Accelerating Change 2005:
Artificial Intellligence and Intelligence Amplification
September 16-18th, Stanford University

Forty-five world-class speakers, two debates (fun, heated, informative), 350 amazing attendees, great new technology demos, and many opportunities for networking and conversation with leading thinkers. Which people, ideas and innovations will fuel our next long boom? Come find out.

Speakers include:

Vernor Vinge
    Mathematician
    Computer Scientist
    Author, A Fire Upon the Deep

Ray Kurzweil
    CEO, Kurzweil Technologies
    Award-Winning Inventor
    Author, The Singularity is Near

Moira Gunn
    CEO, Tech Nation Group
    Host, Tech Nation and BioTech Nation

Blake Ross
    Co-Creator, Mozilla Firefox
    Open Source Entrepreneur

Colin Angle
    CEO, iRobot, creators of the Roomba and PackBot

Esther Dyson
    Founder, PC Forum
    Editor, Release 1.0
    Editor at Large, CNET Networks

Peter Thiel
    Co-founder and former CEO, PayPal
    President, Clarium Capital

Philip Rosedale
    CEO, Linden Lab, creators of Second Life

Terry Winograd
    Computer Scientist, Stanford U
    Author, Understanding Computers and Cognition

David Fogel
    CEO, Natural Selection
    Editor, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computing

Robert Hecht-Nielsen
    Computational Neurobiologist
    ECE Professor, UCSD
    Founder, HNC Software.

Harold Morowitz
    Biophysicist, George Mason U
    Author, The Emergence of Everything

Special Events include:

* Interactive demos at Stanford labs
* Future Academy Tutorials Friday
* Tech Night reception and demo expo at SAP Labs, Palo Alto
* Collective Intelligence Dinner, Futuristically Incorrect

Also check out:
* Online ACC2005 Knowledge Base
* Future Academy pre-conference professional development tutorials

Accelerating Change is your community for the most broad minded, foresighted, practical and passionate speakers and participants. Come to understand and make your own extraordinary future. Can you join us this year? Enter “AC2005-FRIENDS” to receive a $50 discount before July 31st.

Rates & Registration

Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005
A study by the Open Net Initiative. [PDF]

China’s Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world. Compared to similar efforts in other states, China’s filtering regime is pervasive, sophisticated, and effective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control. It involves numerous state agencies and thousands of public and private personnel. It censors content transmitted through multiple methods, including Web pages, Web logs, on-line discussion forums, university bulletin board systems, and e-mail messages.

Most recently, China is requiring the registration of all Chinese websites and blogs. Related thread @ Slashdot.

ATLAS is a particle physics experiment that will explore the fundamental nature of matter and the basic forces that shape our universe. The ATLAS detector will search for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy.

A revolutionary machine which can make everything from a cup to a clarinet quickly and cheaply could be in all our homes in the next few years.

Dr Bowyer is working on creating the 3D models needed for a rapid prototype machine to make a copy of itself.

[He] said the machines were a form of Universal Constructor, first proposed theoretically by the mathematician John von Neumann in the 1950s. He also said their progress would be similar to that of a species in nature – as the machines replicated, so their users would vary them to suit their needs, some making larger objects, some more accurate devices and some making devices more quickly.

via Guardian Unlimited

Scientists [from the Virgo Consortium] have recreated a vast segment of the universe inside a computer and written a brief history of time, black holes and galaxy formation.
The Millennium Simulation - the biggest exercise of its kind - required 25 million megabytes of memory.

Max Planck press release
PPARC coverage
Pics & movies

Image represents the large-scale light distribution in the simulation.

via PhysOrg.com and Foresight’s Weekly News Digest (email)

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology and Stanford University are the first to successfully apply genetic nanotechnology using molecular sensors to view changes in brain chemical levels. A newly published study reveals how the nanosensors were introduced into nerve cells to measure the release of the neurotransmitter glutamate, the major brain chemical that increases nerve-cell activity in mammalian brains.

- even at hundreds of degrees below zero

A new form of water has been discovered by physicists in Argonne’s Intense Pulsed Neutron Source (IPNS) Division. Called nanotube water, these molecules contain two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom but do not turn into ice — even at temperatures near absolute zero.

What appeared was “totally different from bulk liquid or ice,” said Kolesnikov. At 8 K, four-coordinated water molecules create an icy lining inside the naturally hydrophobic carbon nanotube. The lining free-floats inside the carbon nanotube with a 0.32 nanometer space all around it because that is as close as nature allows the water to the carbon. “An interior chain is running inside the lining, but compared to bulk water is much more mobile,” Kolesnikov said.

View a short clip (2.7mb mpeg) of a molecular dynamics simulation of nanotube water.

(Photo credit: CJ Burnham, U Houston)