March 11, 2012

geekfeed:

Neil deGrasse Tyson - We Stopped Dreaming

Abandon thought and theory for a moment and reflect on the facts:

    ◊ Earth is the only planet known to harbor life.
    ◊ If a model of the Earth were built to the scale of an apple, then the whole biosphere of Earth would appear in the model as being thinner than the skin of said apple.
    ◊ Homo Sapiens is the only species to have broken free of Earth’s gravity to explore the vast, inanimate cosmos.

So with the exception of spacefarers, every man and woman, every sage and fool, king and serf, Othello and Iago, has fretted away an hour of existence within the confines of a film clinging to a dead iron ball hurtling through an indifferent universe. One final, vital fact:

    ◊ Four billion summers from today, our sun will exhaust the hydrogen that fuels it. Helium fusion will begin. The sun will swell to a diameter about as large as the present orbit of the Earth. The seas of Earth will boil away. Life will end.

When I reflect on these four facts, I do not see the exploration of space as a luxury. I see the exploration of space as our species inherent, manifest destiny. If life should not perish, then it’s up to humanity to carry life out of its cradle and into the cosmos. Meeting this destiny will be the single most difficult task our species has ever undertaken. Neil deGrasse Tyson sharply reminds us that at present we are failing to work toward our destiny—an unacceptable lapse of imagination and nerve.

(via joost5)

3:06pm  |   URL: http://imall4frogs.tumblr.com/post/19135704317/geekfeed-neil-degrasse-tyson-we-stopped
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(No. OF NOTES: 145)
  
FILED UNDER: space future 
January 19, 2012
Do electric dogs suffer with statically charged fleas?

tumblrspharmacist:

galentines:

I suddenly see ourselves in the future, passing USB drives with episode downloads in alley ways wearing a trench coat and a hat. 

#people on street corners with shifty eyes #hey man do you have arrested development season two #no but #i know a guy

will they have usb sniffing dogs?

(Source: katicmagic, via absurdreasoning)

9:06pm  |   URL: http://imall4frogs.tumblr.com/post/16152260613/do-electric-dogs-suffer-with-statically-charged-fleas
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(No. OF NOTES: 40076)
  
FILED UNDER: future humor 
February 14, 2011
Time Magazine: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal From the article: “Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they’re getting faster is increasing. True? True. So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties. If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there’s no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn’t even take breaks to play Farmville. Probably. It’s impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which (with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you’d be as smart as they would be. But there are a lot of theories about it. Maybe we’ll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we’ll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.”More Here

Time Magazine: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

From the article: “Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they’re getting faster is increasing.

True? True.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there’s no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn’t even take breaks to play Farmville.

Probably. It’s impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which (with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you’d be as smart as they would be. But there are a lot of theories about it. Maybe we’ll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we’ll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.”

More Here

10:10pm  |   URL: http://imall4frogs.tumblr.com/post/3304033453/time-magazine-2045-the-year-man-becomes
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(No. OF NOTES: 2)
  
FILED UNDER: computers Artificial-Intelligence future futurism 
August 2, 2010
"In the past we had books, movies and songs. now they’re all being bundled into one category — apps — to be further delineated by a descriptive prefix. It’s easy to imagine today that movies will have back stories and fan elaborations available on the web and new fiction forms will explore and make use of a complex almagam of media types. the categories- books, songs, movies- meant something in the past that loses specific meaning in this fluid digital domain where each can incorproate aspects of the other. In its media agnosticism and inclusive fluidity, “app” already describes this landscape."

— if:book: the future of the app (via infoneer-pulse)

9:20pm  |   URL: http://imall4frogs.tumblr.com/post/895922002/in-the-past-we-had-books-movies-and-songs-now
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(No. OF NOTES: 8)
  
FILED UNDER: media culture future app digital 
July 2, 2010
kkj114: sampler: deadgirls: MCSG SYM - aurorae: hanakodo: Aspettando Ellis I like yesterday’s future better than the one we’re living. (Is a nostalgia for the future possible? …hummmm )

kkj114:

sampler:

deadgirls:

MCSG SYM - aurorae: hanakodo: Aspettando Ellis

I like yesterday’s future better than the one we’re living.
(Is a nostalgia for the future possible? …hummmm )

7:44pm  |   URL: http://imall4frogs.tumblr.com/post/763455041/kkj114-sampler-deadgirls-mcsg-sym
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FILED UNDER: photo retro future 
April 17, 2010
Segway and GM are now in the prototype stage of the development of the PUMA (for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility). Here in the Metro, both Dallas and Fort Worth have been upgrading the DART light rail system. If these PUMAs became widely available, then the combination of rail and PUMA would greatly lessen our traffic headaches. China has a similar concept vehicle called the Camper Lotus. Because their traffic and pollution troubles are only now beginning, China has real reason to be serious about the development of such a vehicle.

Segway and GM are now in the prototype stage of the development of the PUMA (for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility). Here in the Metro, both Dallas and Fort Worth have been upgrading the DART light rail system. If these PUMAs became widely available, then the combination of rail and PUMA would greatly lessen our traffic headaches. China has a similar concept vehicle called the Camper Lotus. Because their traffic and pollution troubles are only now beginning, China has real reason to be serious about the development of such a vehicle.

9:32am  |   URL: http://imall4frogs.tumblr.com/post/528230849/segway-and-gm-are-now-in-the-prototype-stage-of
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FILED UNDER: transportation future futurism electric 
April 6, 2010
Hi Tila! In answer to your “WTF?”— I give you a photo of a Segway PT in action. The device moves a rider along at a brisk clip! I like the Segway that you posted much better than this one…yours has style! :-)

Hi Tila! In answer to your “WTF?”— I give you a photo of a Segway PT in action. The device moves a rider along at a brisk clip! I like the Segway that you posted much better than this one…yours has style! :-)

9:06pm  |   URL: http://imall4frogs.tumblr.com/post/502092681/hi-tila-in-answer-to-your-wtf-i-give-you-a
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FILED UNDER: future transportation