Mailbag Stuff

Optical Illusion.
Very interesting.

Human version 2.0 from the SMH. It's tantamount to a sort of "Cyber Manifesto"

Between 2000 and 2014 we'll make 20 years of progress at 2000 rates, equivalent to the entire 20th century. And then we'll do the same again in only seven years. To express this another way, we won't experience 100 years of technological advance in the 21st century; we will witness in the order of 20,000 years of progress when measured by the rate of progress in 2000, or about 1000 times that in the 20th century.

Ultimately, we will merge with our technology. As we get to the 2030s, the non-biological portion of our intelligence will predominate. By the 2040s it will be billions of times more capable than the biological part.

Above all, information technologies will grow at an explosive rate. And information technology is the technology that we need to consider. Ultimately, everything of value will become an information technology: our biology, our thoughts and thinking processes, manufacturing and many other fields. As one example, nanotechnology-based manufacturing will enable us to apply computerised techniques to automatically assemble complex products at the molecular level.

This will mean that by the mid 2020s we will be able to meet our energy needs using very inexpensive nanotechnology-based solar panels that will capture the energy in 0.03 per cent of the sunlight that falls on the Earth, which is all we need to meet our projected energy needs in 2030.

A common objection is that there must be limits to exponential growth, as in the example of rabbits in Australia. The answer is that there are, but they're not very limiting. By 2020, $1000 will purchase 1016 calculations per second (cps) of computing (compared with about 109 cps today), which is the level I estimate is required to functionally simulate the human brain. Another few decades on, and we will be able to build more optimal computing systems. For example, one cubic inch of nanotube circuitry would be about 100 million times more powerful than the human brain. The ultimate 1-kilogram computer - about the weight of a laptop today - which I envision late in this century, could provide 1042 cps, about 10 quadrillion (1016) times more powerful than all human brains put together today.

And that's if we restrict the computer to functioning at a cold temperature. If we find a way to let it get hot, we could improve that by a factor of another 100 million. And we'll devote more than 1 kilogram of matter to computing. We'll use a significant portion of the matter and energy in our vicinity as a computing substrate.

Our growing mastery of information processes means the 21st century will be characterised by three great technology revolutions. We are now in the early stages of the "G" revolution (genetics, or biotechnology). Biotechnology is providing the means to change your genes: not just designer babies but designer baby boomers. But perfecting our biology will only get us so far.

Biology will never be able to match what we will be capable of engineering, now that we are gaining a deep understanding of biology's principles of operation. That will bring us to the "N" or nanotechnology revolution, which will achieve maturity in the 2020s. There are already early impressive experiments. A biped nanorobot created by Nadrian Seeman and William Sherman, of New York University, can walk on legs only 10 nanometres long, demonstrating the ability of nanoscale machines to execute precise manoeuvres.

Interesting stuff if you like Futue Shocking yourself. :)