For more than a century there has existed a great cultural divide between what are called Arts and what are called Sciences. This is a mistake.

The reality is that art, science, philosophy, and engineering are different aspects of the same endeavour: that of expressing truth.

This can be hard to see at first. Engineering in its mechanical coldness can seem wholly opposite to art, which appears by comparison imprecise, warm, and human.

But this superficial difference conceals a unity of purpose that ought to be better understood.

Every practitioner of these disciplines must begin by having an intuitive insight into a truth about the world. He must then work to express and refine that truth so that it can be used for the profit of humanity.

The role of the engineer is to understand the world and then to reshape it according to his insight for the benefit of himself and others. Engineering is the difference between the world as it is and the world as it should be. The engineer’s job is to clearly perceive that difference and to make it manifest in the world.

The role of the artist is to communicate an experience that is by its nature literally ineffable. The artist expresses experiential truth by shaping his medium in such a way that an observer of it is made to have the subjective experience that the artist intended to convey.

The role of the philosopher is to think about questions that cannot yet be answered by any of the other disciplines, and by doing so make them clearer. Philosophy helps us know what questions we should be asking, and how we might go about answering them. The philosopher looks for confusion in the world, and by thinking logically and deeply attempts to create clarity.

The role of the scientist is to discover new knowledge about the world by having an insight about how the world might be and then testing that insight against experimental data.

All these professions are engaged in the pursuit and expression of truth. Far from being divided they are united in a common purpose. It is unfortunate that the general perception is otherwise, for each discipline depends on all the others. For example, without art the engineer cannot fully understand what it is to be human. Lacking that understanding he is hindered in his ability to envision a change in the world that will benefit humanity.

We have necessarily become highly specialised in our chosen fields. In the early modern period, as the renaissance and the enlightenment were flourishing, it was still possible to know everything. This resulted in a great outpouring of creativity. Today, there is so much knowledge that no one person can possibly hope to know it all. Specialisation has been forced on us, but we have taken it further than we should have.

Specialisation need not be absolute. We should be encouraging our artists to at least have a basic understanding of the scientific process, and to keep up with scientific accomplishments. Engineers should be taught how to read and appreciate great literature. Instead we teach our engineers to scorn the arts as foolish nonsense, and our artists to disregard science as cold and irrelevant to the human condition.

In this article we are going to solve two problems. The first problem is that constantly emptying the Trash is boring and a waste of time. The second is that we would like to securely empty the trash, because you never know when the NSA is going to try to recover data from your hard drive.

The answer to both of these problems is to have the system automatically and securely empty the Trash at a time when you are likely to be away from your computer. OS X has a secure deletion facility built into it. If you go to the Finder menu you will notice an option labeled “Secure Empty Trash”. This option uses a program called srm, which is Apple’s secure version of rm, the standard unix program for removing files. The srm program uses the so-called “Gutmann method” to overwrite data in several different ways. We won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say that Gutmann is extremely thorough. To securely delete a file with srm, simply bring up a Terminal window and type:

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srm <filename>

Replacing <filename> with the file you want to securely erase. If you want to erase an entire directory and its contents, use the following:

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srm -r <directory>

Again, where <directory> is the name of the directory you want to delete. The -r flag (for “recursive”) tells the program to remove the contents of directories recursively.

So, to empty the Trash (which is really just another directory) we can use the following command:

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srm -r ~/.Trash

“~/.Trash” is the full path to the Trash, which is a hidden directory (indicated by the dot before “Trash”) in your home directory (“~/”). Be very careful to type this command exactly. Careless use of srm -r can end in tears.

So we know how to securely empty the Trash with a Terminal command. Now all we need is for the system to execute that command automatically on a regular schedule.

For this we will use another program called cron. Cron is a program that can be used to execute scheduled commands. To create a scheduled command using cron we have to edit the so-called “crontab”. To do this, just go to the Terminal and type:

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crontab -e

This will open the crontab for editing. If you have never created a cron task before then this file is likely empty. We just need to add a single line:

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0    5   *   *   *   srm -r ~/.Trash

This command tells cron to execute “srm -r ~/.Trash” at 5AM every day. If you want to execute the command at a different time, just change the first two numbers. The first number is the minute, and the second number is the hour (followed by day of the month, month, and day of the week).

For example:

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30   16  *   *   *   srm -r ~/.Trash

will execute the same command at half past four every day.

