, it's a drag. it's always breaking down. if its
not a knee or back problem, it's a headache, If you neck doesn't have
a charley horse, you may be in for a quick stroke or a heart attack.
Getting the human personality into a more durable, replacable, and all-functions-capable
body might help. However it would need something beyond the protein
circuitry that's about to come online. Radioactivity blows proteins
to bits. And present-day silicon chips go nuts when hit with radioacitivity.
But there are apparently gallium-arsenide chips developed by the military
that can't be wonked out of whack by the radioactivity of a nearby nuclear
blast. Let's hop ourselves into them asap.
It seems time to resurrect Isaac Asimov's basic rules of robotics, rules that said under no circumstances should a robot harm a human being. But rules are made to be broken, and creativity is the art of breaking rules in unexpected ways. How can we work synergistically with a web of lethal servants? Perhaps we should train them to confuse and disable, but not to maim and kill. Where is a mind-ray when we need one? And if we find one, how long will it take before it's turned on us? On the positive side, the new form of networked intelligence envisioned for the battlefield could have amazing applications for civilian life-if only civilian life can survive the independent decisions made by armies of microchips programmed for murder. Below is an article on the Office of Naval Research's Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman project. And further down are Isaac Asimov's 1940 Laws of Robotics. See what you think. Howard Retrieved July 24, 2002, from the World Wide Web http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/technology/circuits/11NEXT.html?ex=1027404 558&ei=1&en=3506d9d02ffffc0e A War of Robots, All Chattering on the Western Front NYT July 11, 2002 By NOAH SHACHTMAN SINCE the United States military campaign began in Afghanistan, the unmanned spy plane has gone from a bit player to a starring role in Pentagon planning. Rather than the handful of "autonomous vehicles," or A.V.'s, that snooped on Al Qaeda hideouts, commanders are envisioning wars involving vast robotic fleets on the ground, in the air and on the seas - swarms of drones that will not just find their foes, but fight them, too. But such forces would need an entirely new kind of network in which to function, a wireless Internet in the sky that would let thousands of drones communicate quickly while zooming around a battle zone at speeds of up to 300 miles an hour. Such a network would have to be able to deal instantaneously with the unpredictable conditions of war and cope with big losses. Designing this network is a monumental task. Consider how poor much cellphone coverage is in some areas. Now imagine how much worse it would be with no base towers to direct signals, and with hostile forces trying to jam calls and blow up phones. An association of nearly 300 scientists and engineers spread across 45 project teams and coordinated by the Office of Naval Research is about a year and a half into a five-year, $11 million effort to determine what it will take to build such a system. The project is called Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman (not to be confused with the nuclear missiles). While the program is not about to produce anything like the droid army from the Star Wars movies anytime soon, it has already delivered some important theoretical breakthroughs. The most important is the network's structure, developed by Mario Gerla, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Los Angeles. The network will deploy the highest-flying of the A.V.'s, a drone called the Global Hawk, as a kind of cellphone tower in the sky, said Lt. Col. Douglas Boone, deputy chief of the Air Force's airborne reconnaissance division. Soaring above the battlefield at 50,000 feet or higher, the Global Hawks will communicate with headquarters, transmitting data and receiving commands. The commands will be passed along to a team of lower-flying A.V.'s that will relay them in turn to single drones serving as liaisons for squadrons of A.V.'s. Despite this basic hierarchy, the network is designed so that any robot in any of the three levels can become the one to relay information to its peers. "Besides serving as routers, the drones also have to do reconnaissance and carry weapons," Dr. Gerla said. "There is no central control - as soon as you do that you are vulnerable." As a graduate student nearly 30 years ago, Dr. Gerla did work for the federal government on the Arpanet, the military precursor to the Internet. This flexible "network of networks" structure not only allows communications to stay up when individual drones go down but also enables the network to reconfigure itself to maximize bandwidth and to meet goals on the battlefield. Robot planes would constantly shift position to communicate with one another. This continuous reconfiguration is part of an attempt by Allen Moshfegh, director of the Minuteman project, to mimic one of the most elegant of systems for transferring information: the human brain. In the brain, groups of neurons quickly form around a particular goal like reaching for a newspaper, then recombine for the next task, like turning the page. "A.V.'s will reconfigure in much the same way neurons reconfigure when doing goal-oriented tasks," said Jeffrey P. Sutton, director of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, which is contributing to the Minuteman project. The drones will shift the way in which they talk. With "multi-in, multi-out" radios, they will sometimes communicate over several frequencies at once and at other times use a single frequency and lower power. With new methods
for the dynamic compression of video under the MPEG-4 standard, the
A.V.'s will send images ranging from high-resolution color video to
black-and-white still photographs. The goal is to keep communications
flowing, no matter what. Current wireless commercial systems simply
drop a connection if congestion builds up or quality deteriorates. That
is not a good option in wartime. Military and technical experts say
they are impressed with what Dr. Moshfegh's Minuteman team has come
up with so far. "It's an extremely elegant network, and it's feasible,"
said Ken Dulaney, a vice president for mobile computing with the Gartner
Group in San Jose, Calif. "But it's a dream. There are a lot of
challenges." So far, Minuteman's field tests have seemed more like
a hobbyists' convention than a military operation, with model helicopters
hovering above toy jeeps with laptops taped to their sides. Dr. Moshfegh
and others behind Minuteman are still unsure of how they will make the
jump from motley squads to the tens of thousands of drones that they
foresee. A big part of the problem, Dr. Moshfegh said, is that the routers
at the heart of the network are not yet intelligent enough to figure
out the right path and speed for sending the nearly limitless amounts
of data that would be collected by the drones. But he is optimistic
about overcoming such hurdles. "If we have enough sources for funding,
we could resolve all of these issues in six to eight years," he
said, adding, "It's not that complex." Clark Murdock, a senior
fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington,
said he was not so sure. On whether Minuteman will be available in several
decades or within Dr. Moshfegh's time frame, he said, "My guess
is the former." If and when it arrives, Mr. Dulaney of the Gartner
Group sees benefits beyond the battlefield. "This could be one
of those situations where the military figures it out for survivability
reasons, and then it goes private," he said of the technology.
