This Blog has Moved to NovaSpivack.com

Russia Plans to Mine Helium-3 On Moon

The head of the Russian space corporation, Energia, has been quoted as stating that Russia is planning on setting up a permanent mining base on the moon to mine Helium-3. Helium-3 is a non-radioactive isotope of helium that is rare on earth but plentiful on the moon. It is an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion. It can also be used to make next-generation weapons. Some have predicted a new energy frontier focused on helium-3 in the coming century.

Internet Game Provides Breakthrough in Predicting Epidemics

Where's George, an internet game in which people track the spread of dollar bills as they move around, has yielded an unexpected breakthrough in the science of predicting the spread of epidemics.

China About to "Strike Hard" Against Civil Unrest

Chinese officials are preparing to "strike hard" against civil unrest. Are they planning another Tiannamen-style massacre? There is something fundamentally wrong with a government that has to torture, repress, and murder it's own people (and its neighboring peoples) on a regular, systematic basis in order to maintain stability. China isn't the only country guilty of such crimes, but they are certainly the most visible. As one of the largest, and most important, nations on earth -- and as a key member of the global community -- China really should hold itself to a different standard. Just because protestors are comprised of disenfranchised peasants, workers, students and ethnic minorities does not mean that their lives and causes are without value. In fact, the whole point of the Maoist revolution was ostensibly to liberate the lower classes from oppression -- so I find it very ironic that the regime that grew out of that revolution is now actively oppressing the very same people it was formed to liberate. Worse still is that the Chinese government -- with or without Google's support -- cannot possibly succeed at a policy of repression in the long-term. Eventually, the more acts of violence that are perpetrated against the Chinese people, the more disillusioned those people will become. And eventually the regime will fall out of favor and be dissolved. Since that is the inevitable outcome of the current direction of Chinese policy, why not just spare the needless loss of life, and take a different approach now? The Chinese government should find a way to listen to its people and work with them to build partnerships and solutions from the bottom-up instead of forcing them to comply from the top-down. Anyway, what I say doesn't matter -- I'm sure the Chinese government is not reading this blog. Fortunately, capitalism is like a virus, or an acid, that is already colonizing China and will inevitably result in a shift to something like democracy there, eventually. It's just too bad that so many people have to suffer in the process.

Why Do Some Bacteria Contain Magnetic Crystals?

It was previously thought that some types of bacteria carry around magnetic crystals in order to orient themselves. But a recent study has found that in fact this does not seem to be the case -- so why do they carry magnetic crystals? Nobody knows. It's an interesting mystery.

Scientists Solve Flu Virus Replication Mystery

In a big step for medicine, scientists have figured out how the flu virus replicates -- including the bird flu --  inside cells. This opens up new pathways for developing drugs to fight all strains of the flu.

Rocket Bike

This guy really likes go fast on his bicycle. So fast, he's strapped a rocket engine to it. Dude, just get a motorcycle! Seriously, a flaming rocket angine strapped a few inches from your butt is just kind of risky, don't ya think?

Good News!!!! Sex Before Public Speaking Calms Nerves, Researchers Discover

In an amazing scientific breakthrough, researchers have just discovered that sex before public speaking calms nerves. Phew, I'm glad they settled that burning question!

Next SF Web Innovators Party: Feb 2 at Adaptive Path

Hi everyone, come to our party. The SFWIN event is a monthly after-work gathering of Web 2.0 people in San Francisco. And it's growing. Techies, biz people, and VC's all welcome. Please RSVP below to attend; we have room for about 100 people at this event.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NEXT EVENT – Thursday, February 2 at 6PM – Adaptive Path Offices

363 Brannan Street, San Francisco

SPONSORS

Fish and Richardson and Adaptive Path will be sponsoring this event.

Fish and Richardson (www.fr.com) is a law firm that specializes in intellectual property law and they’ll have someone at the event that you can talk to and ask questions of.

