from the here-comes-Singularity dept.
Vernor Vinge, author of some of the best — many would say THE best — novels on highly advanced coming technologies, will speak at the Sept 8-10 Foresight Gathering. It was Vernor who came up with the term Singularity; come hear about it from the man himself. The good news is that Vernor has stopped teaching in order to write full-time, so we should be seeing more work from him. You need to read his writing whether you like sf or not: books such as his are some of the most useful future scenarios around.

from the don't-miss-this-one dept.
Register ASAP to save $100 on the Foresight Gathering, Sept 8-10. Here's a sample: ever-controversial Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder and cypherpunk John Gilmore will speak: "I think I want to talk about how the prospect of nanotech is driving my work on intellectual property reform…If our economy is not to crash immediately after assemblers arrive (resulting in many hungry people rioting or warring), society needs to learn how to structure an economy to support the expensive part while letting the cheap part provide its benefits of broad distribution of the results…If even a third or a half of the economy is running on open source principles before assemblers start assembling more assemblers, we can probably avoid war and worldwide civil unrest." Read More for John's full message.

from the where-to-stay-when-you're-REALLY-under-the-weather dept.
Miss the Alcor conference at Asilomar this year? That's unfortunate, but you can get a vague idea of what it was like from this media writeup, which doesn't have too many errors: "Mr Drexler's presence at the conference–he has become something of a media recluse–could be explained by the fact that it was organised by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. He is on the scientific advisory board of Alcor, best known perhaps as the largest US cryonics foundation. At its freezer facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, 38 dead people, including one Australian, are in suspended animation awaiting a miracle of future technology to bring them back to life." We prefer the term "temperaturely-challenged".

from the sooner-or-later-it-will-happen dept.
UC Santa Cruz chemist Stephanie Corchnoy brings to our attention this press release, which explains that the proposed California Nanosystems Institute is indeed one of six finalists for funding by the state, with 2:1 matching funds required from non-state sources. Of the six, three will be funded. The judges: Richard Lerner (chemist, president of Scripps); Erling Norrby (Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy); John Hennessy (electrical engineer, president of Stanford); Harry Gray (chemist, Caltech); John Brauman (chemist, Stanford). The other five proposals are in biology and computers; with three chemists in this group, does the Nanosystems Institute have a good chance, or not?

from the metanews dept.
Jonathan Desp writes "At Atomasoft we developed a Nanotechnology News Search web page…It's several search engines that search within 300+ news magazines in science and technology. Enjoy the service!" CP: See also Nanospot, covered previously.

from the mark-your-calendars dept.
"The Next Twenty Years", a series of high-tech showcases being held around the US, will be in NYC on August 3 including thoughts on nanotechnology by Michio Kaku, co-founder of string theory. I saw him give a similar talk in SF a while back, and it was pretty conservative, but he's an interesting guy. In case you don't want to go to NYC, it will be broadcast online.

from the I'll-have-a-mole-of-moletronics-please dept.
CPhillips reports on story from the July issue of Wired magazine: "It describes the research and potential impact of molecular electronics. Jim Tour (Rice) and Mark Reed (Yale) are the main focus of the article. The article also makes brief mention of the National Nanotechnology Initiative and the research being done at Hewlett-Packard. It's very interesting reading for lay-people like myself. This is almost enough for me to forgive Wired for Bill Joy's story!"

from the now-it's-a-business-tool dept.
Senior Associate Jack Hughes writes: "this is the new e-book by Seth Godin on how to unleash the IdeaVirus. I think you'll find it interesting — he's giving it away for free now, but publishing it for money in hardcover come September." Warning: the download can be tricky.

from the maybe-maybe-not-but-still-interesting dept.
RajayKumar writes "CNN has an article regarding light traveling faster than c. This article goes into more detail than the previous article mentioned on Nanodot. CP: The piece explains that it is not clear that the light coming out is the same light that went in, so it may not be correct to say the light exceeded c.

from the is-this-really-a-good-idea dept.
Senior Associate member davesag writes "Just opened page 7 of the UK issue of this week's New Scientist and there's an article about Chew Chew the 12 wheeled flesh eating robot that uses e-coli to recharge its batteries. Is building robots that digest meat another one of those 'oh boy, wait till they get smarter and smaller' issues we need to be worried about?" Note also the slug-eating robot.

from the would-you-know-it-if-you-saw-it? dept.
Two Idea Future claims on the Foresight server were created that concerned developments in building computational elements using "protein synthesis techniques". Please help us clarify the claims and ensure that they mean what was intended. Read More for details.

from the yup-here-comes-the-money-for-sure dept.
Senior Associate Luke Nosek, VP Strategy at X.com, points out this item from The Standard on venture capitalist John Doerr at the Internet Summit: Still, in a sign that the revolution is changing, Doerr, an investor credited with being one of the early Internet visionaries, admits that his interests are shifting. When asked what the next big thing is, Doerr didn't answer by describing some new Internet technology. "I'm getting interested in making things again — atoms," he says. The largest global markets to come, he added, will be in providing clean water, clean power and transportation.

