Christine Peterson

Foresight Co-Founder and Past President Christine Peterson is interviewed on the Singularity Weblog in a 47-minute tour that covers nanotechnology, the founding of the Foresight Institute, her work on personal life extension through Health Activator, open source, and the Technological Singularity. “Christine Peterson on Singularity 1 on 1: Join Us to Push the Future in a Positive Direction“:

During my Singularity 1 on 1 interview with Christine Peterson we discuss a variety of topics such as: how she got interested in nanotechnology and the definition thereof; how, together with Eric Drexler, she started the Foresight Institute for Nanotechnology; her interest in life extension; Dr. Drexler’s seminal book Engines of Creation; cryonics and chemical brain preservation; 23andMe and other high- and low-tech tips for improved longevity; whether we should fear nanotechnology or not; the 3 most exciting promises of nanotech; women in technology; coining the term “open source” and using Apple computers; the technological singularity and her take on it…

Hear Christine discuss some challenges while presenting an essentially optimistic message—a wonderful future is coming from science and technology over the next few decades—a future that encourages everyone to get involved.
—James Lewis, PhD

Join us for an intellectually stimulating evening with best-selling author and tech analyst Sonia Arrison! Dinner and drinks will be served h’orderve/tapas-style at 7pm; Sonia will present at 8pm, with personalized, small-group Q&A on the future of technology to follow.

Wednesday March 21, 2012 at Ristorante Don Giovanni, 235 Castro Street, Mountain View, CA 94041

This is a limited-audience event; to RSVP, please Paypal $40 to foresight@foresight.org at http://www.paypal.com/

SONIA ARRISON is a bestselling author and technology analyst who has studied the impact of new technologies on society for more than a decade. Her book, 100 PLUS: How the Coming Age of Longevity will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith, is a national bestseller and has been featured in top media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, Fox News, and the Today Show.

As a founder, academic advisor, and trustee of Singularity University, she is focused on exponentially growing technologies and their impact on society. She is also a Senior Fellow at the California-based Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI) and a columnist for TechNewsWorld. She is author of three books and numerous PRI studies and was also the host of a radio show called “digital dialogue” on the Voice America network.

What are reviewers saying about 100+?

NEW SCIENTIST
“Brilliant …. The chapters devoted to advances in regenerative medicine and the search for interventions that slow ageing are exhilarating. Growing new limbs, copying internal organs like a Xerox machine, exponential increases in computing power, better eyes and ears—I could read stories like this endlessly. We need such vision to help carry the science forward, and some of the most exciting advances in the scientific study of ageing are forthcoming. Arrison paints a realistic picture of the science driving the next longevity revolution, and makes the case that, if we play our cards right, humanity will reap huge dividends for the effort. In that way, this book is the most comprehensive treatment of the socioeconomic consequences of life extension that I’ve seen …. [T]he costs and benefits of life extension and, more importantly, health extension, are subjects in desperate need of open dialogue, and Arrison begins this process with elegance and style.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Ms. Arrison entertainingly chronicles efforts to conquer aging and death from antiquity to today. Food, sex, exercise and alchemy have all been employed to keep the grim reaper at bay. But technology offers the most plausible route, she says, noting that biology and computing are drawing ever closer together with the sequencing of the human genome …. [Her] sunny outlook is infectious.”

SINGULARITY HUB
“Easy to read, and easy to understand, 100+ walks you through the incredible achievements in regenerative medicine we’ve already seen, projects them forward, and discusses the changes in environment, economy, family, and religion that will follow…. Arrison states her case strongly enough to convince almost anyone, and in a style that will be as accessible to your techno-phobic Uncle Walter as it is to your computer loving self.”

Remember, space is limited! To RSVP, Paypal $40 to foresight@foresight.org at http://www.paypal.com/

Our friends over at the Thiel Foundation asked us to help spread the word about their fellowship program, which offers $100,000 grants to innovators age 19 or younger.

If you know of a very bright, energetic, and visionary young person, please bring this opportunity to his or her attention.

Of course, here at Foresight we hope that your protege will work on nanotechnology, and the Thiel Foundation is very interested in this field, but the fellowships are available in a wide range of areas of endeavor.

Below is their message. Think of this as a potentially large holiday gift to the smartest teenager you know!

Another great holiday gift — to yourself and society at large — is your membership in Foresight Institute. Donate by December 31 and your gift will be matched:
http://www.foresight.org/challenge

Best wishes,

Foresight Institute

from the Thiel Foundation:

We’d like to tell you about the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, a no-strings-attached grant of $100,000 that lets extraordinary young adults skip college and focus on their work, their research, and their self-education. We are delighted to announce that our friends at the Thiel Foundation are now accepting applications for the 2012 class of Fellows.

The future will not take care of itself. Global prosperity is not inevitable. The world will only get better if visionary people are creative and relentless about solving hard problems.

The 2011 class of Thiel Fellows includes 24 people who are tackling breakthroughs in hardware and robotics, making energy plentiful, making markets more effective, challenging the notion that there is only one way to get an education, and extending the human lifespan. Several of them have already launched companies, secured financing, and won prestigious awards. As they’re demonstrating, you don’t need college to invent the future (you can read about their progress in a recent article in TechCrunch).

If you’re under twenty and love science or technology, we hope you’ll consider joining the 2012 class of fellows. Go to ThielFellowship.org and apply to change the world. There’s no cost to apply, and they’re accepting applications through December 31. Fellows will be appointed this spring and begin two-year fellowships this summer.