Adaptive Path (www.adaptivepath.com) is a leading edge strategy and user interface consultancy that is one of the pioneers of the Web 2.0 movement.
 

Please RSVP here:

http://wsfinder.jot.com/WikiHome/SF+Web+Innovators

Please let others know about SFWIN and tell your friends about the event - we would love to grow the event and get more people involved.

Quantum Evolution -- A Radical Theory

The theory of quantum evolution is a radical new take on how mutations in DNA occur. Basically the theory postulates that DNA molecules are in fact macroscopic quantum objects that undergo quantum interference. It is spearheaded by Johnjoe McFadden, a professor in the UK and makes for an interesting read. Here is a brief overview of the main ideas of the theory. He also has some interesting ideas about a possible interaction between electromagnetic fields and consciousness.  It's way too early to tell whether he is correct in his hypoetheses, but I give him high marks for original thinking! Very interesting stuff.

Quantum Computing Steps Forward

This is a great overview of the current state of the art in quantum computing, and how it could benefit all of us in the future.

Brains Scans Show Unexpected Effects of Accupuncture

Recent brain scans have shown that accupuncture can actualy deactivate the brain's pain centers. One more bit of evidence for alternative medicine.

Collective Intelligence 2.0

Introduction:

This article proposes the creation of a new open, nonprofit service on the Web that will provide something akin to “collective self-awareness” back to the Web. This service is like a "Google Zeitgeist" on steroids, but with a lot more real-time, interactive, participatory data, technology and features in it. The goal is to measure and visualize the state of the collective mind of humanity, and provide this back to humanity in as close to real-time as is possible, from as many data sources as we can handle -- as a web service.

By providing this service, we will enable higher levels of collective intelligence to emerge and self-organize on the Web. The key to collective intelligence (or any intelligence in fact) is self-awareness. Self-awareness is, in essence, a feedback loop in which a system measures its own internal state and the state of its environment, then builds a representation of that state, and then reasons about and reacts to that representation in order to generate future behavior. This feedback loop can be provided to any intelligent system -- even the Web, even humanity as-a-whole. If we can provide the Web with such a service, then the Web can begin to “see itself” and react to its own state for the first time. And this is the first step to enabling the Web, and humanity as-a-whole, to become more collectively intelligent.

It should be noted that by "self-awareness" I don’t mean consciousness or sentience – I think that the consciousness comes from humans at this point and we are not trying to synthesize it (we don't need to; it's already there). Instead, by "self-awareness" I mean a specific type of feedback loop -- a specific Web service -- that provides a mirror of the state of the whole back to its parts. The parts are the conscious elements of the system – whether humans and/or machines – and can then look at this meta-mirror to understand the whole as well as their place in it. By simply providing this meta-level mirror, along with ways that the individual parts of the system can report their state to it, and get the state of the whole back from it, we can enable a richer feedback loop between the parts and the whole. And as soon as this loop exists the entire system suddenly can and will become much more collectively intelligent.

What I am proposing is something quite common in artificial intelligence. For example, in the field of robotics, such as when building an autonomous robot. Until a robot is provided with a means by which it can sense its own internal state and the state of its nearby environment, it cannot behave intelligently or very autonomously. But once this self-representation and feedback loop is provided, it can then react to it’s own state and environment and suddenly can behave far more intelligently. All cybernetic systems rely on this basic design pattern. I’m simply proposing we implement something like this for the entire Web and the mass of humanity that is connected to it. It's just a larger application of an existing pattern. Currently people get their views of “the whole” from the news media and the government – but these views suffer from bias, narrowness, lack of granularity, lack of real-time data, and the fact that they are one-way, top-down services with no feedback loop capabilities. Our global collective self-awareness -- in order to be truly useful and legitimate really must be two-way, inclusive, comprehensive, real-time and democratic. In the global collective awareness, unlike traditional media, the view of the whole is created in a bottom-up, emergent fashion from the sum of the reports from all the parts (instead of just a small pool of reporters or publishers, etc.).

