Future Current

In the 1980′s while a researcher at Rutgers doing artificial intelligence and computer architecture, J. Storrs Hall learned about Eric Drexler‘s ideas and founded the sci.nanotech Usenet newsgroup, which he then moderated for over a decade. He is the inventor of various nanotech concepts, ranging from utility fog to space launch towers. The founding chief scientist of Nanorex Inc., he is a member of the Foresight Batelle productive nanosystems roadmap working group. He has also published the book Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology, which won the Foresight Institute’s communication prize in 2005. His latest book, which came out this summer, is Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine. At the 2007 CRN conference entitled “The Future of Nano & Bio Technologies,” he went down the list from A to Z of things you could make with something called a “nanofactory.”

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Cryonics researchers Chana de Wolf and Aschwin de Wolf

Moderated by Aschwin de Wolf, the critical care medical panel of the 7th Alcor Conference addressed the current status on laws that affect the practice of cryonics, the ethical debate concerning non heart-beating organ donation (NHBD), and comparisons between organ procurement procedures and cryonics. Questions were fielded by participants Tanya Jones (Alcor’s Chief Operating Officer), David Crippin (Associate Professor of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical center) and Leslie Whetstine (Ph.D. in Health Care Ethics).

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