Future Salon

Reminder Sustainability Future Salon

Just got off the phone with John McCarthy. He is looking forward to the conversation tomorrow at the Sustainability of Material Progress Future Salon.

He told me that his Nuclear Energy site, which is part of the overall Sustainability Area of his Website got over 1 Million page hits and is number 2 on Google ahead of government pages if you search for "Nuclear Energy". (The Sustainability page got 200 thousand hits and is also on the first page on Google.)

I didn't read all the pages, but John proofs that with further technology development we will be able solve our current problems and get to an even greater level of wealth and opportunities.

That brought back a quote: "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." It is actually from Albert Einstein.

With all the material progress that we enjoy here in the Bay Area, why are we nevertheless not really happy? Why do so many people need Prozac to get through the day? Are we barking up the wrong tree?

It is going to be interesting tomorrow. See you there.

A Future Salon has the following structure: 6-7 networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+ pm presentation and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] As always free and open to the public. Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities. Free and open to the public.

Sustainability Future Salon Thursday 25th

I hope Future Salon regular Paul C. Hoffman comes to our Future Salon this Thursday: The Sustainability of Material Progress with Stanford Professor John McCarthy. Please RSVP now.

Paul usually brings stacks of his Earth Seals with him. A sticker with the picture of our little planet taken from outer space by one of the Apolo missions in the 60s. This picture made people realize how finite our little blue rock is. Some say that this realization triggered the green movement all over the world.

Sustainability is the buzz word of the moment: Planet Earth can't sustain the living standards of the western world exteneded to all 6 billion of us. Is the claim. We are rushing towards extinction if we continue on our current path.

Some of these claims have been way overblown, or have you been stung by a Killer Bee lately?

John McCarthy is a life long scientist and when he looks at a problem like: Is our material progress sustainable? He collects data, does the math, contacts the experts in the fields and tries to leave ideology out of it.

Proof to the point his bare bone Web site. Bare bone from a style perspective, but it is chock full of information and references that support his findings.

Here the things that he covers on his site:  energy in general, nuclear energy, solar energy, food supply, population, fresh water supply, forests and wood supply, global engineering, pollution, biodiversity, various menaces to human survival, the role of ideology in discussing these matters, useful references.

If you want to know the essence of all of it and what are John's latest observations, then come to the Future Salon this Thursday the 25th. I am convinced that tt is going to be a really interesting discussion.

Sustainability
Edit...
Ignore all
Add to dictionary

Apollo
Apple
Appal
Apply
Appall
Edit...
Ignore all
Add to dictionary

extended
extender
extenuated
expended
extenders
Edit...
Ignore all
Add to dictionary

interesting
inter sting
inter-sting
inters ting
inters-ting
Edit...
Revert to "intersting"

A Future Salon has the following structure: 6-7 networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+ pm presentation and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] As always free and open to the public. Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities. Free and open to the public. Please RSVP, so we can get enough food and drinks.

Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) White Paper

Numenta just posted an Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM)  white paper. HTM is the brain theory of Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee described in their book On Intelligence.

The white paper is like updated Cliff Notes to their book including commonly asked questions. Helps to have presented on conferences like AC2005 where people asks these questions :-)

I think it is a very interesting and quite plausible theory and I can't wait to see it tested. They promise to have a toolset out by the end of 2006. Let's cross our fingers. We'll keep an eye on it.

The Sustainability of Material Progress Future Salon

John McCarthy Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University was in the audience at the Hard AI Future Salon the other month. Which was excellent, after all he coined the term Artificial Intelligence and also wrote the language Lisp, which Paul Graham of Hackers and Painters fame describes:

In 1960, John McCarthy published a remarkable paper in which he did for programming something like what Euclid did for geometry. He showed how, given a handful of simple operators and a notation for functions, you can build a whole programming language. He called this language Lisp, for "List Processing," because one of his key ideas was to use a simple data structure called a list for both code and data. [more]

John liked our Future Salon format so much, that he agreed to talk about something that is near and dear to his heart:  The Sustainability of Material Progress at the Future Salon on Thursday 25th of May 6pm SAP Palo Alto. [Future Salon Wiki with collection of background links]

Please RSVP now

Abstract:

Over the centuries and up to the present the condition of humanity has improved with increased longevity, reduced infant mortality, better nutrition, and more choices in occupation, material goods, and recreation.
This improvement includes both advanced and backward countries.  Questions have been raised about whether this improvement can continue and whether the backward countries can advance to the level of the present advanced countries to which so many of their citizens migrate. 

Many phenomena have been suggested as obstacles to further material progress.  This lecture deals with several problems that have been
raised: energy, minerals, food supply, soil degradation, fresh water supply, pollution, waste disposal, population growth, disease, natural catastrophes, forests, global warming.  None of them, except possibly war or social stagnation, is likely to prevent further material progress.

Whether optimism or pessimism is warranted by the facts has always been contentious, but who takes which position is often determined by non-rational considerations.

These points are elaborated on the web site www.formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress.

Bio:

John McCarthy is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University.  His professional work has been in artificial intelligence and other branches of computer science.  His work includes Lisp, time-sharing, logical AI, proving programs correct and personal use of computers.

He has long studied human progress and starting in 1995 has developed a web site arguing that progress is sustainable; The pages have so far got about one million hits.

A Future Salon has the following structure: 6-7 networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+ pm presentation and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] As always free and open to the public. Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities. Free and open to the public. Please RSVP, so we can get enough food and drinks.