The Google Foundation
Google has announced that it will contribute a certain percentage of its stock value (approximately $1B, judged by stock prices today) and annual profits to humanitarian causes over the next 20 years via the Google Foundation. This is a level of charitable giving similar to that of other big technology companies such as Cisco Systems, Intel, and eBay. But I hope that Google's unique, hands-on approach to such activity will cause its humanitarian investments to yield a greater return-per-dollar than that of other companies. Their central focii are global poverty, energy, and the environment.
Google Grants is also offering in-kind donations of advertising space for non-profit organizations in the US. If you are involved in the non-profit sector, you should check to see if your organization is eligible. I've just applied for my organization, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Also of interest is that Google seems to be working on a payment service, Google Accounts, ostensibly meant to challenge Paypal.
I am hopeful that over the coming years, employees within Google will think in greater detail about the ultimate consequences and potential of Artificial General Intelligence, leading them to support risk-mediation organizations such as the Singularity Institute. Of particular interest is that Ray Kurzweil recently gave a talk at Google to promote his new book, The Singularity is Near. There is also the observation that Google has internally been using prediction markets to create consensus estimates on the probability of given events, demonstrating a serious interest in the future. Will the Singularity Institute be getting more attention from Google and similar progressive companies in coming years? We aren't counting on it, but it sure would be nice!
Aliens – There Are None
People have been talking about the extraterrestrials again. The former Canadian minister of defense is arguing for public hearings on "exopolitics" and a "Decade of Contact", delegating public monies to education regarding our unearthly bretheren. Meanwhile, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is worried that alien signals received by SETI could contain viruses bent on taking over the world's computer networks.
The latter speculation is original thinking, I must admit. Thinking "outside the box" in this way is helpful in recognizing and addressing genuine future risks, even though I think this particular concern is off-base. It's also consoling that the mainstream media is willing to cover it, because some of the most truly serious risks to our well-being as a civilization will indeed sound "fringe" before they make headlines (nuclear weapons, chimera virii, others you haven't heard of).
But there are no aliens. Not around here, anyway. Why not? Because if there were, they'd already be here by now.
Radio has been in use for almost a hundred years. The Earth is surrounded by a sphere of intense electromagnetic activity almost 200 light years in diameter. It only gets more intense as time elapses. Short of bending space, there is no way we can ever take that information back. It's on its way out to the cosmos, in every direction at the speed of light.
You can't miss it. Natural phenomena, like supernovae and the cosmic microwave background radiation, have a characteristic signature that could never be confused with the orderly pulses of language and images. Information-theoretically, apples and oranges.
Radio is easy to invent, once you get to a certain stage as a civilization. You can't afford not to invent it. Harnessing electromagnetic waves to facilitate near-light-speed communication among the members of a civilization is as natural as constructing shelter or combating disease.
The Milky Way galaxy is about ten billion years old. Yet it's only a hundred thousand light years across. That's a ratio of a hundred thousand to one. If there were aliens about, we'd be bathed in radio signals continuously. Maybe they showed up so recently that their radio waves haven't hit us yet? Implausible. If life were to evolve in this galaxy, it would have done so already, and they'd be blasting us with their television dramas.
Perhaps alien civilizations have evolved to a medium of communication beyond electromagnetism? That could be the case, but then they'd be colonizing other worlds. Even moving at a tenth of the speed of light, saturating the galaxy with their presence would only take a mere million years, tops. But where are they?
Our solar system is appealing. We have a stable, mild star capable of providing billions of exawatts of free power to any alien race interested enough to set up shop here. There is no reason to pass us up. But our neighborhood is silent.
An advanced extraterrestrial civilization couldn't be missed. Life is constructed to flourish and reproduce. At no point will it collectively say, "we've had enough". Individual beings must explore, travel, and consume. Barring dictatorial control forbidding space travel, it's bound to happen. Not as a trickle, but a flood. Once a form of travel becomes technologically feasible, it becomes progressively easier until millions can do it.
The fact of the matter is simply that life is rare. Scientists believe there are a multitude of universes in existence, probably an infinite number. Presumably there are also an infinite number of intelligent civilizations. They are just separated by vast distances. The Self-Sampling Assumption compels us to treat ourselves as typical observers. If we're typical, then typical intelligent civilizations are separated by such vast distances that for most practical purposes they are alone.