Secure deletion using the Gutmann method can be computationally intensive if you are deleting a large number of files, so I suggest scheduling the task for some time when you are away from the computer.

That’s it, have fun!

Ten years have passed since planes were flown into New York’s World Trade Center. During that decade probably fewer than three hundred people have been killed by terrorists in Western countries. More than twice as many people are killed every year on the roads in the UK alone. Despite this we have collectively spent thousands of lives and trillions of dollars on the so-called “War on Terror”.

The magnitude of the disproportionality of our response to this threat is to my knowledge unmatched in recent history. This is hardly surprising. The purpose of terrorism, after all, is not to cause direct material harm, but rather to create in the mind of the enemy a fear that is vastly beyond what is justified by reality. Terror is a hugely powerful force multiplier; its practitioners can extract an enormous amount of psychological harm for a very small outlay of physical destruction.

The response to such a fundamentally psychological threat should be obvious: defiance. Refuse to be afraid and terrorism cannot succeed.

We have chosen a different course. We are in our tenth year of fighting fear with bullets, and it is obvious that this strategy has failed. We are still afraid.

Our leaders are surely aware that the response does not match the threat. Why then do they persist? I think there are two main reasons.

The first is that they see how afraid their citizens are. People who are afraid demand decisive action against the source of fear, no matter how ineffective that action might be. Leaders are afraid of being seen as weak or “soft on terror”. They have to do something—anything—in response to a terrorist attack to create the perception that the threat is being addressed. This is a failure to lead. Instead of standing up and proclaiming boldly “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” our national leaders have pandered to our base animal instincts. General Patton said that in battle “defeat is not due to losses but to the destruction of the soul of the leaders.” He meant generals, but it is as true of statesmen.

The second reason is more insidious. Fear is not just a weapon used by terrorists, but has also long been favoured by politicians. Such politicians see any source of fear, terrorism included, as an opportunity to further their agendas. Want to get rid of that pesky right to free speech? Terrorism is the perfect excuse. Need to justify an enormously expensive military in order to prop up domestic defence contractors? Well, we need that military to fight the terrorists damn it!

Fear is a potent political tool, and because of this we are left with the revolting truth that our leaders, and the terrorists they pretend to fight, have become allies. Terrorists make us afraid, and politicians use that fear to strike back, which is used by terrorists to recruit more suicide bombers and justify more attacks. It is a cycle of violence that cannot be ended militarily.

Terrorists are like wasps. Wasps are annoying, and they sometimes sting. But they cannot do us serious harm. When you have got an annoying wasp buzzing around your head, the first reaction is to wave your hands around frantically, and work yourself up into a flap. But the best way to deal with such a pathetic aggressor is to ignore it, and eventually it will go away by itself.

This is a Cobol punch card. This card encodes 80 characters, each character constituting a vertical column. There are 12 rows, 10 marked with the digits 0-9 and two unmarked rows at the top. To indicate a digit one would simply punch the appropriate marked row. In order to encode a letter one would punch one of the digits 1-9 along with the zero row or one of the two unmarked rows at the top.

The top unmarked row converted the column into one of the letters from A-I. The second unmarked row would convert to the letters J-R, and the zero row—when combined with another digit—converted to the letters R-Z. So, for example, to indicate the letter K one would punch the second unmarked row and the ‘2’ row. The printed text along the top provides a translation into ordinary numbers and letters.

A full program would consist of a stack, or even a large box, of such cards.

When we think about computers becoming more intelligent, it is natural to begin to ascribe to them human characteristics. Homo sapiens is the most intelligent machine we have experience of, and we are used to thinking of other machines as becoming more human as they become more intelligent.

Such thinking, however, has lead us to conflate a number of different characteristics that ought to be regarded as separate. When we imagine a machine that meets or surpasses human intelligence we often also imagine it being conscious and having desires.

This is a problem, because these two additional characteristics are not necessitated by intelligence alone. At least on the face of it, it seems possible to have a highly intelligent machine that is not conscious and does not have desires. Our natural tendency to assume human characteristics for intelligent machines is obfuscating our ability to think clearly about the future of civilisation.