"By turning receivers into transmitters, it could make wireless
networks more robust, more resilient than they are now. It could follow
the same kind of path as the Internet." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/technology/circuits/11NEXT.html?ex=1027404
558&ei=1&en=3506d9d02ffffc0e The 1940 Laws of Robotics -Isaac Asimov First Law: A robot may not
injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come Second Law: A robot must obey
orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would Third Law: A robot must protect
its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with
the ________
Sensors gone wild http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/1028/076_print.html Technology Benjamin Fulford, 10.28.02 An experiment in the California desert and an executive suite in Tokyo provide tantalizing hints of how a networked world could make everyday life a lot more precise and profound. Biologists at the James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve in southern California stumbled upon a tiny discovery in the world of squirrels a few months back. It turns out that the little guys, heretofore known to exist on nuts and berries, have a thing for moss; they munch on it for the moisture. No one knew; no one had been in the right place at the right time to see it. But the squirrel in California was caught in the act when the animal tripped a 7.5-centimeter-square motion sensor that fired up a tiny wireless camera to record the event. The small sensor is one of dozens of digital spectators linked into a speedy wireless network and sprinkled across a 12-hectare patch of wilderness 40 kilometers southwest of Palm Springs. The devices take note of the movements of animals, plant growth and such factors as time, temperature, air pressure, wind speed and changes in carbon use. Animal insights, however, aren't the point of this $40 million experiment. The real goal is to explore the uses of intelligent sensors, a technology whose promise suddenly seems huge. The applications for this "embedded intelligence" are vast and profound. Eventually large swaths of the earth will communicate with the digital realm using millions of miniature sensors. "We will really be able to instrument the physical world," says Deborah Estrin. She's a computer science professor at UCLA who runs the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, which oversees the James Reserve project. Sensors will be placed in bridges to detect and warn of structural weakness and in water reservoirs to spot hazardous materials. Hospitals will track patients with such things as wireless bandages that warn of infection. Truck drivers will be able to dodge traffic jams based on slow-ups 20 cars ahead. Urban planners will track groundwater patterns and how much carbon dioxide cities are expelling, enabling them to make better land-use decisions. "I like to be conservative about things, but in a way [sensor networks] could be bigger than the internet. The net is relegated to a small screen and a keyboard. This will detect who you are and where you are. The whole analog world will interface with the net," says Clark Nguyen, a professor of electrical engineering on leave from the University of Michigan to develop sensors for the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA has made sensors a top priority, putting up $160 million of its own money and $500 million in matching funds from other U.S. government agencies. The Pentagon wants what it calls "hyperspectral" data from a war zone. By spreading thousands of chips from a drone aircraft, the military will be able to follow enemy troops and detect bioweapons and electromagnetic noise. Early this year a pilotless aircraft sprinkled three dozen cheap wireless magnetic sensors, each about the size of a credit card, along a road at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twenty Nine Palms, California. Once they hit the ground, these sensors automatically formed a wireless network and began to scan the environment for magnetic signals. When a vehicle rolled by, they could tell from its magnetic signature what kind it was, its speed and direction. The readings were sent wirelessly through the aircraft to headquarters. Before the sensor revolution can truly take off, researchers must overcome some crucial engineering hurdles in power management and data networking. The progress made by such companies as Intel and Transmeta in producing low-power chips has helped make processing bits a much thriftier affair, says Estrin. But efficiencies have not kept pace when it comes to transmitting those same bits of data. The James Reserve still uses expensive, short-lived batteries. Estrin wants chips that sip power so slowly they can run on their own for years. Some new sensors are getting so small--some are invisible to the naked eye--that they will be able to run on 100 microwatts. (A microwatt is a millionth of a watt. A Pentium 4 processor runs at 75 watts.) At the 100-microwatt level they could gather energy from ambient heat and photovoltaic cells, says Stephen Senturia, a specialist in microsystems at MIT. His colleagues are working on making chips so small that they can power themselves, like watches that need only the kinetic energy generated by movements of the wearer's wrist. Engineers also have to devise new networking schemes to juggle the billions of constant inputs that could easily swamp network bandwidth. This is Estrin's top priority at the James Reserve project. Ethernet and TCP/IP, the internet's two fundamental protocols for shuttling data around, are poorly suited for low-power wireless sensor networks. The net compensates for its habit of losing or garbling lots of data packets by constantly resending to the same address, leaning heavily on plugged-in servers at the edge of the network, fast Cisco routers and abundant bandwidth in between. Estrin's plan, still in a rudimentary stage, calls for far less indirection to conserve communication power. Data packets are processed every step of the way along the network, not just at the edge. They zip around with no specific address, grouping themselves on the fly based on a time stamp, a location or the nature of the data being sent (video, audio, chemical signature). And the network must operate only when necessary. Radios have to turn themselves off when they sit idle. "Even listening uses precious joules," she says. One matter of little concern is money, thanks to the deflationary forces of Moore's Law. Airbag sensor chips cost only 60 cents each; they combine an accelerometer with a microprocessor that figures out whether you have merely slammed on the brakes or had an accident. They detect 15 types of information, including speed, deceleration, yaw, vibration and angle, then use algorithms to figure out what it all means. To detect and process this information using traditional instruments would cost more than a thousand dollars. Omron, a company in Kyoto, Japan, with $5.8 billion in revenue that dwarfs the startups that dominate the sensor business in the U.S., hopes to get around a Japanese slump in industrial demand for sensors by aggressively developing consumer applications. One product it sells lets your car call you to say that it has been stolen, then use a global-positioning system (GPS) to report its location to a security company (for more on this technology, see story, p. 36). Omron is about to
market a system that lets your car recognize you using your fingerprint.
The car will be able to prevent unauthorized people from driving it.
Omron also sells sensors that adjust air-conditioning and lights according
to what room you're in and remind you to turn things off when you leave.
Omron's biggest hopes lie with face-recognition software. At its offices
in Tokyo, such software replaces keys and cards in the executive suites.
It has rather limitless applications in the next decade. The hitch:
these networks are a snooper's dream come true, putting each citizen
in the same situation as that squirrel in the James Reserve. "There
would be a whole suite of sensors in a room that could tell you how
many people are there and what they are saying. The implications of
this are so huge that we need to get sociologists and legal people thinking
about this early," says Roger T. Howe, the director of the Sensor
&Actuator Center at the University of California at Berkeley.
The input data streams are abstracted into sequences of events and states, which are aggregated into threads and episodes to produce a timeline that constitutes an "episodic memory" for the individual. Patterns of events in the timeline support the identification of routines, relationships, and habits. Preferences, plans, goals, and other markers of intentionality are at the highest level. LifeLog is interested in three major data categories: physical data, transactional data, and context or media data. "Anywhere/anytime" capture of physical data might be provided by hardware worn by the LifeLog user. Visual, aural, and possibly even haptic sensors capture what the user sees, hears, and feels. GPS, digital compass, and inertial sensors capture the user's orientation and movements. Biomedical sensors capture the user's physical state. LifeLog also captures the user's computer-based interactions and transactions throughout the day from email, calendar, instant messaging, web-based transactions, as well as other common computer applications, and stores the data (or, in some cases, pointers to the data) in appropriate formats. Voice transactions can be captured through recording of telephone calls and voice mail, with the called and calling numbers as metadata. FAX and hardcopy written material (such as postal mail) can be scanned. Finally, LifeLog also captures (or at least captures pointers to) the tremendous amounts of context data the user is exposed to every day from diverse media sources, including broadcast television and radio, hardcopy newspapers, magazines, books and other documents, and softcopy electronic books, web sites, and database access. LifeLog can be used as a stand-alone system to serve as a powerful automated multimedia diary and scrapbook. By using a search engine interface, the user can easily retrieve a specific thread of past transactions, or recall an experience from a few seconds ago or from many years earlier in as much detail as is desired, including imagery, audio, or video replay of the event. Additional LifeLog applications are discussed in the PIP. LifeLog technology will support the long-term IPTO vision of a new class of truly "cognitive" systems that can reason in a variety of ways, using substantial amounts of appropriately represented knowledge; can learn from experiences so that their performance improves as they accumulate knowledge and experience; can explain their actions and can accept direction; can be aware of their own behavior and reflect on their own capabilities; and can respond in a robust manner to surprises. TASK AREAS. This solicitation seeks proposals to develop and demonstrate LifeLog system-level capabilities as described in the following tasks: Task 1. Representation and Abstraction via Reasoning and Inference. The research focus of the LifeLog program is the appropriate