Future Salon

Next Future Salon: Get your hearing back!

Good futuristic practice is to shift traditions, not being bound by them. This time we break three of our traditions. First there will be no Future Salon in July. It's to bring in some European 'savoir vivre', take a break in the summer time, they all do over there. I actually will be gone most of July in Germany. Although rumor has it, that some people can't wait until the 12th of August and will do a Future Salon without me.

I would really appreciate this, because it would mean that the Salon can stand on it's own, that the concept is worth while for enough people to keep it going.

Cory Doctorow on DRM Voodoo

Weblogsky - industrial-strength weblog

I don't want to be the only blogger alive who hasn't pointed at Cory's DRM rant, delivered at Microsoft, but probably to the wrong set of heads. It's a start, though. [Link]
Pardon me, but would you like a wiki with that rant?

Well, don't want to be the only one either. Also love Jason's audio version what beautiful things are done once something is in the public space.

Reading the text of course I had to smile, because September last year the Future Salon had the pleasure to host Cory, and we got his excellent run down the copyright history road back then life and in color. (Here some more pictures from that day.) Read the MS transcript, it is worth it.

Cyborgs of New York

After an FDA Panel's surprise thumbs up to neural implants for treating depression on Tuesday, a recent NY Daily News piece, "Cyborgs of New York," sheds a welcome personal light on its significance. Choice quotes:

• "I prefer to think of myself as being bionic."
• "I can shave without decapitating myself."

While not about precisely the same device, both types of Neural Prosthesis have been undergoing trials for the same classes of disorders for quite some time—see the 2000 WABC-TV (NY) piece: "Shocking the Brain." Tuesday's approval was not without controversy, but the panel voted 5 to 2 in favor of permitting many more patients to try it, with certain conditions. It seems worth noting that "worrie[s] that the device could also be the forerunner of political behavior modification that could effect populations" (reported in the the Investors.com story) did not appear to have been among the issues the FDA addressed.

Quantum Movie

Update: Quantum Computing at Stanford is tonight Wednesday 16th and the movie is skipping the Bay Area until July/August, see showdates or my comment further down. Shouldn't post that late in the night, but I knew that there is something happening this Thursday: The AllwaysOn Salon about Social Software. Does it matter? .

There is a movie slowly making its way down the West Coast. It has been held over for 16 weeks in Portland now, runs in Eugene already and is supposed to arrive in Berkeley this weekend.

Intel's 486 CPU turns 15

This article talks about the 15 year period from April 1989 to April 2004. In April 1989, the 33MHz Intel 486 was introduced. I checked Intel's website and their current high-end offering is a 3.4 Ghz Pentium 4.

So, what's the "rate of acceleration" from 33 MHz to 3.4 GHz in 15 years? I'll do the math for you. That's a factor of 103 increase. That comes out to a factor of 1.36 per year, or 36% increase per year. That's a doubling time of 2.24 years. (Close enough to 2.25 to round, I'd say.)

Now, this calculation looks only at clock speed, and neglects the fact that the new chips are "hyperthreading", and all the other cpu pipeline improvements that have been made. So the actual difference in performance between the 33 Mhz 486 and today's Pentium 4 is much more that 103x. Exactly how much, I don't know.

Quantum Computation A Glimpse Into the Future of Computing

Quantum Computation A Glimpse Into the Future of Computing at the MIT-Stanford-Berkeley Nanotechnology Forum.

As a warm-up to this Friday's Quantum Gravity Future Salon you should check out what's the latest and greatest in the field of Quantum Computing.

Singularity Watch with Bruce

When I walked into the Fort Mason center where Bruce Sterling was about to to present his view on the Singularity, I almost took a step back, because out there on the screen was the banner from our LA brother John Smart's Singularity Watch web page. Just hanging there in the middle of the big screen. Wow. Some short notes to Bruce's talk. The Long Now Foundation taped it and you will be able to see it in a couple of weeks on their web page.

Future Salon: Hard Science Details

Guess I did the cardinal error of web publishing/editing, using the back button going from preview to edit. Consequence was, that the Hard Science details were missing in my previous post (I have added them today). Just in case someone has missed that. Here they are again this time even with some links.

Hard Science part or Extreme Physics as Mike calls them, which with the current fascination of everything extreme should really peak your interest.

Here are some suggested readings if you want to prepare for next Fridays talk:

“Three Roads To Quantum Gravity” by Lee Smolin
“The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything”, by John Gibbon
“The Odd Quantum”, by Sam Trieman
“Loop Quantum Gravity”, in Scientific American Jan 2004 (I don't have the link to the article, but one by Lee Smolin at the edge with the same title) The Wikipedia entry is very interesting too.
“The Myth of the Beginning of Time”, in Scientific American May 2004
“Parallel Universes”, in Scientific American May 2003

24HOURDOTCOM

24HOURDOTBOMB is a great Art/Prank with a dose of seriousness, cramming the dot com experience into 24 hours.

Right now we are at the Wizards of OS conference in Berlin to make a performance art/business project. The mission is to create a dotcom business from scratch in 24 hours. That means designing and programming a complete and useful web application, recruiting people, doing marketing, creating investment programs and much more. After 24 hours, the complete business will be sold on an eBay auction, and everyone involved will be rich!

You can't be part of the fun anymore, but can buy the business for currently $780 on Ebay. So hurry up. [via Steve at O'Reilly Blogs]

The man can't bust our biometrics... no wait, he can

Future Now: The man can't bust our biometrics... no wait, he can

Will the RIAA ever stop? Andrew Orlowski from The Register puts it very nicely:

Not content with asking for an arm and a leg from consumers and artists, the music industry now wants your fingerprints, too.

And it is easly fooled. [via Future Now]