Our Digital Book Future: Turning A New Virtual Page In Human Evolution – Forbes

Via Scoop.it – Knowmads, Infocology of the future

Digital books, streaming music, apps that allow people to compare prices at brick-and-mortar stores with the price on Amazon.com.  The more we talk about these things, the more I feel like we’re having the same conversation over and over again with a slightly new twist each time: how to think about the future and the co-evolution of society and technology in a time of rapid change. It’s not an easy conversation to have, and yet it’s really the foundation for everything from anti-piracy legislation like SOPA to understanding how the internet can have an impact on a musician’s paycheck.   Keep on reading
Via www.forbes.com

Prof Jamie Davies – Synthetic Biology: the potential and the problems of re-engineering life

Professor Jamie Davies, Professor of Experimental Anatomy, presents “Synthetic Biology: the potential and the problems of re-engineering life”.

What Consciousness Is Not- Raymond Tallis

Via Scoop.it – Knowmads, Infocology of the future

Philosophers of mind are in thrall of the idea that the mind is a computer, dismissing the role and even the existence of conscious experience. But one philosopher, David Chalmers, has been highly influential in pushing back.   With the publication of his 1996 book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, David Chalmers established himself as one of the most assiduous, honest, imaginative, and talented thinkers working in the vast and overpopulated field of the philosophy of mind. In that tome, Chalmers did not avoid the abstruse and the technical where they were unavoidable, and only intermittently lost touch with the mysteries that strike us all when we think about consciousness. And for the most part, despite the difficulties, he also managed to explain his inquiries with admirable clarity; in this respect, he came across like the philosopher John Searle, only less combative, less sure of himself, and less liable to brush aside or overlook the true problems of consciousness. (Searle, incidentally, launched a savage attack on Chalmers’s book.) If Chalmers’s scrupulousness and attention to contrary views made his arguments long — sometimes wearyingly so — this was an indirect tribute to his seriousness of purpose.

Keep on reading-> Via www.thenewatlantis.com

Clay Shirky – Defend our freedom to share (or why SOPA is a bad idea)

What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.

Discovery Could Lead to an Exercise Pill – A newly identified hormone acts like a workout, and transforms bad fat into good.Technology Review

Via Scoop.it – Knowmads, Infocology of the future

Researchers have discovered a natural hormone that acts like exercise on muscle tissue—burning calories, improving insulin processing, and perhaps boosting strength. The scientists hope it could eventually be used as a treatment for obesity, diabetes, and, potentially, neuromuscular diseases like muscular dystrophy. In a paper published online today by the journal Nature, the scientists, led by Bruce Spiegelman at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, showed that the hormone occurs naturally in both mice and humans. It pushes cells to transform from white fat—globules that serve as reservoirs for excess calories—into brown fat, which generates heat. Because the hormone is present in both mice and humans, Spiegelman speculates that it may have served as an evolutionary defense against cold by triggering shivering. He named it irisin, after the Greek messenger goddess Iris, who allowed humans to communicate with the gods in Greek mythology, because exercise appears to “talk” to various tissues in the body via irisin.
Via www.technologyreview.com

The battle between your present and future self: Daniel Goldstein

Every day, we make decisions that have good or bad consequences for our future selves. (Can I skip flossing just this one time?) Daniel Goldstein makes tools that help us imagine ourselves over time, so that we make smart choices for Future Us.

Daniel Goldstein studies how we make decisions about our financial selves — both now and in the future,
Full bio and more links

Scientists grow sperm in laboratory dish – Telegraph

Via – Knowmads, Infocology of the future

The development opens up the possibility of infertile men being able to father their own children rather than using donor sperm. Researchers in Germany and Israel were able to grow mouse sperm from a few cells in a laboratory dish. In a world first a team headed by Professor Stefan Schlatt, at Muenster University in Germany, were able to grow sperm by using germ cells. These are the cells in testicles that are responsible for sperm production. Scientists grew the sperm by surrounding the germ cells in a special compound called agar jelly to create an environment similar to that found in testicles. Prof. Mahmoud Huleihel, who also grew the sperm at Israel’s Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, said: “I believe it will eventually be possible to routinely grow human male sperm to order by extracting tissue containing germ cells from a man’s testicle and stimulating sperm production in the laboratory.”
Via www.telegraph.co.uk

The quest to understand consciousness : Antonio Damasio

Every morning we wake up and regain consciousness — that is a marvelous fact — but what exactly is it that we regain? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio uses this simple question to give us a glimpse into how our brains create our sense of self.