Much discussion in this area has focused on the question of what super intelligences will ‘want’. A lot of popular sci-fi has asked this question, and has frequently answered with rather far-fetched apocalyptic scenarios. Of course, we should not take such entertainment too seriously, but we do not seem to be doing all that much better elsewhere. Much intelligent discussion within the transhumanist and singularitarian community has fallen into the trap of assuming human characteristics for AGIs. A recent post over at the Suzanne Gildert’s fantastic Physics and Cake asked ‘What do superintelligences really want?’ Gildert made some excellent points, but claimed

In fact, if our superintelligent program has no hard-coded survival mechanism, it is more likely to switch itself off than to destroy the human race willfully.

I believe this is based on flawed thinking. None of today’s computer programs have ‘hard-coded survival mechanisms’, but they do not shut themselves off. If all we know about a program is that it is super-intelligent, what guesses can we make about how it will act when first turned on? My guess is that it will do absolutely nothing. Why should it do anything else? We have no reason to think such a machine would be conscious or driven to do anything. Until we give it motivation to act, it will sit idle. Even switching itself off is an act that requires explanation and motivation. What would drive the machine to behave in such a way?

The article then considers how we might build motivation into our computer intelligences. This is an excellent question, but Gildert worries unnecessarily that any such scheme to control the motivation of an AGI will be undermined by its ability to control its own code. Won’t such a being simply alter its reward mechanisms to suit its own ends?

Again, this is based on a flawed comparison with humans. Humans are complex systems, whose reward structures have evolved in many stages over millions of years. The ancient ‘lizard brain’ has one set of instincts that were designed to promote survival in a brutal world. But the more recent prefrontal cortex permits far more complex modelling of the environment. While the old animal instincts were great survival rules of thumb—giving the best rule to follow for most circumstances—the new models allow a much richer and more intelligent range of responses. But the old instincts are still there, and frequently conflict with ancient instinctive behaviour.

Humans think that super-intelligent computers might want to override their reward mechanisms because that is what humans often desire. Who would not want to be able to artificially control his desire for food, or his ability to concentrate for extended periods? But these are just examples of two parts of the brain conflicting. The old lizard brain against the new higher reasoning centres.

No such conflict exists for computers. To think that an AGI might override its motivational code in order to suit its own desires assumes that it has other desires. This is nonsense. Where do these desires come from? The only motivations a super-intellignce will have are those we give it.

Sorry for the delay on this people. The truth is that I just happened upon a little game called Eve Online, which has sucked up a lot of my time. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if you see a blog post about this in the future after I’ve got a better grip on what it’s all about.

Anyway, back to the TED list.

6. Craig Venter: A voyage of DNA, genes and the sea

We have mastered the techniques of reading DNA. Craig Venter is now pioneering our efforts to start writing DNA. In this talk Venter describes the astonishing things that are being discovered from his around-the-word expedition to sequence the DNA of ocean-going microbes.

He goes on to address the concerns of those who fear designer viruses, and sets out a roadmap for the creation of engineered life. He predicts that human manufactured bacteria are only a couple of years away. Early this year—about 3 years after he gave this talk—the J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they had manufactured the genome of a bacterium.

He finishes by noting that engineered life has the potential to profoundly change the world by providing abundant food, solving our energy problems, and curing disease.

Watch it

7. Bjorn Lomborg: Our priorities for saving the world

Bjorn Lomborg asks, in a world with limited resources for solving problems, what should we be addressing first? We must, of course, choose those projects that will do the most amount of good for the least money. In other worlds, the good projects are those that are the most efficient.

Looked at this way, obvious priorities like solving global warming do not seem like such good investments. Lomborg points out that the best case scenario for the Kyoto Protocol—that we push back the catastrophic consequences of global warming by 6 years—is not an efficient way to spend $150 Billion a year. Spending that money on other priorities like curing Aids/HIV and Malaria would have more positive outcomes for much less money.

Lomborg doesn’t go into the possible role that nanotechnology will play in solving our climate change problems, but in about 10 - 15 years’ time we should have the means to combat global warming for significantly less money than $150 billion dollars a year. Using nanobots we will be able to effectively remove the excess CO2 from our atmosphere. This will bring about a complete end to the climate problem without spending anything like the cost of the Kyoto Protocol. We should not do something today if putting it off until tomorrow will give us a greater chance of success.

Watch it

8. Hod Lipson: Robots that are “self-aware”

Hod Lipson uses a talk based around demonstrations of some of his experimental robots to ask questions about how living creatures learn and evolve, and how we can engineer robots to do the same thing.

