Mssv

An illustrated speculative timeline of future technology and social change - one man’s work to create a future universe that covers the next thousand years, all based on real scientific and technological speculation (albeit often tenuous speculation). A fascinating read.
Along with reams of timelines and explantory material, the author has written some very original story/timelines [...]

Now this is why I love neuroscience. In a recent weekly paper presentation, one of the groups in my class presented a paper called Genetic enhancement of learning and memory in mice. After altering a single gene in mice, the authors of the paper managed to improve their learning and memory significantly, by up to [...]

Putting your life online - recording and organising all of your emails, conversations and other life events on a computer to serve as a supplemental memory system. This isn’t a particularly new concept, but it is likely to be the first decent implementation. Very interesting stuff - I wonder how it’ll affect kids growing up [...]

Thanks to a generous grant from Trinity College at Cambridge University, I was able to attend the full week-long British Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Festival of Science in Leicester this year, from September 9th to 13th. This is a brief report of what I learned there.

Hah, I always knew that AI pundit Ray Kurzweil was up to no good, but this article proves it. Kurzweil is fond of making grand - and vague - predictions about the future of AI, but as far as I can see he his only major achievement that could possibly be related to AI is [...]

Got back from DC last week, just been catching up on things recently. Anyway, Longbets is finally showing some interesting activity in its discussion forums.

In one of the slower periods at the lab, I browsed through the mini library we have here and began flipping through The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT by Stewart Brand. It was absolutely fascinating reading - not because the Media Lab is an interesting place, but because the book is fifteen years [...]

Something popped into my head today as I was scribbling down some notes during a supervision: does the fact that I write with a pencil (as opposed to a pen or biro) affect my writing style, and on a higher level, my method of thinking?
Pencils provide a much less constrained and linear way of putting [...]