| Mike Posts Mike made the following posts on the Clumsy Congress under the nick Emtee1. |
| 09/12/2000 00:54 I'm here...just not always vocal. The book I was mentioning is called "Genome: The story of a species in 23 chapters". It's pretty damn cool too, maybe not quite Kurzweil but good anyway!. 11/12/2000 09:51 (In reply to PRIMETIMFOOL) Just a complete aside from Mr.K, but I was at a friends place on Sat. and we told me that he read something from MIT about a functional 5 q-bit Quantum computer....the future is now!! 14/12/2000 23:25 (In Reply to Lissa [LISSALEE] ) Hey Liss, Being the resident creator (soon) of odd coloured livestok, I thought you'd be a good person to explain the concept of LUCA (Last Common Universal Ancestor) the little RNA bug everything started with. Might make the evolution Ray talks about a bit more understandable. As for the emotions etc. that a human brain makes, it seems to me it all stems from neurons. Either they fire or they don't, admittedly the stimuli they are responding to is varied but if you think of them al as little binary switches (either 1 or 0) then it follows that a computer caould replicate most anything that the brain could do. We just need much bigger, nueral net type computers. I'm not so sure that one's conscience would travel with the 'scanning' process though. If the scan is non-destructive what about the biological you? Would it just die as 'you' were transported into the machine world? Would you feel as if you were in two places at once? Nobody would be able to tell from the outside, and the intelligence that resulted would be able to convince you that it was aware of the change from bio to computer. This is one of those philosophical questions that is just about impossible to answer because it hinges on the subjective experience of an individual that may not survive the event! Any ideas...I'm a bit stumped. 19/12/2000 14:35 Hey all, found an article Ray did for Time magazine, thought it might shed a bit of light. If you're supposed to be studying.....GO READ SOMETHING FROM YOUR COURSE WORK!!! Will our future machines be smarter than people? One initial observation is that once a computer does achieve a level of intelligence comparable to human intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it. A key advantage of nonbiological intelligence is that machines can easily share their knowledge. If I learn French I can't readily download that learning to you. My knowledge, skills and memories are embedded in a vast pattern of neurotransmitter concentrations and interneuronal connections, and cannot be quickly accessed or transmitted. But we won't leave out quick downloading ports in our nonbiological equivalents of human neuron clusters. When one computer learns a skill or gains an insight, it will be able to immediately share that wisdom with billions of other machines. Let's consider the requirements for a computer to exhibit human level intelligence, by which I include all the diverse and subtle ways in which humans are intelligent-including musical and artistic aptitude, creativity, physically moving through the world and even responding to emotion. A necessary (but not sufficient) condition is the requisite processing power, which I estimate at around 20 million billion calculations per second (we have on the order of 100 billion neurons, each with some 1,000 connections to other neurons, with each connection capable of performing about 200 calculations per second). In the mid 1970s, Gordon Moore, one of the inventors of integrated circuits, and then Chairman of Intel, noted in what has become known as "Moore's Law," that we could squeeze twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit every twenty-four months. The implication is that computers, which are built from integrated circuits, are doubling in both capacity and speed every two years. However, after sixty years of devoted service, Moore's Law will die a dignified death no later than the year 2019. By that time, transistor features will be just a few atoms in width, and the strategy of ever finer photolithography will have run its course. So, will that be the end of the exponential growth of computing? Don't bet on it. In studying this trend, I have discovered that when one paradigm such as Moore's Law can no longer provide improvements, another paradigm steps in to continue exponential growth. Indeed, Moores Law itself was not the first, but the fifth paradigm to provide accelerating price-performance. What will the next paradigm be? Chips today are flat. Our brain, in contrast, is organized in three dimensions. We live in a three dimensional world, why not use the third dimension? There are many emerging technologies now being developed that build circuitry in three dimensions. Nanotubes, for example, which are already working in laboratories, build circuits from hexagonal arrays of carbon atoms. One cubic inch of nanotube circuitry would be a million times more powerful than the human brain, at least in raw processing power. More important, however, is the software of intelligence. The most compelling scenario for mastering the software of intelligence is to tap into the blueprint of the best example we can get our hands on: the brain. There is no reason why we cannot reverse engineer the human brain and essentially copy its design. We can peer inside someone's brain today with noninvasive scanners, which are increasing their resolution with each new generation. To capture the salient neural details of the human brain, the most practical approach will be to scan it from inside. By 2030, "nanobot" technology will be viable, and brain scanning will be a prominent application. Nanobots are robots that are the size of human blood cells, or even smaller. Billions of them could travel through every brain capillary and scan neural details from up close. Using high speed wireless communication, the nanobots would communicate with each other, and with other computers that are compiling the brain scan database. This scenario involves capabilities we