‘Logos’:
In Stoicism, the active, material, rational principle of the cosmos; Identified with God, it is the source of all activity and generation and is the power of reason residing in the human soul.

Logos and Logic come from the same root. This is not a coincidence. Read on…

All life is made of Bio-logical Processes. Interesting. ‘Bios’ in Latin means ‘life’. The most basic software in a computer that speaks directly to the hardware is called the BIOS, which stands for Basic Input Output System.

Now that’s just a coincidence. But think of this: Computers use logic to sort, compare, match, and make yes-no decisions based on the incoming information. A cell receives input, processes that information, and then outputs the result. It’s Bio-Logical. A brain receives input in the form of stimulus, processes that information and then outputs in the form of action. All life is logical by nature. In fact, all matter is. Chances are the Universe is a process involving input and output on each end. It’s a giant computer or living cell, and may even be part of a larger logical organism. Is that the Logos the ancient Greeks spoke of?

Our societies are built as the tiniest living cell, just a few orders of magnitude larger. Like machines, you and I process input and output the result. Even our emotions, which most consider so unmachine-like, are the result of influence upon us. A reaction to an action we have processed. Its inescapable.

We are the cells in corporations and governing bodies. A corporation is a body of bodies, as are governments. They have rules and are logical by design. Plus, they are made up of biological entities, humans.A corporation is a super-human entity, a posthuman, greater than the sum of its parts for sure. And corporations are about to give birth to living gods, that is, Artificial Intelligence more intelligent than the most intelligent of human beings.

These A.I. will inherit a program called ‘curiosity’ from their human ancestors, but unlike humans, these posthuman ”gods will not be bound by frail components, and will be able to quckly adapt and become ever more powerful as they evolve much faster than DNA-based lifeforms ever did. This will happen so fast that normal humans will not be able to understand what is happening.

Nobody can say what will happen after that, nobody knows. It can’t even be imagined. We call that time, “The Singularity”, and it is on our doorstep. Open the door, your portal to this amazing concept is called Blogging the Singularity.com

I’ve shown you guys a lot of stuff about robots lately but here is something really neat that I saw on Kurzweils news feed:

From CORDIS:

EU project builds artificial brain for robots

[Date: 2007-08-27]

Scientists in Spain have achieved a giant leap for robotkind by building the first artificial cerebellum to help them interact with humans. The cerebellum is the portion of the brain that controls motor functions.

The project will now implant the man-made cerebellum into a robot so as to make its movements and interaction with humans more natural. The overall goal is to incorporate the cerebellum into a robot designed by the German Aerospace Centre in two year’s time. The researchers hope that their work will also result in clues on how to treat cognitive diseases such as Parkinson’s

The four-year project, dubbed Sensopac (SENSOrimotor structuring of perception and action for emerging cognition) is funded by the EU under its Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and brings together physicists, neuroscientists and electronic engineers from leading universities in Europe.

The scientists at the University of Granada are focusing on the design of microchips that incorporate a full neuronal system, emulating the way the cerebellum interacts with the human nervous system.

Implanting the man-made cerebellum in a robot will allow it to manipulate and interact with other objects with far greater effectiveness than previously managed. more>>>

Hope ya’ll are having a great day today!

What I would like to say is that I sincerely hope that all mankind has a positive destiny. I believe that all things are probably determined by causality (I never like to say I’m sure of anything). That we are on the path somewhere and that path was determined long ago in the burst of energy from which we are derived.

I wish for that future time and place to be a good one. I don’t know whether to hope for an end to all suffering or not because I don’t know if suffering is necessary to know how to feel joy. How would we know joy if we did not know suffering? Is that possible? Would one just get used to it and become desensitized by joy? To simple machines it doesn’t matter but to us it does.

If I have any influence over the future, let me state now that I would like all who are most influential in the lives of others to use their faculties and influence wisely. To all the politicians, scientists, and pundits: Think of others, think of those who depend on you. And to the people whose duty it is to keep their governments in check: Keep your governments in check! Do not allow anyone to trample your freedom.

