from the it'll-be-the-Declaration-of-Independence-next dept.
From the SJ Mercury wire services: "Israel's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an Isreali scholar had a copyright on his recontruction of an important Dead Sea Scroll…". The messed-up "intellectual property" system will be debated at the Sept 8-10 Foresight Senior Associate Gathering in Palo Alto; join us.

from the capabilities-or-culpability? dept.
Bruce Schneier, author of the standard reference Applied Cryptography, has a new book out called Secrets and Lies. In an interview in Salon he talks about the book's main thesis: that secure computing is impossible: "Given the inevitability of attacks, 'prevention' can no longer be the security buzzword. Just as even the finest hockey goalies must regularly suffer the humiliation of allowing a goal, companies must learn to live with penetrations. Prepare for the worst, Schneier urges." Has the man never heard of capability security?

from the machines-with-a-past? dept.
Adam Brown writes "It has been theorized that in order for a computer to evolve its personality, it should have past memories to draw upon. While browsing the web I found the site randomaccessmemory.org which encourages members to post their life experiences and any memories that stand out in their mind. Could such a database be used as a starting seed for the implanted past memories of an AI persona? Does anybody else know of any similar resources?" CP: there's the separate question of whether seeding with human memories is a good idea…but if so, one could use biographies.

from the early-"engineering-AI" dept.
EddieWehri writes "Researchers developed a computer program that came up with designs for simple robots after being given simple parameters. Found on slashdot. http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSScience 0008/30_robot.html" RalphMerkle explains that this refers to "recent work at Brandeis by Jordan Pollack. Evidently, this work involves a design system that uses evolutionary algorithms to design a robotic system."

Update: A spate of press coverage of this research was set off by the publication of a paper by Pollack and co-worker Hod Lipson, also of Brandeis, in the 31 August 2000 issue of Nature. Some interesting press accounts include articles in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

from the major-disagreement dept.
Senior Associate Peter Voss writes "Josh Hallís Ethics for Machines suffers many of the problems endemic to moral debate: vague and shifting definitions, confusion over ëdutyí, rejecting the possibility of a rationally derived morality, and confusing description and prescription. Specifically, it fails to clearly define, or justify, its implied meta-ethical goal of ëgroup dynamismí. Other core problems are: its mischaracterization of ëethical instinctí, its condemnation of self-interest and common sense, and its failure to recognize the importance of high-level intelligence and consciousness to morality. Ethics for Transhumans addresses these points, and sketches an alternative path."

from the utopian-dystopian-or-atopian? dept.
Senior Associate BryanBruns writes "Reason magazine has a story "Dystopian Fearmongers Strike Again" criticizing the "TechnoUtopian" advertisement recently run in the New York Times. (The ad is available online: technoad.pdf.) The advertisement has three paragraphs on nanotechnology, with reasonably accurate content, using nanotech as another example of technological optimism. The section on nanotech finishes by saying "[Bill] Joy has grave doubts about proceeding, citing dangers from escaping self-replicating nanomachines, and from military applications. (There are also terribly frightening surveillance and privacy concerns.) So far, Joy is one of the few major scientists to be openly critical." Read more for details and analysis.

from the what-is-human dept.
In a story originally from the LA Times, Pope John Paul II defines death as "the complete and irreversible cessation" of brain activity. This would seem to indicate that, eventually, the Roman Catholic Church will choose to view patients entering and in cryonic suspension as being alive; this would fit with their general "when in doubt, be generous to marginal cases" position. This can serve as a reminder to the cryonics organizations that an awkward gap may appear in financial arrangements for cryonics, when life insurance no longer covers the cost, but medical insurance has not yet added this coverage. Perhaps we need a new type of policy entirely.

from the Do-you-know-me? dept.

Three years after its widely-publicized chess match with Grand Master Garry Kasparov, IBM's Deep Blue computer system outranks many human celebrities in a poll of the public's familiarity with both human and machine personalities. A short article from the Associated Press on the Washington Post web site describes the study, which was conducted by Marketing Evaluation/TvQ, Inc.

