Watching this video blows me away. This robot "dog" can walk on all terrain, can recover if kicked (watch 38 seconds in), and it can even scramble to stay upright while slipping on ice. Its movements are more "alive" than any other robot I've seen.

This is a glimpse of the future of robotic technology.

Someday (relatively soon) even kids toys will be this advanced.

Based upon the current pace of robotic evolution, we are just a few years away from cars that can self-drive in traffic, and robots that can run and walk as well as any human or animal.

And after that equivalence is reached, what then? The imagination boggles.

The singularity is near, indeed!

See: vanishingpointgame.com

To promote Windows Vista, Microsoft is sponsoring a very elaborate online puzzle game.

The grand prize includes "a chance to see the ultimate vista" - a trip to the edge of space aboard a rocket plane, including some zero-gravity time. Nice! Lots of other more earthly prizes are up for grabs too.

Imagine this:
The Rocketplane® XP Vehicle is a four-seat fighter-sized vehicle fitted with a delta wing and a V-tail which provide good flight characteristics both subsonically and supersonically. The vehicle is powered by both turbojet engines and a rocket engine, enabling it to accelerate to speeds just over 3,500 feet per second (2,386 miles per hour) and reach altitudes in excess of 330,000 feet (100 kilometers) providing the sensation of weightlessness for three to four minutes!

But you don't even need to solve puzzles to win. Jut by registering at the site you earn "20 points" - and each point is an equal chance in the final drawing for the prizes.

Mention "chris@radven.net" when you sign up and we both get 20 points. It only takes a minute to register, so why not?

Solve some puzzles and you can earn more. Some of the puzzles have had solutions found already - check the online forums here for some hints.

But hurry - the contest ends and the winner will be contacted on February 1st.

Enjoy!

Some scary thoughts about the risks of global warming are written up here.

I think I really need to read the book mentioned ASAP - James Lovelock's Revenge of Gaia.

It seems to me that we are in a race between theTechnological Singularity and an environmental collapse - a singularity of a different sort. And Lovelock seems to be convinced that we have already crossed the event horizon towards that collapse - too late to turn back.

No matter which explosion wins - the changes of the next century are going to be revolutionary in scale. And things are going to get messy.

The scary thing is that BOTH the blind squandering of our natural resources and a return to "nature" are recipes for disaster. The extremists from both side are missing the big picture.

And the big picture is the only thing that will save us. Evolution is not going to save us. Nature is not going to save us. Keeping our heads in the sand and "staying the course" is CERTAINLY not going to save us. But INTENTIONAL evolution however just might. The power is in our hands....

This snippet from a letter from Richard Dawkins to Prince Charles says it clearly:

But the very fact that Darwinism is true makes it even more important for us to fight against the naturally selfish and exploitative tendencies of nature. We can do it. Probably no other species of animal or plant can. We can do it because our brains (admittedly given to us by natural selection for reasons of short-term Darwinian gain) are big enough to see into the future and plot long-term consequences. Natural selection is like a robot that can only climb uphill, even if this leaves it stuck on top of a measly hillock. There is no mechanism for going downhill, for crossing the valley to the lower slopes of the high mountain on the other side. There is no natural foresight, no mechanism for warning that present selfish gains are leading to species extinction - and indeed, 99 per cent of all species that have ever lived are extinct.

The human brain, probably uniquely in the whole of evolutionary history, can see across the valley and can plot a course away from extinction and towards distant uplands. Long-term planning - and hence the very possibility of stewardship - is something utterly new on the planet, even alien. It exists only in human brains. The future is a new invention in evolution. It is precious. And fragile. We must use all our scientific artifice to protect it.

It may sound paradoxical, but if we want to sustain the planet into the future, the first thing we must do is stop taking advice from nature. Nature is a short-term Darwinian profiteer. Darwin himself said it: "What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature."

{thanks to pure_agnostic for the links sparking this post...}

Check this out!



My old college roommate and fellow nomad Andrew Koransky sent this link to me.

GMC has created a six-wheeled "Living Activity Vehicle" concept design called the GMC PAD that combines the traits of a small urban loft, an SUV, and an RV.

