Stainless Steel Printing

Self-replicating desktop manufacturing systems are on the near future horizon.

From this CrunchGear entry: 'The future of fabrication is here: Shapeways announces stainless steel printing'

Much if not most of 3d printing uses modified inkjet printers. Ink is substituted with other mediums.

The incredible accuracy of the printer heads deposit nano-scale droplets exactly where they need to be. The end result is a useful or interesting object.

Where is this Technology Headed?

1. Desktop Manufacturing
In the same way huge computers shrunk to the desktop while becoming vastly cheaper and more powerful, desktop manufacturing is following the same trajectory.

2. Self Replication
Desktop fabricators capable of manufacturing all of it's own parts, to be assembled into another unit, will by nature quickly spread and improve in a self reinforcing loop.

3. Open Source Network Power
These systems will allow the grass-roots production of new continually evolving computers. The compounded power of countless networked enthusiasts around the world will pour ingenuity and creativity into new systems you can manufacture at home. Gadgets, cell phones, ... you name it... will spill from home hobyists and Universities into the marketplace in the same inexpensive way as iphone apps and the Linux free operating system.

4. Robots
As the hardware, circuitry and software continue to evolve, they will be capable of manufacturing and becoming robots which can self replicate.

5. Fabricating at the Molecular Level
Imagine a molecular printer. Cartridges filled with each element of the periodic table, the raw materials to create literally everything in the universe.

More here:

How Close Are We To Cyberspace?

There are only a few links left between us and full immersive sensual cyberspace.

William Gibson coined the term Cyberspace as a near-future digital world we would mentally navigate.

Clearly, the mouse and keyboard are about to be assimilated by touch screens. Sky diving costs and increasing value dictate it.

Monitors, the last membrane between us and cyberspace dissolve as we navigate digital experience in the same way we do physical experience.
Thought recognition, (computing that translates thoughts into a real or virtual world action) is here and advancing fashionably below the radar.

The distinction between the virtual and the physical is only a matter of resolution. As we merge our minds directly with Cyberspace, a global mind will emerge from the network. (The power of a network increases exponentially according to the number of communication nodes). Coming soon: an emergent, distributed, networked, increasingly intelligent, global nervous system.

Ever-fresh Google searches on thought controlled technology here:

Google Search

What to Expect From Google in The Next 10 Years?

This article from eWeek raised the question in the title. At this writing, Google has passed her 10th birthday. From Google Web to Maps to a newly invented browser about to rule the Web, to a Google phone, to a completely new computer operating system ... Everything she produces seems like a paradigm shift. So, what will she make happen during her next 10 years? I think it's quite possible the shift will be from information to Intelligence.

Intelligence and communication networks can't exist without each other. And in some cases (as in the Web), they symbiotically reinforce each other in a self accelerating feedback loop.

The Internet is a scaffold for Intelligent systems which compounds the power of Intelligence within the network. This combined networked Intelligence repays the favor by further diversifying, increasing the efficiency of, and enhancing the network.

I think that's why we started calling the Web "Web 2.0". It started behaving meaningfully smarter.

Lastly, as increasingly intelligent systems exchange the sum of their Intelligences at near the speed of light, a new global Intelligence will emerge with the power to focus on a single global project as one mind and switch to trillions of projects individually. Again in a self reinforcing loop.

The next really big Google sized opportunity will be the shift from organizing the world's information to organizing the world's Intelligence. If not Google then who? I mean ... besides the Intelligence itself :)

The Internet / A.I. to Become One of Our Senses.

Visionary article by John Burch.

Ted's paraphrased summary:

The Internet (read "The OneMachine") exists because everybody wants it, and that will drive brain augmentation because it helps us get the Internet. The Internet will soon turn into one of our core senses.

Audio has arrived through a bluetooth headset. Next the earphone disappears into the ear canal and cuddles up to the ear drum. Eyeglasses morph into contact lenses that derive their energy from light, and overlay graphics onto what we see. The graphics are like an aircraft display, delivering visual data. Contact lenses start to look at the world from its own camera. It provides face recognition. You know everyone’s name. The artificial camera gets better with telephoto, infrared, high resolution vision and overlaid Internet.

Next we embed this system into our skull where it directly connects to our brain.

More juicy visionary goodness here.

The End of Commercial Mass Media Television

By 2015, cheap bandwidth and computer processing power, combined with powerful video compression will end commercial television. From The Inflection Point by Cringely

By extension, the end of Mass Media T.V.

Web 3.0 The Internet as Artificial Intelligence

Kevin Kelley, one of the foremost thinkers about the 'net and it's evolution gave a profoundly lucid presentation on where it's headed. I've summarized some of it below, and added a few notes of my own.

[Summary]

The Web was about 5000 days old early in 2008. In those 5000 days the Web has brought email, auctions, Youtube, Blogs, phone service, Google, real time stock prices, sports scores, weather, news, real estate prices, every street map, encyclopedias, library books, IRS forms, every song, movie and television program, dictionaries, phone books, show and game tickets, family trees, all patent records, catalogs, banking...

5000 days ago we never saw this coming. There was no economic model on how all this new wealth could be generated and then given away for free. So, the Web taught us that we have to get better at believing the impossible. That's the major lesson. What impossibilities will the next 5000 days bring?

The Internet is the largest and most reliable machine in human history, consuming 5% of the world's electricity (2008 figure). 5000 days ever growing, never stopping. 100 billion clicks a day, 55 trillion links, a billion connected PC chips. Every second 2 million emails, 1 million IM messages and 8 terrabytes of traffic move throughout this organism. 65 billion phone calls per year, 255 exabytes of hard drive storage. It behaves like a brain with neurons, automatically connecting ideas to each other. Roughly equivalent to the processing power of the human brain, it doubles in power every 2 years. By 2040, it will match or exceed the processing power of humanity.

[End of Summary]

[Ted's Notes]
Meanwhile, it is behaving ever more intelligently using automated decision making, analysis, testing, learning, creativity, invention, design and autonomous self-improvement simulations.

Simultaneously it is developing sophisticated sense organs. Vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste.
[End of Ted's Notes]

What will the next 5000 days bring? From Kevin Kelley: "Expect the Impossible." From Larry Page Google Co-founder: "What we really want to do at Google is create an AI."

Definitely worth the watch. The Q&A is just as juicy.

Amazing "BigDog" Military Pack Mule Robot

The latest "BigDog" 4-legged military robot "pack mule", moves with an astonishing animal fluidity. Creepy, spooky, amazing... what word best suits? It's real. But turn your sound way down. There is no commentary anyway, and BigDog sounds like a chainsaw.



Follow story here.