tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-343031432012-01-11T22:22:28.212-08:00Reading Ray Kurzweil's books on the Singularity has inspired this organization of articles, thoughts and conversations. I have often sent my friends articles that I find interesting, especially when they relate to breakthrough technologies. This is one place I can point my friends to as evidence of either current research or especially businesses profitting from business models that are inevitable steps leading to the Singularity.Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.comBlogger431100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-3297211713103301752009-04-01T14:54:00.000-07:002009-04-01T14:56:57.053-07:00

This is a great idea! Things are changing so rapidly, one must continuously seek out the technological changes that could completely wipe your business model. http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/09_12/b4124044178284.htmRise of the MachineMarch 12, 2009, 5:00PM ESTSingularity U.: It's No Sci-Fi FantasyThe new university, named after a futuristic vision, is drawing a lot of serious

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-39863915979759225722009-04-01T14:45:00.000-07:002009-04-01T14:52:38.765-07:00

Without putting any ethical judgements on the implementations, this is a pretty exciting article (from last month's The Economist). The uses of computer vision is advancing rapidly and its really interesting how many real world uses its finding. Makes me think of Minority Report. Sure wouldn't want a job having a computer monitoring me though!! Check it out...http://www.economist.com/science/tq/

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-59840182315143914352009-04-01T14:39:00.000-07:002009-04-01T14:47:13.193-07:00

I think this is more significant that some obscure article in Scientific American. The fact that a simple carbon nanotube can function as a complete radio (sans power and a speaker) is just plain wild. There are many great discoveries to unfold at the nano scale!"A bare-bones radio, Zettl knew, has four essential parts: an antenna that picks up the electromagnetic signal; a tuner that selects the

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-18398031271816469422009-04-01T14:37:00.000-07:002009-04-01T14:38:58.181-07:00

I know its been almost two years since I've posted something here. But I figured, why not! Its still a kind of fun place to put some interesting articles I've read. Even if I'm not diligent, I hope people enjoy some of the articles I bring together.

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-71610451843119251162007-05-29T14:05:00.001-07:002007-05-29T14:08:58.144-07:00

I listened to this on the way to work the other day. Very interesting that people can make a living playing games and selling the virtual treasure that comes with it. There is controversy with it as those people playing the game for fun face inflation from these gold farmers. Just one more career that exists entirely online! Listen to it here from NPR:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-35428281539573187222007-05-03T13:01:00.000-07:002007-05-03T13:14:02.963-07:00

Catching up on my Scientific American subscription had me reading this article from Feb. '07 this morning. It talks about BCI's (Brain-Computer Interfaces). A group is studying them in rats. It does say that we have modeled some portions of the brain so accurately, that the silicon replicas give 95% of the same outputs, given a set a of inputs, as the actual brain does (similar things have

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-53452026858808718202007-05-02T14:01:00.000-07:002007-05-02T14:04:22.804-07:00

Interesting blurb about how law enforcement is going to need to advance to handle "virtual crimes".APRIL 16, 2007Up FrontEdited by Michael ArndtWEB WATCH Calling In The Virtual G-Men"The seedier side of Second Life—the online world where users spend real money to shop as well as gamble and misbehave—is coming under federal scrutiny. Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual world, recently

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-79908784692913298872007-05-02T13:41:00.000-07:002007-05-02T13:50:47.380-07:00

Interesting to think how close this is. They haven't begun human trials, but just the idea of robotics in our hearts is exciting. Although this is tethered to a human for surgical purposes, the idea of a small robot crawling though your veins to fix things is just the beginning. Remove the tether to a human, make it wireless, give it some AI, and you've got a full-time doctor helping you out.

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-46469416581563882872007-04-21T11:24:00.000-07:002007-04-21T11:58:50.049-07:00

Here's a very interesting article sent to me about metacognition - "the ability to think about your thoughts, to engage in self-reflection, to introspect." It describes a few clever tests that show significant evidence of such self-awareness in animals, comatose humans and even computer programs. It challenges this last bastion of human uniqueness. Perhaps animals and future computers may one day

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-64756683320585601292007-03-28T11:36:00.000-07:002007-03-28T11:45:48.865-07:00

Great article. Makes me think about Minority Report and Blink. Do we have free will? The laws and rules of privacy are only going to get more relevant. Sent to me by Gayle (thanks!). Check it out! http://www.slate.com/id/2161936/