placement of transactional and physical data within an appropriate framework of representations and abstractions to make accessible both the flow of the user's physical experiences in the world and the stream of his or her interactions with other entities in the world. For transactional data, this process of representation and abstraction might begin with the association of metadata with each data item (e.g., the header information in an email or the information on the envelope of a physical letter). Physical data streams generally have to be parsed into meaningful "chunks," such as "saccadic" scenes of video, motion segments in GPS or inertial data, or segments of one person's speech in audio, and these chunks have to be labeled. The key challenge of LifeLog is to make sense of this ongoing sequence of multi-modal transactions and labeled chunks of physical data, by sorting it into discrete "events" and "states" (whose transitions are marked by events) and "threads" (consisting of sequences of events and states) and "episodes" (with beginnings and ends), and to do this automatically and recursively until an extended episode can be identified and labeled as, for example, "I took the 08:30 a.m. flight from Washington's Reagan National Airport to Boston's Logan Airport." The representational path from the raw physical sensor inputs to this high-level description includes concepts of walking, standing, and riding, being indoors and outdoors, being "at home," taking a taxi, and going through airport security. The task can be made considerably easier because LifeLog can also process a "going to Boston" entry in the calendar program, email from the airline telling that the flight is on time, and a phone call ordering the taxi, and can correlate GPS readings to a COTS street map. Beyond the generation of the user's individual timeline or history, represented as a structure of labeled threads and episodes, LifeLog will be able to find meaningful patterns in the timeline, to infer the user's routines, habits, and relationships with other people, organizations, places, and objects, and to exploit these patterns to ease its task. The proposal should describe in detail exactly how the offeror's LifeLog system will accomplish this process of "tracing the threads" and "telling the story" of the user's experience. State how physical sensory inputs will be parsed and classified (labeled). Define the metadata to be used for each type of input data. Describe how the representation hierarchy is to be constructed, and how classification of events, states, etc., will be performed. Explicitly address the extraction of patterns such as routines, habits, and relationships. Present an approach for assessing the contribution of each data source proposed to LifeLog system-level performance. Provide a comparison of the relative importance of human knowledge engineering and machine learning components both during system development and when deployed. Discuss the tools to be provided to the user to support the visualization and manual generation and editing of the representational hierarchy. Task 2: Data Capture and Storage Subsystem. LifeLog must acquire data to capture both the user's physical experiences in the world and his or her interactions with other entities in the world. The specific types and fidelity of data to be captured should be driven by the needs implied by the offeror's approach to Task 1. Physical data is captured by various physical sensors and is stored as multiple data streams in appropriate formats at appropriate resolutions. Transactional data is extracted principally from a number of computer applications. Detectors, recognizers, analysis tools, and heuristics are used to "distill" the data, associating metadata, flagging keywords, and otherwise preparing the data for further categorization in terms of representations at various levels of abstraction. Data capture capability must be adequate to support the development of LifeLog, but should not involve new development of sensors. The proposal should identify the sources and modalities of physical, transactional, and context/media data to be captured, and also the specific sensors and deployment (e.g., wearable) means to be used for gathering physical data, and the methods to be used to acquire transactional and context/media data. The proposal should identify the data storage components to be employed and provide an estimate of the volume of data of each type to be stored per unit time. Selection rationale for components, including critical specifications and estimated costs, should be presented. LifeLog system integration should be specifically addressed, together with power and endurance issues. Offerors must also address human subject approval, data privacy and security, copyright, and legal considerations that would affect the LifeLog development process. Leverage of existing hardware and software is highly encouraged, and LifeLog should interface to commonly used computer applications. Task 3. Data Access and User Interface Subsystem. The initial LifeLog prototype implementation must provide a functional Application Programming Interface (API), as well as a stand-alone user data access capability which is envisioned to be a search-engine style interface allowing functions (e.g., less than, greater than, Booleans) of the various metadata parameters. Offerors should propose additional features to enhance the user interface (e.g., timeline displays) and to augment the API to support use by additional applications. The developmental interface should also provide a query capability to enable the user to learn why the system behaved as it did. In addition, the interface should provide intervention tools to enable the user to manually create metadata, assign classifications, and edit the abstraction hierarchy. The capabilities of the proposed access scheme should be described in terms of the flexibility of access queries to be supported (of primary concern) and expected performance, such as response time. Leveraging of existing software is encouraged, since the user interface is not a principal subject of research for LifeLog. Task 4: Experimentation and Performance Assessment. The successful development of LifeLog will require extensive experimentation to provide both the system and its developers with enough "experience" to be representative of use in the real world. The first LifeLog users will clearly be the developer team itself, and, once a critical initial threshold of capability has been achieved, the results of this use should be documented as longitudinal studies. Operating conditions should not be controlled, and a broad spectrum of both physical and transactional data should be captured over weeks of continuous real-world use. The proposal should address performance assessment over these longitudinal studies, and address the metrics of completeness of the ontology and correctness of the LifeLog's classification decisions. The LifeLog program also includes a "Challenge Problem" in the form of a system demonstration while taking a trip to Washington D.C. Travel combines physical activity (movement via a variety of conveyances) and a diversity of transactions (email, calendar, financial, itinerary, etc.) over the course of a trip. The Travel Challenge consists of an uncontrolled trip from the user's home to Washington, plus controlled trials involving travel over a government-prescribed course within the D.C. area, each trial lasting less than one day. Each proposer is encouraged to have at least three (3) LifeLog users participate in the Travel Challenge. Proposals should include plans for participation in these experiments, specifically including a plan for measuring the performance of the LifeLog system in terms of correctness and completeness. These metrics are defined in detail in the PIP. The results of the Travel Challenge will be a major determinant of the scope and course of future LifeLog development, including the exercise of proposed options. Offerors should also propose other challenge activities in addition to the Travel Challenge to demonstrate and assess the richness of the LifeLog representation structure and complexity of the domain (task and environment). Additional metrics should also be proposed. Task 5: Options for Advanced LifeLog Development. The base efforts solicited by this BAA address critical issues that must be tackled to demonstrate a basic LifeLog capability. However, many other equally critical and challenging issues must be addressed to realize a fully deployable LifeLog (sub)system. Therefore, the proposal may include one or more options to perform additional work addressing relevant technical questions, including but not limited to the following: (a) How should the LifeLog system enforce security and privacy, given that different data sources may require different restrictions (i.e., classified, proprietary, privacy act) on each data element, and a given item of data may be acquired from more than one source? (b) How should different people's LifeLog systems interact with each other? For example, if each person's LifeLog understands only his/her own speech perfectly, how should multiple LifeLogs share information so that each can acquire and store all parts of a conversation? (c) How should LifeLog be implemented so that it can degrade gracefully in its access modes, storage resources, and capture capabilities? (d) How can the domain of intentionality (plans and goals) above the level of timeline or history be more fully developed so that LifeLog can effectively support the broadest possible spectrum of assistive and training applications? Proposed options should include a clear statement of the functionality and performance benefits envisioned, and should define metrics to support the assessment of these benefits. PROGRAM SCOPE. This solicitation seeks proposals that address the development of system-level LifeLog capabilities and which fully address Tasks 1 through 4. A proposal that instead focuses on one or more specific individual technologies will be considered, but to be successful it must make a clearly convincing case that the effort would provide an extremely high payoff. Proposed efforts should cover a base 18-month period of performance and may include one or more options, whose period of performance should not exceed 24 months. The project schedule must include an initial kick-off meeting, an engineering design review 6 months after award to approve the architecture and implementation plan, a Principal Investigators' Meeting 9 months after award, and a final project review associated with the Travel Challenge, 16 months after award. Up to four awards are anticipated, and teaming is highly encouraged. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches and techniques that lead to or enable revolutionary advances in the state-of-the-art. Proposals are not limited to the specific strategies listed above, and alternative visions will be considered. However, proposals should be for research that substantially contributes towards the goals stated. Research should result in prototype hardware and/or software demonstrating integrated concepts and approaches. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvement to the existing state of practice or focuses on a specific system or solution. Integrated solution sets embodying significant technological advances are strongly encouraged over narrowly defined research endeavors. Proposals may involve other research groups or industrial cooperation and cost sharing. The establishment of LifeLog as an approved DARPA program is dependent upon the quality of the responses to this BAA. GENERAL INFORMATION. This Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) requires completion of a BAA Cover Sheet for each Proposal prior to submission. This cover sheet can be accessed at the following URL: http://www.dyncorp-is.com/BAA/index.asp?BAAid=03-30 After finalizing the BAA Cover Sheet, the proposer must print the BAA Confirmation Sheet that will automatically appear on the web page. Each proposer is responsible for printing the BAA Confirmation Sheet and attaching it to every copy. The Confirmation Sheet should be the first page of the Proposal. If a proposer intends on submitting more than one Proposal, a unique UserId and password should be used in creating each BAA Cover Sheet. Failure to comply with these submission procedures may result in the submission not being evaluated. NEW REQUIREMENTS/PROCEDURES: The Award Document for each proposal selected and funded will contain a mandatory requirement for electronic submission of DARPA/IPTO Quarterly Status Reports and an Annual Project Summary Report via the DARPA/IPTO Technical-Financial Information Management System (T-FIMS), utilizing the government-furnished Uniform Resource Locator (URL) on the World Wide Web (WWW). See Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) for further details. PROPOSAL FORMAT. Proposers must submit an original and 3 copies of the full proposal and 2 electronic copies (i.e., 2 separate disks) of the full proposal (in PDF or Microsoft Word 2000 for IBM-compatible format on a 3.5-inch floppy disk, 100 MB Iomega Zip disk or cd). Mac-formatted disks will not be accepted. Each disk must be clearly labeled with BAA 03-30, proposer organization, proposal title (short title recommended) and "Copy of 2". The full proposal (original and designated number of hard and electronic copies) must be submitted in time to reach DARPA by 12:00 PM (ET) Mon., June 23, 2003, in order to be considered during the initial evaluation phase. However, BAA 03-30, LifeLog will remain open until 12:00 NOON (ET) Fri., May 7, 2004. Thus, proposals may be submitted at any time from issuance of this BAA through Fri., May 7, 2004. While the proposals submitted after the Fri., June 23, 2003, deadline will be evaluated by the Government, proposers should keep in mind that the likelihood of funding such proposals is less than for those proposals submitted in connection with the initial evaluation and award schedule. DARPA will acknowledge receipt of submissions and assign control numbers that should be used in all further correspondence regarding proposals. Proposers must obtain the BAA 03-30 Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP), which provides further information on the areas of interest, submission, evaluation, funding processes, proposal abstracts, and full proposal formats. This pamphlet will be posted directly to FedBizOpps.gov and may also be obtained by fax, electronic mail, mail request to the administrative contact address given below, or at URL address http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Solicitations/index.html. Abstracts and proposals not meeting the format described in the pamphlet may not be reviewed. This notice, in conjunction with the BAA 03-30 PIP and all references, constitutes the total BAA. No additional information is available, nor will a formal RFP or other solicitation regarding this announcement be issued. Requests for same will be disregarded. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal that shall be considered by DARPA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Institutions (MIs) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of this research for exclusive competition among these entities. Evaluation of proposals will be accomplished through a scientific review of each proposal, using the following criteria, which are listed in descending order of relative importance: (1) Overall Scientific and Technical Merit: The overall scientific and technical merit must be clearly identifiable and compelling. The technical concept should be clearly defined, developed and defensibly innovative. Emphasis should be placed on the technical excellence of the development and experimentation approach. (2) Innovative Technical Solution to the Problem: Proposed efforts should apply new or existing technology in an innovative way such as is advantageous to the objectives. The plan on how the offeror intends to get developed technology artifacts and information to the user community should be considered. The offeror shall specify quantitative experimental methods and metrics by which the proposed technical effort's progress shall be measured. (3) Potential Contribution and Relevance to DARPA/IPTO Mission: The offeror must clearly address how the proposed effort will meet the goals of the undertaking and how the proposed effort contributes to significant advances to the DARPA/IPTO mission. (4) Offeror's Capabilities and Related Experience: The qualifications, capabilities, and demonstrated achievements of the proposed principals and other key personnel for the primary and subcontractor organizations must be clearly shown. (5) Plans and Capability to Accomplish Technology Transition: The offeror should provide a clear explanation of how the technologies to be developed will be transitioned to capabilities for military forces. Technology transition should be a major consideration in the design of experiments, particularly considering the potential for involving potential transition organizations in the experimentation process. (6) Cost Realism: The overall estimated cost to accomplish the effort should be clearly shown as well as the substantiation of the costs for the technical complexity described. Evaluation will consider the value to Government of the research and the extent to which the proposed management plan will effectively allocate resources to achieve the capabilities proposed. Cost is considered
a substantial evaluation criterion but secondary to technical excellence.
All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation,
including requests for information on how to submit a proposal to this
BAA, must be received at one of the administrative addresses below by
12:00 NOON (EST) Fri., April 30, 2004; e-mail or fax is preferred. DARPA
intends to use electronic mail and fax for some of the correspondence
regarding BAA 03-30. Proposals MUST NOT be submitted by fax or e-mail;
any so sent will be disregarded. All proposals, administrative correspondence,
and questions submitted in response to this solicitation must be in
the English language. Submissions received in other than English shall
be rejected. Restrictive notices notwithstanding, proposals may be handled,
for administrative purposes only, by a support contractor. This support
contractor is prohibited from competition in DARPA technical research
and is bound by appropriate non-disclosure requirements. Input on technical
aspects of the proposals may be solicited by DARPA from non-Government
consultants/experts who are bound by appropriate non-disclosure requirements.
Non-Government technical consultants/experts will not have access to
proposals that are labeled by their offerors as "Government Only."
While non-government personnel may review proposals, contractors will
not be used to conduct evaluations or analyses of any aspect of a proposal
submitted under this BAA, unless one of the three conditions identified
in FAR 37.203(d) applies. The tools being developed today are pattern spotters. Those who break the pattern win wars. ep: 2. Is there a cost to society with technology such as the one proposed with Terrorism Information Awareness? Is it worth it? hb: the cost can be high if this technology is placed in the hands of a bureaucracy that fails to see we are defending a way of life based on freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and a reasonable degree of privacy. Bureaucracies tend to become killers. Bureaucrats tend to lose sight of the human suffering they cause. When humans turn to mere numbers, the sense that others are just like us disappears. Empathy goes. Empathy is ironically what one needs to think like the enemy. And you have to think like him to anticipate him. er: 3. What is the best way for society to prevent the misuse of TIA technology? Should citizens be concerned with TIA and any possible misuse? hb: Congress and the press are doing a good job of watchdogging right now. Not an entirely accurate job. And that's part of the problem. Will the press still be there making headlines when the tools developed under TIA are put into the hands of a Poindexter? Truthout and People for the American Way will keep their eyes peeled. The press is our major watchdog and the press has enormous flaws. It does not live up to its public responsibility. But that's a subject for another time. er: 4. What technological advances can the research in TIA really bring us? Is that sort of technology something that the United States really needs? hb: New ways of understanding information and new ways of accessing information change our human capacities. They upgrade us as individuals. Imagine what life would be like if you could walk down the street wondering who erected the building you're looking at and have the data as instantly as the phone calls you receive from the cellphone vibrating in your pocket. Imagine if something disturbing happened--a fight with your wife, for example-- and, instead of waiting until you could call a friend, you could discuss the issue with an electro-organism composed of your personal intelligent agents, agents with pattern learning skills that helped you find your way through your confusion. Imagine if it could tell you a few stories of others folks grabbed from a variety of magazines and tv shows that helped you see the logic of a new approach to your emotional bind. That is one of the distant potentials of TIA. I appreciate your time and help! BTW, near the end of my school, I sat down for lunch and happened to see you on CSPAN. You mentioned some misgivings about the New York Times and today's academia. Do you have any writings/articles where you talk about this? hb: Strange--I haven't done any CSpan interviews. Either that was Harold Bloom or some of the TV footage I've done is being circulated by the folks who shot it. But, yes, I have a large file of notes on these topics--in the case of the press, I have enough to literally fill a book. (The title is Life In the Fame Factory: Two Thousand Years of Media Madness or how Alexander got to be Great and other secrets from the history of spin-doctoring.) I'm curious about your viewpoint on the matter. In a message dated 3/22/2003 8:37:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, MPDIVO writes: Sir, I read and enjoyed your article in WIRED magazine, interested enough to read up on your website and to read several