Future Salon

Neuroengeneering Future Salon this Wednesday 30th

Let's assume someone develops the pill, that makes you twice as intelligent. Small side effect is, it shaves off 10 years of your life. Will you take it?

What if everyone you know is on it? You come to work and your boss is calling you into the office and says: "I am concerned about your output. If I compare your to the performances of your colleagues, they just get so much more done."

It is the stadium effect, if everyone is standing up, you are forced to stand up too, just to  level the paling field. You will be forced to pop the pill too.

You may think, that this is a dark future scenario, but check the Revving the brain article about Ritalin use to enhance your concentration.

I fear that we are like the sorcerer's apprentice the spirits we called will take over and soon we will ask ourselves how to get rid of them.

I once talked about this with John Smart and he said that our brain over the years has been finely tuned via biology, there is not a lot of room for improvement left.

It is for sure a very interesting field and I am really happy to have Dr. Pete Estep presenting the latest research regarding Neuroengineering at our Future Salon this Wednesday the 30th of April.

If you can't join in person we will webcast the event and tape it too. Point your Quicktime viewer to the following address: rtsp://207.105.30.90/salon.sdp

Neuroengineering Future Salon

Wednesday April 30th at SAP Palo Alto
Hosted with Silicon Valley H+ Meet Up

Please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/6oxlzr

Dr. Pete Estep will discuss the InnerSpace Foundation (IF), a new nonprofit being developed to promote and support neuroengineering approaches for the enhancement of memory and learning – biomedical goals that have the potential to improve not only the lives of those suffering from a specific malady, but everyone's life.

Estep earned his Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard Medical School, performing research in the lab of genomics pioneer Dr. George Church. He is an inventor of several technologies, including universal DNA protein-binding microarrays (PBMs). He serves as an advisor to the Personal Genome Project, an open source project at Harvard Medical School.

Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation followed by discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross or Cafeteria depending on number of RSVPs. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304. Free and open to the public. Spread the word and please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/6oxlzr

This should be a fresh, engaging discussion. I hope to see you there. -Tyler

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The InnerSpace Foundation and The IF Prize: Why and How We Should Transcend Our Evolved Limitations

Biological evolution is a somewhat haphazard and non-optimizing process that has produced many undesirable artifacts. Among a large number and wide variety of such artifacts, two stand out as the underlying causes of the most pervasive and extreme human suffering: mental and lifespan limitations. Mental inabilities are universal, and they must ultimately serve to explain our ongoing failures to end human warfare, crime, poverty, and famine, and to completely cure diseases, disabilities, aging and death; therefore, these inabilities are fundamentally even more harmful to humanity than the categories of biomedical dysfunction we currently labor to cure. The overall goal of the InnerSpace Foundation (IF) is to accelerate the development of biomedical technologies for transcending these limitations. IF Chairman Dr. Pete Estep will outline specific steps the foundation is taking toward dramatic enhancement of memory, learning and cognition, and will describe how these near-term goals should ultimately help us to eliminate or transcend other unwanted artifacts of Darwinian evolution.

Yuri's Night Tonight

One of the coolest events ever is/are happening tonight: Yuri's Night commemorating the 50th anniversary of maned flight in space.

In some earlier time zones of the world parties are happening already. The Bay Area has an amazing line-up of speakers for their Yuri's Night: Jaron Lanier for example who once ramped up the McLuhan Ramp at the Future Salon (video of the event at the Internet Archive).

He will talk about one of the most out there ideas I came accross in a long while: Let's rearrange the stars to let people know that there is intelligent life out here in this dot of the universe. He closes his article with: Crazier things have happened. I am scratching my head thinking about what that could have been?

It is happening at Moffett Field a blimp hangar in Mountain View, that intrigued me for ages when driving by on 101. Today I will be able to see it from the insight. So cool.

Hope to see you there, oh and it starts already at 2pm this afternoon.