Welcome to my first Weekly Twitter Wrapup. This is where I get to write longer than 140 characters about things that caught my eye this week… and you get a mini-futurist carnival. A win-win! Enjoy:
ebertchicago
And don’t be quick to assume ethanol is the answer to the energy crisis. link.
I won’t. Without subsidies ethanol wouldn’t be profitable for anyone… and wouldn’t be sold. Its a net energy loss. And, frankly, its evil to put food in our gas tanks when there are hungry people in the world.
We can do better.
futureaware
Sweet Little Lies ? The Bitter Truth About Sugar
Your mother was right. Cut the sugar. Sugar is at the root of most of our abundance-related ills.
video games – increasingly free from restrictions of device and location… gaming via cloud computing. link
Gaming has already moved away from physical media like CDs and DVD/ROMs to download only. But this is beyond that. No need to install a game into a computer when its out there on the “cloud.” You’ll play your game from any device that can touch the cloud.
What is your brain like during an epiphany?
…and what can we do to encourage that?
“The Singularity is Near” wins awards at Breckenridge film festival. link
Phil reported that if this film gets the attention it deserves, Kurzweil and company will have a big hit on their hands.
XiXiDu
What is Google TV? (video) link
Nintendo 3DS first look – solid. link
The chances that I won’t be buying a couple of these 3D Nintendo DS’s for Christmas this year? Well, not good.
Solar storms coming. link
Our civilization has a vulnerability that not enough people are aware of – a strong-enough electro-magnetic pulse (or EMP) could render useless every device with a computer chip. Our power grid would go down. Our cars would be bricked.
The novel One Second After dealt with the possibility of a man-made EMP attack. Unfortunately, this disaster could also come from a natural source – our Sun.
So, I was glad to get to tweet:
Hardening the electric grid against attacks EMP, cyber, and solar flares. link
The author of “One Second After, William R. Forstchen, suggested having a fleet of hardened locomotives engines ready to go to start making critical food and drug deliveries immediately.
I think it would be a good idea to require mechanics, as part of their certification, to know how to get vehicles moving after their computers are fried.
“Translator” will soon be, like “computer,” one of those words that used to mean a profession, and now means a machine. link
Reason at FightAging has begun following the Russian longevity community via Google Translate technology. The world is getting smaller all the time.
BookBanter: BookBanter Episode 31 with Cory Doctorow. link
Cory is always interesting. We certainly enjoyed having him as a guest on FastForward Radio.
Graphene circuits.
…that are 10 times faster than silicon.
Technology benefits on exponential curve. Shouldn’t judge Human Genome Project results before elbow in the curve. link
Yes, its been 10 years since we sequenced the human genome; and no, we haven’t cured cancer, obesity, or aging… yet. Exponential trends have a way of surprising us, making us think that the world changed overnight.
Five God Particles: US experiment suggests there may be multiple versions of the elusive God particle – or Higgs boson
You think maybe we couldn’t find the tree for the forest?
Better pain relief. New drug could be 100 times as potent as morphine with no addiction, less chance of side effects. link
Chronic pain and, unfortunately, the addiction that often results are epidemic. This development could be world-changing for many people.
The Moon’s interior may harbor 100 times more water than previous estimates, link
Abundant water means we can go to the Moon to live. Lunar agriculture is possible. We can split water for oxygen to breathe and we can use hydrogen for fuel.
Nokia hopes that power scavenging from radio might eventually deliver 50 milliwatts, enough to trickle-charge a phone. link
How cool would it be to power your phone and laptop from the radio waves all around you? Never plug in!
Taking kids to A team.
No, not a futuristic tweet. But it was a very fun movie. I recommend it, especially if you have boys.
#TechShop is amazing. Every city should have one. link
Cory Doctorow’s “Makers” in real life! Well, almost. I hope this “tool-shop-treated-like-fitness-club” concept spreads everywhere.
NPR has a nice piece on Einstein’s brain, and what might have made it special. link.
Fascinating story. Scientist steals Einstein’s brain because he believes science could learn from it. It costs him his career and reputation. Now, finally, his idea (if not his ethics) has been vindicated.
Looking forward to Ray Kurzweil’s new book How the Mind Works and How to Build One link
Can’t wait.
But could some dude without a PhD teach college math and engineering? And history and biology? & beat MIT? link
…well, at least in traffic to his website.
Sciece tattoos.
And here’s the science tattoo emporium.
Focus fusion making huge progress. link
It may still be a bit of a long shot, but it beats betting on ethanol.
O2 deprivation, then freeze = safer suspended-animation cold sleep
Not, necessarily, for cryonics. This could be developed into a system to stabilize severely injured patients to get them to a hospital.
nytimesscience
In the Singularity Movement, Humans Are So Yesterday link
This is a very long article on the transhumanist movement. It was a big topic of conversation on the hplus twitter feed last weekend.
Follow Stephen on Twitter: @stephentgo.