reviews of your books. hb: thanks. I am a student at the Public Affairs Officer Qualification Course at the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Maryland. hb: this sounds utterly fascinating. PR is something our government does very, very poorly (with the exception of the new practice of "embedding" journalists in military units--a brilliant twist on the old press-junket trick). In my opinion, the embedding process went very well. I should add though that it wasn't some stroke of genius by some general as he woke up one day, but instead a long process of creating a relationship between the military and the media that started after the Vietnam war. Lots of studies, think tank papers, and committee research. We have had successes and failures and have built from the lessons learned with the ultimate goal of creating trust with the media and the American public. It was still hard for some of the military to take but overall it went very well. What little conflict that arised was due to the different natures of the military and the media. The military has not only the goal of completing it's military mission but of protecting it's members and their families. So when certain media outlets wanted to show a picture of a soldier in his last hours of his life (wounded), the military's concern was for the soldiers wife and family. The media had a responsibility to accurately show what the cost of war are. Overall, the system worked great. It's most important function was to counter false information being dished out by the Minister of Information for Iraq. While the minister of information for Iraq was stating that American troops were not in Baghdad, independant news coverage was showing video live of American troops driving through the streets of Baghdad. mp: I am researching topics for both writing and speech assignments. After reading your article I became interested in the Total Information Awareness research debate. I'm considering basing several of my classroom projects on TIA. Before I start though, I need to ensure that I have enough sources to answer questions. The instructor requires that I have three before I am allowed to proceed with the project. Could you answer a few questions via email, regarding your views on TLA research? hb: yes, if I can find the time. I'm often 300 emails behind. In exchange you have to tell me more about your course and why it interests you. I've been in the Navy for 12 years. Eight years as a Navy Photographer and three years as a Surface Warfare Officer (Those that drive and fight ships). I applied for and was accepted for a lateral transfer (Navy lingo for changing career fields) to Public Affairs Officer. I left the USS CONSTELLATION where I was the assistant Weapons Officer and was transferred to the Defense Information School where I took a two month course in Public Affairs. 3/4 of the course was essentially journalism while 1/4 was in dealing with the media (arranging press conferences, giving interviews, etc). I'm now back in San Diego at the Navy Public Affairs Center. We write and distribute stories of sailors and market it to the sailors hometowns. I'm interested
in Public Affairs for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it deals
with my former rating (Photographers mate). I enjoy the PA field. I
have 8 more years and then I can retire. Second, I enjoy writing but
I've always struggled with grammar and style. The more practice I get
the better. Getting paid to write is a great way to pursue that goal.
Finally, without sounding too altruistic: My father was a career Navy
man and I have made it a part of my life as well. I have a strong bond
with the Navy and it's culture which is hundreds of years old. Having
a chance to share my love of the Navy with the public and help them
understand what the average 18 year old sailor does out at sea is great
way to earn a living. Once again, thanks for your time! Sincerely, Lt.
Erik Reynolds, USN ___
_________ Howard In a message dated 11/14/2002 2:54:55 PM Eastern Standard Time, Robot cleaner comes to Ireland Date: 11/14/2002 2:54:55 PM Eastern Standard Time From: sheergeniussoftware.com Sent from the Internet Robot cleaner comes to Ireland http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=8692993 Thursday, November 14 2002 by Andrew McLindon Vacuuming the house no longer has to be a back-breaking exercise with the launch of a robotic vacuum cleaner that cleans floors by itself. The Robo Cleaner, which goes on sale in Ireland from December, uses sensors to guide itself around a room. Developed over the last four years at a cost of several million euro, its makers, Karcher, claim it is the only robotic device of its kind on the market. Starting from a base station, it can work its way around the area to be cleaned and can also climb onto mats and rugs. During its cleaning routine, it returns occasionally to its base station to either off-load dirt or re-charge its batteries. According to the commercial cleaning equipment company, it won't fall down stairs and it is also capable of spotting areas that are particularly dirty and will reverse over and back across such soiled patches until cleaned. The circular machine works by using four sensors in each "corner" to guide its way around a room and under tables. It cleans with a combination of vacuum and sweeper and is much more energy efficient, said Karcher, than a conventional vacuum cleaner. However, the luxury of being able to put your feet up while the Robo Cleaner does all the work does not come cheap. Costing EUR1,995, it is unlikely to be common place in homes around Ireland any time soon. "It isn't cheap," admitted Karcher Ireland's managing director, Gerry Cash, "but world first products usually aren't." Cash told ElectricNews.Net that reaction to the Robo Cleaner in Ireland had been good so far and that he expected purchasers to be technophiles, those that hated vacuuming with a passion, and security conscious companies such as law firms that do not allow cleaners into their offices. Several vacuum cleaner companies have spent the last few years trying to introduce a household robot cleaner. Electrolux and Japanese electronics giant Matsushita have both demonstrated robotic vacuum cleaners in recent times. Matsushita's prototype, for instance, was fitted with 50 sonic and infra-red sensors, could work for an hour on a single battery charge and, like the Robo Cleaner, could avoid falling down stairs. Similar machines
are also available for use in commercial facilities with large floor
spaces such as airports. For example, a UK hospital last year introduced
a STG35,000 robot to clean its halls. The size of a shopping trolley,
the machine needs only to be brought around a route once to remember
it. It then uses laser scanners and ultrasonic detectors to guide its
way around. The machine, which travels at around 3mph, also emits a
warning that it is cleaning if it senses somebody being on its route.
_____ Howard Bloom Visiting Scholar--New York University www.howardbloom.net
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder: Science of
the Soul Initiative; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society,
Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
International Society of Human Ethology; founding board member: Epic
of Evolution Society; founding council member, The Darwin Project; advisory
board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book
series. For two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition
Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information
on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the
21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
n: means that we are now able to propose a technical vehicle for achieving it with the crux of the matter covered: It is not owned by one commercial entity (eg Microsoft), but by the network itself (the members). Ie it is self-owning and self-governing, like VISA. This will provide the equivalent to DNS for the web, and therefore it makes sense that it works exactly the same way (a distributed, chaordic model). > >2. #1 starts with single sign-on to all e-services, from web sites to getting Ryze via your TV, hb: this sounds good. n: and ends with self-organising, global e-government. hb: to achieve this you need superstars--emotionally-connected people willing to go out on a limb and become leaders, believers, and enterpreneurs. Totally egalitarian societies grow flat and dull. Societies pirated and enslaved by uncaring companies like microsoft shrivel just as easily. There's a midpoint between the two. n: Topic map ontologies provide the logical structure for intelligent agents to navigate; everyone using the same one creates the singular framework for global brain et al. > >3. Infused with the right purpose and commercial framework, I believe #2 can end world hunger (give a man a fishing rod and all that), and I want to give it a shot to try and make it happen. hb: I have ideas about this too. But I'm politically incorrect. I believe in the power of genetically modified food. n: I figure if I only get a small % down this path it's all for the good. hb: heartily agreed. n: I am already arranging pilot exercises to utilise #1 for local projects aimed at helping disadvantaged, poor people (homeless, long-term welfare, young single moms etc) and will simply template, franchise and extend from there. hb: Peter Drucker says that if you want to enrich society--and that includes the poor--concentrate on bringing the creativity out of your top 20%. Concentrate on your strengths and you will aid the weak. I agree. I focus on nurturing creatives--artists, entrepreneurs, and scientists who dare to break the mold. And I've been working on ideas for forlorn areas like Afghanistan, the Arab countries, and even the greatest challenge--Africa. So we do have things in common. We may just be approaching them from different starting points. n: The beauty is businesses make more from this model, not less. (Community investment). hb: if you look at the proposal for my next book-- Reinventing Capitalism--Putting Soul In the Machine: http://howardbloom.net/reinventing_capitalismorhttp://www.howardbloom.net/reinventing_capitalism.pdf you'll see that in strange, oblique ways we powerfully agree. > >n: Don't ask me how I figured this stuff out, to be honest it seemed to come from somewhere beyond me, if that makes sense, I just want to use it now I've got it. hb: yes. it makes total sense. it's the most important thing you could say to me. > >n: Hope that makes sense, most people think I'm insane so no offence taken if it's not a good fit for you, it was nice just to have the chance to pitch. > hb: I've tossed a lot of hurdles in your path and tested you...but with my genuine points of view, points of view derived from intense experience in the corporate world, the small business world, art, and science. I want to make futures happen now. I have ideas about the technologies we need. They may be very different from yours or they may be virtually the same. See if you think we should go onward and discuss a bit more of what each of us would like to achieve. Howard _________ > >Too often
advertisers have focused on being intrusive >rather than relevant.
