Transsexual memebox

There's a fascinating interview with Pagan Kennedy on Changesurfer Radio about Laura/Michael Dillon - one of the very first female-to-male transexuals - and her/his struggle to challenge and physically redefine gender for the first time (26min, mp3).

I've joined the MemeBox Future Scanner: "a community-powered application that organizes information about the future by year and category." Jeff Hilford, CEO: "...our goal here at MemeBox is to create a rich, interactive playground that allows people to explore the future and see how accelerating technological change will increasingly affect their everyday lives." Funky but a bit crammed with ads. I'll be cross-posting some of my blogs on their Future Blogger system and let you know what it's like.

It's good to be home.

Just briefly

Store your medical data online with Google or Microsoft. The WikiLeaks judge is having second thoughts :) iTunes overtakes CD sales. A new round of measly sanctions (not saying they should be tougher, just saying) against Iran are expected to gain UN approval on saturday. And from DNI: haha.

Also, the second chapter of iPlant is now available on the website.

"Happily psychotic" returns 77 hits on google

Finally had some time to work on my website and write a short generic iPlant introduction:

An iPlant is a new kind of brain implant that could be developed in less than 10 years. It would regulate the release of monoamines in the brain, thus giving its user increased control over his or her motivation, mood, learning and creativity. Brain implants like this have been available for non-human animals for decades: for instance, they've been used to motivate rats to do heavy exercise and learn new behaviors. The electronics and surgical procedures required for human application already exist in the form of so called deep brain stimulation treatments for movement disorders.

iPlants could give people the motivation to perform difficult behaviors such as physical exercise, learning or research. They might also offer a more dynamic alternative to stimulants and antidepressants, which function by regulating monoamines.

The purpose of this website is to discuss and promote the development of iPlants.

The Longevity Dividend Seminar has talks by several anti-aging top dogs including Aubrey de Gray; a good talk but the first 10 minutes are unbearably noisy (mp3, 47min). Jay Olshansky's opening address is an excellent introduction for anyone unfamiliar with anti-aging research (mp3, 46min). But more than that: Jay describes how recent lobbying efforts has resulted in the following formulations in the most recent, now senate-approved, NIH appropriations bill:

"The committee commends the NIA for work it has done to improve understanding of the biological factors that regulate the processes of aging. These new discoveries have led many scientists to believe that it may become possible to postpone the onset of a wide range of fatal and disabling diseases in a coordinated fashion, by retardation of the aging process. It is widely understood that chronic illness is a powerful driver of medical costs, which in the United States are expected to reach 16 trillion dollars annually by 2030.

"To elleviate this financial burden and to develop interventions that can extend health and longevity, the committee urges the NIH to increase dramatically its annual investment in the biological process of aging."

What appears to have happened is that politicians are getting seriously worried about the aging baby-boomers, who will hit retirement age in just a few years (not just in the US). Watch this space, the introduction of this kind of language and funding directives could have a massive impact.

Another interesting conference with media available online is the LIFT conference, recently held in Geneva. A 'technology and society' type conference with speakers like Kevin Warwick (26 min, like Aubrey he has sound problems). I'll blog the good ones as I go through them.

We don't have a plan so nothing can go wrong

I'm going home for a month on friday. A much needed break.

The singularity: rapture of the nerds. Some transhumanist-bashing on a tuesday night. Relatedly, Hugo Award winning legend Vernor Vinge talks about the future of mankind if the technological singularity does NOT happen (1h31min). A somewhat annoying presentation but a very important thought experiment.

But back on track, Aubrey talks about ageism (as in racism, sexism) (5min, Big Think). Fantastic little clip, please watch it.

Ralph Nader decides to run as the third US presidential candidate. I don't know if this is ok (the man has an important message) or irresponsible, since his measly 0-3% of the votes is likely to be all Democrat. Many if not all Democrats rightly blame him for Al Gore's loss against You Know Who in 2000. To this Nader says: "If Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form." Do we(they..?) really have time for stunts at the moment? He will make McCain seem less old and Obama less like.. well.. you know - someone who's actually not evil for a change.

