Putting the Human Back Into the Post-Human

It is actually the first part of a longer speech refuting it or describing a different outcome.

Physicists Create BlackMax To Search For Dimensions In Space At The LHC

Looks like they are going to use the Large Hadron Collider to create a black hole simulator, with a goal of searching for extra dimensions of timespace predicted by string theory.  Yeah, nothing could go wrong with that.  The scientists at the LHC assure us this is perfectly safe

Connectivity:

The bandwidth available to people is increasing at a rate of 50% per year.  Not quite as fast as Moore's law for silicon, but still extraordinary.

Here is a more up to date estimate that takes into account the number of websites and requests.

Faster and faster it goes.  How long have you been watching videos online?  Two years?  Three?  Not longer surely.

Do you watch any actual TV shows on your internet connection?  You will soon.

Bioengineering:

The human genome is mapped and I have heard some people say, "So what, they haven't done anything with it."  Mapping something and understanding something are two different things.  Give the processor speed increase time to be applied against the genome and there will be plenty that comes from it.

It cost approximately $13 Billion to decode the human genome over the course of 13 years.

...the price of sequencing DNA has fallen rapidly with the advent of these machines. Today, the price tag on a human genome decoded with sequencers of the type used in the Human Genome Project would be $25 million to $50 million. It drops to around $1 million with next-generation machines available today and could be as low as $100,000 by 2008.

Now THAT is an improvement in cost.

"The last year has been the most exciting period in genomics since the days of the Human Genome Project," says Eric Lander, first author on the project's first published draft of the human genome and now head of the Broad Institute for genomic medicine in Cambridge, MA. "Sequencing is becoming cheap enough and powerful enough that it can be applied to about any problem. It's standing the field on its head." Francis Collins,

Remarkable, faster and cheaper by factors of a thousand or more.  And I wouldn't expect it to stop there. 

Someday Kinko's will be able to give you your DNA sequence in 10 minutes for $42.95.

Space Technology:

Lotsa cool stuff going on.  It finally appears that the private sector is getting involved.  We have a variety of Billionaires interested in spending their money here.

• Elon Musk (PayPal): SpaceX
• Paul Allen
• Google guys: XPrize sponsorship for a unmanned moon landing
• Richard Branson: Virgin Galactic

Of these the most interesting to me is Elon Musk's attempt to develop an entire space program on his own.  He is focused on a less expensive, modular rocket system.  He is positioning himself to be the only US based rocket launch provider for the ISS after the space shuttle is decommissioned.

Not a bad place to be.

This is actually the technology that fits the least in the singularity paradigm, but it is finally vibrant and growing after years of stagnation.

Nanotechnology:

One of the holy grails from this technology is fab-labs.  Basically a "replicator" from Star Trek.  Well there's nothing like that on the horizon, but what is being developed is the cross pollination of silicon wafer technologies being leveraged across to make nano-machines.

Still conjecture and wishful thinking.

Virtual Reality:

From online games like World of Warcraft and Elfquest before it we now have the virtual world of Second Life and dotSoul virtual reality is here to stay.  Get you avatar and enter the multiverse.

You can set up your own virtual reality server for free: Worldforge.com

Check out these goggles: [http://www.sensics.com/products/pisight.php]

This video is extraordinary:

This has only just begun and lends itself very well for the tinkerer / inventor.

Computer Power:

We are still increasing at Moore's law.  And Moore's law only applies to the silicon chip, the phenomenon can be traced back further across previous technology and the doubling time holds back to vacuum tubes.

And there is plausibility that as we exhaust the capabilities of silicon that other technologies will enter and the speed increases will continue.

Conclusion:

Now you can see why the singularity is considered the point beyond which we can't predict what will happen.  All of these groups of technologies is increasing in performance and coming down in cost.  Some by extraordinary amounts, some by more modest amounts.

There is feedback loops intertwined amongst some of these technologies.

The only thing we can do is keep our eyes open and watch.  Predicting is likely to be wrong, whatever it happens to be about.

Basically the cliff notes on his singularity books and accelerating change.  

Cool accelerating change video. It has some interesting comparison statistics at the start, but then gets into some very interesing prediction stats.

None of this is new to me but the presentation is pretty gripping.