And when the effectiveness of the >ads or messages decreased (such
as the case with banner >ads), the advertisers assumed they simply
had to make their ads even more intrusion to the point that there is
now a category of ads called "ultra intrusive" which are being
deployed. It's analogous to a man going on a largely >chocolate diet
to lose weight and when the pounds don't >come off the man assumes
the problem is that he is not eating enough chocolate rather so he eats
more chocolate and makes it a larger percentage of his daily intake.
> >The other shortcoming I have found in regards to meta >data
is that most of the schemas in existence today >(such as MPEG-7)
only consider meta data inherently >related to the object such as
file size, dimensions, >color depth, frame rate and also descriptions
of the objects particulars such as a "woman walking her dog on
the beach" or "a business man sitting in a train". We
>are adding several more dimensions to that meta data. > >There
has also been a dearth of holistic meta >systems although MPEG-21
looks somewhat promising. > >The meta system we are building is
an enhanced MPEG-7 >system coupled with a pseudo-MPEG-21 system.
> >The completion of that entire system is in the future >for
us, but we are building along a roadmap that will >take us there.
> >The other exciting thing, in my mind, about meta data >is
that it is value add data. We leave the heavy >lifting and backhauling
of video streams, voice and >graphics to others as it is a commodity
while we focus >on the golden nuggets of meta data. > >James
> Jack's on Ryze, so hunt him down and ask him for the details--then please share them with me. Once the camera is in place, the trick will be to upgrade face recognition technology so it can register moods and emotions-and interpret their significance. Your computer can then learn to soothe and comfort you when you're jolted or down or give encouragement when you have a bright idea, and can offer you the information or connection that would help you the most--whether that help involves suggesting solutions to your problem, zooming you into a self-help chatroom of people with similar difficulties, putting you in touch with the right people on a business networking site like ryze, or getting your mind off your woes with ten minutes of amusement via a videogame or an online animation. Some of the solutions to your problems are goods and services, salable products, which is where the marketing meets the customer's needs...and just at the very best time. Howard James Santagata
writes:
I have to tell you
about it. It combined cybertronic love with something I now call "The
Divinity Chip"--a technology I know will come, and will transform
the species. But, then, most core technologies do transform us. We've
been transformed by the stone blade, the wheel, the steed, the farm,
the telegraph, the internal combusion engine, the telephone, the pc,
and the cell phone, not to mention by TV. > >Advances in ceramics,
sheathing materials and MEMS hb: what are MMS. And what is happening
in ceramics? I lost touch with the field in roughly 1991, when the big
push was to create ceramic engines that could withstand higher temperatures
and burn fuel more efficiently. Then there was Kyocera and its ceramic
knives. But ceramics since then has dropped out of my sight. >allow
for realistic skeletal and muscular structures while >advanced models
could contain eletronics and sensors that would also allow for non-verbal
communication like skin temperature changes, blushing for embarassment,
red faced for anger, etc. hb: you've hit the critical elements. And
eye contact with pupil enlargement, eye contact that tells us we're
rousing intense emotional interst. And fingertip contact that says the
same. You can feel the attention a lover is giving you through her fingertips.
When she's feeling your body with wonder and delight, it comes across
in tricks of skin pressure. When she's grown accustomed to your body
and the awed exploration stops, you feel that too. And it's a letdown.
> >The most immediate and obvious market I see (in terms of market
adoption and profits) would be in the area of >sexual entertainment
and sexual dysfunction (sort of an >FDA-approved device/treatment
that could be paid for with medical insurance). hb: let's be honest.
the horror that greets pornography is not entirely sane. human need
sex. There's a far greater demand than supply. Yet sex is almost as
necessary as food. So is love. How do we make up for the shortfall?
By offering cyber or cyborg sex, companionship, understanding and love.
Will this kill off real relationships? Will it stop us from mating and
conceiving children? We'll just have to see. When it comes to technology,
anything you can do you should do. Just watch out and don't hurt human
beings. > >There are, of course, many other markets such as companions
>for elderly folks, etc. as well. > You do too, but unlike me, you have a grip on the business and the technology. Howard James Santagata writes: > Howard Bloom writes: >>>hb: we're more on the same page than you imagine. I wrote this very scenario up in 1995 and it was published in something Dorion Sagan (Carl Sagan's oldest son and an award-winning science writer) wrote. I don't remember whether it was for Wired or for one of his books. >>> > >Sounds very interesting - I'll have to check around >for this. hb: It may be in Dorion's book with his mom, Lynn Margulis, What Is Sex. I'm trying to find it using my hard-drive search engine and giving it a very big job--going through 21 Gb of material. So let's pray the computer doesn't crash. > >>>>tells me this is obviously going to be a huge market >>>>and I'm on to something. ;) > >>>hb: it is going to be so huge it's ridiculous. It'll be addictive. We humans need it badly. We need to shed the bodies we've been burdened with, take on the body we want--if only in virtual reality--and make love to each other in the forms and shapes that we feel fit who we really are--or that fit the fantasies that are more the-real-us than our busybody "self" imagines. >>> > >I'm in total agreement with you - what exactly >is the body and what is its significance? Do we >need it? > >Philosophers and spirtualists have told us for millenia that the body is just a "container" and now the hard sciences are starting to tell us the same thing. > >I think it is so fascinating that a person can have >an erotic dream that ends in both a physical response (ejaculation) and emotional response (calmness, peace of mind, etc.). > >In that situation, a person's fantasy has been transmuted >into both a physical and emotional response. > >I have no doubt as well that this would be a wildly popular product as I have yet to hear any man ever complain about the wet dream he had the night before when three unassuming young, busty blondes suddenly and wantonly tackled him and had their way with him until his alarm clock sounded >early the next morning, thus, ending the session. >I guess his only regret is that he didn't have a TiVo >or ReplayTV DVR for his dreams. > >The trick would be to develop a product that consistently >produces those fantasies in the dream or meditative >states while allowing the person to control and custom tailor the fantasies (our at least choose from a fantasy >"template") so that they result in the physical response and emotional responses. > >>>By the way, do you have a copy of our latest dialog on face-reading? I want to save it, but seem to have lost it. >>> > >Yes, I'll send it along in a separate post. > >>>hb: hmmm, this relaties to another science fiction story I wrote at the age of 22. I have to tell you about it. It combined cybertronic love with something I now call "The Divinity Chip"--a technology I know will come, and will transform the species. But, then, most core technologies do transform us. We've been transformed by the stone blade, the wheel, the steed, the farm, the telegraph, the internal combusion engine, the telephone, the pc, and the cell phone, not to mention by TV. >>> > >"The Divinity Chip" sounds wonderful! > >I really like your insight into technologies transforming us. It seems that man is able to transform his environment using man-made technology and then he, in turn, is subject to being transformed as well by his own technology. > >>> >>>hb: what are MMS. > >MEMS are micro-electro mechanical machines (a.k.a. >micromachines) which are often so miniaturized that >they cannot be seen with the naked eye. > >This is a very nascent technology but the promise is there. >MEMS applications are varied and can include >microsensors, microactuators, microrobotics, etc. > >Often these MEMS are fabricated with polysilicon (PolySi) >because of its properties -- resiliency, strength >and extremely flexible. > >As an added bonus, MEMS can be made using batch-fabrication >processes (much as semiconductor wafers are) and are characterized not only by their small geometry design rules but by being low-cost, high-performance and long lasting. > >>> >And what is happening in ceramics? I lost touch with the field in roughly 1991, when the big push was to create ceramic engines that could withstand higher temperatures and burn fuel more efficiently. Then there was Kyocera and its ceramic knives. But ceramics since then has dropped out of my sight. >>> > >Ceramics technology has made some