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.

Exoskeletons and Thought Recognition

Thought-controlled Exoskeletons are on the way. The technology already exists.

Rapidly evolving, sophisticated exoskeletons have arrived. My favorite is Sarcos exoskeleton. No need for a joystick or hand controls. You just wear it, and it mirrors your actions.

You can pump a couple hundred pounds, run, box, dance and carry heavy loads up stairs. It doubles as an autonomous robot. If it can't do so already, it would be a simple step to program it. While in the robotic suit, carry out a series of actions, save, then step out. Switch to autonomous mode and the robot will repeat what you have taught it.

Like all computer tech, these suits will continually drop in price and become ever more sophisticated. Soon they'll park in the garage next to the car or maybe take up a corner in the living room waiting for intruders.

But here's the obvious next step: This technology is also primed to make the link between thought and superhuman abilities.

Thought Recognition

Thought recognition systems directly translate brain signals into action. Eric Ramsay, a man completely paralyzed except for his eyes is translating his thoughts into speech, a monkey's leg movement brain signals control a robot across the planet, and another monkey mentally controls a robotic arm to feed itself.

As exoskeletons fluidly respond to thought, paralysed, speechless people will walk, talk and navigate. Exoskeletons will spill from military applications to industry and then to consumers to become superhuman extensions of our bodies.

Follow news on thought controlled exoskeletons here.

More on thought controlled technology here:

Google Search

Google Video

Google News (not much as of March 2009, but worth checking over time)

As Speech Recognition Software Morphs Into Thought Recognition

Since 1999, Eric Ramsay has been paralyzed and only able to move his eyes. Otherwise he's completely conscious. But a new computer/ brain interface reads his brain signals as he thinks about vocal sounds, translating them in real time. The goal is conversation, by making it possible for him to literally think out loud. This pioneering development has interesting implications for texting, search engines and much more.

Some Blue Sky Thinking...

Computer technology that translates thoughts into spoken words would also be able to turn them directly into text. That's what speech recognition software already does. So Eric Ramsay may soon be searching Google and surfing the web. It means he may soon be texting his friends and family. Making new friends and maybe show up on Twitter.

[April 22 2009 Update: Adam Wilson made history, posting to Twitter just by thinking about it.]

As electrodes give way to a skull cap, things like wireless searching, texting, messaging, Twitter, Facebook etc., could become a thumbless, mental exchange. I can hardly wait for the 'Blue-Toothers' to discover this. I mean it's freaky to watch someone striding down a street, or sitting alone at a table having a conversation with the ether. (Chuckle at this short video.)

Reverse the process and imagine computer text translated directly into your unique brain signals and show up as your own thoughts. 'These opinions are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise...'

Is there an ethicist in the house? Who said that?

More on thought controlled technology here:

Google Search

Google Video

Google News (not much as of March 2009, but worth checking over time)

Amazing Rough Terrain Robot

The six legged RHex Robot, from the makers of BigDog is designed for extreme terrain. It can seemingly go anywhere. Stairs, over rocks, through mud, swim through water, run through fields... If it gets stuck it just goes crazy until it's moving again. Kinda cute too. At least until hoards of them begin marching from our desktop fabricators only to be turned into zombies by the latest botnet.
See the video links.