Blogs Are Here To Stay And The Impact Will Deepen

From a discussion on Slashdot here entitled: "The Rise and Fall of Blogs". The main question wondered: "Have Blogs reached a saturation point?"

Web Page 2.0

Blogs are simply the evolution of the personal Web page. They made publishing online easier for everyone because you don't need to know HTML. Just type your thoughts into a form, and the software builds the code automatically. No Webmaster bottleneck. Blogs have become such a phenomena because they dramatically reduce the "friction" to publishing online.

The Millions of HTMLess can now have their say. And the sheer number of Bloggers means the brilliant, funny and fabulous poke through the slime.

They're here to stay like anything else that works better. I just hope we pitch the name soon. Can't stand saying it.

Is "Big Brother" Dying or Just Being Born?

A post on Smart Mobs entitled Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation raises one of the central questions about the future and technology. Is "Big Brother" dying or just being born? Will technology enslave us or empower us? Here's the quote:

How we resolve this culture war will have far-reaching consequences for all of us. Five or ten years from now, who will be able to create and share media—individuals, or only powerful interests? When hundreds of millions of people walk down the street carrying connected, always-on devices hundreds of times more powerful than today’s computers, what will they be allowed to do?

I think the end of the drama is written upon the wall. The digitally connected masses will soon remove the mass from media. Here's why:

1. The balance of power has already shifted to the masses in a sort of first mover advantage. The backlash coming from the entertainment industry is reflexive. It happens *after* networked mobs creatively, unexpectedly, disruptively take technology into their own hands. The tension between the entertainment industry and the online world simply represents that shift of power and control away from mass media.

2. What will the entertainment industry be when consumers en masse, produce their own "as good or better than" diversions? Blogs spontaneously exploded news into millions of niches, leaching the mass from news media. Cheap high tech multimedia production tools wielded by thousands of grass roots reporters are absolutely capable of producing high quality fare.

The mass entertainment and news industry will soon compete with high quality virtually free grass roots alternatives from the digitally connected masses, and take its rightful place as another niche. What "mass" will be left to market to?

3. Litigation takes a lot of time. Since technological advances also accelerate events, inflexible, knee jerk systems will eventually be overwhelmed with the speed of disruption. There will soon not be enough time to react before the next volley. Future shock paralyses the most inflexible systems first. So, ultimately, in a digitally networked world, control is distributed to the masses. But the question keeps returning:

Is Big Brother a Possible Future?

Will some central organization, representing narrow interests be able to control what citizens share electronically? I don't think so. The imminent emergence of open source personal self-replicating fabricators will spit out an ever growing complexity of items, all of which will be embedded with personalized computational intelligence. So, no consistent control over hardware standards will be possible. Chips will not answer to a centralized institution.

As self-replicating fabricators rapidly spread to thousands and then millions of people, they will mutate and evolve; enlisted to upgrade and propagate their own next generation. Mobjects from the collective creative energy of Smart Mobs. This spells the end of the consumer/ producer divide. What will mass marketing be without a mass market?

P. S. The rise of personal replicating desktop fabricators is one of the trends I've followed closely since October 2004. I was pleased to see CNN cover the emergence of desktop fabricators only a few days ago. The blogosphere scooped CNN by many months :)

Ted

As We Begin Inventing Our Evolution. Some Well Thought Out Near Future Scenarios from the Washington Post

Well written article about some of the technologies just arriving: Pain vaccines. Computers that enable us to move things with thought. Personal Gene sequencing for $10. Enhancements to our memories, metabolisms, personalities and offspring. It will all be adopted as avidly as Viagara for the same reasons. Here's the Link

A Few Quotes from the Article

"No one really has the guts to say it, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?"
James Watson, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA

"We have spent billions to unravel our biology, not out of idle curiosity, but in the hope of bettering our lives. We are not about to turn away from this."
Gregory Stock of UCLA on the decoding of the human genome.

"All the political energy that has gone into this issue -- it is not even slowing down the most narrow approach." It is simply being pursued outside the United States -- in China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Scandinavia and Great Britain, where scientists will probably achieve success first.
Ray Kurzweil, on the controversy over the use of stem cells from human embryos.

More on emerging technologies here.

The Rise of Personal Desktop Fabrication and Replicators

In October 2004, I began tracking the rise of crude personal fabricators hacked from Inkjet printers. We are now on the verge of self-replicating fabricators and self assembling, replicating, and repairing robots. Here's the whole story...

My research began with the use of Inkjet printers to produce physical objects. The full story is in the above link. It involves hacked Inkjet printers spitting polymer instead of ink to create extremely detailed 3d physical objects. Initially, this was a cheaper and faster way to produce a prototype from a 3d computer model.

But since inkjet technology allows the very exact mixing of 3 basic colored inks into photographic quality results, it was also used to mix precisely charged polymers. A growing array of computer parts, complete working gadgets and solar cells followed from the widening jaw of the humble inkjet.

Polymer soon gave way to new mediums as researchers discovered they could use practically any pulverized material mixed with a suitable glue. Hard objects made from powdered ceramics and tungsten demonstrated that actual working parts (instead of just prototypes) were possible.

Then the pace quickened. Researchers Hod Lipson and Jordan B. Pollack at Brandeis University coupled inkjet technology and software to autonomously design and fabricate robots without human intervention. Other labs were using Inkjets to produce actual human skin complete with blood vessels.