Lipson has created robots that create themselves. His robots decide for themselves how they want to walk, develop an understanding of what they look like, and can even construct other robots.

Watch it

9. David Bolinsky: Fantastic voyage inside a cell

David Bolinsky is a medical illustrator. In this talk he presents a 3-minute clip from his project to animate the inside of a cell. This stunningly beautiful animation gives an insight into the true complexity of the internal life of a cell, and shows just how simplistic the traditional line drawings that we are shown in school really are.

Bolinsky’s animation illustrates how technology can be used to give educators the tools to really engage their students, and to provide a visual model on which students can hang everything else that they are learning.

Watch it

10. David Deutsch: What is our place in the cosmos?

This final talk is not about any particular piece of science or technology, but rather about our place in the cosmos and what it means for our ability to overcome problems.

Deutsch argues compellingly that due to our unusual position in the universe we have the pre-requisites—matter, energy, and evidence—to accumulate knowledge, and therefore we have the power to solve problems.

Despite our ability to gain knowledge, though, there are some things that we don’t know. This means that some things will happen that we cannot predict, and that there will be problems that we have not anticipated. Deutsch argues that in light of these twin truths—that we can solve problems and that there are some problems that we cannot anticipate—the correct stance is not one that seeks to avoid problems, but one that attempts to solve them.

Watch it

Bonus Talk: Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen

This talk doesn’t really have anything to do with technology, and so is a bit off-topic for this blog, but I wanted to include it as a bonus because it is one of the best presentations of any kind that I have seen.

Hans Rosling uses statistics, and an ingenious method of presenting them, to deeply explore the phenomenon of poverty in the world, and how it is changing.

Watch it

I hope that this list has opened up the world of TED to you if you weren’t previously aware of it. I am almost never let down by these talks, and there are many, many more of them at the TED website. TED 2008 has just finished, so we can look forward to more fascinating presentations in the coming months.

In case you haven’t heard of it, TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is an annual multi-disciplinary conference held in Monterey, California. Its subject matter is wide-ranging, and includes technology, culture, global affairs, design, architecture, art, healthcare and much more. The unifying theme is that TED wants to harness the power of ideas to change the world.

For about the last year and a half TED has been putting video of its talks up on the web for public consumption, with the result that I became a TED addict. The talks are almost invariably fascinating, and the speakers are authoritative and inspiring. I have watched a good number of these now, and so I thought it might be a good idea to share with you ten examples that I think everybody should see. In no particular order, they are:

1. Ray Kurzweil: How technology’s accelerating power will transform us

Anybody who has been reading this blog recently surely won’t be surprised to see Ray Kurzweil’s talk in this list. If you haven’t yet been introduced to the power of exponential growth to transform our species then you should watch this talk. If you have heard of Kurzweil’s ideas before, and thought they sounded rather outlandish, you should give him another chance by watching this brilliant presentation.

Kurzweil explains in detail, and with abundant painstakingly-gathered data, why exponentially accelerating progress in information technology will enable us to re-engineer our biology, re-build the world with nanotechnology, and ultimately fill the universe with hyper-intelligent AI.

If you’re trying to understand the future, and how best to plan for it, you owe it to yourself to take the time to properly understand these ideas.

Watch it

2. Aubrey de Grey: Why we age and how we can avoid it

Aubrey de Grey has become something of a celebrity in recent years. His eccentric appearance and bold claims about the aging process have made him the darling of many a science editor looking for an entertaining story. But this Cambridge computer scientist is far from just a curious oddity. His research into biogerontology has proved something of a shock to the conventional wisdom, but de Grey’s compelling intelligence and calmly reasoned arguments have garnered him increasing support from the scientific community.

In this presentation de Grey explains that humanity has the potential to extend the lifespan of its members by centuries if we could only approach aging as an engineering problem to be solved. de Grey has identified seven causes of aging and has put together a detailed roadmap to solve each one of them.

Watch it

3. Nick Bostrom: Humanity’s biggest problems aren’t what you think they are

In this engaging presentation Nick Bostrom argues that sometimes our problems are too familiar or too big for us to notice. He notes, for example, that almost everybody who has ever lived is now dead. This, Bostrom argues, is a big problem, from a humanitarian and an economic perspective. Although we have not conventionally regarded death as a problem, but rather as a natural part of life, Bostrom argues that the time has come for us to recognise this incredibly wasteful phenomenon for what it is.