The lack of alien presence is also evidence that FTL (faster-than-light) travel is impossible. Either that, or we are the only intelligent species with a civilization in the universe. (Or, faster-than-light travel exists, but is sufficiently weak that it only permits travel at a few times the speed of light - unlikely.)
The popular obsession with aliens and UFOs closely reflects the obsession with fairies in the early 1800s, and the fixation on angels and demons before that, and beliefs in the presence of spirits throughout history. We just want to believe it because the possibility is so exciting. This article from The Onion does a great job poking fun at this human tendency. Also see this Tech Central Station article ("Internet Killed the Alien Star") on how the Internet has helped us realize that alien visitation is make-believe.
If we want to witness bizarre new forms of life, or different types of intelligence, we'll just have to create it. You might say that creating it isn't the same thing as discovering, but this concern can be sidestepped by creating new forms of intelligence randomly, or constructing forms of intelligence that give rise to further forms in an unpredictable fashion. Both will happen, we just have to stick it out until the technology is here. You'll get your aliens soon, star-gazers!
138th Cryonics Patient Suspended
Early last August, the 138th cryonics patient in history underwent cryogenic suspension, thanks to the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute. The patient was pronounced dead at 6AM on August 12, 2005. By that evening the patient had arrived in Michigan and was intravenously administered a vitrification solution which would allow the patient to be cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen without fear of damage to the neurons. After 105 hours of cooling at the Cryonics Institute facility, the patient was transferred to a cryostat where she will remain indefinitely, along with 68 others who have been preserved the same way.
Our memories, personality, likes, dislikes, loves, and dreams are all encoded in the neural network of our brain. When our heart stops beating, the flow of oxygen to the brain is cut off, and neurological deterioration begins to occur. The information that constitutes who we are begins to be lost. But complete loss is not certain. If the body is quickly transferred to a cryonics facility and cooled to very low temperatures, the connections between the brain's neurons stay pretty much the same. In some cases, the difference between the two cannot even be detected with a microscope.
In the future, it should become possible to do light repair on a cryosuspended body, heat it back up to room temperature, and reboot the metabolism and vital organs by restoring the chemical and thermodynamic environment of the body to that as it was before death. This will require advanced technology capable of extreme precision and care - most likely medical nanotechnology. But it will be done. And if a civilization has the desire and means to revive cryonics patients, it's overwhelmingly likely that it would be a fascinating place to live - for a very long time.
This leads to the conclusion that we have an obligation to consider the possibility of making cryonics arrangements for ourselves and loved ones. An action as simple as freezing the body after death could lead to a very long-lasting and fulfilling life, a life that extends beyond what would have otherwise been our ultimate end. Cryonics arrangements are very affordable - the Cryonics Institute offers contracts for a low annual fee of $120 and possession of a life insurance contract which names the Cryonics Institute as a beneficiary (also about $100/year). Something you should consider!
Location-mapping Software – Plazes
Recently I signed up for the location-mapping software, Plazes. I originally heard it mentioned at last month's Accelerating Change conference. This service allows people to tag locations that are distinguished by Plazes using router information. People can add comments or pictures (via flickr) to the "plaze", and you can permit others to locate which plaze you are currently logged on. You can even permit Plazes to track your trajectory through time, creating a record of one's travels. Fascinating!
When I initially signed up with Plazes, the thing that surprised me the most was how few people and plazes currently existed. There were only 176 people logged on worldwide, and merely 11,810 plazes tagged so far. But it seems obvious that this service will become radically more popular in the years to come. I would expect perhaps a million plazes tagged by 2010, with tens of thousands of users logged on at any given time. Eventually this will develop to the point where someone will be able to casually walk down a street they've never been, but know basically what to expect just around the corner. And we'll always be able to know roughly where our friends are located (if they allow us), and where they were last weekend (or even last year!)
Plazes is part of the emerging "Web 2.0" family of applications and services, which make the most of collective intelligence, allowing us to create and receive useful information. Although the term is sometimes wielded lackadaisically, it does appear to refer to something genuinely real, something happening on the web right now, which has to do with the idea of turning the web from a static library into a collaborative "event stream", and getting users involved in the creation and editing of information.