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-4896879405813214972007-03-28T11:33:00.000-07:002007-03-28T11:36:53.326-07:00

A nice 5 minute video that has a cool perspective. Some great numbers to make you think. A good friend of mine sent this - thanks Ardi! I quote a number of these all the time. Just like the fact that China has more honor students than we have students all together. Even if China and India have lousy education percentiles compared to industrialized countries, they must realize their sheer

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-365974743146164602007-02-22T17:11:00.000-08:002007-03-28T11:46:50.831-07:00

New systems may allow people to record everything they see and hear--and even things they cannot sense--and to store all these data in a personal digital archiveBy Gordon Bell and Jim GemmellI’ve been reading and hearing about the possibility of recording your entire life. Every second, every word and every image. It just takes cheap cameras (still and video), microphones, storage, and most

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-59332954691279521362007-02-22T17:05:00.000-08:002007-03-28T11:47:54.556-07:00

"The creator of the PalmPilot and the Treo isn't just making another gadget. He's attempting to fuse silicon and gray matter to produce the ultimate intelligent machine."Here’s an interesting article I read today. From what I know, I agree that Numata seems quite aggressive. The human brain has many different regions which all work together in a myriad of ways. The neocortex is agreeably a very

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-42992643986476444272007-02-08T18:08:00.000-08:002006-12-17T14:46:38.850-08:00

I've always enjoyed seeing interdisciplinary discoveries. When I was getting my undergraduate degree, they were just starting to link different disciplines together in the same course. Two classes that I took that weren't linked, but I took in the same quarter and were Physical Psychology and Epistemology. I was often utilizing information from Physical Psychology in the Epistemology class.

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-91291557120997292692006-12-17T14:26:00.000-08:002006-12-17T14:46:38.882-08:00

I have been an adamant player of the Civilization series of games. I borrowed my brother’s computer just to play Civilization IV a few months ago as mine was too old and slow (I’ve been holding out to get a screaming new system, optimized for Vista). I have a great idea for the next version of this game. It would be an excellent way to do four things:1. A framework for the tech tree (both past

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-40634943259020747572006-12-04T12:09:00.000-08:002006-12-04T12:12:53.232-08:00

This is a short update on web technologies. It references the Semantic Web and other visions of the next step on the web. I've never heard of FOAF files, so I think I'll look into those. Sounds like a great idea!http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=17845

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-52574552563199017752006-12-04T11:35:00.000-08:002006-12-04T11:55:55.444-08:00

This article discusses a new method of machine translation that seems significantly superior to the two primary methods used today. It is able to cut human translation speeds by one half (to achieve accuracy of a human translator), but it also does very well before it is fine tuned by a human. It requires more processing power than current machine translators, but as processing power improves

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-50218862032855266972006-12-01T10:18:00.000-08:002006-12-01T10:21:02.951-08:00

"43 percent of Internet users who are members of online communities say that they “feel as strongly” about their virtual community as they do about their real-world communities." And people don't beleive that many people will choose to spend significant amounts of their waking lives in virtual worlds?! Considering how rudimentary online communities and virtual worlds are today, and yet 43% of

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-67497316655918082592006-12-01T09:53:00.000-08:002006-12-01T10:02:23.417-08:00

Apparently "a third of all stock trades in the United States were driven by automatic algorithms last year." I personally know day traders and this article states there are tools for people to easy create rules. The cool thing this article is talking about, though, is that the rules are now being created, implemented, and altered based on their success, entirely by computers - "neural networks"

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-44652943293319251282006-11-29T16:45:00.000-08:002006-11-29T17:11:59.436-08:00

I've spoken to people about cochlear implants a lot lately. Its the first sense that we've created an FDA approved implant for. They are relatively new, but over 100,000 people as of 2005 have them. As soon as a human sense is subject to the exponential curve of all technology, one can just imagine the potential. These are by no means a perfect replacement for normal hearing - yet! But as our

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-7921082289195894922006-11-29T16:16:00.000-08:002006-11-29T16:30:17.394-08:00

OK, so my blog is starting to look like a Second Life promotion! It just seems more and more likely that this company has the kind of vision necessary to create one of the first virtual worlds that will grab a mass audience - rather than just gamers. Here IBM is committing $100 million in a new business unit to explore the potential of new technologies like virtual worlds in commerce, e-learning,

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-90743868348756829392006-11-23T11:14:00.000-08:002006-11-23T12:18:58.892-08:00