can touch and feel today. We already have technology capable of producing very high resolution scans (provided that the scanner is physically proximate to the neural features). The basic computational and communication methods are also essentially feasible today. The primary features that are not yet practical are nanobot cost and size. As I discussed above, we can project the exponentially declining cost of computation. Miniaturization is another aspect of technology that is developing exponentially. The size of electronics and robotics is shrinking at an accelerating rate, currently by a factor of 5.6 per linear dimension per decade. We can expect, therefore, the requisite nanobot technology by around 2030. With this information, we can design biologically inspired recreations of the methods used by the human brain. After the algorithms of a region are understood, they can be refined and extended before being implemented in synthetic neural equivalents. For one thing, they can be run on a computational substrate that is already more than 10 million times faster than the electrochemical processes used in the brain. And we can also throw in the methods for building intelligent machines that we already understand. The computationally relevant aspects of individual neurons and neural structures are complicated, but not beyond our ability to accurately model. Scientists at several laboratories around the world have already built integrated circuits that match the digital and analog information processing characteristics of biological neurons, including clusters with hundreds of neurons. During the third decade of the 21st century, we will be in a position to create highly detailed maps of the pertinent features of neurons, neural connections and synapses in the human brain, all of the neural details that play a role in the behavior and functionality of the brain, and to recreate these designs in suitably advanced neural computers. By that time, computers will greatly exceed the basic computational power of the human brain. The result will be machines that combine the complex and rich skills of humans with the speed, accuracy and knowledge-sharing ability that machines already excel in. How will we apply technology that is more intelligent than its creators? One might be tempted to respond "Carefully!" But let's take a look at some examples. The same nanobots that will scan our brains will also be able to expand our thinking and our experiences. Nanobot technology will provide fully immersive, totally convincing virtual reality. By taking up positions in close physical proximity to every interneuronal connection coming from all of our senses (e.g., eyes, ears, skin), the nanobots can suppress all of the inputs coming from the real senses and replace them with the signals that would be appropriate for a virtual environment. By 2030, "going to a website" will mean entering a virtual reality environment. The implant will generate the streams of sensory input that would otherwise come from our real senses, thus creating an all-encompassing virtual environment that responds to the behavior of our own virtual body (and those of others) in that environment. This technology will enable us to have virtual reality experiences with other people-or simulated people-without requiring any equipment not already in our heads. Furthermore, this virtual reality will not be the crude experience that one can experience in today's arcade games. It will be as realistic and detailed as real reality. So instead of just phoning a friend, you can meet in a virtual French caf� in Paris, or take a walk on a virtual Mediterranean beach, and it will seem very real. People will be able to have any type of experience with anyone-business, social, romantic, sexual-regardless of physical proximity. Nanobot technology will be able to expand our minds in virtually any imaginable way. Our brains today are relatively fixed in design. Although we do add patterns of interneuronal connections and neurotransmitter concentrations as a normal part of the learning process, the current overall capacity of the human brain is highly constrained, restricted to a mere hundred trillion connections. Since the nanobots are communicating with each other over a wireless local area network, they can create any set of new neural connections, can break existing connections (by suppressing neural firing), can create new hybrid (i.e., combined biological and nonbiological) networks as well as adding powerful new forms of nonbiological intelligence. Brain implants based on distributed intelligent nanobots will massively expand our memories and otherwise vastly improve all of our sensory, pattern recognition and cognitive abilities. We are already using surgically installed neural implants for conditions such as deafness and Parkinson's Disease. In 2030, nanobots will be introduced without surgery, essentially just by injecting or even swallowing them. They can also be directed to leave, so the process is easily reversible. They are programmable, in that they can provide virtual reality one minute, and a variety of brain extensions the next. They can change their configuration and alter their software. Perhaps most importantly, they are massively distributed and therefore can take up billions or trillions of positions throughout the brain, whereas a surgically introduced neural implant can only be placed in one or at most a few locations. So will computers be smarter than humans? It depends on what you consider to be a computer, and what you consider to be human. By the second half of the 21st century, there will be no clear distinction between the two. On the one hand, we will have biological brains greatly expanded through distributed nanobot-based implants. On the other, we will have fully nonbiological brains that are copies of human brains but vastly extended. And we will have a myriad of other varieties of intimate connection between human thinking and the technology it has fostered. Although some observers today find the prospest of merging with our technologies disconcerting,I believe that by the time we get theremost of us will find it very natural to expand in this wayou experiences, our minds, and our possibilities. 