The system I envision would visualize the state of the global mind on a number of key dimensions, in real-time, based on what people and software and organizations that comprise its “neurons” and “regions” report to it (or what it can figure out by mining artifacts they create). For example, this system would discover and rank the current most timely and active topics, current events, people, places, organizations, events, products, articles, websites, in the world right now. From these topics it would link to related resources, discussions, opinions, etc. It would also provide a real-time mass opinion polling system, where people could start polls, vote on them, and see the results in real-time. And it would provide real-time statistics about the Web, the economy, the environment, and other key indicators.

The idea is to try to visualize the global mind – to make it concrete and real for people, to enable them to see what it is thinking, what is going on, and where they fit in it – and to enable them to start adapting and guiding their own behavior to it. By giving the parts of the system more visibility into the state of the whole, they can begin to self-organize collectively which in turn makes the whole system function more intelligently

Essentially I am proposing the creation of the largest and most sophisticated mirror ever built – a mirror that can reflect the state of the collective mind of humanity back to itself. This will enable an evolutionary process which eventually will result in humanity becoming more collectively self-aware and intelligent as-a-whole (instead of what it is today -- just a set of separeate interacting intelligent parts). By providing such a service, we can catalyze the evolution of higher-order meta-intelligence on this planet -- the next step in human evolution. Creating this system is a grand cultural project of profound social value to all people on earth, now and in the future.

This proposal calls for creating a nonprofit orgnaization to build and host this service as a major open-source initiative on the Web, like the Wikipedia, but with a very different user-experience and focus. It also calls for implementing the system with a hybrid central and distributed architecture. Although this vision is big, the specific technologies, design patterns, and features that are necessary to implement it are quite specific and already exist. They just have to be integrated, wrapped and rolled out. This will require an extraordinary and multidisciplanary team. If you're interested in getting involved and think you can contribute resources that this project will need, let me know (see below for details).

Further Thoughts

Today I re-read this beautiful, visionary article by Kevin Kelley, about the birth of the global mind, in which he states:

The planet-sized "Web" computer is already more complex than a human brain and has surpassed the 20-petahertz threshold for potential intelligence as calculated by Ray Kurzweil. In 10 years, it will be ubiquitous. So will superintelligence emerge on the Web, not a supercomputer?

Kevin's article got me thinking once again about an idea that has been on my mind for over a decade. I have often thought that the Web is growing into the collective nervous system of our species. This will in turn enable the human species to function increasingly as an intelligent superorganism, for example, like a beehive, or an ant colony -- but perhaps even more intelligent. But the key to bringing this process about is self-awareness. In short, the planetary supermind cannot become truly intelligent until it evolves a form of collective self-awareness. Self-awareness is the most critical component of human intelligence -- the sophistication of human self-awareness is what makes humans different from dumb machines, and from less intelligent species.

The Big Idea that I have been thinking about for over a decade is that if we can build something that functions like a collective self-awareness, then this could catalyze a huge leap in collective intelligence that would essentially "wake up" the global supermind and usher in a massive evolution in its intelligence and behavior. As the planetary supermind becomes more aware of its environment, its own state, and its own actions and plans, it will then naturally evolve higher levels of collective intelligence around this core. This evolutionary leap is of unimaginable importance to the future of our species.

In order for the collective mind to think and act more intelligently it must be able to sense itself and its world, and reason about them, with more precision -- it must have a form of self-awareness. The essence of self-awareness is self-representation -- the ability to sense, map,  reason about, and react to, one's own internal state and the state of one's nearby environment. In other words, self-awareness is a feedback loop by which a system measures and reacts to its own self-representations. Just as is the case with the evolution of individual human intelligence, the evolution of more sophisticated collective human intelligence will depend on the emergence of better collective feedback loops and self-representations. By enabling a feedback loop in which information can flow in both directions between the self-representations of individuals and a meta-level self-representation for the set of all individuals, the dynamics of the parts and the whole become more closely coupled. And when this happens, the system can truly start to adapt to itself intelligently, as a single collective intelligence instead of a collection of single intelligences.

