Ray Kurzweil to head futurology school backed by Nasa

[nickeley102]

An American inventor who plans to live for ever has been appointed head of a new school for futurologists backed by Google and the US space agency Nasa.

 

 

 

Ray Kurzweil, who worked as a computer scientist before turning to future gazing in the late 1980s, will become chancellor of the Singularity University based at Nasa's Silicon Valley campus in California.

 

 

 

The institution gains its name from a controversial 2005 book by Kurzweil, entitled The Singularity is Near. In it, he argues that the exponential advance of technology is set to transform society by giving rise to computers that are more clever than humans. The leap in computing power will drive rapid advances in other fields, he claims, that together could solve the problems of climate change, poverty, famine and disease.

 

 

 

In an earlier book, Kurzweil predicts the creation of "nanobots" that will patrol our bloodstreams, repairing wear and tear as they go, and keeping our bodies perpetually young.

 

 

 

"The law of accelerating returns means technology eventually will be a million more times powerful than it is today and cause profound transformation," Kurzweil told Associated Press after his appointment was announced.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... ingularity

 

 

 

i thought some of you may be interested in this.

 

 

 

My thoughts: Its only a matter of time until schools like this are established which intentionally try to push the envelope, and, after reading some of his accurate predictions, this Kurzweil seems qualified. But something tells me this school is unlikely to be successful. Think-tanks already provide this service successfully enough. But I have been wrong before.

[Jimmyw3000]

another news article? [bleep]ing hell

 

 

 

 

 

does it really matter? they might be created in afew years, but when they come they'll come and before long they'll be treated as bog standard items.

[Quoi_Tu]

Seriously, this is nothing new.

 

 

 

For proof, The Jetsons.

[evil_mumm_ra]

An American inventor who plans to live for ever

 

 

 

and that's pretty much when i didn't care anymore. if we get nanobots that repair wear and tear on our bodies and keep us perpetually young, we'll flood the planet with people, not be able to survive because of lack of food/fresh water/shelter/space/jobs etc. not to mention i'm sure that would end up causing more wars over the resources people will have. the day we get nanobots to keep us young, is the day humans begin their decline because we'll wipe ourself out. although i'm sure we'll wipe ourselves out some other way too.

[Da_Latios]

An American inventor who plans to live for ever

 

 

 

and that's pretty much when i didn't care anymore. if we get nanobots that repair wear and tear on our bodies and keep us perpetually young, we'll flood the planet with people, not be able to survive because of lack of food/fresh water/shelter/space/jobs etc. not to mention i'm sure that would end up causing more wars over the resources people will have. the day we get nanobots to keep us young, is the day humans begin their decline because we'll wipe ourself out. although i'm sure we'll wipe ourselves out some other way too.

 

This. There's going to be too many people....

[Faux]

An American inventor who plans to live for ever

 

 

 

and that's pretty much when i didn't care anymore. if we get nanobots that repair wear and tear on our bodies and keep us perpetually young, we'll flood the planet with people, not be able to survive because of lack of food/fresh water/shelter/space/jobs etc. not to mention i'm sure that would end up causing more wars over the resources people will have. the day we get nanobots to keep us young, is the day humans begin their decline because we'll wipe ourself out. although i'm sure we'll wipe ourselves out some other way too.

 

 

 

not really. i used to think this way too, but realize these:

 

 

 

* by the time we have that technology our space programs would be capable of colonizing other planets

 

* there is a lot of unused space in earth. i don't know what people are saying about overpopulation when there's a lot of land we can use. e.g. Canada, United States, Russia, Africa, etc. - these countries/continent are larger in size compared to India/China and none have even crossed the billion pop. threshold

 

* at least 71% of earth is unused space. why? because this is covered by the ocean. the ocean is basically untapped space considering we can build cities in it and over it. for example, look at Dubai's man-made islands. another example is this:

 

 

 

[Da_Latios]

An American inventor who plans to live for ever

 

 

 

and that's pretty much when i didn't care anymore. if we get nanobots that repair wear and tear on our bodies and keep us perpetually young, we'll flood the planet with people, not be able to survive because of lack of food/fresh water/shelter/space/jobs etc. not to mention i'm sure that would end up causing more wars over the resources people will have. the day we get nanobots to keep us young, is the day humans begin their decline because we'll wipe ourself out. although i'm sure we'll wipe ourselves out some other way too.

 

 

 

not really. i used to think this way too, but realize these:

 

 

 

* by the time we have that technology our space programs would be capable of colonizing other planets

 

* there is a lot of unused space in earth. i don't know what people are saying about overpopulation when there's a lot of land we can use. e.g. Canada, United States, Russia, Africa, etc. - these countries/continent are larger in size compared to India/China and none have even crossed the billion pop. threshold

 

* at least 71% of earth is unused space. why? because this is covered by the ocean. the ocean is basically untapped space considering we can build cities in it and over it. for example, look at Dubai's man-made islands. another example is this:

 

 

 

We don't have enough resources to 'build' more countries. Unless, of course we find a way to create matter.

[ember3579]

Yeah, this is PROBABLY going to be worth the time and effort put into it. The whole part about wanting to live forever set off some alarm bells for me (who in their right mind would want an ETERNITY of putting up with humanity's bulls***?), but the rest of it sounds like it could be useful, and actually worth the effort. Sure, SOME measure of safeguards should be placed (see the Terminator series for an example) when we get to where this could become a problem that couldn't be contained otherwise, but other than that I say full steam ahead. You never know which rabbit hole you jump into will lead to Wonderland.