04/03/2001 14:31 Hello All, just thought that you might like an update. I met all of the people involved in the Ramona project at the TED conference in Monterey and what a fascinating group! I had a great time and was made to feel welcome in their company for which I am enormously grateful. I haven't travelled alone in many years and it was an interesting thing for me to do. All of the info a TED was amazing, I feel refreshed and ready to get back into a bus and play for a few months. The Ramona project brings up a great deal of questions about avatars or alter-egos. Do you think it's a good thing to be given the courage to explore your other personalities or not. It might be a great thing to be free from the fear of ridicule in the face of judgement, but it might be a bad thing to not be accountable for you own actions. I tend to be more optimistic in that I feel that people may try creative endevours that they might not otherwise. That's just an opinion though, I might change it tommorrow. For those of you that like Alice I recommend you go to KurzweilAI.net and meet Ramona. She's a lot more advanced than Alice and there is a tonne of great articles at the site. No time to hang out....be well Emtee1 22/07/2001 16:00 Hi all, just thought I'd stick my head in and stir things up a bit. If you're interested in Ray's work then you should get the kurzweilai.net newsletter. I think of it as Ray's "I told you so!" newsletter. It coverst he current tech innovations the he predicted in the book. The path starts here. 08/08/2001 09:59 On the subject of Cloning, I guess it was inevitable. The fact is that there are people want to take part in the process and have volenteered their time and cash to make it happen. The truth is that there is an economic imperative at stake here. The first person that does this will have the claim to the title 'pioneer' and, as such, will be a market leader. As long as this gives a competative edge in the market, someone will be trying to do it. If the governments of the world try to outlaw it they will only suceed in driving it underground. This will result in the edge being held by those who are content to operate outside of the law. This reality should frighten you more than the idea of cloning as an abstract idea. We cannot put the genie back in the bottle, we'd better get used to having it around. Here's some interesting stuff from Ray' "I told you so newsletter" NEWS ==== ************************* Mass-market wearable computer coming July 27, 2001 ************************* The first consumer-marketed wearable computer is due out around Christmas 2001 for roughly... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=381&m=1456 ************************* Nurses get bionic 'power suit' July 27, 2001 ************************* A robotic exoskeleton has been created by Japanese researchers to allow nurses to lift patients effortlessly and without... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=382&m=1456 ************************* Total protein scan approaches reality July 27, 2001 ************************* For the first time, nearly all the proteins from a single organism have been produced, purified and biochemically tested in an... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=383&m=1456 ************************* Scientist Claims Evidence of Life in Outer Space July 31, 2001 ************************* Evidence of life beyond our planet -- clumps of extraterrestrial bacteria in the Earth's upper atmosphere -- has been... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=384&m=1456 ************************* Software Called Capable of Copying Any Human Voice July 31, 2001 ************************* Voice cloning software -- replicating a person's voice so perfectly that the human ear cannot tell the difference -- has been... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=385&m=1456 ************************* Truly Embedded Chips July 31, 2001 ************************* Chip implants with telecommunications capability could open new connectivity and entertainment options.... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=386&m=1456 ************************* Computers of the future: Made of glass? July 30, 2001 ************************* Your handheld computer could look like a small glass panel, possibly as early as 2003.... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=387&m=1456 ************************* Doctors Implant Chips in Eyes to Restore Vision July 31, 2001 ************************* Doctors have implanted three more microchips in the eyeballs of men suffering from retinal damage in the second phase of a... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=388&m=1456 ************************* Population predicted to peak in 2070 August 1, 2001 ************************* The world?s population will peak at 9 billion over the next 70 years before beginning a decline into the 22nd century,... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=389&m=1456 ************************* Ray Kurzweil responds to Jaron Lanier critique August 1, 2001 ************************* Ray Kurzweil has responded to a critique of "Cybernetic Totalism" in Jaron Lanier?s "One Half of a Manifesto"... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=390&m=1456 ************************* At nanoscale, current laws may not apply July 30, 2001 ************************* As nanotechnology moves from the realm of science fiction to the real world of commercial application, legislation and... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=391&m=1456 ************************* Foldable computer a step closer August 1, 2001 ************************* The ability to grow large crystals inside a thin, organic film could hurry a new generation of throwaway, plastic, electronic... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=392&m=1456 ************************* Buckyballs Make Fantastic Voyage August 1, 2001 ************************* Fullerenes (a.k.a. Buckyballs -- molecules containing 60 carbon atoms arranged in a sphere with a hollow center) are becoming... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=393&m=1456 ************************* Vinge's 'True Names' classic to be reissued August 2, 2001 ************************* Vernor Vinge's classic scifi novel True Names/aa href="http://www.tor.com/"... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=394&m=1456 ************************* RoboCup competition opens in Seattle August 2, 2001 ************************* Robotics teams from universities in 23 countries will compete at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=395&m=1456 ************************* US warned of cloning 'brain drain' August 2, 2001 ************************* The American biotechnology industry is warning of an exodus of scientists because of moves to make human cloning for medical... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=396&m=1456 ************************* World champion to battle chess supercomputer August 2, 2001 ************************* World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik will play the "Deep Fritz 7" chess supercomputer in an eight-game match in Bahrain in... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=397&m=1456 ************************* Major AI conference scheduled for Aug. 4 - 10 in Seattle [Event] Aug. 3, 2001 ************************* The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, sponsored by AAAI, will be held August 4th to 10th in... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=398&m=1456 ************************* Political Leaders Out of Touch with Accelerating Technology, Says Clinton Aug. 3, 2001 ************************* ASPEN, Colorado, Aug. 3, 2001 ? Former President Bill Clinton said many political leaders are "out of touch" with the... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=399&m=1456 ************************* Challenge to create program that can win a game without knowing rules August 6, 2001 ************************* Artificial Intelligence NV (Ai) has announced a challenge to promote original AI research. The companuy invites participants to... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=400&m=1456 NEW ARTICLES ============ ************************* Excerpts from "One Half of a Manifesto" Jaron Lanier 07/30/2001 ************************* Does the optimism of technologists blur the question of quantitative improvements in hardware versus a lack of qualititative improvements in software? Do they point the way towards an eschatological cataclysm in which doom is imminent? http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=232&m=1456 ************************* Postscript Re: Ray Kurzweil Jaron Lanier 07/30/2001 ************************* This postscript to his One Half of a Manifesto is a further discussion and criticism of exponential trends. Do these trends exist as predictive models, or are we playing connect-the-dots based upon an arbitrary selection of milestones and paradigm shifts? http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=233&m=1456 ************************* Foreword to Blondie24: Playing At The Edge of AI by David Fogel Raymond Kurzweil 07/30/2001 ************************* Blondie24 demonstrates the value of combining the biological and "traditional" machine approaches to crafting artificial intelligence. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=234&m=1456 ************************* The Singularity Is Near - Ray Kurzweil at Extro5 (Video) Raymond Kurzweil 07/30/2001 ************************* Ray Kurzweil presents an illustrated sneak preview of his next book, The Singularity Is Near, due out in 2002. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=235&m=1456 ************************* One Half of An Argument Raymond Kurzweil 07/31/2001 ************************* A counterpoint to Jaron Lanier's "One Half of a Manifesto" and postscript regarding Ray Kurzweil. Although they agree on the immeasurability of subjective experience, Kurzweil defends the trends, points to Lanier's "engineer's pessimism," and believes that despite dystopian visions of runaway technological cataclysm, the story of the 21st century has not been written. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=236&m=1456 ************************* Consciousness is a Big Suitcase Marvin Minsky 08/02/2001 ************************* Is consciousness reducible to a set of mechanisms in the brain acting in concert? In this discussion with the Edge's John Brockman, Marvin Minsky peers into the suitcase of the mind. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=237&m=1456 ************************* How Fast, How Small and How Powerful? Moore's Law and the Ultimate Laptop Seth Lloyd 08/02/2001 ************************* A laptop that looks like a thermonuclear explosion inside of a liter bottle of coca cola? Or a black hole? Read Seth Lloyd's follow up to a Nature article that pushes Moore's Law to the limit. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=238&m=1456 ************************* The Emergent Self Francesco Varela 08/03/2001 ************************* The late Francesco Varela postulates that organisms have to be understood as a mesh of virtual selves--a bricolage of various identities. How virtual is the reality we live in, and do various realities emerge from cognitive and biological systems? http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=239&m=1456 ************************* Natural Born Cyborgs Andy Clark 08/03/2001 ************************* For Andy Clark, the ancient fortress of skin and skull has been breached: as we understand more and more how the brain works, the brains we craft in the future will be extensions of our own. Mindware upgrades and other cognitive upheavals coming soon... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=241&m=1456 ************************* The End Of Time: A Talk With Julian Barbour Julian Barbour 08/03/2001 ************************* In this talk with the Edge's John Brockman, Julian Barbour takes on the absolute framework of time. And if time truly doesn't exist, could we, hypothetically, live forever? http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=242&m=1456 ************************* Bill Clinton Calls Many Political Leaders Out of Touch with the Acceleration of Technology at Fortune Summit KurzweilAI.net 08/03/2001 ************************* Bill Clinton calls many political leaders out of touch with the acceleration of technology, recommends Non Zero by Robert Wright and The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=244&m=1456 15/08/2001 09:52 Hey all, Here's Ray's "I told you so" leter for the week. There's more actually, I edited out some older articles of Ray's but you can read them if you want, they're on the site. NEWS ==== ************************* 24-hour chip design cycle called possible August 7, 2001 ************************* A new "chip-in-a-day" method could cut system-on-chip design time from months to 24... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=401&m=1456 ************************* Gates: AI for the billions August 8, 2001 ************************* SEATTLE, Aug. 8 ? The vast majority of Microsoft research--included in the firm's $5.3 billion R&D budget for FY 2002--is for... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=402&m=1456 ************************* It's 2001, where is HAL? August 9, 2001 ************************* SEATTLE, Aug. 9 ?- The film 2001: A Space Odyssey is unequalled in its scientific and technical accuracy. But how close does... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=403&m=1456 ************************* 'Terragrid' of supercomputers planned August 9, 2001 ************************* Four U.S. supercomputer centers will be linked together into one massive "grid" style computer next summer.... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=404&m=1456 ************************* SIGGRAPH opens in L.A. [Event] Aug. 11, 2001 ************************* A new generation of computer interface technologies and Hollywood special-effects wizardry will take center stage at this... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=405&m=1456 ************************* Robots beat human commodity traders August 9, 2001 ************************* Software-based robotic trading agents made seven per cent more cash than people in an IBM... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=406&m=1456 ************************* Automated invention machines August 3, 2001 ************************* Genetic programming research has reinvented engineering patents generated as recently as last year, says John Koza, consulting... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=407&m=1456 ************************* Mining newsgroups July/August 2001 ************************* Researchers are developing software that mines online newsgroups for public-opinion... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=408&m=1456 ************************* Still Waiting on Neural Nets August 8, 2001 ************************* Neural network technology needs to connect with current research about how the human brain works, said researchers gathered at... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=409&m=1456 ************************* Self-assembling nanotubes August 6, 2001 ************************* The principle that makes DNA strands link together may someday be used to manufacture molecular wires and other components for... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=410&m=1456 ************************* Quantum memories should mimic ours August 6, 2001 ************************* Quantum-computer engineers should design memories like our own, storing information as patterns rather than putting each item... http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=411&m=1456 NEW ARTICLES ============ ************************* Intelligence Augmentation Pattie Maes 08/06/2001 ************************* Machine consciousness may not be a matter of replicating total human thought capacity--it may come in several small, specialized parts. In this discussion with the Edge's John Brockman, Pattie Maes discusses IA (Intelligence Augmentation) as opposed to AI. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=264&m=1456 ************************* The Rights of Robots: Technology, Culture and Law in the 21st Century Sohail Inayatullah Phil Mcnally 08/06/2001 ************************* Robot rights are already part of judiciary planning--can sentient machines be far off? This discussion of robot rights looks in-depth at issues once reserved for humans only. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=265&m=1456 ************************* The Rights of Your Robots: Exclusion and Inclusion in History and Future Sohail Inayatullah 08/06/2001 ************************* Sohail Inayatullah is preparing for a world in which machines become sentient and begin to demand rights--this article discusses how the machines will participate in their destiny. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=266&m=1456 ************************* When Will HAL Understand What We Are Saying? Computer Speech Recognition and Understanding Raymond Kurzweil 08/06/2001 ************************* This chapter from HAL's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality addresses the accomplishments--and challenges--of automatic speech recognition. What kind of paradigm shift in computing will give HAL the ability to understand human context, and therefore truly speak? http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=267&m=1456 ************************* Taming the Multiverse New Scientist 08/07/2001 ************************* In Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, physicist Sir Roger Penrose is paraphrased as suggesting it is impossible to perfectly replicate a set of quantum states, so therefore perfect downloading (i.e., creating a digital or synthetic replica of the