from the sooner-or-later-it-will-happen dept.
Three Univ. of Calif. Institutes for Science and Innovation will be selected from proposals made by UC campuses, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News: "California Nanosystems Institute would focus on the science, engineering and manufacturing of molecular-based structures. Lead campus is UCLA." It's unclear from the article whether this proposal is one of six semi-finalists for the $300 million each new institute will get from combined state and industry matching funds–but if not this time, then soon, somewhere.

from the but-how-do-I-know-what's-going-on-in-there dept.
Senior Associate Eliezer Yudkowsky forwards from Transdot: Aaron Davidson writes: "About 8 months or so ago, David Gobel & I formed a new company called Vastmind, as a result of discussions on the Extropians list and on Eliezer's Singularitarians list. It is our pleasure to debut the early beta version of Vastmind. What is Vastmind? It is a general purpose distributed computing service. With our system, people will be able to sell or donate spare computing resources to those that need it for large projects. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, read Egan's 'Permutation City', which discusses the potential of a planetary computing market."

from the many-hands-make-lots-of-work dept.
Senior Associate TomMcKendree writes "I understand the intent of "Engines of Creation 2000" project is to produce an up-to-date version of Engines of Creation by integrating the work of many contributors. An excellent model for such an integration is the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, Smith (eds), 1994). It combines the work of 63 contributors, many providing just a single section of a few pages. The book is organized into chapters by topic, with individual sections identified by type (solo exercise, team exercise, guiding idea, resource, etc). It is intended to be highly browsable–readable in any direction." In addition, the book has its own website under construction.

from the let's-get-a-2nd/3rd/4th-opinion-on-this-one dept.
Senior Associate ChrisPhoenix brings weird news: "I wouldn't have believed it, but it's reported in the American Institute of Physics Physics News Update number 494. A team in Europe has done some new thermodynamics work. They say that heat engines may be made more efficient than previously thought, by putting the hot and cold baths in direct contact for brief periods of time–this may even lead to new engine designs. Even more surprising is their second paper, which claims that a quantum particle strongly interacting (entangled) with a "quantum thermal bath" may violate the Clausius inequality. The particle may gain heat from a colder bath. They term this "appalling behavior", but come right out and say that this could constitute a perpetual motion machine of the second kind."

from the DaveK-says-"info-wants-to-be-frictionless" dept.
Paul Hughes writes "For those of you who don't already know, FreeNet is a peer-to-peer network designed to allow the distribution of information over the Internet in an efficient manner, without fear of censorship. Freenet is completely decentralized, meaning that there is no person, computer, or organization in control of Freenet or essential to its operation. This means that Freenet cannot be attacked like centralized peer-to-peer systems such as Napster. Freenet also employs intelligent routing and caching, meaning that it learns to route requests more efficiently, automatically mirrors popular data, makes network flooding almost impossible, and moves data to where it is in greatest demand.

Brian Atkins (posting to the Extropians List) has pointed out a new article about FreeNet. It appears to be spreading across the net at lighting speed, with many believing it spells the end of copyright as we know it. What do you think?"

from the enough-pain-&-suffering-already dept.
Senior Associate Robert Freitas Jr., author of the partially-Foresight-funded book Nanomedicine Vol. 1, has published an article on nanotechnology in the prestigious magazine The Sciences published by the New York Academy of Sciences. He concludes: "The hope and dream is that, sometime in the not-too-distant future, those devices will be able to eliminate virtually all the common diseases of the twentieth century, and virtually all bodily pain and suffering as well." Oddly, the magazine is not online at all; Read More for order info.

from the why-the-good-guys-have-to-work-work-work dept.
Foresight advisor Ralph Merkle responds to Bill Joy's concerns in an interview for ACM's Ubiquity: "…if we attempt to block the development of new technology, if we collectively try and say, 'These technologies are technologies that are not meant for humans to understand,' and we try to back away from them, what we effectively have done is not to block the technologies, we have simply ensured that the most responsible parties will not develop them…In other words, a relinquishment of the new technology, unless it is absolutely 100 percent effective, is not effective at all. If it's 99.99 percent effective, then you simply ensure that the .01 percent who pays no attention to such calls for relinquishment is the group that will develop it."

from the never-too-late dept.
At the Foresight Senior Associates gathering in 1999, an Idea Futures market was set up for attendees to "put their money where their mouths were" on a variety of questions related to Foresight's goals. The market is now available on an ongoing basis for those who've opened accounts. This article reports on events at this year's gathering: Two new claims were added concerning how and when AI will appear. The most contentious claims during the gathering were those related to the date that the Feynman Grand Prize will be awarded. The odds on those claims have see-sawed back and forth as people with different viewpoints have weighed in on the question. Senior Associates can join by sending money to the Foresight office.