The Foresight Institute, the world’s premier and original nanotech think tank, has announced its 2004-2005 expansion plan, aka Stage 2: Implementation, composed of three related efforts: Direct Research, Legislative Action, and Community Building.

Next comes Stage 2: Implementation—making molecular nanotechnology (MNT) happen sooner rather than later.

Recent headlines in nanotech and quantum computing:

NEC develops world’s smallest transistor

IBM lets polymers assemble nanoscale structures
[this ‘diblock copolymer’ method has been demonstrated before]

Spooky bits propel quantum computer

Physicists Stop Polarized Light, Create Bit of Quantum Memory

It’s fascinating to watch the simultaneous ‘discovery’ or ‘emergence’ of knowledge in these two fields. With increasing numbers of researchers and intense developmental pressure, this phenomena is shifting from a puzzling rarity to a subconscious expectation. We are witnessing an extraordinary collective thrust into new developmental phase spaces.

There’s an interesting and somewhat contradictory piece on Benoit Mandelbrot from the latest Economist Technology Quarterly [12.6.03 : pp35-36]. After praising Mandelbrot for his widespread public recognition [rare for a mathematician] and highlighting his major career moves and accomplishments, the article makes this single, bold claim:

But the study of chaos is now somewhat discredited, having failed to make any useful progess.

The author then jumps behind Mandelbrot by using the mathematician’s proclaimed avoidance of topics “in which the data are not abundant and proof cannot be provided” to label chaos theory and self-organising complexity as “vogue” and “trendy.”

This curious and abrupt dismissal, as if chaos were taboo pseudo-science, is moreover preceeded by exhaltations of Mandelbrot’s transformational insights.

In 1993, when he won the Wolf Prize for Physics, he was cited for “having changed our view of nature.”

Mandelbrot: I overturned a horn of plenty in which all kinds of things humanity has always known were located.

Thus the “father of fractals” revolutionized our views on science and complexity, exposing the underlying organization of nature. So when exactly was chaos theory discredited? [Or perhaps the author meant abandoned instead? Even then the claim is inaccurate.] According to the article, the Mandelbrot set was first printed as a large colorful fractal in 1980. Supposedly 23 years was enough time for a full investigation, and now we are almost certain that it’s bogus, a practically useless tool. For the sake of consistency, let’s not mention the increasing penetration of chaotic dynamics in the fields of medical biology, neuroscience [see W.J. Freeman], evolutionary computation, nano-scale engineering, fluid and aero-dynamics, population dynamics, social networks, etc etc etc. At least we can rest-assured that next-generation nanobots will be logical entities with predictable, linear behavioral patterns.

local cosmic singularities

“We might be wrong, but it looks to us more natural than all other existing explanations,” says Tomaras. The team hopes that detailed analysis of future Centauro-like events, as well as computer simulations of mini black holes exploding, will help to resolve the issue.

If they are right, the consequences would be stunning. As well as proving that tiny black holes exist, it would unveil hidden dimensions in our universe.

It would also show that the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva will soon be able to churn out black holes to order. Particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, due to start in 2007, would have enough energy to create thousands of black holes every day.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Nano is President’s Prefix of the Day

The Smalltimes staff, including Nanobot blogger Howard Lovy, assembled this piece on the new $3.7 billion ’21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act’

Foresight Institute President Christine Peterson said that while the bill is a step forward for “generic nanotechnologies,” it suffers from a “lack of focus” on the bottom-up molecular manufacturing first envisioned by physicist Richard Feynman in 1959. “An earlier version of the bill called for a study of the Feynman goal, but even this was viewed as too ambitious and was deleted by entrenched interests,” Peterson said. “That’s sad – immense payoffs for medicine, the environment and national security are being delayed by politics.”

photo report on Wearable Media Fashion Show 2003

…for this site:

-hovercraft robot servant future predictions
-holographic universe quantum consciousness
-cyborg democracy
-incipient posthuman
-neural prosthetics
-neural networks
-list of big thinkers
-quantum theology

The Final Energy Crisis

How much do you know about peak oil? As this book introduction unabashedly reminds us, we have entered the oil end-game. How can we relate this stark realization to accelerating computational complexity and the developmental spiral?

(Image credit: Singularity Watch)

“It’s not about technology any more.” Sure it’s not.

Whether they’re called innovators, early fanatics or mavens, there’s typically a group of influential pioneers who first start using a new product. Next comes a group of fast followers who trail the pioneers and then gradually the mainstream masses follow behind them. At the end of the pattern are the laggards and technophobes — the types who still think cell phones cause brain cancer and don’t understand how fax machines make that piece of paper fly through the telephone line.

The Opte Project… the pattern looks strangely familiar

Search internet maps with TouchGraph

How Much Information 2003, a new report from Berkeley

How much new information is created each year? Newly created information is stored in four physical media – print, film, magnetic and optical – and seen or heard in four information flows through electronic channels – telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet. This study of information storage and flows analyzes the year 2002 in order to estimate the annual size of the stock of new information recorded in storage media, and heard or seen each year in information flows.

Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. Ninety-two percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks.

Information flows through electronic channels — telephone, radio, TV, and the Internet — contained almost 18 exabytes of new information in 2002, three and a half times more than is recorded in storage media. Ninety eight percent of this total is the information sent and received in telephone calls - including both voice and data on both fixed lines and wireless.

…on transhumanism @ marginwalker

They call it transhumanism. The melding of technology with the flesh. Some say that by the end of this millenium we’ll have left our human forms for the hive mind of a global network of humanity. In small steps we may slowly see this reality take shape in our lifetimes.