human brain based upon quantum states) is impossible. What would be required to make it possible? A solution to the problem of quantum teleportation, perhaps. But there is a further complication: the multiverse. Do we live in a world of schizophrenic tables? Does free will negate the possibility of perfect replication? http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=268&m=1456 ************************* >From Here to There New Scientist 08/07/2001 ************************* In Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, physicist Sir Roger Penrose is paraphrased as suggesting it is impossible to perfectly replicate a set of quantum states, so therefore perfect downloading (i.e., creating a digital or synthetic replica of the human brain based upon quantum states) is impossible. But how perfect does this copy need to be? This New Scientist article approaches the question of replication of quantum states from a similar perspective--that of quantum teleportation. And how is this complicated by the infinite possible universes that exist--or don't--based on possible quantum states? http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=269&m=1456 ************************* A Jurisprudence of Artilects: Blueprint for a Synthetic Citizen Frank W. Sudia 08/07/2001 ************************* Will artilects have difficulties seeking rights and legal recognition? Will they make problems for humans once they surpass our knowledge and reasoning capacities? Frank W. Sudia provides a legal blueprint. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=270&m=1456 ************************* Beyond 2001: HAL's Legacy for the Enterprise Generation Frank Schirrmacher 08/10/2001 ************************* Bill Joy and Robert Freitas debate the perils of a technology that, in the words of the author, is so far in the future that even the word infancy would be premature. But does science fiction indeed shape the future? http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=240&m=1456 ************************* Consciousness John Searle 08/13/2001 ************************* Can consciousness be measured scientifically? What exactly is consciousness? John Searle approaches the scientific investigation of consciousness and its possible neurobiological roots from a philosophical perspective. http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=282&m=1456 19/12/2001 12:35 Hello all, I guess it's time for me to say my piece now. I have to say that the things I've been reading here have profoundly moved me. I'm glad that over my time with the band I've managed to make a connection with all of you, and I'll miss the opportunities to interact with you in the ways we have in the past. Now is a time to look forward to what the future may hold and one thing it has in abundance is potential. There seems to be a great deal of concern as for the band and myself and I appreciate the concern, but I can assure you that it isn't all that necessary. Everything is fine in the grand scheme of things; things are different for certain, but fine. I think I need to clear a something up though; my departure was a mutual decision. We have always made music as a product of very different personalities and sometimes that process has been less than smooth! Through it all we knew that the music was the important thing. As time has gone on we've all grown and changed in many ways, this includes changes in our musical identities. Over the course of making this record it became clear that Raine, Duncan and Jeremy had grow together in one direction and my interests had taken me down another path. There really isn't any one event that makes this thing clear just a gradual, but undeniable distance that grew over time. My departure has been characterized as my choice alone when in fact it was a mutual decision. A very difficult one, but one that we believe is the best one for everyone. I know it's natural to look for a 'bad guy' or someone to blame for this event, but there really isn't anyone to blame. I hope that you can understand that this is the result of the same commitment to our ideals that gave us the ability to be that band that you've known up until now. That commitment is still intact. The band will be different without a doubt, but this is a great opportunity for all of us to grow and explore other ideas with the same passion that has always guided us individually and collectively. The record that's being finished in the New Year is a great record, different (like the others have been) but with the same commitment to strong songs and passion that we've held on to from the start. I enjoyed working with Bob and think he's brought something to the band that'll continue to be an asset in the future. Speaking of the future, I need to address a couple of things I've read here. First of all I'd like to thank the people that pointed out the fact that I'm not dead... thanks for noticing! As for what I'm doing in the future, I think I'm going to rest a bit then maybe have lunch, beyond that I think I'll just figure it out as it comes to me. I'm sure I'll still be making music although I'm not certain with whom or even what I intend to do with it once it's done. I guess I'll let you know when I've got it figured out. As for the band, you'll see what the future holds as soon as anyone else. For my part I believe there is still a great deal of music in the band and I wish them well in their pursuit of it. As for the rumor I just read about the expectations for this record, don't believe everything you hear, the band is far from completing what it set out to do. Everyone will have an opinion and just because someone does, even if they formed it from talking to me, it doesn't make it anything other than an opinion. I still believe in the band, it's just that our paths lead in different directions now. The future looks bright, a little uncertain maybe, but is a life of certainty that interesting? With great respect and best wishes for the holidays, Emtee |
| He will be missed. |
| To see Mike's profile click here. |