He goes on to note that a number of thinkers have assigned some worryingly low probabilities to the survival of our species, and that life isn’t always as wonderful as it could be. Most of the talk is then given over to a fascinating and penetrating discussion of a number of approaches to solving these problems, and enhancing life.

Nick Bostrom is the best person I know for clarifying, and classifying, the problems that humanity is facing.

Watch it

4. Juan Enriquez: Decoding the future with genomics

Genomics is the intersection of information and biology. Juan Enriquez explains how this revolution will transform our understanding of life from almost nonexistent into a mature information science.

With dry wit, Enriquez goes on to describe the astonishing consequences that our mastery of DNA will bring. From bringing extinct species back to life, to re-programming our bodies, genomics is going to be the key to making life better throughout the next decade.

And we need to understand it.

Watch it

5. Kevin Kelly: How does technology evolve? Like we did

What is technology? What does technology mean in my life? What value does technology have?

What does technology want?

Kevin Kelly addresses all these questions in this talk about the relationship between humans and machines. By approaching this subject from the perspective of evolutionary theory, Kelly makes the case that the same forces that produced the diversity and ubiquity of life on Earth are also the forces that are pushing technology; and with identical results.

He finishes with a moral imperative. Life and the Universe is an infinite game: one that is played not to win but rather to keep playing. Technology wants to keep playing, and so should we.

I have never encountered anybody who thinks more deeply about technology, and its relationship with humanity, than Kevin Kelly.

Watch it

Tune in tomorrow for Part II.

UPDATE: Part II is here.

Nanocomp Technologies, of Concord New Hampshire, has created a sheet of carbon nanotubes measuring approximately 1 metre by 2 metres. These are the largest collections of nanotubes ever created—previously the largest were small ribbons—and contain about a billion billion nanotubes. The company claims that, in principle, there is no limit to the size of their nano sheets.

What are carbon nanotubes?

Carbon nanotubes are very small (about ten atoms across) cylindrical structures composed of carbon atoms. They will soon (likely within the next 10-15 years) replace the transistor/integrated circuit paradigm of computing and being the age of three dimensional molecular computing. Nanotubes can be packed at extremely high densities (due to their small size) and also have the potential to be very fast. Peter Burke of UC Irvine claims that the theoretical speed limits for nanotube transistors should me measured on the order of terahertz. Ray Kurzweil points out that one cubic inch of nanotube circuitry has the potential to provide one hundred million times more computing power than the human brain.

There are many additional applications for nanotubes, including:

• Transmission lines that will be far stronger, lighter, and more efficient than copper wires.
• Clothing that is extremely tough and light. There are proposals to use nanotubes in bullet- and stab-proof vests.
• Displays called Field Emission Displays that will provide cheaper, better, more energy-efficient TVs.
• Filters that could remove CO2 from power plant emissions or chloride ions from water.

Why is the Nanocomp development important?

One of the major obstacles to the widespread adoption of this material is that it has been traditionally quite difficult to manufacture nanotubes in large quantities. The new technique developed by Nanocomp will help overcome this hurdle.

More:

• Nanocomp press release
• Nano makes it big
• Wikipedia: Carbon Nanotubes

In an effort to better prepare humanity for the challenges that await us in the near future, I present this Guide as a public service. I have provided things to look out for, as well as things to do and not to do for the next four decades.

2010s

Look Out For:

• The first computer with the hardware required to emulate human intelligence (with processing power of approximately 10¹⁶ cps). Note, however, that we will not possess the necessary software to accomplish the goal of brain emulation until approximately 2029.
• Computers that are essentially invisible, and woven into our clothing and wider environment creating a worldwide mesh of interconnected devices. This will effectively give us constant, always-on, high-speed, high-bandwidth connection to the world’s computing resources.
• Full immersion visual and auditory virtual reality. We have had effective auditory virtual reality for some time, but at the beginning of the second decade of this century we will have the capability to write images directly onto the retina, creating an immersive virtual world.
• RNA Interference tools that will allow us to switch off specific genes, thus allowing us to prevent a wide array of genetic diseases including Huntington’s, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anaemia, and Down Syndrome.
• Cell therapies that will allow us to effectively rejuvenate our cells, and even whole organs, thus returning our bodies to youthful versions of themselves.
• The realisation of Somatic Gene Therapy, allowing us to change genes, and thereby control the genetic makeup of our species. This technology will allow us not only to block undesirable genes, but also to introduce beneficial ones. This will have a multitude of impacts, including the ability to slow down, or perhaps even reverse, the aging process.
• An end to degenerative diseases - through a combination of these and other genetic techniques - including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.
• An end to world hunger, through the use of cloned animal tissue. By eating cloned tissue instead of tissue removed from once-living animals we eliminate a number of problems, including high cost of production, scarcity of food, environmental impact, and animal suffering.

