Social/Ethical/Legal

Black boxes to be required in all new cars from 2015

A new bill (Senate Bill 1813, known as MAP-21) passed by the U.S. Senate in March calls for “mandatory event data recorders” to be installed in all new passenger motor vehicles sold in the U.S. for recording data before, during, or after a crash. As stated in Section 31406 of the bill, the government would have [...]

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A universe of self-replicating code

What we’re missing now, on another level, is not just biology, but cosmology. People treat the digital universe as some sort of metaphor, just a cute word for all these products. The universe of Apple, the universe of Google, the universe of Facebook, that these collectively constitute the digital universe, and we can only see [...]

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Will corporations prevent the Singularity?

It occurred to me recently that the world possesses some very powerful intelligent organisms that are directly and clearly opposed to the Singularity — corporations. Human beings are confused and confusing creatures. We don’t have very clear goal systems, and are quite willing and able to adapt our top-level goals to the circumstances. I have [...]

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Crowdfunded science projects

Got a cool idea for a research project, but need funding? Check out Petridish.org, which has just launched crowdfunded science and research projects. I think this is a really great idea that could open up funding for some amazing research ideas. On Petridish.org, researchers post materials about themselves and their research, and the public can discover projects [...]

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How to jam annoying talkers

Attention, telephone babblers, library whisperers, and hecklers: Japanese researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology want you to shut the bleep up. They’ve developed the “Speech-jammer” gun, which will reduce you to incoherent stuttering from up to 90 feet away. It works by recording your words and then sending them back [...]

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Txting makes u stupid

Yeah, you knew that already. How else to explain the zombies who text while driving or randomly jaywalking in traffic, AGKWE*? But now there’s a reason: they have a tiny vocabulary. Textisms Or so says says University of Calgary linguistics researcher Joan Lee, who interviewed texters in research for her master’s thesis. Texting is associated [...]

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Bypass the Internet!

I’m sick of hearing about how we need to cave in to repressive governments and throttle back Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other information services and accept Web censorship and limits on free expression. Get the hell off my cloud. “If a full-surveillance world prevents us from speaking, then we need to make another platform where [...]

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The future of autonomous cars … and planes

If you’re driving on the Autobahn right now, I advise you keep an eye out for this guy, who is apparently praying his driverless BMW doesn’t crash into something (note: this is a highway without speed limits — not reassuring). (Videos here.) Hey, BMW: why not toss in a robot driver to carry groceries and [...]

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Why China makes our electronic products (it’s not just cheaper labor)

It’s not just that workers are cheaper abroad, according to an important article in The New York Times Saturday. Most of the components of cellphones, computers, and other electronic products are now manufactured in China (and European and other East-Asia countries), so assembling the device half-a-world away would create huge logistical challenges, the article points [...]

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Crowdsourcing a TEDx talk: what are the three most important trends shaping humankind’s future in the next 10 years?

We received an interesting email from sustainability expert/Singularity University grad Eric Ezechieli: On January 27, I will be delivering a TEDx Trieste presentation, and I will speak in ‘”Exponentialish.” In exponential times, half a gallon of brain does not suffice to keep up with what is going on, and in any case a single perspective [...]

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