huge gains in recent >years. For instance, ceramics can not only be high temperature and corrosive resistant but can be very low weight while remaining extremely strong. > >In addition, some of the new ceramic composites are electrically conductive which allows them to be easily >molded (relatively speaking) into very complex shapes. > >All of these factors coupled with the new ceramic >shaping techologies, means ceramics are finding their way not only into automotive products but also are starting to replace steel in applications like tank and body armor, being using as heat exchangers and as enhanced reinforcement sleeves for high-wear environments or to increase strength and/or decrease the product's weight. > >>hb: you've hit the critical elements. And eye contact with pupil enlargement, eye contact that tells us we're rousing intense emotional interst. And fingertip contact that says the same. You can feel the attention a lover is giving you through her fingertips. When she's feeling your body with wonder and delight, it comes across in tricks of skin pressure. When she's grown accustomed to your body and the awed exploration stops, you feel that too. And it's a letdown. >>> > >That's a wonderful insight. And using MEMS such as >microsensors and microactuators a robosapien could >sense and respond through the application of these micro pressures. And when coupled with ceramic heat exchangers it could also create and respond to temperature changes so that a real human's body was mimicked. > >>>hb: let's be honest. the horror that greets pornography is not entirely sane. human need sex. There's a far greater demand than supply. Yet sex is almost as necessary as food. So is love. How
do we make up for the shortfall? By offering cyber or cyborg sex, companionship,
understanding and love. >>> > >Okay, you caught me, I
just didn't have honesty to say it >although I had the same thoughts
:)))) > >Some years ago I approached some VCs about this using
the >"love doll" concept and to say they were completely
horrified would be an understatement. > >One VC told me, "James,
I have two words for you - >(1) not (2) interested!" He was
pretty indignant about >it as well - luckily I have very tough skin
so it didn't >phase me, although I must say that I just wanted to
do it even more after that! ;) > >In response, I developed a new
pitch along the line of >"FDA-approved device for sexual dysfunction"
but I guess that would be more for the VC's peace of mind so they could
"honestly" categorize the investment as a "bio-medical"
company so the institutional investors wouldn't get too nervous. >
>>Will this kill off real relationships? Will it stop us from
mating and conceiving children? We'll just have to see. When it comes
to technology, anything you can do you should do. Just watch out and
don't hurt human beings. >> > >Howard, I love your way of
thinking as no one could ever >accuse you of being a Luddite! :)
> >Although I've had some people actually complain that my idea
>on the "love doll" was the work of a "misogynist"
(hey, who is to say that a male "Brad Pitt" model isn't offered
for the ladies?) or that I was somehow a "misanthrope" my
philosophy is very similar to yours on technology. > > They greeted me with "Oh, James, so now you are as smart as Copernicus?" And I'd say, "Heck no! I'm stupid. Which is exactly why I'm surprised that you all you smart guys can't all see something that is so obvious even a simple guy like me can see it!" :))) hb: we have remarkable similar feelings, ways of explaining things, and experiences. I despair that the best minds of our generation are not Allen Ginsberg's junkies on rooftops in "Howl", but are folks with terrific brains in corporate conference rooms behaving as if they'd been lobotomized. js: Most didn't think it was funny. That was the job when I decided to start making plans for my own company. BTW, these are two of my favorite quotes purportedly made by Einstein: When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity. --Albert Einstein If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? --Albert Einstein hb: I just copied, pasted, and saved 'em. old Hb: sounds like one of the physicists I've been dialoging with about the nature of the cosmos and reality. He thinks everything can be reduced to the optimization of Lagrangian landscapes. His brilliance has blinded him. He was a math prodigy as a kid. So he sees the math clearly but doubts the existence of basics like the nose on his face. js: LOL! >Hb: you're making me envious. You'll have to tell me how you got into >this and what it was like sometime. Japan, Korea, and China fascinate me. js: I had always been interested in Asia as a child. For some reason the culture, aesthetics, the philosophy and even the food had drawn me in. After I graduated from college I saw immersion into some Asian cultures as a way be really open my horizons and prevent me from becoming an in-the-box thinker. hb: it sounds like a superb idea. js: At the time I was working for Toshiba in the US and while I had a very good career starting it just made me more determined to immerse myself in Japan. I found a program sponsored by the Japanese gov't (JET programme) that would allow a person to actually be both a teacher and an observer in Japanese public schools. That fascinated me because I knew from my studies in consumer behavior that I definitely wanted to see and participate in the socialization process first hand. hb: I would die to have a spare four months in which to teach kids in Japan...and let them teach me. What a combination--a fresh generation with new perceptions and new tools, and a generation in Japan, home of ancient traditions, a history of astonishing cultural leaps, and the home of a radically different way of parsing and seeing the world. js: I got accepted into the programme, took a leave of absence from Toshiba and left on really great terms and just flew to Japan to start a new chapter in my life. I was very fortunate to get dispatched to a rural area and actually teach at one main high school and visit to others. It was very tough in the beginning because I didn't know any Japanese before arriving but I was forced to "go native" and was able to teach myself to speak and read and write within a year. hb: wow. js: Japanese schools are still very segmented with schools marked as academic, commercial or agricultural. I was based at an academic school but got to visit and teach at both a commercial and agricultural one as well. It was wonderful because I could compare my observations across three different socio-economic groups. hb: very, very neat. js: In addition, I paid close attention to the interaction among students, among the young teachers, among the older teachers as well as the interactions between these groups. In that way, I was able to see various cultural gaps appear as I taught with some old timers that had actually fought in the Imperial Japanese army to new teachers right out of school. hb: this is amazing. js: As I taught English as well, I was able to have insights into the minds of several hundred students per week. This taught me so much about their myths, rituals, mores and folkways as well as made me question my own. For instance, I loved playing word association games by writing a word on the blackboard. "Valentines Days". An American thinks of love, flowers and dinner but in Japan there is no association with this. It is a "giri" - obligation or duty to provide chocolates to the males. hb: very interesting observation. js: Mention "Christmas" though and rather than hearing about presents or reindeer or Santa Clause (secular) or even religion you'll find it is the most romantic holidays in Japan. It is a day for lovers. Flowers, dinners, romance, love hotels, etc. hb: wonderful. It would have made Jesus rather unhappy, but he was overly ascetic. js: I could go on for days about the experiences there but they were life changing and this was definitely one of the life altering experiences I've had. I have known others that have gone as well but who got nothing out of it other than chasing girls and drinking (those are fun, too, but they have their time and place) so I think it really is a case of getting out of it what you put in. hb: or finding what you need to see on your path to you-don't-quite-know-where but you find out more and more about the goal as you manage to get there. old >Hb: this sounds amazing. How did you do it? What did you find when you >went rummaging backwards in your early mind? js: As a child (and probably much to my parents chagrin) I found myself always questioning everything around me. When I was around two and half or so, my father was an assistant coach with the local Pop Warner Football team and I would go to the practices with him and watch. There seemed to me to be around 40 or so really big men running around although they were actually 12 year olds. They looked mean with pads, helmets and cleats and were noisy. I remember immediately having an awareness and understanding a sense the vulnerability we all have to each other in terms of physical violence or assault. That although I knew if was against the law and what society taught to hit someone that if those 40 men wanted to hit me or my dad there is nothing we could do. Nobody could help us. This really helped me see through many others