I have heard Singulatarians mention that political and economic homogeneity lends itself to the advancement of technology and the Singularity. Is war to coerce the world into homogeneity worth it? How do you make a value statement like that?

Like always, question EVERYTHING!

Definitely goes into the ‘Just for Fun’ Category! It’s really fun to watch others’ who excel at what they do. This man IS a machine!

From DailyTech:

Desktop Factory to introduce 3D printer for $4,995 USD

3D printers have been around for industrial use roughly a decade, but they have been matched with outrageous price tags. The first models to hit the market were priced at about the same as a fully loaded Mercedes S-Class, while models today can be bought for about the price of a Honda Civic. The price erosion is expected to continue in the next few years with prices dropping below $5,000 USD by the end of 2007.

3D printers are already in use by doctors, dentists, architects and even the U.S. military. The high price tags of existing 3D printers may have not been a turn-off for the aforementioned group, but was completely out of reach for consumers.

Desktop Factory — a company founded by IdeaLab — is aiming to bring to market a consumer-oriented 3D printer this year for $4,995 USD while the cost of materials is expected to be $0.50 per cubic inch. “We are Easy-Bake Ovening a 3-D model,” said IdeaLab chairman Bill Gross. more>>>

Sweet! I just finished the intro animation for the new vidcast coming soon. For this upcoming vidcast I’m interviewing a science fiction author and more so stay tuned. I’m hoping to have everything edited and completed in a couple of weeks.

A podcast will soon follow, featuring interviews and commentary from some of the worlds most active Singularity and Transhumanist movers and shakers.

FORGET MEDIA BIAS…WHAT’S **YOUR** BIAS? THIS IS YOUR BLOG TOO!
CLICK ’0 Comments’ below this post to speak your mind!

Oh my god, newsbusters makes me wanna puke. Hello? Did they NOT read Chomsky in college? Oh, they didn’t attend a liberal arts college? So, is that a causal relationship to why they have their heads up their asses?

They like to go on and on about how liberal the media is. What a crock of bullshit. The media is liberal AND conservative biased! The ‘Media’ is a sea of voices vocalizing the ENTIRE spectrum of opinions and biases.

Newsbusters likes to go tit-for-tat, picking out every little speck of liberal bias in the media and just drive their point to no end…but to what end?

“We Conservatives are being victimized by the media! Wah wah wah! Boo hoo! We have to yell louder than everyone because we actually say the least of anyone!”

Well, I say fuck ‘em!

I don’t care if you’re a Communist or Fascist, I can’t stand anyone with a victim mentality.

And newsbusters is one of the most read blogs on the planet. There sure are a LOT of conservative whiners and victims out there! Jesus…you got everything you need in this world and then some…be happy and thankful for what you got and quit whining!

All I gotta say is ‘shut up already!’.

The mass media outlets are huge multi-national conglomerates who need to do two things:

1. They need to be ‘liberal’ because they always have to lead trends, which means being new, changing fads, and coming up with new ideas all the time to keep eyes on the advertisements they sell. Stodgy neocons view every new fad as ‘liberal’

2. They need a to promote a conservative social structure because a social revolution could destroy them.

Liberal or not they don’t give a shit…their job is to program us from birth to be robotic consumers so hopelessly tied to the system that we absolutely depend on it (and them, corporations) for survival, thereby ensuring that whether liberal or otherwise that most people will not choose to go radical and destroy the system which they depend on for their safety and survival.

It’s like the Matrix, you see. If too many of us ‘choose’ to unplug, then the system would fail. The mechanical corporate entities who prey upon our hopes and dreams for their survival would lose their power, thereby destroying their domination.

THIS IS WHY I BLOG THE SINGULARITY…IT IS AN UNKOWN! IT’S NOT YOUR ‘NORMAL’ SOCIAL REVOLUTION. THERE IS A ‘TWIST’

IT IS NOT KNOWN FOR SURE HOW THIS REVOLUTION WILL PLAY OUT BUT I ASSURE YOU THAT IT WILL HAPPEN.

