Brent Kearney

VBS TV has posted a quirky, documentary-style interview with Ray Kurzweil. For those who have read his books or listened to his speeches, there isn’t much new material here. Although, it does help clarify what Kurzweil means when he says that biology and other areas of science are becoming information technology, and thus subject to the same exponential growth in progress.

Visit VBS for the rest of the interview.

In another post I put forward an example of one way that biology could be considered to be transforming into information technology: a computer programming language was developed that manipulates DNA into rearranging cellular matter according to the instructions in the computer program. In this example, there is a direct mapping between IT and cellular biology: the former manipulates the latter.

I was on the right track, but as the interview shows, Kurzweil extends that idea, assuming that in the future there will be a full flowering of nano-technology, as conceived by K. Eric Drexler. From the interview:

Ten years ago, if I wanted to send you a movie, I’d send you a FedEx package. I’d now send you an e-mail attachment. Same for a music file, or a book. These can now be sent as information files. Those used to be physical products, and increasingly, more and more physical products will become just [information].

Ultimately, when we have full-scale nano-technology, which is re-organizing matter and energy at the molecular level, I’ll be able to e-mail you a toaster, or toast…

The idea is that once we can fully describe an object at the atomic level, we will have an atomic blueprint for it. Then that object essentially becomes information, because all we would need to reconstruct that object in physical reality is the appropriate manufacturing technologies. According to Kurzweil, once mature nanotechnology is developed, we will be able to fabricate any objects with the same efficiency with which we can now copy books and movies.

As the Paul Rothemund talk demonstrates, this is already beginning to happen in biology. Every aspect of the genome is being intensely studied and mapped out; a comprehensive map of the human brain is scheduled for completion in 2012. This is why Kurzweil has been saying that biology is presently becoming an information technology.

Once in the form of pure information, technological progress occurs exponentially, as Kurzweil notes:

There’s a new iPhone that’s twice as powerful as last year’s for half the money, and that’s not just because Apple is so brilliant. It’s true of all electronics, and in fact it’s not just electronics. It’s true of anything where we have information, whether it’s brain scanning or biological technologies.

From the TED conference, Juan Enriquez gave an interesting talk in February that cast the current U.S. financial crisis in light of an impending, massive technological revolution. The theme was rebooting: the economy needs a reboot, and it needs to come in the form of technological leadership. In turn, intensely disruptive technology will soon reboot humanity itself.

Although massive cutbacks are the trend of the day, given the “flames of the crisis”, Enriquez noted that venture-backed start-up companies make up 0.02% of U.S. GDP investment, but provide 17.8% of it’s output. So we must continue to invest in research and development, which spins-off these start-up companies. It will save the economy and help define the future.

In his talk, Enriquez goes over numerous examples of game-changing technological developments, including advancements in cellular engineering, tissue regrowth, and robotics. If you are not interested in the economic angle, the Singularity Hub posted an edited version that has just the technological half of the talk. However, the full version is worth watching (18 min):

I wish that the Canadian government realized the value of basic research. It’s 2009 budget cut research funding by $158 million, in order to help fund "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects. While the new buildings will be welcome, cutting research funding is incredibly short-sighted!

I came across this documentary, Technocalyps, (like apocalypse, get it?) the other day, and although I’ve only watched the first third of it, I can say that it’s pretty cool. I didn’t learn much, but I’ve been getting into the subject for awhile now. It’s a good documentary to pass to someone who isn’t up to date on what’s going on in artificial intelligence, cybernetics, bioengineering, etc.. There some kooky sounding people in the film, but what else is new? I loved all of the imagery from old horror movies and from Burning Man.

Today I sent the link to my pal Rob, who, in pursuit of his Eyeborg Project, is becoming somewhat transhuman himself. He will be the world’s first transhuman documentary maker, and apparently, a working prototype is imminent. He’s in Belgium to speak about the project at the Digital News Affairs conference, and as it turns out, this transhumanism film was made by Frank Theys, of Belgium. Weird coincidence. Anyways, Rob is getting a lot of press for his project, and I was delighted today when his story came across my radar via the KurzweilAI.net news feed (in my sidebar). Check out the clip:

One recurring theme that futurists talk about in discussions of transhumanism, including Bruce Sterling in the TechnoCalyps film, is that there won’t be one big sudden change in society, where we will wake up one day and there will be a race of super-intelligent cyborgs that look like RoboCop roaming the Earth, and people will be lining up to join them. It will be a gradual process — an electronic eye here, an artificial organ there — people will continue to integrate technology into their bodies as needed or as desired.

The technology is still very young, but what most people fail to realize is that it is improving at a very fast rate, and that rate is itself increasing. Today’s technology will seem as crude to us in the near future as medieval medicine does to us now. There will come a time when the integration of technology with our bodies won’t just be for replacing missing parts — it will be a true enhancement, to extend and improve our health, and our abilities.

Pioneers like my soon-to-be-cyborg friend Rob and his colleagues are a driving force for pushing technology out of the lab and into practice. As the pace and breadth of research accelerates, more people with this kind of courage and initiative will be required to bring talent together and apply their skills to solving real-world problems. Cheers to them!

The Singularity Summit brings together futurist luminaries to discuss the rapidly approaching technological singularity: that point past which it becomes nearly impossible to estimate the course of human technological — and biological — development.

I highly recommend that you check out the videos from the summit. Especially the man with the crystal ball, the highlight of the conference, Ray Kurzweil. Despite his monotone, sleep-inducing style of speaking, Kurzweil’s talk is fascinating. He sums up what many of the other speakers said in their talks, comments on them, and gives an overview of the inexorable march of technological progress towards the singularity.

The debate between Ray Kurzweil and John Horgan was interesting. It was refreshing to hear an opposing view, even though his argument from complexity was rather weak in the face of exponentially growing knowledge and computational power, and Horgan had nothing to say about Kurzweil’s suggestion that the brain’s complexity is like a fractal — not as complex as it appears. In the end, it came down to a factual dispute: Horgan does not believe that biology/neurology is or is the same as information technology, and Kurzweil does.

It’s a valid objection. Many technophiles hold the view that genetics and/or brain-mind and/or nano-physics is similar or the same as binary, digital computer technology. What if this view is false? Could the information bits that are perceived in living cells turn out to be a misconception of what is going on inside the body? Is wetware an irreducible, fundamental component of brains, intelligence, consciousness? Of genetic goings-on in general?

Philosophers have long speculated that this could be so. It seems to me though, that the engineers have already won that debate. An example that nicely illustrates how fundamental biological processes are essentially a natural implementation of information technology is Paul Rothemund’s presentation, Casting spells with DNA, or the more recent version, DNA folding. Rothemund describes the beginnings of a high-level computer programming language for engineering DNA, resulting in the manipulation of biological mechanisms to precisely control the organization of matter at the molecular or atomic level. If the understanding of DNA as an information substrate was mistaken, this would not be possible.

Consciousness is another matter — as Horgan pointed out, we don’t even understand irony. First things first though. A lot will be discovered on the path to engineering a brain. Maybe the mystery of consciousness will be solved along the way. Maybe it will be an emergent property of a sufficiently complex neural system. We’ll find out when we get there!

See also: Singularity Hub’s first-hand review of the summit