Here's another Second Life article from BusinessWeek. It is discussing what major corporations are doing, why, and what it's doing for them. I keep pressing that this is just a precursor of what's to come!And here is a particularly important quote from the article (which has more information online if you have a BusinessWeek subscription):Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, says the supporting

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-66399326632274954452006-11-22T09:18:00.000-08:002006-11-22T09:38:40.481-08:00

I've written a number of times about Second Life. This article is interesting and could potentially raise awareness of the potential of real world grey goo from future nanotechnologies. The other interesting aspect of the article is about a program someone introduced called CopyBot that can copy any object in Second Life. Since many people are actually making a living or earning some money

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-66776177364539254482006-11-20T10:38:00.000-08:002006-11-20T10:43:43.323-08:00

One major area of concern over new technologies is the tempting use of it to create a surveillance state. As I listed in a previous blog about what people think will come about in 10 years, they listed the ability of people to record their entire life - video and sound. Well, the same is true for government - they will be able to record all public areas (and I imagine private ones, legally or not

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-65851004073977221022006-11-06T20:52:00.000-08:002006-11-06T20:56:20.602-08:00

Very interesting article discussing the current state of robotics in our military, where it is going, and even a discussion of the ethical and social impacts (that both are and are not taking place). Some people may not realize how quickly this transformation is taking place. I remember a Wall Street Journal article discussing a Stealth Bomber pilot taking off from the US (Kansas or something

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-10128792751251092082006-11-06T13:46:00.001-08:002006-11-06T20:26:41.056-08:00

Interesting article about a symposium of major corporations about computing in 2016. I can't help but think they aren't going to disclose anything revolutionary, or else they might loose their competitive lead. But some interesting perspectives nonetheless. Here's a few interesting quotes from it:“Biology, Dr. Karp said, is now understood as an information science. And scientists seek to describe

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-19854842112409174682006-11-04T20:49:00.000-08:002006-11-04T21:03:53.326-08:00

For some reason it hasn't been posted on Business 2.0's website, but the printed article is very interesting. Crowdcasting is like Donald Trump's show, The Apprentice, sans reality TV. You get a bunch of MBA teams to work on a specific problem in a competition and big league companies (e.g. , Hilton, Eli Lilly) get to tap into young bright minds. I would love to participate in one of these. I

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-4028981233031849032006-11-02T22:12:00.000-08:002006-11-20T10:45:21.601-08:00

I've sent this Scientific American, article wirtten by Tim Berners-Lee, to many of friends, including one recently interviewing at companies asking him what Web 2.0 means to him. It really gives a great roadmap to the web. Web services are starting to make the web more friendly for the kinds of computer agents they discuss. I just read an article in Computer Weekly about how these computer agents

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-7287062104042127542006-11-02T21:50:00.000-08:002006-11-02T21:57:58.612-08:00

Here's a pretty cool breakthrough. I think I've blogged about Ciberkinetics, but if I haven't you should check these guys out: http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/index.jspThough while Cyberkinetics is connecting brains to computers (to control keyboards and electronic wheelchairs as starting points), these University of Washington (go Dawgs!!) researchers are connecting nerves to other

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-40648853994810373642006-11-02T21:34:00.000-08:002006-11-02T21:40:56.346-08:00

Some Penn State researches have "taught" a computer to identify images with a 330 word vocabulary. By creating words from an image, whole image collections can easily be searchable without the need to manually tag each image. The software seems to work pretty well already, but will obviously need to get a little more "education"!Selected Quote:"By inputting tens of thousands of images, we have

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-34779184658758764232006-11-02T15:39:00.000-08:002006-11-02T16:00:30.871-08:00

I saw this short but great segment on CNN last month about David Cope, a professor of Music at UC Santa Barbara. He spent 7 years to write 20,000 lines of code that uses A.I. to create musical composures based on the styles of others. Some people have been having problems with computers generating music that's actually artful, as it symbolizes a revered area of "human only" that is being ceded

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-62088455624526470902006-10-30T17:00:00.000-08:002006-10-30T17:05:49.309-08:00

Keys, cards, passports and PINs could soon be a thing of the past as biometric technology makes our bodies the only passwords we need. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6070576.stm

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-3758906644216655372006-10-30T16:48:00.000-08:002006-10-30T16:54:41.063-08:00

