“My mind is mostly quiet these days,” he says. “I don’t have much to say.” We are sitting on the front porch, sipping tea, while a Stellar Jay cackles at us from a sugar pine a few feet above our … Continue reading
Twenty-five years ago, in the latter part of the eighties, while the Reagan administration was adventuring in Central America and the field of AI was in its symbolic slump, I jotted the following ruminations on consciousness. At the time I … Continue reading
In November Ray Kurzweil published a book titled How to Create A Mind, and five weeks later he was hired by Google as chief engineer. The book lays out a pattern-recognition theory of mind, arguing that this idea is reflected in advances in artificial intelligence, and can be inferred from developments in neuroscience. If true, the field of AI may leap forward with Kurzweil as the guiding hand of Google’s laboratory. In any case, the theory deserves close study. Here is my short (ten-page) summary of his book, and a few comments. Continue reading
Presentations from the Oct 13-14 Singularity Summit are online. I recommend the presentations by Steven Pinker, Temple Grandin, Jaan Tallin, Vernor Vinge, John Wilbanks, Melanie Mitchell, and Linda Avey. Go to the post to see links to each talk, and others at the conference. Continue reading
Time calls to each of us, a quiet hum at the edge of awareness. For some, it is the siren song of a lazy summer afternoon, the sleepy midwestern drone of crickets in a Bradbury idyll, watching crinkly leaves drift down the street in golden afternoon light. For others… Continue reading
[All videos for the summit are available. Click a link, then click “Watch Full Video]. See also my review for Day 1 of Singularity Summit. On the second day of the Singularity Summit, presenters took their gloves off, rolled up … Continue reading
[All videos for the summit are available. Click a link, then click “Watch Full Video]. See also my review of Day 2 of Singularity Summit. The Singularity Summit is an annual gathering of self-identified freethinkers, visionaries, futurists, geeks, rationalists, optimistic … Continue reading
Where does spirituality fit into science? Can both be right? And if so, what is the full picture? For the last few years this question has increasingly gnawed at me. I don’t have the answer, but optimistically believe that there will be an answer — and that it will surprise all of us, scientists and mystics alike. Here is an essay I wrote last spring for The Integral Review, trying to put the question into perspective. Continue reading
Is the person sitting next to you a human being? The question hardly makes sense; how could she not be human? Yet in the coming years the question will become commonplace, even urgent. Continue reading
The world brain, the tower of babel, the Net, the library of Alexandria – at some point every reader, thinker, or dreamer imagines the Totality of Knowledge, accessible at a glance, a thought, a click or swipe, a wave of the hand or brain. Continue reading
