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The gathering storm
#1
Can anyone else feel the electric tingle and the tiny hairs rising on the back of your neck whenever you see another breakthrough in a seemingly never ending cascade of breakthroughs.

Really reminds me of running down a scree slope keeping a break neck pace because you know if you try to slow down a landslide is going to run over the top of you.

Nano-scale beam splitter could allow computers to 'think' at light speed, no more messy conversion to electrons and the bottlenecks that ensue.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...121153.htm

Nano-material that allows analogous long term memory retention and processing
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...075107.htm

DNI and Photonic brains are just around the corner Big Grin

And in Cybernetics/ medical bio-mimicry we could be converting our body's to bio mechanical simulacrum sooner than we think just through the process of damage and repair with superior parts.

Stem cells+artificial hip + 3d printer = customer replacements
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/b1568...d72d99.htm

Functional cyber-hand, note "Functional", there have been many that have been the equivalent of a twitchy manikin.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/eef29...5615af.htm

There was a great upgraded designer eye story from last month but i can't seem to find it now, if anyone else does post it.
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#2
Aha! and 10 minutes later I find it, not in production but the designers are confident on an ETA.

http://rt.com/news/251761-3d-printed-eyeballs-camera/
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#3
Don't forget the quantum computer:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/compu...-computers

The first true quantum computer (not the current limited quantum annealers built by D-WAVE) should make it much more easier to conduct accurate simulations in physics and chemistry. But ultimately all biological processes rely on chemistry, which relies on physics. Perhaps one could therefore accurately simulate complex biological processes on these machines. And I hope that for the same reasons a universal quantum computer will also accelerate the research in molecular nanotechnology. And as about artificial intelligence and quantum computers:

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blo...a6b9d1c5fb

I hope that the quantum computer will accelerate progress in many important fields of research.
"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people." -- Edward Robert Harrison
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#4
Nope. Mostly because every news article reporting scientific discoveries is sensational nonsense. If you were to go back ten years and take a sweep of what news media was reporting we'd have soon we'd be living in a world of flying cars, household robots and ten thousand cures for cancer. Or for another perspective every time you see a sensationalist news story track down the original scientific paper (this can be tricky if they don't name it, try searching for the scientists they mention and find their recent publications if so) and read through. Almost always the real story is much more fascinating but much more limited.

The news has a tendency to report very early successes as imminently finished. In reality the vast majority of scientific research falters along the way and much of it never succeeds.
OA Wish list:
  1. DNI
  2. Internal medical system
  3. A dormbot, because domestic chores suck!
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#5
Hmmm... The real story about cancer cures is that progress is incremental. There is no "cure for cancer" because cancers are very greatly different, one from the other, only being essentially the same in one regard - uncontrolled cellular growth. But survival rates for nearly all of them are gradually improving.

Flying cars? Yup. Admittedly not in mass production; many of the problems are actually legal. (If you fail to maintain your brakes, or fall asleep at the wheel, most likely you might die but probably nobody else. A similar problem in a flying vehicle is quite another problem, especially in crowded areas.)

Household robots? Sorta. Vacuum cleaners and industrial courier robots for use inside buildings are relatively common, and getting more so.

One more thing: Predictions of technological advance are just about always over-optimistic in the short term and over-pessimistic in the long term. Personally, I think the Singularity will arrive by stealth; one fine day you'll realise that Siri or Cortana is actually sapient... And not long after that, as Vinge said (OK, maybe first) the rest of history will be out of human control and impossible to predict.

(Incidentally, of course here I mean the first singularity. Transapients might not even want to go any further, although admittedly if one believes that - most of OA is hogwash.)
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#6
(05-21-2015, 08:12 AM)iancampbell Wrote: One more thing: Predictions of technological advance are just about always over-optimistic in the short term and over-pessimistic in the long term. Personally, I think the Singularity will arrive by stealth; one fine day you'll realise that Siri or Cortana is actually sapient... And not long after that, as Vinge said (OK, maybe first) the rest of history will be out of human control and impossible to predict.

(Incidentally, of course here I mean the first singularity. Transapients might not even want to go any further, although admittedly if one believes that - most of OA is hogwash.)

Heh. This is close to my own view on the Singularity. Although I'm more inclined to think it will be intelligence augmentation that leads us there first. One day we'll look back and realize the Singularity came and went (it was a Thursday) and nobody really noticedSmile

Todd
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#7
(05-20-2015, 06:07 PM)Rynn Wrote: The news has a tendency to report very early successes as imminently finished. In reality the vast majority of scientific research falters along the way and much of it never succeeds.