Lastly,
Enjoy.

The demotivating siren song of fridays

The US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations discusses government funding for science in 2008 (2hr14min but doesn't start immediately). The hearing takes place under "ominous" observations such as 77% of new research labs being in India or China.

Relatively boring conversation about philantropy with top Google people (FORA.tv, 1h7min).

In other news, firetruck in Örebro burns to the ground.

Personal Brain Scanner

This is just absolutely crazy. Get this, this christmas you will be able to buy an EEG brain scanner that hooks up to your computer, that you can play simple games with! The company behind the magic hat, Emotiv, say the scanner will ship at around £150.

Insignificant?

Male chimps do not know or care for their offspring. Females cooperate in caring for their children, and young chimps are therefore acutely aware of the rise and fall of alliances between females.

Far as I understand. How do the bonobos do it I wonder.

Semi-decent 34 min lecture on clinical trials. Alternatively there's 'An Introduction to the Methods and Ethics of Clinical Trials' on iTunes (54min) that's a bit less formal.

Nicholas Hope talks about the awakening of Asia, prospects for 2008 and the future (1hr13min). A lot of the economics is over my head but it's a very good lecture, particularly the Q&A session starting at about 50min, which focuses on corruption in China. Hope also makes the interesting observation that India, unlike China, does not have a large aging population for the younger generation to take care of.

Daniel Ellsberg, who made the Pentagon Papers public during the Vietnam War, draws paralells between Big Brother government during that and the current war (UChannel, 67min). Excellent talk. Great voice.

Pretty interesting article on why it's ok to be sad (hat-tip Laura).

Finally, WikiLeaks survives thanks to a Swedish server that specializes in websites hunted by the establishment (e.g. The Pirate Bay). Whooooo!

The usual suspects

Press
Democracy back online in Pakistan. Fiedel Castro resigns. Clinton tries to shoot down Obama for borrowing part of a speech from a friend (please don't let this matter...). Feminists blame Clinton's falling behind on sexism. Swiss bank Julius Baer spawns a court order to close down wikileaks.org after hundreds of documents about its offshore activities were posted anonymously on the site (!!@£$%). Finally, Microsoft DreamSpark provides students with free development tools. Clever move.

Video
Joseph Stiglitz discusses globalization (FORA.tv, 1h36min). Slow at the start and an annoying eh-frequency, but the man was not awarded a nobel prize for nothing. Note: when asked about the recent upswing in the economy of Africa he replies: "What's making a difference for Africa is China. China is now giving more aid, for infrastructure for example, than the World Bank and the African Development Bank combined". To be compared with the 0.15% of GDP the US spends foreign aid (i.e. one fifth of the 0.7% target agreed on by advanced industrial countries). Also, Charles Anderson explains in serious depth what biofuels are and which ones are worth the hype (googletechtalks, 59min).

Endgame

18 days left now. Theoretically that's 90 trials. If I can't get this last bit to work I should at least be able to say WHY it's not working. Apes work harder (twice as hard?) when they're close to the end of a task.

One in ten fish are afraid of water

Charlie Rose talks to Jonathan Schness and Richard Branson about nuclear proliferation and climate change. Seems in 40 years whole continents will have turned into deserts, billions will starve and Jamaica will have a nuclear bomb. I prefer the "I'm not a catastrophist" outlook of Michael Crichton (Rose interview here), even if his new book 'Next' is a bit childish. Branson also talks about the world council of elders he's helped put together (persons who have "gone beyond the ego", headed by Nelson Mandela!).

Another Rose interview with palistinian Prime minister Salam Fayyad makes me wonder if someone could explain to me why the Israelis continue to create settlements.