The Rise of Personal Fabricators

In March 2005, engineers at the University of Bath worked on a machine to rapid prototype and replicate itself.

In early May, Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, announced his determination to produce affordable, replicating personal fabricators.

Later in May, Hod Lipson (who previously announced the process to design and fabricate robots without human intervention) pointed out the arrival of simple self replicating robots. I'll stay on top of this developing story.

The Evolution of Leggo? New Robot Self-Replicates In 2 1/2 Minutes

Out of Cornell rises a self assembling/ replicating robot composed of independently functioning cubes allowing it to assume a range of three-dimensional shapes. Each cube is preprogrammed with step-by-step instructions on how to replicate the robotic structure.

(This is part of a developing story about the rise of personal desktop fabrication and replicators).

Dismissing any doubt that self replicating machines are possible, the modular design with intelligence built into each module, points a way to self-repairing, assembling and replicating robots.

Applications

More complex robots are possible. Adding grippers, cameras, new sensors etc. would allow the assembled robot to see, hear, move... A robot could assemble and reassemble itself into a new structure to deal with novel events.

The research team has set it's sights on a molecular version. The cubes, like molecules, are held together with magnets that turn on and off. Like biological life forms, they (crudely) replicate in 2005 and programmed to stop reproducing after 2 generations.

Implications

Nanomachines: Lipson is interested in making these machines at microscale. That could drive major advances in Nanotechnology because huge numbers of robots are needed to manufacture things at a molecular scale. Self-replication is how biology does it.

Imagine scaling the size of this self replicating design down in half each year. Increasingly complex structures, detail and properties would emerge. Each new generation would be exponentially more capable. Every 3 1/2 years the modules would shrink to one 10th the size. The cubes are now about 10 centimeters square. By 2010 the modules would be about smaller than the ball of your pen. By 2015 they would approach the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Each with equal or greater computational power than they have now, loaded with sensors and new properties.

Each module could become a pixel in the construction of an object. Kind of like those "Pin Art" toys that you press to your hand, face or some object. It would form itself from instructions and be able to walk, roll, climb and move about. Perhaps even swim or fly. And replicate as long as the supply of modules lasts.

It's absolutely conceivable because Technology is inherently self-accelerating. In an ever quickening loop, the power of technology naturally accelerates in speed, magnitude and scope while dropping in cost.

Beyond that is the doorway to manufacturing with molecules. At the molecular scale it would be capable of producing perfectly designed objects, energy sources, even food. It is a very powerful existence proof of what is on the near horizon.

The movie (accelerated 4X) is eerie to watch. It's easy to imagine a clutter of cubes picking themselves up and walking towards you.

Updated Google News Links Here

The Evolution of Lego? Self Replicating Robots

Out of Cornell rises a self assembling/ replicating robot composed of independently functioning cubes allowing it to assume a range of three-dimensional shapes. Each cube is preprogrammed with step-by-step instructions on how to replicate the robotic structure.

(This is part of a developing story about the rise of personal desktop fabrication and replicators).

Dismissing any doubt that self replicating machines are possible, the modular design with intelligence built into each module, points a way to self-repairing, assembling and replicating robots.

Applications

More complex robots are possible. Adding grippers, cameras, new sensors etc. would allow the assembled robot to see, hear, move... A robot could assemble and reassemble itself into a new structure to deal with novel events.

The research team has set it's sights on a molecular version. The cubes, like molecules, are held together with magnets that turn on and off. Like biological life forms, they (crudely) replicate in 2005 and programmed to stop reproducing after 2 generations.

Implications

Nanomachines: Lipson is interested in making these machines at microscale. That could drive major advances in Nanotechnology because huge numbers of robots are needed to manufacture things at a molecular scale. Self-replication is how biology does it.

Imagine scaling the size of this self replicating design down in half each year. Increasingly complex structures, detail and properties would emerge. Each new generation would be exponentially more capable. Every 3 1/2 years the modules would shrink to one 10th the size. The cubes are now about 10 centimeters square. By 2010 the modules would be about smaller than the ball of your pen. By 2015 they would approach the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Each with equal or greater computational power than they have now, loaded with sensors and new properties.

Each module could become a pixel in the construction of an object. Kind of like those "Pin Art" toys that you press to your hand, face or some object. It would form itself from instructions and be able to walk, roll, climb and move about. Perhaps even swim or fly. And replicate as long as the supply of modules lasts.

It's absolutely conceivable because Technology is inherently self-accelerating. In an ever quickening loop, the power of technology naturally accelerates in speed, magnitude and scope while dropping in cost.

Beyond that is the doorway to manufacturing with molecules. At the molecular scale it would be capable of producing perfectly designed objects, energy sources, even food. It is a very powerful existence proof of what is on the near horizon.

The movie (accelerated 4X) is eerie to watch. It's easy to imagine a clutter of cubes picking themselves up and walking towards you.

Updated News Here

How to Use RSS to Automatically and Instantly Track *Anything* Online All in 1 Place Including Your Email

Get updates about anything online, as it happens, all in 1 place: News, Email, Fedex, Ebay, Stocks, Weather, Companies, Products, Music, Radio, TV, Schedules, Entertainment, Comics, Whats Popular Now, Weblogs, Websites, Software, Anything Online. Here's the link.