Interesting article about paradigm shifts in military revolutions. How the ability to translate technological revolutions (gunpowder, industrial, information, etc.) into military strengths have been significant factors in the change of power on the global stage. I guess with our $71 billion budget for pure R&D of new weapons, we're definitely spending the dough, but the key will be what

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-14549431031352531972006-10-27T09:45:00.000-07:002006-10-27T09:49:54.406-07:00

Here's a little more on ETFs, as they are relatively new and risky, but if you want to invest in a narrow area of technology, are a pretty cool investment option. They even have them for specific diseases!BusinessWeekMAY 5, 2006Frontiers of InvestingBy Marc HoganETFs: Sliced, Diced, and Razor-ThinThese exchange-traded funds are super-specialized and promise new opportunities. But are they right

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-19668604401892203862006-10-27T09:22:00.000-07:002006-10-27T09:32:49.630-07:00

If you have any belief in the future of GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology & Robotics - Robtics is really just Artificial Intelligence), then here is one way you can profit from your beliefs. Some quotes from the article below:"...nanotechnology will increase to $2.6 trillion in 2014, equal to about 15% of global manufacturing output, from $13 billion in 2004."BusinessWeekAPRIL 17, 2006Market ViewsBy

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-55403187642670292712006-10-26T14:02:00.000-07:002006-10-26T14:07:58.471-07:00

Interesting snippet - and its quoting our local University of Washington - go Dawgs!!. A good friend of mine and I have often discussed how being the quintessential positive thinker may not always be best path to happiness and success. Here's a little scientific evidence supporting our thoughts (at least for creative thoughts, so I suppose you'd need to make a connection between creative

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-42355919909356999912006-10-26T09:19:00.000-07:002006-10-26T09:30:20.734-07:00

I've often said the technology is all there for language translations - voice to text, text language conversion, then text to voice, but this allows mouthing words to text, text to language conversation, etc. Of course the language conversion piece of these systems is the part that needs the most work, but it is continually getting better!http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6083994.stm'Tower of

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-1161625273721659382006-10-23T10:35:00.000-07:002006-10-23T10:41:36.207-07:00

Albeit rudimentary, if these crude images can be seen by blind people, I think it is nothing short of amazing. Since this retinal implant is silicon based, it is subject to the exponential gains of all technology. One can easily imagine the retinal implants of Lt. Jordi from Star Trek. Only in the show, it was thought of a handicap, with special benefits of seeing in different spectrums, but

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-1161623406256422742006-10-23T10:01:00.000-07:002006-10-27T11:08:43.962-07:00

Very interesting article. The book this article quotes looks like its short and worth a quick read. I've often said that a great civilization has a good balance between science and philosophy (as my belief is that they are mutally exclusive). As our religious beliefs have waned (and religion is just an organized philosophy, while politics are the indoctrination of one's philosophical beliefs), it

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-1161622860753615222006-10-23T09:58:00.000-07:002006-10-23T10:41:36.033-07:00

Here’s another interesting article about Second Life in the New York Times today that I read over lunch. I was talking to Chris, Keith and Mel about this on Saturday at lunch (among other things!). It just keeps growing and getting more and more recognition. Now more than 30 well known brands (e.g. Reebok, Nike, Nissan, Amazon and American Apparel) have real estate in this virtual world and are

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-1160089159710626952006-10-05T15:59:00.000-07:002006-10-23T10:41:35.967-07:00

A Dystopian, Luddite PerspectiveThe dystopian, Luddite perspective of the Wachowski brothers can be seen in its view of the birth of artificial intelligence as the source of all evil. In one of Morpheus' "sermons," he tells Neo (Keanu Reeves) that "in the early 21st century, all of mankind united and marveled at our magnificence as we gave birth to AI [artificial intelligence], a singular

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-1158102148354635102006-09-12T16:01:00.000-07:002006-10-23T10:41:35.898-07:00

I know I've sent some of you some information on Second Life in the past (bottom of this email), but I just read a litte piece about them again this morning (article just below). Besides Starwood Hotels, "American Apparel, Universal Music, and even the American Cancer Society have already set up shop in this cyberworld to push their brands". Keep an eye on this operation and others like it...its

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34303143.post-1158102009021746342006-09-12T15:57:00.000-07:002006-10-23T10:41:35.809-07:00

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982010.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2006/id20060307_123989.htm?chan=search http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/03/the_future_of_credit_cards_ear.html

Colin d'Hondthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03663153464447852253noreply@blogger.com0