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

Foresight’s Director of Development and Outreach Desiree D. Dudley will speak on a panel at the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2012 conference at NASA-Ames July 26-28. Right now the schedule has the panel titled “Approaching the Tipping Point: How Emergent Technologies Will Change the Way We Look at the Future of Spaceflight” at 2pm Saturday July 28th. From the Conference home page:

The next disruptive innovation is already underway and it is in space.
The commercial space industry is building a new market with efficient business processes, a wide spectrum of technology, and almost prescient investors. It’s been said that the first trillionaires will be made through space industrialization and we’re going to show how space pioneers are creating new products and profits. NewSpace is undergoing rapid expansion, similar to the Internet explosion of the 1990′s, and needs to be filled with revolutionary businesses like yours.

The Space Frontier Foundation’s annual conference is one of the most important commercial space conferences in the nation, and will be in July in Silicon Valley. NewSpace 2012 is where networking with leaders, supporters, investors and activists evolves into enterprises that propel the industry upward. It will host a wide-range of thought-provoking panels and visionary keynote speakers that will surpass NewSpace 2011′s already highly-praised programming. …

• What will be the next great revolution in the material basis of civilization?
• How can we establish reliable knowledge about key aspects of such technologies?

From the news release, aptly titled “The next technological revolution?“:

The key to tackling some of our planet’s greatest challenges may be found in the laws of physics and methods of engineering, as opposed to any specific technological innovation.

Speaking at the inaugural public lecture of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, Dr Eric Drexler said there is a compelling case for the viability of atomically precise manufacturing. This is the process of building structures, tools and machines starting at the molecular level, with atomic precision, to address challenges such as rising greenhouse gases and energy production for our growing population.

In a talk entitled “Exploring a Timeless Landscape: Physical Law and the Future of Nanotechnology”, pioneering nanotechnology researcher Dr. Drexler invited the audience to consider the intriguing possibility of nano-level manufacture of macro-level products. Such a process, if achieved, would be the next great revolution in the material basis of civilization, offering high-performance components, materials or systems and accelerated productivity. …

Those who have read Drexler’s 1988 essay on exploratory engineering and the 2007 Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems will be familiar with the main arguments presented in the talk. Dr. Drexler’s conclusions about the development of atomically precise manufacturing were:

• We now have ample scientific knowledge. Rather than additional breakthroughs we need component design.
• Molecular experiments are fast and inexpensive by ordinary engineering standards.
• Advances in fabrication methods will yield faster more predictable results, accelerating progress.

Dr. Drexler left the audience to consider whether the advent of atomically precise manufacturing meant that in preparing for the 21st century we should expect scarcity and conflict or something radically different, and whether we could change the conversation in the world about the future incrementally in a well-grounded way.

The Oxford Martin Programme has made the abstract available, which includes a link to a Youtube video of the lecture “Timeless Landscape: Physical Law and the Future of Nanotechnology“.

See this page for schedule and link: http://foresight.org/reunion/schedule.html

It’s free so please have patience if we run into any technical difficulties.

You can try sending questions to speakers by using this Twitter tag (though in-person participants get first priority): #foresight2011

Next time we hope to see you in person!

As I write this, late conference registration is still open: http://www.eventbee.com/v/foresightinstitute/event?eid=890000225

(And note, the Friday evening no-host reception is open to all.)

—Chris Peterson

Foresight@Google

25th Anniversary Conference Celebration and Reunion Weekend

Google HQ in Silicon Valley, CA

June 25-26, 2011

http://www.foresight.org/reunion

Use code NANODOT for $50 off registration!

You already know our Saturday program kicks off with a keynote by

Zyvex founder/president JIM VON EHR

Now Foresight is also proud to announce our Sunday keynote:

BARNEY PELL, PhD - Cofounder and CTO, Moon Express

Chief Architect, Bing Local Search; Associate Founder and Trustee, Singularity University

The Moon-Rush is on and Dr. Barney Pell, well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former NASA R&D Manager, has joined the race. As Co-Founder, Vice-Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Moon Express, Inc., Barney believes very strongly in the economic potential the Moon. He says “the Moon is Earth’s eighth continent. We have barely begun to explore the lunar surface and are already finding compelling evidence of resources that are very important to Earth”.

Moon Express is a privately funded lunar transportation and data services company created to establish new avenues for commercial space activities beyond Earth orbit. Selected last fall by NASA, Moon Express was awarded a lunar data services contract worth up to $10M, for the initial delivery order of the Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD) program. In addition, the X PRIZE Foundation announced Moon Express as a competitor for the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE, a competition to place a robot on the Moon’s surface that travels 500 meters and transmits high definition video, images and data back to Earth. Moon Express will be sending a series of robotic spacecraft to the Moon for ongoing exploration and commercial development.

Barney is excited to apply his expertise in artificial intelligence, search and spacecraft control to the exploration of the Moon and the search for lunar resources that can be of benefit to Earth. “It’s highly motivating for me to come back to my roots of space exploration as a commercial space entrepreneur at a time when the Moon is revealing compelling new secrets, he said. My career has been largely devoted to space and search technology and I can think of no more important place to focus my attention than on searching for new energy and resources for planet Earth.”