Charlie Rose

I've started watching Charlie Rose (website, wiki) lately. Some highlights (all ca 1hr): Walt Mossberg and Ken Auletta (about Apple and Google respectively), Michael Chrichton (author of 'Jurassic Park' and 'Next', some controversial opinions on global warming), authors of Freakonomics and Francis Fukuyama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Chris Rock, Bill Gates, Barack Obama (back in 2006), the list goes on and on and on :)

Drawing low

Howard Rheingold talks about cooperation past present and future (19min, TED talks).

Shelby Steele talks about the racial coping mechanisms Barack Obama has adopted (1hr10min, FORA.tv). The 'masking' concept he presents is an interesting one, epsecially in light of the current Swedish prime minister (nicknamed The Soap) whose real identity and beliefs seem ever elusive, but I'm more optimistic about Obama and his chances of winning.

Steve Wozniak talks about his early career and co-founding Apple (58min, Authors@Google).

Piglet approaches

John Micklethwait 'The View From Abroad: Is America Broken?' (iTunes U, 1hr22min). A very interesting UC Berkeley interview with the still quite new editor of The Economist, John Micklethwait. A must for those who read the magazine. Towards the end of the talk John says that even though China's behavior in places like Sudan is outright criminal, it's important to keep in mind that they are building infrastructure (roads etc) at a time when Western countries are still only talking about doing so. The coming China-US/Europe standoff looks more and more like one of ruthless productivity versus ineffective humanism. Bring it on.

Margret Anderson 'The Re-Discovery of the Irrational- Fin de Siecle Pessimism and the Birth of Psychoanalysis' (iTunes U, 1h17min). An excellent lecture on Fin de Siecle mentality that took me further towards understanding my own hangup on this period. The mentality wasn't an extension of the Enlightenment faith in reason and freedom, it was a rejection of it, but one that, although rejecting of the idea that reason overcomes instinct, nevertheless applied that reason, dare I say ruthlessly (Schopenhauer's eastern influences come to mind), in its epic anti-Cartesian de-throning of humanity, which, through the fundamental realization that unconscious forces are responsible for most of what we do, culminated in psychoanalysis. "Suspect the reasons that people offer for their conduct". (But what about the wars, were they unavoidable, will this mentality always end in hubris?)

Margret starts by exemplifying with art from the time (e.g. Munch's Madonna) focusing on the antagonism between the sexes but also on the early liberation of women through Victorian puritanism. Then goes on to discuss Freud and his predecessors (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) at somewhat excessive but still interesting lenght.

In other news, power-generating knee and Google, Microsoft, IBM et al have all joined the OpenID initiative that started in June and aims to eliminate the need for separate logins on different webpages. Good good.

Finally, McCain is winning the republican primaries in the US. Here's a less than brilliant but informative debate on him and his politics (FORA.tv, 1h8min).

The Bush administration in American media

There's a very good lecture on iTunes U ['War, Geopolitics, and History'] by Robert Fisk (introduced by Chomsky!) on Iraq, American/Western politics and the flawed media apparat. I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who he was, but he's very good. Weird how he refuses to use the internet though. - As a sobering comparison, watch this very recent Authors@Google interview with investigative reporter legend Bob Woodward, also on the Bush administration.

Getting tired of technology and globalization

1971 Woody Allen Interview :)

Been perusing the CSE Colloquia 2007 and similar lectures on technological development lately, mostly through iTunes U so it's hard to link. Hard to summarize too. Ed Lazowska's 'Computer Science: Past, Present and Future' was particularly good. Multicore processing and cloud computing are big. Quantum computing, which some believe holds the holy grail of allowing us to solve large complex systems, has had a few big breakthroughs (Yale university has a few lectures on this, also on iTunes U) but sceptics say it's a long way away and that the commercial D-wave Systems quantum computer is nothing but a fancy laser pointer. Nanotech is picking up speed, particularly biosensors (again, Yale).