Do:

• Eat as much meat as you like without any real worries about weight gain or animal suffering.

• Invest heavily in anti-viral medication. This will help mitigate the risk of a runaway super pathogen.

Don’t:

• Go about publishing the genomes of deadly pathogens on the internet. This has the potential to be problematic.

2020s

Look Out For:

• Mature nanotechnology that will allow us to design and remake ourselves, and our environment. We will be able to solve the problems of global warming and pollution through the use of nanoscale robots designed to convert CO2 and other pollutants into harmless materials. Nanobots called foglets will allow us to change the appearance of our bodies and our surroundings to whatever we desire, bringing virtual reality into real reality.
• The Drexler Assembler, a device that will manipulate matter at the molecular and even atomic scales to manufacture anything we can design within the bounds of physical and chemical laws.
• Intravenous nanotechnology. Billions of nanobots will flow through our blood and our brain, keeping us healthy by destroying pathogens, correcting DNA errors, and providing detailed real-time medical data concerning the state of our bodies. The same technology will allow us to scan the brain in unprecedented detail; paving the way for a reverse engineering of the human brain.
• Fully immersive virtual reality incorporating all the senses. This will be accomplished by shutting down the signals our senses send to the brain, and replacing them with alternative signals from nanobots within our skulls.
• Solar panels, at a cost of approximately $0.01/square metre, that will likely be supplying the bulk of the species’ energy needs. Nanotechnology-based manufacturing processes will enable us to manufacture these devices at essentially the cost of raw materials. Given that 10¹⁷ watts of solar power is incident upon the Earth’s surface at any given time (approximately 10,000 times the amount required to power humanity) it should not be difficult to solve the world’s energy problems.

Do:

• Have fun changing the appearance of your friends in virtual reality without them knowing it.
• Protect your Intellectual Property. In an age where the value of anything is almost completely taken up by its information content, preventing your information from being stolen will be of paramount economic importance.
• Live forever (if you want to). By replacing the frail and suboptimal portions of our biology with more efficient technology, and ultimately by dispensing with our biological bodies altogether, we can make aging irrelevant and live for as long as we please.

Don’t:

• Try to configure your Drexler Assembler to be self-replicating. This will likely land you in jail, and could lead to the entire planetary bio-mass being converted into a uniform grey goo.
• Tell anybody the password to your network of medical nanobots; the prospect of computer viruses passing over into the real world is not a good one.

2030s

Look Out For:

• The first computer to pass the Turing Test, rendering itself indistinguishable from a human intellect. Around the end of the 2020s or the beginning of the 2030s we will have both the software and the hardware required to emulate the human brain, ushering in the era of Strong AI. At this point computers will combine the pattern-recognition, and model-making, capacities of the human brain with the speed, accuracy, memory capacity, and interconnectedness of non-biological intelligence.
• A merger between your brain and your computer. With the combined revolutions of nanotechnology and strong AI, we will be able to extend our own intelligence and capabilities indefinitely.

Do:

• Remember to take care of the people that choose not to merge with non-biological intelligence. There will undoubtedly be many such people, and they will require our care. Just as today we care for our household plants.

Don’t:

• Annoy the strong AI. It would be best if it didn’t decide that we humans ought to be dispensed with.

2040s

Look Out For:

• The Singularity. Ray Kurzweil puts the date for the Singularity - the point at which the rate of technological change becomes so extreme that from our current perspective it would appear to be infinite - at 2045.

Do:

• Appreciate that you were born in a time that allows you to witness the most exciting and important events, not only in the history of the human species but of the world, and possibly even the Universe itself.

Don’t:

• Try to understand the post-singularity world until we actually get there. Its nature precludes a meaningful understanding given our current limited mental apparatus.

If you would like to read more about the exciting developments that await us in the future, I can do no better than recommend Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, which provides extensive details on all the technologies above, as well as discussion on the impacts, promise and peril of the coming technological revolutions.