Agent Based Surveillance.

This article in National Geographic should be of interest to anyone who thinks about artificial intelligence, national intelligence or cognitive intelligence.

When people use the term "Artificial Intelligence", they are generally referring to Terminator or Matrix style machine minds, more intelligent than any human, self-aware and cognizant. These concepts are only a part of the picture. When you shoot at an enemy in a video game, you're competing against a limited artificial intelligence. Aibo, Sony's recently discontinued robot dog for the terminally wealthy, is an artificial intelligence as well.

While machines are not yet intelligent enough to reason for themselves, they are growing smart enough to simulate experts in very specific fields, such as law or medicine. These agent based technologies are rapidly becoming an extension of how we interact with the world, leading us inexorably in the direction of Singularity.

See also my earlier articles on the subject of Data Mining, and this definition of the term "software agent".

Miscellaneous Finds.

Two items of interest:

1. An interesting paper on the subject of MySpace. I know a lot of people on MySpace.
2. An online spreadsheet service. I'll be using this at the library to track my finances while I'm computerless in Portland.
   

Robot bodies for slime mold.

Beautiful. A proof of concept for artificial evolution. This is true Singularity at work.

Just add water.

One step closer to a nano-future. Frictionless carbon nanotube pipes make it possible to transfer liquid substances at five hundred times their normal speed by bypassing surface tension and friction.

Other uses for carbon nanotubes? How about superconductivity at reasonable temperatures?

Storytelling changes shape.

Half-life 2 was one of the best games of 2k4, by virtue of excellent graphics, realistic physics and immersive storytelling. What really got me the most about the game were the moments in which the story seemed to be happening all around. I'd turn a corner and be surprised by some critical plot element. Both the mood and the characters really sucked me in.

In recognition of the importance of storytelling to the Half-life franchise, Valve software has decided to move toward an episodic format for the game, creating a television show format for the story, rather than a film format. By doing this, they have committed themselves to shorter but more frequent updates. Cool. I'm game.

Three Dimensional Display.

I'm pretty sure that this is the first truly three dimensional digital display.

Aerogel.

I'm sure that those of you with more than a passing interest in materials research are already familiar with this, but I found it quite remarkable. Aerogel is a substance with a crystaline structure which shatters like glass. What's so special about it? First of all, Aerogel consists of about 99.8 percent air. This makes it extremely light weight yet durable and gives it tremendous capacity for insulation. The stuff was invented in 1931, but until recently was very expensive to make and mass produce, and couldn't be made into flexible forms such as housing insulation and clothing. Here are some other photos, and an article on NASA's recent use of the material to capture particles from a comet.

Transhumanism.

Two articles which deal with the light and dark issues involved in modern Transhumanism. Transhumanism is the movement for artificial human enhancement, and it would appear to be a tentative step toward Singularity. The proponents of Transhumanism espouse a diverse range of methods, from body piercing to brain-chip implants to genetic reconstitution. This has caused many people to wonder... What does it really mean to be human?

Here is an archive at Demos of essays on the subject of Transhumanism.

Braingate ( Update ).

Here's an article covering recent developments at Cyberkinetics Inc. The upshot is that there have now been four participants in the project, three quadriplegics and one individual suffering from a neurological disorder. There is also reference to their NeuroPort project, which centers on an interface for neurological analysis.

Cybernetic Integration.

This is, if I am not mistaken, the first case of a successful integration of prosthetic hardware into the human nervous system: An artificial arm which gives tactile feedback to its user, while accepting mental commands just the way a real arm would. The prosthesis was built to interact with the existing nerve infrastructure remaining in the shoulder.