issues later in life like understanding the legal systems, courts, self-defense and inalienable right to self-preservation. hb: amazing insights. js: For instance, I've had friends say: Friend: "James, why would you buy a gun?" James: "To ensure my right for self-preservation." Friend: "You're just looking for a gunfight." James: "I also have car insurance so does that mean I'm looking for a car accident?" I also have health insurance so does that mean I'm looking to get sick? So what should I do if someone threatens me in my home by breaking in and holding me at gunpoint?" Friend: "Call the police" James: "Okay, assuming they are dispatched immediately and come to save me before I'm dead, then what? Friend: "They will solve the problem?" James: "With their bare hands?" Friend: "Of course not, they have a gun!" James: "Oh, so they are looking for a gunfight" Friend: "You know what I mean. They are trained to fire a gun." James: "Oh, so I am I. So as long as I train as much or more than a cop, I can own gun for self-defense and not be accused of looking for a gunfight?" Friend: "You're too much, James!" James: "Okay, :)))) " When I was four I remember having an intuitive sense of the connectedness of the world. One day my father had bought a new car and we were driving home and I had made the comment, "You know dad, when you buy a car not just the car dealer gets the money. The guy who makes the glass and the tires and the seats gets money, too." hb: amazing. (yes, I've repeated that word a lot, but these are experiences--and confessions-- that have earned it.) js: My parents were very liberal in the traditional intellectual sense of relying on reason, looking into issues and rationally weighing them. My father was an electrical engineer by training and was very level headed and as I was growing up most of the things he had taught me were right on the mark. So after a while I started accepting what he told me as facts and stopped questioning them. One day, when I was around 16 years old, one of the values he had instilled in me didn't really work -- in fact it was completely out of whack with reality. I then became very indignant (hey, I had thought he was really smart so how could he not know this?) and confronted him with it. We talked about it and after some time he kind of admitted that was something he learned directly from his father, too, and never questioned it and just passed it along until I just brought it up. hb: an amazing revelation on his part. js: He felt kind of bad about it. But I remember saying (paraphrasing), "But dad, if I expect you to have the ability to be able to see through some value your dad instilled in you as being somehow flawed and get mad at you when you weren't able to see through it, shouldn't I be equally mad at myself for not having the ability to see through the very same flawed value you taught me?" hb: your dad sounds remarkable, and so do you. js: That stuck in my mind from then on to really question everything that came into my mind and filter it out. It wasn't until ten years later when I went to Japan that I had a brainstorm that I had a bunch of unfiltered and unquestioned "truths" pumped into my mind before I even had thought about this or built my filters. hb: I cherish some of the givens in my brain--like the urgency of insight for its own sake or the need to stop a mugging when I see one (I've done something of this sort roughly three times) even though I am totally unathletic and incapable of mounting a physical fight. old>Hb: this also sounds amazing. When you pursue ideas that are out of the >box, you get tons of rejection and have to take it. So I've taken it >since I was roughly ten. But it's still a shock to my emotions. The >trick is never giving up. Persistence wins. js: Persistence is very much a key. The other thing I've been trying the last few years is to cultivate a self-deprecating sense of humor. In the past, when I stuck to my guns on those rejections I would then be called "hard headed", "insolent", "cocky", "arrogant", "conceded". But I've been able to defuse a lot of those calls by applying some self-deprecating humor at certain points. Still is no replacement for persistence. :) hb: and the humor helps enormously. old>Hb: wow. Terrific. I'm depositing it in the "epigrams" file. Just did a >quick google and couldn't find out who said it. If you ever need >bolstering, read the book "Churchill on Leadership" or read Dean Keith >Simonton. Greatness: Who Makes History and Why. New York: Guilford Press, >1994. Both are about the power of persistence under even the worst of >circumstances, persistence, in Churchill's case, in the face of ten solid >years of rejection. js: Thanks. I will check out this Churchill book. hb: Then read his biography The Last Lion, by William Manchester. The stories are amazing and teach many, many lessons. js: By the way, I love the way Churchill used wit and sarcasm to defuse or defeat his opponents as well as what appeared to be a steely determination. There was an incident where he was at a large social gathering of high society and as often was the case was seen to be drinking quite a bit. The story goes that there was a middle-aged socialite at his table who made a particularly biting comment in front of the whole table with the express purpose of embarrassing him. Middle aged socialite: "Sir, I find you behavior to be boorish. If you were my husband I would surely poison your drink." To which Churchill replied, "Madame, if you were my wife I would gladly drink it." hb: this is hilarious. I am literally LOL. old>Hb: I'll tell you more in a few weeks once the website has ripened and >matured. I'll also enclose one video. Remember when you watch it that it >was made by a volunteer who has turned out close to 20 minutes of >animation since March 6th, when the Big Bang Tango Media Lab came into >being. This is so far beyond the bounds of what most professionals feel >is possible that it defies belief. Thanks! old hb: >Just one year ago, I was told by one of the producers who wanted to do my >first TV series, "Never use the word animation again. TV executives will >realize that you are an amateur and a lunatic. They'll see multimillion >dollar signs rolling in front of their eyes. They'll see budgets that >skyrocket beyond belief. And they'll toss you out on your can." This >came from one of my strongest supporters, the man who said, "Howard Bloom >is the Einstein, Darwin, Freud, Buckminster Fuller and Isaac Newton of the >21st Century." And he didn't just say I should give up on animation, he >screamed it. > >I invented animation techniques back in my art studio days that involved >almost no budget at all. He dismissed all that and went back to >ranting. The Big Bang Tango Media Lab has proven him wrong…very wrong >indeed. >Persistence. "Never give up," said Winston Churchill. I love it! And wasn't it IBM's Watson who once said, "At most there is a world market for 6 computers"? hb: someone said it but I don't recall who. old hb: >Especially on the big visions-like the Stepford Lab. More than anything >else in life, people need warmth, admiration, and company. That's what >the Stepford Lab is really all about. js: This is what all humans crave. In my view, any human who doesn't crave it is either being disingenuous at best or is perhaps psychotic at worst. I would perhaps go even further and suggest that if we could give people more of those three things we'd have a happier society. I think Stepford Labs can fill a very big human need. hb: our only trick is to make sure we don't demotivate people. if we could help the socially inept learn social skills through a cybertronic lover, if we could help those with ambition get their visions expressed, if we could muse writers, poets, and painters, provide crucial information and suggestions to executives under stress who dare not confess their difficulties to a soul lest they be despised as weak, if we could not only love, admire, and warm, but teach, if we could do it painlessly, if we could make people smarter, braver, more creative, and more knowledgable through their intercourse (literally) with these cyber-geishas, these cyber Aspasia's (Pericles' brilliant mistress), we'd have a major achievement--and one of the most valued products in the world on our hands. js: > Remind me to tell you what I learned from a friend who is a hi-powered, >hi-tech company exec, has an IQ of 190, and in her spare time is one of >the continent's most successful dominatrices. The secret is all in the >eyes. Howard js: I love multi-faced individuals like that. Don't they say "the eyes are the windows to the soul"? hb: and the eyes of a dominitrice must never stray from the man she's beating...never. Intense emotional attention is the key. Those who grow bored and let there eyes stray lose their clients. When the eyes are intensely interested it shows in the pupils. They dilate. Persian carpet dealers can read the degree of interest a customer has in her eyes by watching her pupils expand and contract. The pupils tell them how high a price to set. I suspect in shows in muscular cues from the face as well. Onward--Howard ________
1) studies done
back in the 1950s or so demonstrated that therapists tend to think their
patients are cured when the patients adopt the vocabulary and the speech
rhythms of the therapist; |