In summary, in order to achieve higher levels of collective intelligence and behavior, the global mind will first need something that functions as its collective self-awareness -- something that enables the parts to better sense and react to the state of the whole, and the whole to better sense and react to the state of its parts. What is needed essentially is something that functions as a collective analogue to a self -- a global collective self.

Think of the global self as a vast mirror, reflecting the state of the global supermind back to itself. Mirrors are interesting things. At first they merely reflect, but soon they begin to guide decisionmaking. By simply providing humanity with a giant virtual mirror of what is going on across the minds of billions of individuals, and millions of groups and organizations, the collective mind will crystallize, see itself for the first time, and then it will begin to react to its own image. And this is the beginning of true collective cognition. When the parts can see themselves as a whole and react in real-time, then they begin to function as a whole instead of just a collection of separate parts. As this shift transpires the state of the whole begins to feedback into the behavior of the parts, and the state of the parts in turns feeds back to the state of the whole. This cycle of bidirectional feedback between the parts and whole is the essence of cognition in all intelligent systems, whether individual brains, artificial intelligences, or entire worlds.

I believe that the time has come for this collective self to emerge on our planet. Like a vast virtual mirror, it will function as the planetary analogue to our own individual self-representations -- that capacity of our individual minds which represents us back to ourselves. It will be comprised of maps that combine real-time periodic data updates, and historical data, from perhaps trillions of data sources (one for each person, group, organization and software agent on the grid). The resulting visualizations will be something like a vast fluid flow, or a many particle simulation. It will require a massive computing capability to render it -- perhaps a distributed supercomputer comprised of the nodes on the Web themselves, each hosting a part of the process. It will require new thinking about how to visualize trends in such vast amounts of data and dimensions. This is a great unexplored frontier in data visualization and knowledge discovery.

How It Might Work

I envision the planetary self functioning as a sort of portal -- a Web service that aggregates and distributes all kinds of current real-time and historical data about the state of the whole, as well as its past states and future projected states. This portal would collect opinions, trends, and statistics about the human global mind, the environment, the economy, society, geopolitical events, and other indicators, and would map them graphically in time, geography, demography, and subject space -- enabling everyone to see and explore the state of the global mind from different perspectives, with various overlays, and at arbitrary levels of magnification.

I think this system should provide an open data model, and open API for adding and growing data sets, querying, remixing, visualizing, and subscribing to the data. All services that provide data sets, analysis or visualizations (or other interpretations) of potential value to understanding the state of the whole would be able to post data into our service for anyone to find and use. Search engines could post in the top search query terms. Sites that create tag clouds could post in tags and tag statistics. Sites that analyze the blogosphere could post in statistics about blogs, bloggers, and blog posts. Organizations that do public opinion polling, market and industry research, trend analysis, social research, or economic research could post in statistics they are generating. Academic researchers could post in statistics generated by projects they are doing to analyze trends on the Web, or within our data-set itself.

As data is pushed to us, or pulled by us, we would grow the largest central data repository about the state of the whole. Others could then write programs to analyze and remix our data, and then post their results back into the system for others to use as well. We would make use of our data for our own analysis, but anyone else could also do research and share their analysis through our system. End users and others could also subscribe to particular data, reports, or visualizations from our service, and could post in their own individual opinions, attention data feeds, or other inputs. We would serve as a central hub for search, analysis, and distribution of collective self-awareness.

The collective self would provide a sense of collective identity: who are we, how do we appear, what are we thinking about, what do we think about what we are thinking about, what are we doing, how well are we doing it, where are we now, where have we been, where are we going next. Perhaps it could be segmented by nation, or by age group, or by other dimensions as well to view various perspectives on these questions within it. It could gather its data by mining for it, as well as through direct push contributions from various data-sources. Individuals could even report on their own opinions, state, and activities to it if they wanted to, and these votes and data points would be reflected back in the whole in real time. Think of it as a giant emergent conversation comprised of trillions of participants, all helping to make sense of the same subject -- our global self identity -- together. It could even have real-time views that are animated and alive -- like a functional brain image scan -- so that people could see the virtual neurons and pathways in the global brain firing as they watch.