According to the article, even though Deep Blue's big public splash was in 1997, about 50 percent of those polled recognized Deep Blue's name — putting it on par with actress and "Baywatch babe" Carmen Electra, and slightly above CNN talk show host Larry King.

from the pass-the-hat dept.

An interesting segment on National Public Radio's All Things Considered on 29 August 2000 describes some attempts by artists to use the Internet to sell their work directly to their audiences. Look for the segment on "The Street Performer Protocol", which compares some of these efforts to high-tech busking.

One of the challenges for applying open source concepts to IP areas other than software is: how do creative artists like writers and musicians make a living? While this piece doesn't directly address the issue of copyright, it does show that artists like author Stephen King are pushing the envelope a bit, and blazing the trail for others who want to offer ideas and creative works through advance subscription or auction. It's an idea that might catch on.

from the to-tell-or-not-to-tell dept.
Prominent MIT psychologist Steven Pinker predicts in Technology Review: How far can this revolution in the human condition go? Will the world of 3000 be as unthinkable to us today as the world of 2000 would have been to our forebears a millennium ago?…The future, I suggest, will not be unrecognizably exotic because across all the dizzying changes that shaped the present and will shape the future one element remains constant: human nature…It is also far from certain that we will redesign human nature through genetic engineering. People are repulsed by genetically modified soybeans, let alone babies, and the risks and reservations surrounding germ-line engineering of the human brain may consign it to the fate of the nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner…Third-millennium futurologists should realize that their fantasies are scaring people to death. The preposterous world in which we interact only in cyberspace, choose the endings of our novels, merge with our computers and design our children from a catalogue gives people the creeps and turns them off to the genuine promise of technological progress.

from the Spanglesi-spoken-here dept.
James Murdoch (crown prince of father Rupert Murdoch's enormous News Corp. media empire, which includes Fox TV and movies, the Times of London, the worldwide Sky TV satellite service, and tabloid newspapers everywhere) offers his take on the future of language in big media and on the Internet over the next decades. Rather than an English-dominated mediasphere, he sees four major languages dominating: Mandarin (835 million native speakers), English (470M native, fewer than 800M as a second language), Spanish (330 MNS), and Hindi (300 MNS). He points to the influence of global media on standardization of language (broadcast Spanish from Chilean television is replacing native Rapanui on Easter Island, for example).

from the maybe-they-do-get-it dept.

A major article in the New York Times ("Code Name: Mainstream – Can 'Open Source' Bridge the Software Gap?" by Steve Lohr, 28 August 2000) reports that a Presidential commission will recommend backing the Open Source software development model as an alternative path for addressing pressing national needs in the development of new information technologies.

According to the Times article, "the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee will recommend that the federal government back 'open source software as an alternate path for software development,' according to a draft copy of the report, which will be sent to the White House and published in a matter of weeks."

from the synapse-crackle-pop dept.
An interdisciplinary team that includes electrical engineers, computer scientists, physicists and neuroscientists is using a hybrid analog-digital circuit design in an attempt to understand how biological neurons function and process information. A brief description of the research appeared in the New York Times on 29 June 2000, and was described in greater detail in a paper that appeared in the 22 June 2000 issue of the journal Nature.

from the hearts-and-minds dept.

In an essay for the New York Times ("Whose Intellectual Property Is It, Anyway? The Open Source War," 24 August 2000), author Peter Wayner (Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans (HarperBusiness, 2000) ) declares:

"There's a war going on. . . . It is between nimble people who want to think for themselves and big dinosaurs of corporations that want to keep the upstarts penned up and docile."