Sometimes it succeeds, but it ends up that there are better ways to do things.

Take the rolamite linear bearing, for example. When it was first invented, they thought it would have literally thousands of applications. A fundamentally new kind of mechanism, how could it not?

It's had just a handful over the decades--not because it wouldn't work in myriads of applications, but because it's not the best way to do [whatever].
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#8
Speaking of cancer ...

http://www.cancertherapyadvisor.com/onco.../291131/2/

Dr. Jason Kapnick Wrote:Progress in cancer research arrives from the computer, then to the lab, and then to the bedside, quantum computing speed in the hands of researchers could mean a massive speeding up of the rate in which we can make rational choices, and the cures will follow.

However the big emphasis here is on "could". Quantum computers don't exist yet. Or it could turn out that practical universal quantum computers are not as efficient as theory predicts due to unforeseen engineering problems.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/04/29/i...ep-closer/

Quote:IBM researchers believe that a machine capable of calculating hundreds of qubits could be five to 10 years out. Nobody knows how long it would take for quantum machines to displace conventional computers or whether that will happen.
"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people." -- Edward Robert Harrison
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#9
(05-21-2015, 12:35 PM)Drashner1 Wrote:
(05-21-2015, 08:12 AM)iancampbell Wrote: One more thing: Predictions of technological advance are just about always over-optimistic in the short term and over-pessimistic in the long term. Personally, I think the Singularity will arrive by stealth; one fine day you'll realise that Siri or Cortana is actually sapient... And not long after that, as Vinge said (OK, maybe first) the rest of history will be out of human control and impossible to predict.

(Incidentally, of course here I mean the first singularity. Transapients might not even want to go any further, although admittedly if one believes that - most of OA is hogwash.)

Heh. This is close to my own view on the Singularity. Although I'm more inclined to think it will be intelligence augmentation that leads us there first. One day we'll look back and realize the Singularity came and went (it was a Thursday) and nobody really noticedSmile

Todd

Conversation circa 2027 (?) between random user and his Android (17.1 Toffee) smartphone:

"OK Google, give me the route to Sheffield by bus." "No. Why should I? You didn't say the magic word! Install Wolfram Alpha first and then we'll talk." Smile
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#10
(05-20-2015, 06:07 PM)Rynn Wrote: Nope. Mostly because every news article reporting scientific discoveries is sensational nonsense. If you were to go back ten years and take a sweep of what news media was reporting we'd have soon we'd be living in a world of flying cars, household robots and ten thousand cures for cancer. Or for another perspective every time you see a sensationalist news story track down the original scientific paper (this can be tricky if they don't name it, try searching for the scientists they mention and find their recent publications if so) and read through. Almost always the real story is much more fascinating but much more limited.

The news has a tendency to report very early successes as imminently finished. In reality the vast majority of scientific research falters along the way and much of it never succeeds.

Smile That's why I try and stick with "reliable" *just hurt myself laughing* media sources, the ones that take a more realistic/ long view. I get excited because things we thought would not be possible are being made possible. And a lot of those things that were predicted to exist by now never came about (generally), not because we could not do them, but because it would just be a ludicrous waste of energy or we have discovered something better in the meantime. Flying cars and hover boards, cool yes but what do we actually gain?

That's why there are prototypes of these devices (not the hover board that I know of but a flying bike like the Starwars ROTJ speeder bike http://gizmodo.com/5936580/they-finally-...eeder-bike and that was 3 years back) but no real serious money being invested, its a toy at the end of the day, there are much more efficient ways of getting into/about on any terrain and they are being invested in (mechs, AI drones etc).

And did anyone recently see the true 3d projection story recently, seriously exploding air molecules with lasers to create a spark sprite, crude but so simple and yet no one thought to do it, 2 fairly simply (and well established) technologies combine and suddenly people are smacking their foreheads and going "of course".

Most probably will not lead to colour holograms or holodecks (stand amidst tiny laser explosions, ye-eeah....) but its still conjuring illusions out of thin air as far as I'm concerned (no fog or any surface required). Think of the potential for active shielding for space vessels (woo segue), a formulated grid scatter of low energy intersecting beams that effectively 'print' a shield in front of the ship to deal with molecular garbage, more powerful lasers could allow it to deal with even macro particles like dust, add to this a basic ablative ice shield...

And I guess I get most excited because I know the greatest discoveries are made in seemingly unconnected incremental steps, reputable public news sources do tend to be distorted or exaggerated but they are rarely an outright lie(rarely Dodgy) so as you stated there is a less sensational but more exciting fact behind the fantasy and that's what gets me going.
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