 

 

 

Oh, and on the above post, I agree. Unless if we either use excess from mountains (to Hell with that; that would just make things worse overall) or scrape stuff from the sea floor (not even going to go into that), we can't create something without resources. Meaning, we'll need to be able to reach either other planets or (the best option, probably) the asteroid field(s) surrounding this solar system to be able to do anything on that scale. While strip-mining a barren planet might not screw any ecosystems over (what ecosystems? :P ), it might mess with the way that gravity holds our planet in place orbiting the sun. You know how when you remove an electron from an atom that the rest are held tighter? Same principle. We might move the planet out of the "golden path" and make it uninhabitable. Which is why the asteroid belts are a better option; a lot more of it, and the big ones are farther away from the star at the core of our system, helping mitigate the effect of mining them.

[Faux]

We don't have enough resources to 'build' more countries. Unless, of course we find a way to create matter.

 

 

 

lol says who? you?

[Quoi_Tu]

An American inventor who plans to live for ever

 

 

 

and that's pretty much when i didn't care anymore. if we get nanobots that repair wear and tear on our bodies and keep us perpetually young, we'll flood the planet with people, not be able to survive because of lack of food/fresh water/shelter/space/jobs etc. not to mention i'm sure that would end up causing more wars over the resources people will have. the day we get nanobots to keep us young, is the day humans begin their decline because we'll wipe ourself out. although i'm sure we'll wipe ourselves out some other way too.

 

 

 

not really. i used to think this way too, but realize these:

 

 

 

* by the time we have that technology our space programs would be capable of colonizing other planets

 

* there is a lot of unused space in earth. i don't know what people are saying about overpopulation when there's a lot of land we can use. e.g. Canada, United States, Russia, Africa, etc. - these countries/continent are larger in size compared to India/China and none have even crossed the billion pop. threshold

 

* at least 71% of earth is unused space. why? because this is covered by the ocean. the ocean is basically untapped space considering we can build cities in it and over it. for example, look at Dubai's man-made islands. another example is this:

 

 

 

[hide=][/hide]

 

It will be a sad day when we turn our planet into a city. Also, there is the issue of being able to sustain our growing consumption levels.

[Da_Latios]

We don't have enough resources to 'build' more countries. Unless, of course we find a way to create matter.

 

 

 

lol says who? you?

 

Says logic. Oh, and I do too.

[Quoi_Tu]

We don't have enough resources to 'build' more countries. Unless, of course we find a way to create matter.

 

 

 

lol says who? you?

 

Says logic. Oh, and I do too.

 

Explain your reasoning beyond saying, "logic"?

[evil_mumm_ra]

all you've gotta do is examine a current city. look at new york city for example. there is an assload of steel used for the support beams and stuff in the buildings to hold them up. there is a lot of concrete for support under the buildings, for parking garages, etc. look at the amount of glass on the skyscrapers. we don't have enough resources to cover the earth like that, not even gradually, there is just no possible way to get that much steel, or concrete, or glass, or whatever the future cities are going to be built out of.

[IGoddessI]

lol I can't wait (literally I'll be dead) until this becomes a first grade subject or kindergarten elective :lol:

[Faux]

all you've gotta do is examine a current city. look at new york city for example. there is an assload of steel used for the support beams and stuff in the buildings to hold them up. there is a lot of concrete for support under the buildings, for parking garages, etc. look at the amount of glass on the skyscrapers. we don't have enough resources to cover the earth like that, not even gradually, there is just no possible way to get that much steel, or concrete, or glass, or whatever the future cities are going to be built out of.

 

 

 

is this a joke? what are you babbling about? look at Dubai. they made a city within a span of a decade and they had no problem with the resources. there's still a lot of resources available, not to mention the amount of untapped reserves. we don't have to cover earth either. *other* planets do exist.

[evil_mumm_ra]

that's one city, granted it is a large city. but resources will run out. other planets aren't hospitable, and we don't even really know the cost of terraforming one, or mining one for resources, either way it'd be too large of a project.

[ember3579]

that's one city, granted it is a large city. but resources will run out. other planets aren't hospitable, and we don't even really know the cost of terraforming one, or mining one for resources, either way it'd be too large of a project.

 

 

 

 

 

At the moment, yes, it's going to be too costly to mine other planets. However, once we are capable of building both sizable space stations with suitable equipment and can travel cross-planet in a reasonable (1-2 weeks, I guess) time, mining will become very viable. Need iron? Mars is practically made out of it, or at least covered in it (that red dust is iron oxide, AKA rust). And we don't even know what sort of random things might show up in the asteroid belt. Yeah, this will probably be about 25-35 years off before we can even really consider this sort of thing, but we ARE going to have the tech to pull it off around that time. It's just a matter of patience.

[evil_mumm_ra]

i think that's a bit to soon to even consider the possibility of it, but i'm not going to flat out deny that it won't ever be possible, i think it's still quite far off.

[Faux]

i think that's a bit to soon to even consider the possibility of it, but i'm not going to flat out deny that it won't ever be possible, i think it's still quite far off.

 

by the time we have that technology [nanobots]

 

we're not talking about these forms of technology being efficient anytime soon. but to grovel and panic for lack of resources makes no "logical" sense.