GMC envisions a world where people can just park and "live" near work, eliminating traffic and commute hassles. Then when the weekend rolls around, you can just take your whole house out to the woods.



The whole vehicle is a technological showcase - with a hybrid engine, solar panels, LCD screens covering every wall, all sorts of networking and computational gizmology, and much much more.

Sadly - it only exists as a computer mockup right now. But maybe in a decade or so, I'll be calling some descendent of this design home.

I was really impressed with the recent news that Bill Gates will be leaving Microsoft to work full time on directing the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. His passion and commitment in this are are clear.

Today, Warren Buffett (the worlds second richest man) committed to donating most of HIS $44 billion to fortune to the Gates foundation to spend on improving health and education in the developing world. Wow.

Bill is going to have his work cut out for him spending it all. The condition on the donation is that the money must be entirely spent in the year that it is given. The first $1.5 BILLION dollar check is due in a few weeks.

Again - wow.

I've always been a harsh critic of Microsoft. In the past I've blamed Bill Gates and Microsoft for bad design decisions and exceedingly dubious and anti-competitive business practices that have indirectly brought about immeasurable pain and suffering, and massive economic losses. The dominion of Windows has probably held back the evolution of "modern" computer science and architecture by 10 to 20 years. Computers have never had any excuse to be as unreliable and flakey as they are - and we've come to accept it because Windows is so damn prevalent.

I used to think this was unforgivable.

But, all that is forgiven now Bill.

The number of lives your generosity will touch and save will change the world in ways that will have a much more powerful and longer lasting impact than Windows or Microsoft ever will.

Thank you, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. This is what a fortune is meant for. This is how to change the world.

Thank you.

Wow.

See this story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=a5w0Bet0kOE4

A broadband warp in space created using "metamaterials" that can bend light (and other forms of radiation) that completely hides whatever is inside of it. This is SciFi turning real. Full-on invisibility cloaks may be a ways off - but materials that can literally become invisible to radar are likely within five years.

This is so cool.

Materials science rocks.

And its about time that the Federation at last caught up with the Romulans in this area. *grin*

Michael Mace, my former boss and mentor from my days at PalmSource has been blogging a lot lately, and I love that his amazing insights are now shareable with the world at large.

Read him here: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/

One of the things he and I used to scheme about was the upcoming Technological Singularity. This is the moment ahead when the whole world changes - and nothing will ever be the same again.

Vernor Vinge first wrote about the Singularity years ago - this essay is one of the best food-for-thought items ever written:
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/%7Ephoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html

Michael has written a new article for his blog that talks about how Silicon Valley companies need to focus on accelerating the rate of change and embracing the Singularity to survive in the increasingly global market. He even gave me a mention...

When Chris Dunphy and I were working together at Palm, we sometimes talked about the idea of the "Singularity." That's the point in the future at which technological change happens so fast that the world is altered in fundamental ways we can't anticipate today. I think the concept was best explained by Vernor Vinge, in an essay you can read here. Professor Vinge believes that if you extrapolate from today's trends, the Singularity (it's always capitalized) is a lot closer than you think.

The idea of the Singularity has been screwing up science fiction authors for about a decade now, because they have trouble extrapolating what the world will be like in 50 years, let alone 500. But in the rest of the world the idea doesn't have much traction. There's a lot of millennialist rhetoric associated with the idea that feels overblown (humans being transcended, etc), and some very prominent people see the Singularity as a grave threat. Maybe the whole thing's just a bunch of nerdy intellectual wankery. There's a pretty good pro and con discussion in Wikipedia here (and I guarantee you won't find that entry in the Encyclopedia Brittanica).

Chris and I used to joke to each other that the real mission of Palm was to make the Singularity happen sooner, by giving people as much computing power in their pockets as possible. We were wise enough not to tell anyone else, because we would have been viewed as kooks.

But maybe we had it wrong. I'm starting to believe that the right thing for Silicon Valley may be to consciously embrace the Singularity. Bring on the chaos, baby! The faster we can make the world change, the greater the chance we'll be able to pay our mortgages.

Amen!