Star Trek: The Next Generation was formative to how I see the world, and understand the possibilities for the nature of the future. It was an ideally utopian place, where we could all seek what we determined was best for ourselves.
So it’s really weird to look back at episodes like ‘The Nth…
ST:TNG and Augmented Personhood
Read more "ST:TNG and Augmented Personhood "Klint Finley
Here’s the description of a talk that happened at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs:
In today’s world, businesses are facing increasingly complex threatspto infrastructure, finances, and information. The government is sometimes unable to share classified…
Essential Breakaway Republic services in the post cyberpunk present.
Private companies are building their own spy agencies
Read more "Private companies are building their own spy agencies"“
The comet was actually discovered by my computer here under my desk!
Our human-volunteer TOTAS clickers review all the ‘movers’ found by the software and either confirm or reject them. That task can’t be done by software – but the software can combine the single detections and extract the moving objects.
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Just one of the ways we’re forming a team with machines and exploring the cosmos.
Finding a comet: the backstory | Rocket Science
Read more "Finding a comet: the backstory | Rocket Science"A new analysis challenges the out-of-Europe hypothesis, which has figured in a political debate over the rights of present-day Native American tribes. Scientists announced on Wednesday that they had, for the first time, determined the full genome sequence of an ancient American, a toddler who lived some 12,600 years ago and was buried in western Montana. His DNA, they report, links today’s Native Americans to ancient migrants from easternmost Asia.
The study, published in the journal Nature, “is the final shovelful of dirt” on the European hypothesis, said anthropological geneticist Jennifer Raff of the University of Texas, co-author of a commentary on it in Nature.
The idea that the first Americans arrived millennia earlier than long thought and from someplace other than Beringia – which spans easternmost Russia and western Alaska – has poisoned relationships between many Native Americans and anthropologists. Some tribes fear that the theory that the continent’s first arrivals originated in Europe might cast doubt on their origin stories and claims to ancient remains on ancestral lands.
Despite the new study, other experts say the debate over whether the first Americans arrived from Beringia or southwestern Europe, where a culture called the Solutrean thrived from 21,000 to 17,000 years ago, is far from settled.
“They haven’t produced evidence to refute the Solutrean hypothesis,” said geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University, a leading expert on using DNA to track ancient migrations. “In fact, there is genetic evidence that only the Solutrean hypothesis explains.”
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“The genetic data from Anzick confirms that the ancestors of this boy originated in Asia,” said Eske Willerslev of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, who led the study. The DNA shows that the child belonged to a group that is a direct ancestor to as many as 80 percent of the Native Americans tribes alive today, he said: “It’s almost like he is a missing link” between the first arrivals and today’s tribes.
The most likely scenario, said Texas’s Raff, is that humans reached eastern Beringia from Siberia 26,000 to 18,000 years ago. By 17,000 years ago, receding glaciers allowed them to cross the Bering Strait. Some migrated down the Pacific coast, reaching Monte Verde in Chile by 14,600 years ago, while others – including the ancestors of Anzick-1 – headed for the interior of North America.
The genetic analysis found that the boy is less closely related to northern Native Americans than to central and southern Native Americans such as the Maya of Central America and the Karitiana of Brazil. That can best be explained, the scientists say, if he belonged to a population that is directly ancestral to the South American tribes.
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Genetic analysis is also keeping the out-of-Europe idea alive.
One variant of DNA that is inherited only from a mother, called mitochondrial DNA, and is found in many Native Americans has been traced to western Eurasia but is absent from east Eurasia, where Beringia was before the sea covered it, Oppenheimer explained. For the variant, called X2a, to have such a high frequency in Native Americans “it must have got across the Atlantic somehow,” he said. The new study “completely ignored this evidence, and only the Solutrean hypothesis explains it.”
Ancient native boy’s genome reignites debate over first Americans
Writing in Acta Astronautica, Shostak says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than “biological” life. Seti researchers have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they will not be carbon based life forms, but be bound to follow “at least some rules of biochemistry, live for a finite period of time, procreate, and above all be subject to the processes of evolution.”