If you’re twenty or over, we have a different request. Think of the smartest, most creative person you know who’s 19 or younger. Sit down and talk with that person about her or his goals and interests. For some people, such as future doctors, the time and cost of four years of college may be worth it. But for those who plan to invent things or start companies, starting now may make more sense. If your friend is interested, you might suggest pursuing an innovation or applying to the Thiel Fellowship.

Millions of people enjoy a higher quality of life because smart people like Steve Jobs, Muriel Siebert, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Zuckerberg, and hundreds of others skipped college to start a project that couldn’t wait.

We hope you’ll help me spread the word about the Fellowship. The time for innovation is now.

Please visit ThielFellowship.org to learn more.

The difficult thing to keep sight of when you’re talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn’t, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It’s not a fringe idea; it’s a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There’s an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it’s an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.

After a brief but very informative survey of the concept of the Singularity, covering nanotechnology and life extension as well as artificial intelligence:

A hundred years from now, Kurzweil and de Grey and the others could be the 22nd century’s answer to the Founding Fathers — except unlike the Founding Fathers, they’ll still be alive to get credit — or their ideas could look as hilariously retro and dated as Disney’s Tomorrowland. Nothing gets old as fast as the future.

But even if they’re dead wrong about the future, they’re right about the present. They’re taking the long view and looking at the big picture. You may reject every specific article of the Singularitarian charter, but you should admire Kurzweil for taking the future seriously. Singularitarianism is grounded in the idea that change is real and that humanity is in charge of its own fate and that history might not be as simple as one damn thing after another. Kurzweil likes to point out that your average cell phone is about a millionth the size of, a millionth the price of and a thousand times more powerful than the computer he had at MIT 40 years ago. Flip that forward 40 years and what does the world look like? If you really want to figure that out, you have to think very, very far outside the box. Or maybe you have to think further inside it than anyone ever has before.

…a current update and the most comprehensive summary so far of the many potential applications of advanced diamondoid medical nanorobotics to conventional and anti-aging medicine. Here’s the abstract:

Nanotechnology involves the engineering of molecularly precise structures and molecular machines, and nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to medicine, including the development of medical nanorobotics. Theoretical designs for diamondoid nanomachinery such as bearings, gears, motors, pumps, sensors, manipulators and even molecular computers already exist. Technologies required for the molecularly precise fabrication of diamondoid mechanical components and medical nanorobots, along with feasible strategies for the mass production of these devices, are the focus of active current research. This chapter describes a comprehensive solution to human morbidity and aging which will be attained when mankind has established control over all critical molecular events in the human body through the use of medical nanorobotics. Medical nanorobots can provide targeted treatments to individual organs, tissues, cells and even intracellular components, and can intervene in biological processes at the molecular level under direct supervision of the physician. Programmable micron-scale robotic devices will make possible comprehensive cures for human disease, the reversal of physical trauma, and individual cell repair. This leads to the complete control of human aging via nanomedically engineered negligible senescence (NENS) coupled with nanorobot-mediated rejuvenation that should extend the human healthspan at least tenfold beyond its current maximum length. The nanomedical solution is the final step in the roadmap to the control of human aging.

Best wishes,

Robert A. Freitas Jr. http://www.rfreitas.com
Author, Nanomedicine http://www.nanomedicine.com and http://www.MolecularAssembler.com
Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Molecular Manufacturing

The Humanity+ @ Caltech conference will be divided into four main sessions:

• Session 1, Re-Imagining Humans: Mind, Media and Methods
• Session 2, Radically Increasing the Human Healthspan
• Session 3, Redefining Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Enhancement and Substrate-Independent Minds
• Session 4, Business and Economy in the Era of Radical Technomorphosis

Humanity+ @ Caltech
December 4-5, 2010
Redefining Humanity in the Era of Radical Technological Change
Pasadena, CA

Several times a year, Humanity+, the world’s leading nonprofit for the ethical use of technology, holds conferences about the sciences, technologies and social issues concerning the future. Past Humanity+ conferences have taken place in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University and Irvine, California. Our next conference, Humanity+ @ Caltech, will take place on December 4-5th (Saturday-Sunday) at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

Speakers will include many of the top visionaries and leaders of the transhumanist community, as well as new voices from the worlds of science, art, media and business.

The Humanity+ @ Caltech program will be divided into four main sessions, each one of which will cover a key area of transhumanist thought:

• Re-Imagining Humans: Mind, Media and Methods (Saturday morning)
• Radically Increasing the Human Healthspan (Saturday afternoon)
• Redefining Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Enhancement and Substrate-Independent Minds (Sunday morning)
• Business and Economy in the Era of Radical Technomorphosis (Sunday afternoon)

For information about registration: http://humanityplus10.eventbrite.com/

Topics include OpenPCR, DIY biology, open source hardware, brain preservation, synthetic biology, gene patents, open data, open access journals, reputation engines, crowd-funding and microfinance for science, citizen science, biohacking, open source biodefense, cure entrepreneurs, open source drug discovery, patent pools, tech transfer, and much more.

Here’s some advance media coverage:

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/07/07/the-open-science-shift/

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/07/diy-biotechnologists-go-looking-for-a-bigger-garage/59701/

If you can’t attend in person, watch the webcast live at:

http://fora.tv/live/open_science/open_science_summit_2010

Put it on your calendar now!  Or we’ll hope to see you in person, especially for the session where I’m speaking: “Safety and Security Concerns, Open Source Biodefense” at 5:15 PM on Friday.  –Chris Peterson