Wayner concludes: "The open-source war is not going to be easy for society. The intellectual property laws do help protect creators and their innovations, and corporations instinctively grab as much power as they can get. But if the strength of these laws grows and the teams of lawyers that enforce them become more powerful, society will become much poorer."

from the vision:-two-yes,-one-no dept.
from the New Scientists' Next Generation Symposium site: "Welcome to the future…it's getting seriously strange out there as we head for the millennium. Below 24 young scientists working at the cutting edge bring you their thoughts and predictions. Check them out before you take your journey into the future… " Included:
Brain Repair in the 21st Century: "How much of the brain can be replaced before you require a new passport?"
Soft-condensed matter: "we could design desirable structures without actually having to build them, and if you break them, they will 'repair' themselves…we'd really like to have systems that completely self-assemble and produce hard bits and soft bits and valves and pistons and all the necessary things we need to make nanomachines, all from exploiting the properties of soft matter."
AI is possible, but AI won't happen: "there is no obvious way of getting from here to there–to human-level intelligence from the rather useless robots and brittle software programs that we have nowadays." [Yes, okay, it's not obvious.]

from the MSNBC-prefers-"subatomic"-tech dept.
From an MSNBC news story on new HP leader Carly Fiorina: The high-level patronage has reinvigorated morale throughout the labs. Until Ms. Fiorina arrived, Stan Williams, a researcher in nanotechnology, the science of manipulating atomic structures, had planned to move his lab to Agilent Technologies Inc., a test-and-measurement company spun off from H-P earlier this year. Now, H-P is building a new multimillion-dollar nanofabrication facility. It may not generate commercially useful work for years, but the investment could help H-P retain researchers in a field that one day could allow more powerful silicon chips to be ìgrownî by means of subatomic chemistry and physics, rather than manufactured in complex factories.
We assume the "subatomic" term came from MSNBC, not HP. Stan is a finalist for this year's Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology.

from the dismal-scientists-boggled dept.
From a widely-published Boston Globe story: "Greenspan's comments…indicated his strengthening conviction that a stunning surge in the productivity of U.S. workers will persist…ensuring that the longest-running expansion in U.S. history has no end in sight…[his] main point was about the world economy and the profound impact of technology and globalization…Economists said such strong gains in productivity are unusual, if not unprecedented." He compared the current situation to the railroads, which "helped elevate economic growth for a considerable period of time. But the pace of growth eventually slowed when full or near-full exploitation of the newer technologies was achieved." But will we stop seeing such gaps between newer technologies, as they arrive with increasing frequency?

from the Malthus-had-a-point dept.
From Australia comes news of an easy, enjoyable way to play out various scenarios of human population growth. David Coutts has designed a game called 6 Billion which enables players to model exponential growth of human population in our solar system. Users can set their own timescales for scientific progress, population growth, and even sociological change. Sounds like a fun method to get a feel for exponential growth of population, which the designer correctly describes as "scary". Here's some background and history on the game. Read more for David's full post.

from the if-this-continues dept.
from Future Presence newsletter published by The Arlington Institute, these comments on some useful fiction: Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson — Extend our computer technology out just a little. Add an ability to quickly search for copyright infringement in a new piece of art you are creating. What if you keep getting back the reply that your new piece music or short story was too close to a copyrighted piece? What if copyrights lasted forever? Could new art become a thing of the past? With our limited senses how many unique combinations of worthwhile art are there? Check out this short story to explore some of these questions.

from the whew-we'd-better-get-going dept.
Scott Pace of RAND points out this news item from the American Institute of Physics on the Implementation Plan for the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative: The implementation plan establishes "Grand Challenges" in such areas as smart materials, computing and memory storage, drug delivery and diagnostics, water purification and desalinization, energy conversion and storage, microspacecraft, biochemical detection and mitigation, economical and safe transportation, and national security. It lays out a timeline for the next five years and research strategies for accomplishing the objectives…"The National Nanotechnology Initiative: The Initiative and Its Implementation Plan," runs approximately 150 pages with appendices and is now available on the Internet at http://nano.gov