Technology
Stephen Hawking: “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded” Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.
The process of making sea water potable, water desalinization has been a significant point of research for years in order to purify water. While there have been new technologies that aim at making sea water drinkable, many of our oceans, lakes, and rivers have become highly contaminated due to pesticide and industrial fertilizer ground water penetration, and run-off, as well as contaminated from petro chemicals and other corporate industry polluters. Luckily, researchers at Massachusetts Technology Institute (MIT) just might have a solution to this problem.
It’s not easy to keep growing cities green when there is such a high demand for building space. But nobody wants to live in a concrete jungle, which is why a company in the US has proposed a rather unusual solution: underground parks
Computers at Google now have a machine-learning system that can analyze images like the one above and generate captions for them. it’s actually one hell of an accomplishment.
This incredible music video by Nigel Stanford is an excellent demonstration of how cymatic frequencies affect physical matter – in the broadest sense. Note the waves manifested in flowing water, in surging flames, the slow motion roll of a metal crash cymbal, hit by the wood of a drumstick, and finally the affect of sound on what looks like some sort of organic dust. All the elements are represented here – even the etheric within the science of Nikola Tesla. After you watch this, you may find it worthwhile to ponder what your favorite music, the wind, the rain, the hum of automobiles, planes and trains are doing to the water and other fluids in your body. In other words, what kind of wave-created “art” is being co-created by you and your environment every day.
Jason Silva’s most recent video on Ontological Design is a bit of a mind-bender that asks us to consider the way in which the things we create in turn re-creates us. He talks about the ways our environment molds and shapes us; that everything we design is designing us back like Escher’s drawing of hands drawing each other in an eternal feedback loop.
Mammoth cloning is closer to becoming a reality following the discovery of blood in the best-preserved specimen ever found.
Astronomers using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have discovered an unexpected alignment of the spinning axes of supermassive black holes located billions of light-years apart.
Michio Kaku talks about his new book titled “The Future of the Mind,” in which Kaku explores what might be in store for our minds: practical telepathy and telekinesis; artificial memories implanted into our brains; and a pill that will make us smarter. He describes work being done right now on using sensors to read images in the human brain and on downloading artificial memories into the brain to treat victims of strokes and Alzheimer’s.
If there is anything good to be said about mass surveillance, overcharging and monopolization by telecom/ISP companies, and government censorship including cell phone and Internet shutdowns as they see fit, it is that these heavy-handed measures only create astronger desire for freedom.
A sculpture so tiny that it cannot be seen by the naked eye is claimed the smallest sculpture of the human form ever created. A new series of equally diminutive sculptures are at a scale so infinitesimally miniscule that each of the figures is approximately equal in size to the amount your fingernails grow in around about 6 hours, and can only be viewed using a scanning electron microscope.
The Philae lander on the distant comet 67P re-established radio contact with Earth on Friday night, downlinking yet another stream of science data. Everything expected from the little probe was delivered, just before low battery power dropped it into standby mode.
How would you feel if I told you that a virus could be responsible for depleting human intelligence? According to scientists at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the University of Nebraska, a virus that infects human brains could be making much of the population ‘stupid’.
Researchers from the University of Exeter found that when individuals are briefly presented pictures of others receiving emotional support and affection, the brain’s threat monitor, the amygdala, subsequently does not respond to images showing threatening facial expressions or words. This occurred even if the person was not paying attention to the content of the first pictures.
“We humans have indeed always been adept at dovetailing our minds and skills to the shape of our current tools and aids. But when those tools and aids start dovetailing back — when our technologies actively, automatically, and continually tailor themselves to us, just as we do to them — then the line between tool and user becomes flimsy indeed.” – Andy Clark