Morning

John Markoff writes in the New York Times about Microsoft's $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo. Slightly esoteric analysis at times but some interesting facts and observations about the computer market. "Internet technology ("cloud computing") has overtaken the PC desktop as the center of the action, as people increasingly view the computer as merely a doorway to their virtual world." Says 1 billion people have personal computers and 3 billion have cellphones. Mentions Intels new mobile phone microprocessor Silverthorne.

An intresting new concept apparently growing in popularity: attention economy. First articulated by Herbert Simon (1971): "...in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else:.. the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it".

Thanks to Laura for blogging Nature's editor-in-chief's eloquent, well-balanced change of mind about human cognitive enhancement.

Restless

Nick Bostrom explaining in 5 minutes why efforts to improve cognitive performance through science are so important (yes, he's a Swede). It was part of a recent Nature podcast.

UC Berkeley panel debate on coorporations trying to silence scientists whose findings threaten their interests (mainly GM foods and pesticides). Very intresting but a bit long, well worth watching the first 40 minutes of to learn what it can mean to publish a sensitive finding.

An inside look at Google China (googletechtalks)... lot of info, not a word on the censorship.

New iPlant forum and ethical concerns

Ah, you gotta love Google's spam filter. I think the way they do it is they compare new entries (and emails..) to past data and if something is posted too repeately across their servers it doesn't get accepted. Anyway, it's allowed me to finally set up an iPlant forum (the phpBB one was nothing but spam). I woke up at 5 and for some reason setting up this group seemed more attractive than going back to sleep. It's been good too, Google Groups is more than just forums, time's 08:41 now and I'm still at it. Created a 'group page' listing the various ethical concerns regarding the iPlant that I can think off and I'm hoping they'll be discussed one by one in the actual discussion section of the forum/group.

Here's what I wrote:

Assuming an ideal DBS iPlant with no medical risk, no significant damage to brain tissue and highly selective electrical regulation of the dopamine and serotonin nuclei: what are the ethical complexities surrounding a human being using that iPlant to modify the functioning of his or her brain?

The following issues come to mind. Please feel very free to add to this or bring up specific issues in the forum:

Bioconservativism
New biomedical procedures can make many people feel really uncomfortable. How many people, which people, why exactly and is this just a phenomena to be ignored or inhibited untill it goes away like it did for IVF and organ transplants?

Inequality
If successful, iPlants would make users extremely productive and could create a division in society between those who can get one and those who can't.

Unpredictability
The Jurassic Park argument

Zombies
The argument that iPlant users would become drones and loose their free will, their ability to self-motivate and/or their integrity

Risk of misuse
Risk of users abusing the rewarding brain stimulation (RBS) function or being controlled by someone else abusing their RBS function. This verges on a medical or practical issue, at least in terms of prevention, but it also poses the question of how much control users should be given. In the iPlant presented so far RBS can only be activated by the user performing some difficult behavior like pulling a stroke on a rowing machine or entering the correct answer on a computer tutorial, but perhaps there is room for more freedom.

(Thanks to Sean Henderson for a recent discusison of some of these issues)

Yea

The world is flat

Thomas L. Friedman talking at MIT about his bestseller "The World is Flat" {search for 'The World is Flat' on iTunes}. A lucid and engaging account of what globalization is and implies. Identifies 10 factors globalizing the world. I'll plug the best mathematical description of globalization I know of yet again: Watts & Strogatz (1998) Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks. Nature 393:p440-442 (pdf). Some of the best 3 pages you'll ever read (if you disagre, read them again). Through the internet, the world is taking on the properties of a small-world network.

Here's Charlie Rose interviewing Friedman about the book. One interesting anecdote: he says Bill Gates told him the best new software they're getting today is from China and that the way the Chinese do it is they went around the top universities in China with IQ tests and hired the top of the top of the top. What's the average IQ of the top 0.0000001% in a population of 1.3 billion? 195? 210? 225? 250? Say what you will of IQ but that's sharp.

In other news, Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion (article). Heavy.