Confirmed speakers and panelists also include:

Halcyon CEO WILLIAM ANDREGG, CalTech’s WILLIAM GODDARD, NanoInk CTO MIKE NELSON, Paypal’s LUKE NOSEK, Stanford forecaster PAUL SAFFO, motor-molecule creator SIR FRASER STODDART, IBM’s THOMAS THEIS, emcee SONIA ARRISON and more…

Remember: use code NANODOT for $50 off registration.

Hope to see you there!

Desiree D. Dudley

Director of Development and Outreach

desiree@foresight.org

Christine Peterson

President

peterson@foresight.org

Use code NANODOT for $50 off on:

FORESIGHT@GOOGLE

25th Anniversary Conference Celebration & Reunion Weekend

Google HQ in Mountain View, CA

June 25-26, 2011

http://www.foresight.org/reunion

Topics are emerging tech with special emphasis on transformative nanotech.

A rockstar lineup of speakers include:

• BARNEY PELL, PhD – Cofounder/CTO of Moon Express making robotic lunar landers

• WILLIAM ANDREGG – Founder/CEO of Halcyon Molecular

• PAUL SAFFO, PhD - Renowned tech forecaster and strategist

• LUKE NOSEK - CoFounder of Paypal, Partner at the Founders Fund

• SIR FRASER STODDART, PhD - Knighted creator of molecular “switches”

• THOMAS THEIS, PhD - IBM’s Director of Physical Sciences

• Keynote JIM VON EHR - Founder/President of Zyvex, the world’s first successful molecular nanotech company

Comments on previous meetings in this series: http://www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/Comments/

Don’t miss this opportunity to make new alliances, re-connect with longtime friends, and possibly get pulled into a nanotech startup!  Hope to see *you* there.  —Chris

Members of Foresight Institute will be offered the same benefits as CANEUS members with reduced registration fees of $350. To obtain the discounted rate select “Member” when registering.

The proposed unique “Industry Focused” course, offered by Dr. Sharon Smith and Dr. Steve Winzer, both former distinguished leaders at the Lockheed Martin Corporation, will be held at the Advanced Technology Center of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, located at 3251 Hanover Street Palo Alto, California.

This one-day intense course is designed to help participants understand how nanomaterials are being applied to the aerospace and defense industries, what are some of the key considerations associated with introducing these materials, what are some of the factors involved in scale-up and qualification, and what future impacts these materials may have on these sectors.

Do not rage against the machine. Embrace the machine.

That is the core message of Michio Kaku’s “Physics of the Future.” …

Nanotechnology will be at first rare and expensive and, by the end of the century, commonplace and cheap, largely fulfilling the predictions of pioneering scientists such as Richard Feynman and Eric Drexler. In a world where programmed molecular assembly powered by sunlight can produce almost anything out of raw materials, material wealth will be widespread. …

Prof. Reynolds agrees with Prof. Kaku’s “largely optimistic view” of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and the future overall, but points to one disturbing passage that concerns the present—not the future:

The most disturbing passage in “Physics of the Future” doesn’t concern the future; it’s about the present. In that passage, Mr. Kaku recounts a lunchtime conversation with physicist Freeman Dyson at Princeton. Mr. Dyson described growing up in the late days of the British Empire and seeing that most of his smartest classmates were not—as prior generations had been—interested in developing new forms of electrical and chemical plants, but rather in massaging and managing other people’s money. The result was a loss of England’s science and engineering base.

Now, Mr. Dyson said, he was seeing the phenomenon for the second time in his life, in America. Mr. Kaku, summarizing the scientist’s message: “The brightest minds at Princeton were no longer tackling the difficult problems in physics and mathematics but were being drawn into careers like investment banking. Again, he thought, this might be a sign of decay, when the leaders of a society can no longer support the inventions and technology that made their society great.”

The future belongs to those who show up. Mr. Kaku’s description of that future is an appealing one. But will we show up?

Is Prof. Dyson’s assessment an accurate description of the current state of Western civilization in general and the US in particular? My (thoroughly non-scientific and limited) casual observations suggest that it is. The workhorses of the scientific enterprise are postdoctoral research associates (and to a lesser extent, graduate students). When I began my research career in the early 70s most postdocs were American and most of the ones who were not were European. When I (briefly) attempted to get back into research last year nearly all the postdocs I saw were Asian (not Americans of Asian descent, but visitors from Asia). It is wonderful that American universities attract such talented, energetic visitors, but worrisome that we are no longer “growing our own”. Is the US making the necessary effort to “show up” for the future?

To participate or listen-in remotely:

Kindly send an email to me at j.winter@eurospaceward.org if you would like to participate or listen-in remotely to our conference this weekend.
Kind regards,
John Winter

The Space Studies Institute will hold Space Manufacturing 14 on Oct. 30-31, 2010 at NASA Ames here in Silicon Valley.  Topics to be covered include:

Session 1: Space Transportation Architecture

Session 2: Closed Environment Life Support Systems

Session 3: Robotics and Space Manufacturing

Session 4: Extraterrestrial Prospecting

Session 5: Engineering Materials from Non-Terrestrial Resources

Session 6: Space Solar Power and Space Energy Systems

Session 7: International, Legal and Economic Considerations

Great to see this work continuing!  Note that attendance is limited to 200, and there are some special procedures for non-US citizens.  —Chris Peterson