“If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you,” he told BBC News.“But within a few hundred years of inventing radio – at least if we’re any example – you invent thinking machines; we’re probably going to do that in this century. So you’ve invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you… a ‘biological’ intelligence.”
From a probability point of view, if AI-powered machines evolved, we would be more likely to spot signals from them than from the “biological” life that invented them.
“But having now looked for signals for 50 years, Seti is going through a process of realizing the way our technology is advancing is probably a good indicator of how other civilisations – if they’re out there – would’ve progressed. Certainly what we’re looking at out there is an evolutionary moving target.”
Dr Shostak says that artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy – the only things he says would be of interest to the machines – would be in plentiful supply. That means the Seti hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centers of galaxies.
“I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time… looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out.” Shostak thinks SETI ought to consider expanding its search to the energy- and matter-rich neighborhoods of hot stars, black holes and neutron stars.
Data centers like this generate a lot of heat, and keeping them cool is a major challenge for modern computing. Intelligent computers would likely seek out a low-temperature habitat. Bok globules (image at top of page) are another search target for sentient machines. These dense regions of dust and gas are notorious for producing multiple-star systems. At around negative 441 degrees Fahrenheit, they are about 160 degrees F colder than most of interstellar space.
This climate could be a major draw because thermodynamics implies that machinery will be more efficient in cool regions that can function as a large “heat sink”. A Bok globule’s super-cooled environment might represent the Goldilocks Zone for the AI powered machines, says Shostak. But because black holes and Bok globules are not hospitable to life as we know it, they are not on SETI’s prime target list.
“Machines have different needs,” he says. “They have no obvious limits to the length of their existence, and consequently could easily dominate the intelligence of the cosmos. In particular, since they can evolve on timescales far, far shorter than biological evolution, it could very well be that the first machines on the scene thoroughly dominate the intelligence in the galaxy. It’s a “winner take all” scenario.”
“Alien Electromagnetic Signals Will Be Discovered by 2040” –SETI’s Chief Astronomer
Read more "“Alien Electromagnetic Signals Will Be Discovered by 2040” –SETI’s Chief Astronomer"“We—the dronesexual, the recently defined, though we only call ourselves this name to ourselves and only ever with the deepest irony—we’re never sure whether the humming is pleasure or whether it’s a form of transmission, but we also don’t really care…There are no dronesexual support groups. We don’t have conferences. There is no established discourse around who we are and what we do. No one writes about us but us, not yet.”
Toward a Drone Sexuality – Part 1: Knowledge and consent » Cyborgology
Read more "Toward a Drone Sexuality – Part 1: Knowledge and consent » Cyborgology"Animist practice, sacred sites, and cultivating a relationship to significant otherness: a talk with Robert Wallis, professor of Visual Culture at Richmond University and a scholar of paganism, shamanism, and rock art.
Expanding Mind – The New Animism – 02/02/14 at Expanding Mind
Read more "Expanding Mind – The New Animism – 02/02/14 at Expanding Mind "From the comments: “ To my mind, this library should be one that could jumpstart a human civilization founded by the passengers of a generational starship.”
Like, say, Spaceship Earth.
» The Manual For Civilization Begins – Blog of the Long Now
Read more "» The Manual For Civilization Begins – Blog of the Long Now"Businesses for the middle class are hurting, while those serving the wealthy are doing fine.
> In Manhattan, the upscale clothing retailer Barneys will replace the bankrupt discounter Loehmann’s, whose Chelsea store closes in a few weeks. Across the country, Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants are struggling, while fine-dining chains like Capital Grille are thriving. And at General Electric, the increase in demand for high-end dishwashers and refrigerators dwarfs sales growth of mass-market models.
> As politicians and pundits in Washington continue to spar over whether economic inequality is in fact deepening, in corporate America there really is no debate at all. The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away.
The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business World.
Read more "The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business World."
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 