Antonio Damasio’s research in neuroscience has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making.

Frontline Medicine – Rebuilding Lives (Part 1-4)

This program shows some of the latest medical advances towards healing injured soldiers and how this innovation may translate to the general public. Also how this technological look into the future would not be possible without military funding of these programs.

part 2
part 3
part 4

This is a must watch

The Neurobiology and Mathematics of Consciousness – Christof Koch – Singularity Summit 2011

In an ambitious talk (and accompanied by his engaging dry wit), neuroscientist Christof Koch – Professor of Biology and Engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle – discussed The Neurobiology and Mathematics of Consciousness – a thorny problem at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. The challenge is derived from the quixotic nature of consciousness as an instance of qualia: introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives we experience as real, but which nonetheless elude definition and neurobiological localization.

h\t to Physorg: The future cometh: Science, technology and humanity at Singularity Summit 2011 (Part II)

Synthetic aesthetics: Daisy Ginsberg

Daisy Ginsberg, designer, artist and writer, explores the social, ethical and cultural implications of emerging technologies, especially synthetic biology. Her projects open up a creative space to imagine the potential scientific triumphs and disasters on the horizon.

Daisy Ginsberg: Synthetic aesthetics from PopTech on Vimeo.

more at Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg site

Generative Art – Computers, Data, and Humanity | PBS Arts -Off Book |

An intriguing combination of programmers, artists, and philosophers, these creators embrace a process that delegates essential decisions to computers, data sets, or even random variables. This allows important metaphors to arise in their work, calling attention to the relationship between humans and the computers that surround us, the mountains of information we generate, and the powerful impact that technology has on our relationships with each other.

Featuring:

Luke Dubois, Generative Composer
Scott Draves, Generative Artist
Will Wright, Game Designer

Music by:

Codex Machine, http://soundcloud.com/ms-codex
Luke Dubois, http://lukedubois.com
Revolution Void, http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/revolutionvoid
Tryad, http://tryad.org
Reno Project, http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Reno_Project

A Multiverse of Exploration: The Future of Science 2021 – Boing Boing

Via Scoop.it – Knowmads, Infocology of the future

For the last year, my colleagues and I at Institute for the Future have been researching the future of science to identify big areas of science we think will have a transformative impact over the next decade. We read a lot of papers, conducted interviews, hosted an Open Science unconference, held an expert workshop with researchers from UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, Scripps Research Institute, SETI, and private industry, and spent many weeks synthesizing what we learned. The result is this map, titled “A Multiverse of Exploration: The Future of Science 2021.” You can click the image to see it larger or download the PDF (front and back) here. Marina Gorbis, Ariel Waldman, and I wrote it. Ariel, Jean Hagan, and Karin Lubeck made it beautiful. The map focuses on six big stories of science that will play out over the next decade: Decrypting the Brain, Hacking Space, Massively Multiplayer Data, Sea the Future, Strange Matter, and Engineered Evolution. Those stories are emerging from a new ecology of science shifting toward openness, collaboration, reuse, and increased citizen engagement in scientific research. We are delighted to share the map with you, under a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. From “A Multiverse of Exploration: The Future of Science 2021″:
Via boingboing.net

The line between life and not-life : Martin Hanczyc

In his lab, Martin Hanczyc makes “protocells,” experimental blobs of chemicals that behave like living cells. His work demonstrates how life might have first occurred on Earth … and perhaps elsewhere too.

Martin Hanczyc explores the path between living and nonliving systems, using chemical droplets to study behavior of the earliest cells

Henry Markram: Simulating the Brain — The Next Decisive Years

The following is 1 of 3 parts of Markram’s presentation. The rest follow on Youtube.