If this global self-representation existed, I would want to subscribe to it as a data feed on my desktop. I would want to run it in a dashboard in the upper right corner of my monitor -- that I could expand at any time to explore further. It would provide me with alerts when events transpired that matched my particular interests, causes, or relationships. It would solicit my opinions and votes on issues of importance and interest to me. It would simultaneously function as my window to the world, and the world's window to me. It would be my way of participating in the meta-level whole, whenever I wanted to. I could tell it my opinions about key issues, current events, problems, people, organizations, or even legislative proposals. I could tell it about the quality of life from my perspective, where I am living, in my industry and demographic niche. I could tell it about my hopes and fears for the future. I could tell it what I think is cool, or not cool, interesting or not interesting, good or bad, etc. I could tell it what news I was reading and what I think is noteworthy or important. And it would listen and learn, and take my contributions into account democratically along with those of billions of other people just like me all around the world. From this would emerge global visualizations and reports about what we are all thinking and doing, in aggregate, that I could track and respond to. Linked from these flows I could then find relevant news, conversations, organizations, people, products, services, events, and knowledge. And from all of this would emerge something greater than anything I can yet imagine -- a thought process too big for any one human mind to contain.

I want to build this. I want to build the planetary Self. I am not suggesting that we build the entire global mind, I am just suggesting that we build the part of the system that functions as its collective self-awareness. The rest of the global mind is already there, as raw potential at least, and doesn't have to be built. The Web, human minds, software agents, and organizations already exist. Their collective state just needs to be reflected in a single virtual mirror. As soon as this mirror exists they can begin to collectively self-organize and behave more intelligently, simply because they will have, for the first time, a way of measuring their collective state and behavior. Once there is a central collective self-awareness loop, the intelligence of the global mind will emerge and self-organize naturally over time. This collective self-awareness infrastructure is the central enabling technology that has to be there first for the next-leap in intelligence of the global mind to evolve.

Project Structure

I think this should be created as a non-profit open-source project. In fact, that is the only way that it can have legitimacy -- it must be independent of any government, cultural or commercial perspective. It must be by and for the people, as purely and cleanly as possible. My guess is that to build this properly we would need to create a distributed grid computing system to collect, compute, visualize and distribute the data -- it could be similar to SETI@Home; everyone could help host it. At the center of this grid, or perhaps in a set of supernodes, would be a vast supercomputing array that would manage the grid, do focused computations and data fusion operations. There would also need to be some serious money behind this project as well -- perhaps from major foundations and donors. This system would be a global resource of potential incalculable value to the future of human evolution. It would be a project worth funding.

My Past Writing On This Topic

A Physics of Ideas: Measuring the Physical Properties of Memes
Towards a Worldwide Database
The Metaweb: A Graph of the Future
From Semantic Web to Global Mind
The Birth of the Metaweb
Are Organizations Organisms?
From Application-Centric to Data-Centric Computing
The Human Menome Project

Other Noteworthy Projects

Principia Cybernetica -- the Global Mind Group
The Global Consciousness Project
W3C - The Semantic Web Working Group
Amazon's Mechanical Turk
CHI -- Harnessing Networks of Humans

Privacy Nightmare

The ACLU has a nice little animation of what life will be like once the government, and corporate America, have access to all personal data. It's a nice little simulation.

Doomsday Vault to House World Seed Bank

The Norwegians are planning to create a deep underground vault near the North Pole to house a backup copy of seeds for all known varieties of crops. The goal is to ensure food supplies and enable humanity to regenerate in the event of nuclear war, global warming or other catastrophes. It's a good idea. This is similar to my own idea for what I call the Genesis Project, which would provide a backup of critical human knowledge as well, and a system for helping humanity relearn it, in case we get knocked back to the Stone Age for some reason.