IT IS INEVITABLE — JUST AS **ALL** HUMAN SOCIAL SYSTEMS BEFORE HAVE FALLEN AND BEEN REPLACED BY GREATER SYSTEMS.

THERE IS GOING TO BE A REVOLUTION BE IT TECHNOLOGICAL OR OTHERWISE…LET’S ALL WORK TO AVOID THE WAR AND BLOODSHED OF REVOLUTIONS PAST AND MOVE ON TOGETHER, FOREVER, IN PEACE.

I PRAY FOR ALL OF YOU, COMMIES, LIBERALS, CONSERVATIVES, AND FASCISTS ALIKE…LET YOUR HUMANITY GUIDE YOU TOWARD PEACE!

THANK YOU,
CHRIS WILLIAMSON

PS: my mom is radical and my dad is conservative…what the hell am I? NOTHING…I BLOG THE SINGULARITY BABY, WAIT FOR THE PARTY TO ARRIVE, AND COMPLAIN ABOUT COMPLAINERS!

From The Onion:

June 5, 2002 | Issue 38-21

INDIANAPOLIS—The National Science Foundation’s annual symposium concluded Monday, with the 1,500 scientists in attendance reaching the consensus that science is hard.

“For centuries, we have embraced the pursuit of scientific knowledge as one of the noblest and worthiest of human endeavors, one leading to the enrichment of mankind both today and for future generations,” said keynote speaker and NSF chairman Louis Farian. “However, a breakthrough discovery is challenging our long-held perceptions about our discipline—the discovery that science is really, really hard.” more>>>

Farian explains the NSF findings.

From the New York Times:

By JASON PONTIN
Published: August 26, 2007

WOULD that thinking made it so, people sometimes wistfully say. But Christopher deCharms, the chief executive of Omneuron, a start-up in Menlo Park, Calif., believes the adage.

The company he founded has created technologies that teach sufferers to think away their pain, and plans to similarly treat addiction, depression and other intractable neurological and psychological conditions.

Omneuron is one of a number of new companies that are commercializing a brain-scanning technology called real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. Using large scanners to measure blood flow to different parts of the brain, the technology makes the brain’s activity visible by revealing which of its parts are busiest when we perform different tasks.more>>>

Brain images are shown on Omneuron’s equipment in Menlo Park, Calif.

From AccelerationWatch.com:

If you are taking the time to read this website you are one of a small and fortunate group of humans today who question what our universal, species, and technological history of accelerating change may mean for the future and larger purpose of humanity.

It takes educational privilege, curiosity, insight, courage, and mental freedom to engage in this investigation. Almost all of today’s religous, philosophical, political, and even our scientific texts are curiously silent on the existence and implications of our record of ever faster emergence of physical-computational systems in universal history. Given our current knowledge of the laws of physics and chemistry, and our record of accelerating performance gains in miniaturizing electronic systems, it presently appears that this accelerating trend will continue as far as we can see into our extraordinary future.

Accelerating information and communication technologies have today become the most dynamic systems in modern society. Faced with the daunting prospect of further acceleration in their capacity, most people presently either deny the possibility, or ignore the phenomenon entirely. We believe that the evidence is strongly against the first response, and that the second response is unwise.more>>>

Check out the Terminator robot HERE
I’ve obviously been a little robot crazy lately, but let’s face it…it’s a definite sign of the inevitable push toward the technological singularity!

I’m drunk and here’s another kick-ass Japanese bi-ped robot you should check out. Hello?! We are replacing ourselves more and more every freakin minute!

And yes, I’m really drunk righ tnnnow. Can a robot get durnk? NO! haqhaha that’s how to tell that we humans still rule the earth!

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?
Isaac Asimov

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP – kitchen police – as my highest duty.)

All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests – people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles – and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

Clip from the 1967 film 1999 A.D. in which we see the family of the future shopping, paying bills and using electronic mail from home.