New Text-Mining Project Aims to Help Scientists

A new project applies text-mining to help scientists in the UK discover knowledge in large collections of research articles and data (Found in: KurzweilAI):

Julie Nightingale
Tuesday   January   10, 2006
The Guardian
 
 Scientific research is being added to at an alarming rate: the Human Genome Project alone is generating enough documentation to "sink battleships". So it's not surprising that academics seeking data to support a new hypothesis are getting swamped with information overload. As data banks build up worldwide, and access gets easier through technology, it has become easier to overlook vital facts and figures that could bring about groundbreaking discoveries.

The government's response has been to set up the National Centre for Text Mining, the world's first centre devoted to developing tools that can systematically analyse multiple research papers, abstracts and other documents, and then swiftly determine what they contain.

The article above also cites some recent discoveries that have been enabled by text-mining approaches:

The more breathtaking results have included the discovery of new therapeutic uses for the drug Thalidomide to treat conditions such as chronic hepatitis C and acute pancreatitis and that chlorpromazine may reduce cardiac hypertrophy - enlargement of the heart leading to heart failure.

Beautiful Images of Insides of Meteorites

Check out these microscope images of the insides of meteorites. Beautiful, and strange. Some of them are reminiscent of bacteria and computer circuit boards.

New Quantum Propulsion Being Researched By Air Force

A radical new form of propulsion is being researched that may enable travel from Earth to Mars in 3 hours, and travel to nearby stars in just 80 days. The system is based on a novel quantum theory termed Heim quantum theory (HQT).

The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine.

The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.

Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.

The US air force has expressed an interest in the idea and scientists working for the American Department of Energy - which has a device known as the Z Machine that could generate the kind of magnetic fields required to drive the engine - say they may carry out a test if the theory withstands further scrutiny.

Professor Jochem Hauser, one of the scientists who put forward the idea, told The Scotsman that if everything went well a working engine could be tested in about five years.

However, Prof Hauser, a physicist at the Applied Sciences University in Salzgitter, Germany, and a former chief of aerodynamics at the European Space Agency, cautioned it was based on a highly controversial theory that would require a significant change in the current understanding of the laws of physics. (Source)

It is interesting to note that this theory shares a similar physical picture, namely a quantized spacetime, with the recently published loop quantum theory (LQT) by L. Smolin, A. Ashtektar, C. Rovelli, M. Bojowald et al. [11, 24-28]. LQT, if proved correct, would stand for a major revision of current physics, while HQT would cause a revolution in the technology of propulsion. (Source)

Links for further reading on this subject.

SF Web Innovators Meetup: Thursday, January 12

If you're in the Web business and you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, come to the 3rd SF Web Innovators Meetup. It's like TechCrunch, but in San Francisco. We do it every month. Last month 40 people from an array of Bay Area startups and established Internet companies showed up for a la carte sushi and conversation. Whether you're a coder, marketer, investor, or service provider, you'll find it interesting and useful. Feel free to pass this on to others who you think might want to come. If you would like to attend, please RSVP on our wiki.

Big Thinkers' Most Dangerous Ideas

The Edge has published mini-essays by 119 "big thinkers" on their "most dangerous ideas" -- fun reading.

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

 

Obsessed Tourist Marries Dolphin

Here's a happy story about true love. An Israeli millionaire tourist recently married a captive dolphin in a formal wedding ceremony. There's something fishy about this wedding though -- I mean did the dolphin really love her for HER, or did he just want her for her money? When asked to comment, the woman repeated that she is "not a pervert" -- PHEW! I'm glad she emphasized that point because otherwise I might have had my doubts. Anyway, what I really want to know is: was it a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony or not, and if it was, how did the dolphin crush the wine glass? Do they even let people bring glassware into the pool nowadays? I thought you could only bring plastic cups to the pool. What kind of operation are they running down there anyway? Well, if you ask me this marriage probably won't last: I think couples should live together for a while before getting married.